$830 a Month for a Seashore Studio. The Repairs Could Run $250,000.

At the end of a private dirt road in Wellfleet, somewhere between Gull Pond and the Atlantic, a studio sits on a wooded acre with most of its front made of glass. Nine bays of it, floor to ceiling. The floor is flagstone. A convex bank of windows faces the shoreline, and accordion doors fold shut on the small rooms at the edges: a kitchenette, a bath, a bedroom not much bigger than a closet.

There's a fireplace, too. The federal government has an opinion about it.

"The fireplace is not operational and may not be used as a fireplace," says the National Park Service's request for proposals, a 24-page document released Aug. 3 that is, line for line, the most candid real-estate listing on the Outer Cape this year. The Sirna Studio, at 60 Way #4, has 746 square feet. First-year rent is $830 a month.

Which leaves you wondering why the Park Service would rent out a house it has no plans to fix, and who, having read that sentence, still applies.

As-is, with all faults

The Cape Cod National Seashore is offering three houses at once. Alongside the studio are the Ahearn House at 450 Pamet Point Road, also in Wellfleet, and the Jedediah Higgins House on Higgins Hollow Road in Truro. The Park Service's own map pins all three inside the park. All three are on the National Register of Historic Places. All three come, in the government's phrase, "as-is with all faults," and the faults are itemized.

The studio needs new roof rafters, new wiring, and a septic system to replace its cesspool. Its well may or may not be usable. Nearly everything else needs work too, including "pest/critter intrusion and damage." The Ahearn House, a 1,200-square-foot three-quarter Cape on 3.1 acres, needs a new roof and a new foundation, and its heating, plumbing and electrical have all "exceeded expected useful life." The Higgins House, a 1,977-square-foot full Cape on three acres with a circular cellar, needs a roof, wood gutters, new mechanicals and a structural look at a fireplace foundation that's settling.

What the list leaves out is a price. Each applicant has to work that out alone. Peter McMahon, founding director of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust, did some of the math for the Provincetown Independent this month. The studio, he said, needs a "total rebuild" running upwards of $250,000. Each Cape, by his estimate, could approach $1 million.

One had a big dead bird inside

The studio was designed in 1960 by the modernist Victor Civkin and built in 1961 by Edward Whiting, a local builder. That's the same year Congress created the Seashore that owns it now, after a fight so sour that Tip O'Neill said Truro hung him in effigy, which we wrote about in August.

The Ahearn House is older than any of that. According to its National Register history, it was probably built by Daniel Lombard sometime after 1817 and was standing by 1851, when he sold it to Justun Williams. Williamses kept it into the 20th century, and Joseph Ahearn owned it for many years after. The Higgins House was photographed for the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1962, and the Register calls it one of the least-altered 19th-century Capes in the Seashore.

Todd Schwebel, a Truro contractor who has restored old Outer Cape houses, toured the two Capes with a Seashore employee on Aug. 12. Neither had a working kitchen or insulation for year-round living, he told the Independent, and both had "a moldy, mousey odor."

"One had a big dead bird inside," he said. "They've been empty for a long time. Perfect haunted house material."

About $200,000 a house

After 1961, the Park Service bought up many of the private parcels inside its lines. The Independent reports that many were torn down, more than 60 became staff housing, and the Seashore now looks after more than 300 structures.

Three years ago, by McMahon's count, it spent $8.3 million demolishing 44 of them.

That works out to about $200,000 a house to make one disappear. Set it beside his estimate for bringing the studio back, upwards of $250,000, and the two numbers sit closer together than you'd guess. The difference this time is who swings the hammer. The park wants a tenant to do the rebuilding, and it may knock the approved cost of finished work off the rent.

Leases run 10 to 20 years. Year-one rent is $830 a month for the studio, $1,795 for the Ahearn House and $2,120 for the Higgins House, or $4,270.50 for all three, a 10 percent discount. Every repair must meet the Secretary of the Interior's standards for historic buildings. A lessee can live there or rent it out, short-term included. Applicants need proof of funds, a recent credit report and a record of historic rehab work. Proposals for all three "may" get preference.

Schwebel forwarded the listing to carpenter friends and says he'd like the houses to go to "local families who can fix them up." The Seashore employee on his tour, he told the Independent, thought one applicant taking all three was a real possibility: "someone with deep pockets."

Unless you went all the way down this certain dirt road

McMahon has stood on the other side of this table. The trust he founded in 2007 was set up to prevent the demolition of the Outer Cape's modern houses, and it leased its first one from the Seashore, the Kugel/Gips house, in 2010. "The NPS was supposed to demolish all those structures, but didn't," he told Boston Magazine in 2017. He'd like mission-driven nonprofits to bid this round, and he calls the contest "a cheerful story."

"It's much better to restore an old building than to demolish it and have it end up in a landfill," he told the Independent.

Back in 2017 he explained why so few people knew these houses existed. "A lot of them are in remote places that you would never come across unless you went all the way down this certain dirt road."

The last appointment tour was Wednesday. Questions are due Sept. 30, and proposals are due by 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, by email only, 20 pages per property.

At the end of that road in Wellfleet, the glass still faces the water, and the fireplace still can't be a fireplace. The paperwork does leave one door open, in a single line: "Offeror may propose a woodstove insert."

Somebody has until Nov. 1 to decide whether that's enough.

Cape Cod National Seashore — Historic Leasing RFP | Sirna Studio, 60 Way #4, Wellfleet · Ahearn House, 450 Pamet Point Rd, Wellfleet · Jedediah Higgins House, 26 Higgins Hollow Rd, Truro
Questions due Wed., Sep 30 · Proposals due 5 p.m. Sun., Nov. 1, 2026 (rolling weekly after that if no responsive proposal)
First-year rent: $830 / $1,795 / $2,120 a month; leases 10–20 years
[email protected] · Full RFP (PDF) · Property map
Tip: tours are over and the sites aren't open to drop-ins. Read Appendices A–C (the repair lists) before anything else.