For sea captains back in the 19th century, there was no place they would rather live than on Pleasant Street. In fact, so many of these master mariners resided along the corridor between downtown and the inner harbor that it became known as Sea Captains Row, the most prestigious section of Hyannis.
Now, you can live on that same street, only this time you’ll find a 21st-century take on urban Cape living: smart-home technology, integrated security, wide-open floor plans. The new Hyannis apartments of Sea Captains Row usher in a new era — where hip meets historic — and breathe renewed life into this storied neighborhood for another generation of residents.
Reminders of the past are everywhere. In the design of Sea Captains Row, the architects at Union Studio Architecture & Community Design pay homage to Greek Revival cottages that the retired sea captains erected on Pleasant Street during the heyday of commercial seafaring in Hyannis. With columns and pediments on the front of the buildings, the new Hyannis apartments of Sea Captains Row incorporate features that characterized the architectural movement that became so popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
And there are more details that connect past and present. The salty sea breeze and native copper beech trees would also seem familiar to past residents like Captain Allen Hallet, who lived at the top of Pleasant Street in 1770.
Across from Hallet’s home, another historic event took place in 1874, when President Ulysses S. Grant arrived in Hyannis on the River Queen and spoke to ecstatic crowds celebrating the extension of the Old Colony Railroad to Provincetown. Today, the area around the station, just three minutes north of Sea Captains Row, is still a transportation hub with bus and train lines taking passengers all over Cape Cod, to Boston and beyond.
To walk in the footsteps of the former sea captains from your new Hyannis apartment to the Inner Harbor takes no more than a minute — although back then Cape Cod was the hub of the nation’s ship-building, seafaring, and whaling industries. Among past Pleasant Street residents who set sail here, we find women such as Sylvia Baxter Crowell Allen, who sailed around the world six times on her family’s ships.
These days, you can take waterfront seat at a top-rated seafood restaurant and enjoy a delectable lobster roll while you watch the boats go by. And, then, head home to your new Hyannis apartment, boasting conveniences unlike anything past sea captains could ever have imagined.
Welcome home.
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