The temperature was just above freezing last week, so Joshua Prager threw on a fourth blanket. He was glad to be here, sleeping in the creaky barn built on a sand dune a century ago by painter Charles Hawthorne. This spot on Miller Hill Road, a short walk to Commercial Street, is where many say this storied peninsula got its start as an art colony.

Norman Rockwell studied there. Norman Mailer, renting a house next door, attended parties in the space. Tennessee Williams danced and Jackson Pollock got drunk in the barn.