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Directory of Burlington Vermont
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Arts and Humanities :
history and museums
History and Museums
There are 303 Arts and Humanities links for you to choose from!
Burlington's Old North End was the pre-Civil War connector
between Burlington's waterfront commercial district and the textile mills on the Winooski River. The residential neighborhoods of the Old North End, within walking distance of both lakefront and riverside industries, became home to most of the City's working class residents. Thriving neighborhood businesses served those residents.
With the closing of the textile mills in the 1950's, the Old North End began an extended period of decline. Homeownership and commercial activity diminished, and by the end of the 1980's, the blighted condition of the area - abandoned buildings, arson, DEA, FDIC and bank foreclosures, environmental contamination and deteriorated infrastructure - reflected the neighborhood's status as the most impoverished area in the state.
The 1990's saw the beginning of a variety of revitalization efforts in the Old North End.
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Green Mountain Children's Museum
is a community resource for children and their caregivers to learn about a wide range of topics, specifically through play. They place a high priority on education through hands-on exploration and creativity. A unique opportunity - regardless of race, physical ability, or economic background - is established for children to connect with one another and their caregivers in a nurturing, safe, and welcoming environment. The love of life-long learning is fostered with each new experience.
Only six states throughout the nation do not have a children's museum. Vermont is one of them.
In 2003, eight individuals from around Chittenden County began asking why.
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Shelburne Museum
is one of the nation's finest, most diverse, and unconventional museums of art and Americana. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in a remarkable setting of 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the Museum grounds.
Impressionist paintings, folk art, quilts and textiles, decorative arts, furniture, American paintings, and a dazzling array of 17th-to 20th-century artifacts are on view. Shelburne is home to the finest museum collections of 19th-century American folk art, quilts, 19th- and 20th-century decoys, and carriages.
Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960) was a pioneering collector of American folk art and founded Shelburne Museum in 1947. The daughter of H.O. and Louisine Havemeyer, important collectors of European and Asian art, she exercised an independent eye and passion for art, artifacts, and architecture celebrating a distinctly American aesthetic.
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Shelburne Museum will exibit Mary Cassatt and Warren Kimble’s first museum retrospective.
Shelburne Museum announced an exciting slate of nine new exhibits featuring a major show by the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt and contemporary folk artist Warren Kimble’s first museum retrospective.
“From the timeless beauty of Mary Cassatt’s Impressionist portraiture to the whimsy of Warren Kimble’s folk art to a dazzling array of flower quilts, new exhibits at Shelburne Museum this season offer something to inspire every visitor,” said Director Stephan Jost.
Mary Cassatt Friends and Family celebrates powerful themes of family and friendship in Cassatt’s art and explores her relationships with artists and collectors including Edgar Degas, Louisine Havemeyer and Shelburne Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb.
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1830 marked an important turning point in the history
of Burlington, Vermont. No longer just another Vermont village, Burlington had entered a period of brisk growth that would last for over a half century and transform it into Vermont's largest city. Set on a terraced ridge between Lake Champlain and the mighty natural falls of the Winooksi River, Burlington's location provided easy access to both international water-borne commerce and one of the most powerful mill sites in the region. With the 1823 opening of the Champlain Canal that provided a continuous water route from Lake Champlain to the Hudson River and New York City, Burlington's importance grew swiftly, and by 1830 it was becoming the leading center of commerce and industry on Lake Champlain and in Vermont.
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A 19th century Burlington landmark was opened to the public
for one day only on Saturday for a rare look inside. The Louisa Howard chapel at Lakeview Cemetery was built in 1875 and gradually fell out of use. It's been closed for the last sixty years.
This weekend a group that wants to re-open it held an open house. A restoration project has gained considerable interest and dozens of people showed up. Very few had ever seen the inside, where the original work remains largely intact, although much of the old plaster has eroded.
Some of it, such as the stained glass, has been repaired but the chapel still needs an estimated hundred-thousand dollars of work. Glenna Light of Friends of the Howard Chapel began raising money for the project ten years ago. "I just thought this building has got to be rescued," she said, "brought back to the purpose it was meant to be. I said I can't be that wrong. So many people are interested and they want to get involved."
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Ammi Burnha Young (1798-1874), arrived in booming Burlington in May of 1830
. Young created a "Plan of the Village of Burlington, Vermont" that year. This map...shows the locations and rough footprints of about 553 buildings. This is the oldest known street map of its type of Burlington.
Bernie Sanders' good friend, Richard Sugarman,
a University of Vermont philosophy professor, convinced him that if he ran for Mayor of Burlington, the largest city in the state and where Sanders had resided for a number of years -- he could do more than just raise issues: he could win the election. And to the shock of all the pundits, and the consternation of the downtown business community, that's exactly what happened. With overwhelming support from the working class wards, Bernie pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in Vermont's history. Running as an Independent, he defeated the six term Democratic incumbent - by 12 votes! He would go on to win three more terms as Mayor of Burlington, defeating Democratic and Republican candidates. In 1987, he defeated the mayoral candidate that both parties supported.
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Burlington Mill Company
harnessed the Falls’ power for the manufacture of yarns and cloth, attracting workers and businesses to support the burgeoning industry. The company’s financial status rose and fell over the ensuing years affecting the town’s economy.
The American Woolen Company purchased the mills in in 1901, once again bringing prosperity to the community. By 1922, the town had reached economic stabilization and was considered one of Vermont’s largest industrialized villages. Winooski successfully petitioned the Legislature for a city charter that year, becoming a city on March 7, gaining its independence from Colchester.
The city suffered a blow when the American Woolen Company shut down in 1954, causing an economic decline that lasted for two decades.
Since the mid-1970s, the city has been experiencing renewal. The mill buildings have been restored; the Champlain Mill contains stores, restaurants, and offices, and the converted Woolen Mill now houses condominiums and a health spa.
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Burlington Traction Company
--- In November of 1896 the Burlington & Winooski Horse Railroad Company changed their name to Burlington Traction Company after leasing and operating the Military Post Street Railway for about three and a half months. The Military Post Street Railway existed on paper until July of 1926.
Burlington was an important port in the 19th century
and boasts a wealth of historic resources.
It has long been commonly held that the town was named for the Earl of Burlington, though nobody could identify which of several Earls that might have been. A more immediate possibility is that it was for the Burling family of New York City, politically prominent and wealthy, a combination Benning Wentworth was known to admire. In support of this theory, the records show that nine Burlings are listed as grantees of eleven towns in Vermont, ten of which were recorded the same day. ... Incorporated as a city by act of the Legislature in 1864, the original town was split into what is now the City of Burlington and a new town of South Burlington. A portion of the original acreage had already been drawn off to form Williston.
Battery Street, near the waterfront and site of a ferry landing since the early 1800s, is known for its historic commercial and industrial buildings.
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Burlington was Chartered by Benning Wentworth,
the colonial governor of New Hampshire, on June 7, 1763, the original town contained 36 square miles.
English settlers were not the first to be attracted to the area. In 1609, Samuel de Champlain and his men were the first Europeans to view what is now Burlington. Although the French established several small forts along the lake, they did not endure, opening the way for British settlement during the late 18th Century. ... Burlington's proximity to the lake, combined with the determination of its founders, quickly attracted inhabitants and commerce to the area. Ira Allen surveyed Burlington in 1772. The following year, Ethan, Heman...Zimri, and Ira Allen formed the Onion River Land Company, which embraced 300,000 acres, including land owned by Edward Burling of White Plains, New York, for whom the town may have been named. -- At first it was known as "Burling's Town."
Burlington was chartered in 1763,
but settlement did not commence until the 1770s when the Allen brothers built a fort at the falls of the Winooski. A few settlers cleared farms in the 1770s and 1780s. In 1787, Ethan Allen settled in the bottomland near the mouth of the Winooski River. The first town meeting was held in 1787. The University of Vermont was established in Burlington in 1791. By 1812, Burlington had become a significant port with a population of 2000. With the opening of the Lake Champlain Canal in 1823, Burlington and Plattsburg in New York became important ports, shipping lumber and farm products South to Albany and New York City and manufactured goods to the farmlands of Vermont and northeast New York.
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Burlington was Once considered the third-largest lumber port
in the U.S.; Burlington was a prosperous, bustling hub in the early 1800s, its harbor full of large sailing ships (sloops) and barges transporting grain, wheat, cotton and wool processed in nearby mills and, of course, lumber, according to local historian Albert Spaulding. Huge quantities of lumber were shipped north to Canada and Europe via the St. Lawrence seaway and south down Lake Champlain to the Hudson River as northwestern Vermont was rapidly cleared of its timber. Wealthy lumber barons eventually built their mansions on the hill above the waterfront, many of which now house sororities, fraternities or administrative buildings for the University of Vermont and Champlain College. ... Although the shipping industry died out once the railroad was built in 1850
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Ethan Allen
who has become a folk hero in Vermont, was an unusually flamboyant backwoodsman-turned-statesman from Connecticut. He was one of the early inhabitants of Burlington, where he lived on his property in the Winooski River intervale from 1787 until his death in 1789. He made a very significant contribution to the early history of Vermont, at that time called the New Hampshire Grants, when the territory constituted the northern frontier of the New England colonies, and of the emerging nation.
He is best known for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and his leadership of the Green Mountain Boys. He was also a Deist and philosopher. Towards the end of his life he published Reason the Only Oracle of Man, rewritten from a manuscript he and Dr. Thomas Young, a Deist friend and mentor from Connecticut, had written together years earlier. (ethan-allen.html)
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Ethan Allen Homestead Museum
Ethan Allen was born in Litchfield, Connecticut
on January 10, 1738. His parents, Joseph and Mary Baker Allen were very religious. He had eight brothers and two sisters. Because of his love of learning, his father sent him to Yale.
In 1757 he joined the military to fight in the French and Indian War. He spent most of his time defending Fort William Henry against the French. When the war was over, Ethan Allen supported himself by making and selling kettles. He married Mary Brownson and they moved to the New Hampshire Grants in 1769.
The British gave the area of what is today Vermont to both New Hampshire and New York, which meant both colonies were selling the same land. Sometimes two people bought the same piece of land - one person from New Hampshire and one person from New York. In 1770, the New York Supreme Court decided that none of the land grants from New Hampshire were legal. This made a lot of settlers mad, because they would have to buy back the land they had already paid for.
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Green Mountain Boys
was a militia that could be called up to protect, by force if necessary, the ownership of the land in the New Hampshire Grants. Ethan Allen was its first, and by all accounts very charismatic Colonel-Commandant. Some of the methods of coercion used by the Green Mountain Boys are questionable at best, violence and intimidation often occurring as they defended their lands against the hated "Yorkers". However, this group of Yankee Vigilantes was very instrumental in resisting New York's claims to land in what is now Vermont. It is worth noting that the Green Mountain Boys took no lives. ... Why did Ethan Allen defend the New Hampshire land grants? (Green_Mountain_Boys.html)
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Heritage Winooski Mill Museum
Preservation Burlington
provides a forum for community concerns and a means for addressing them. The nonprofit organization seeks to improve the livability of neighborhoods and to preserve the architectural, historic, aesthetic, and economic vitality of the city. It is involved with both education and advocacy. Examples of Preservation Burlington activities include a Homes Tour, an awards program, and efforts to improve the livability of neighborhoods.
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8 minute video of the Colchester Log Schoolhouse Restoration that took place during 2000-2007.
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Before the railway age water was Vermont's primary mode of transportation.
By fast steamer and canal boat Burlington was only 24 hours from New York and less than a day from Montreal. New York cost .88 and Montreal .25. Overland transport on the other hand was both slow and expensive. In contrast the trip from Boston took three days and cost about 27 dollars not including meals and lodging. Thus, in the 1830's, the men planning and building the nation's early railroads saw them primarily as connections between marine terminals. For Vermont that meant Bellows Falls in the southeast and Burlington in the northwest. And so, two separate railroads were completed between those points in December 1849; the Rutland & Burlington Railroad (R&B) and the Vermont Central Railroad (VCR).
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Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle has been involved
in city management and public service for almost 30 years. He is currently serving his seventh term as Mayor of Vermont's largest city.
Now 54, Peter was born in Burlington, raised in Winooski, and attended Rice High School. He received his Bachelor's in Urban Studies from St. Anselm College. After earning a Masters in Public Administration from Syracuse University in 1972, Peter worked as Town Manager of Castleton and as City Manager of Winooski. He also served as Executive Director of the Vermont Department of Sheriffs and State's Attorneys.
Peter Clavelle was appointed as the City of Burlington's Personnel Director in 1982 by then-Mayor Bernie Sanders. In 1983 Peter was appointed as the City's first Director of Community and Economic Development. During six years as Development Director, he developed nationally recognized programs in housing, job creation and training, neighborhood preservation, and waterfront revitalization.
In 1989 Peter was elected Mayor of Burlington.
Burlington Vermont 1869/70 City Directory
scanned the original city directory for Burlington, Vermont for 1869/70 and indexed it for your quick search. Click on the letter which corresponds to the first letter of the last name for the person you are seeking. You will be taken to a list of page numbers which correspond to specific surnames. Clicking on the page number should take you to the appropriate page. Again, these pages are scans of the original document which are fairly large files. The average page is about 90K and will download slowly if you are not on a fast connection.
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Burlington's North Street Made National Historic Registry
-- The Burlington City Hall announced Friday that a six-block section along North Street has qualified for the national historic registry.
According to News Channel 5, the area is a mix of students, new immigrants and families who have lived there for decades. It was Burlington's original commercial district a century ago.
North Street fell into decline in the 1960s and 70s, but with Friday's announcement, more and more people are becoming convinced that the old North End is coming back.
Barbara Cook knew she was taking a chance, opening her sparkling new cafe in the rougher part of town. That was almost four years ago, and she's still here.
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Burlington, VT saw its own Train Wreck in January of 1903
The New York flier, north-bound, collided to-night with a wild engine on the Rutland Railroad opposite Dr. W. Seward Webb's estate in Shelburne. The engineers of both engines were killed and their firemen probably fatally hurt. No passengers were seriously injured. ... Dr. W. Seward Webb, President of the Rutland Railroad, was a witness before the State Railroad Commission, which met in this city to-day to investigate the cause of the railroad accident on the Rutland Road between this city and Shelburne Jan. 2 last, when a wild engine collided with a regular passenger train, and five men were killed.
It was rumored at the time that Dr. Webb had ordered the engine to Shelburne for his private train. Dr. Webb denied this emphatically, saying his private train was in New York at the time. He further said that he did not plan to leave Shelburne on the night of the accident, and if he had, he would not have called a freight engine into service.
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Essex Junction was Originally named Hubbell's Falls,
after a settler who built a mill at the only usable falls east of Winooski. Renamed Painesville in the mid-19th century to honor then Governor Charles Paine of Northfield.
Paine was a big name in railroading in Vermont, and as close to a crook the state has ever had in executive office. He and other railroad officials stood to gain greatly from railroad routes, so it was they who determined where the roads would go. Never mind grades just short of impossible for the trains of the time. Never mind the communities the routes supposedly were to serve (evidence that main lines missed both Burlington and Montpelier entirely, requiring passengers and freight to be shuttled to the nearest junction).
"Essex Junction" was the railroad designation, and conductors had for years identified it as such as they announced the stop, completely confounding the hapless traveller en route to Burlington, finding himself on a rail platform in a town he had never heard of.
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Established as the town of South Burlington in 1865
through an act of Legislature, rural origins prompted the city’s separation from Burlington for tax reasons. Objecting to the payment of an additional tax for the purpose of extending Burlington’s water intake further into Lake Champlain, rural residents, who relied on driven wells to provide water, refused to pay for a system that would afford no benefit.
Agriculture sustained South Burlington well into the mid-20th Century. As late as the mid-1950s, traffic regularly stopped for Fred C. Fiske’s cows being driven across Williston Road from the farm, now the site of the Sheraton Hotel, to pasture on land upon which Staples Plaza is located. Cows and horses grazed on pastures along Kennedy Drive and Dorset Street during the mid-1970s.
(Town_Profiles_-_South_Burlington.html)
Fanny Allen
was Ethan Allen's second wife. Before marriage she was known as Frances Montresor Brush Buchanan, was an attractive and well-educated young widow of twenty-four when she met Ethan in 1784 in Westminster; he then being a widower of forty-six with three young daughter's. Fanny had grown up in New York, and, through her stepfather, had strong Tory connections.
She was very interested in botany and was an accomplished musician - skills hardly suitable for frontier life. However, the marriage seems to have been very happy. After Ethan's death in 1789, Fanny and the children moved back to her mother's home in Westminster. In 1793 Fanny married her third husband, Jabez Penniman. Despite conflict over the intervale property, Fanny and her new husband lived there from 1794-1800.
Fleming Museum
is a fine arts museum with permanent collections of American, Native American, European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African art and artifacts. There are also special exhibitions of historical and contemporary work from cultures around the world. Activities include heirloom appraisal day on the last Sat in Oct, Family Day on the first Sat. in Nov, and a series of lunchtime lectures related to the museum’s exhibitions each spring and fall semesters.
When the new Robert Hull Fleming Museum opened in 1931 it was hailed as "a practical place of learning -- a vibrant, ongoing educational institution for both children and adults." Today, the Museum houses Vermont's most comprehensive collection of art and anthropology. It presents exhibitions of contemporary and historic art from Vermont and around the world.
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Green Mountain Boys was the popular name of armed bands
formed (c.1770) under the auspices of Ethan Allen in the Green Mountains of what is today Vermont. Their purpose was to prevent the New Hampshire Grants, as Vermont was then known, from becoming part of New York, to which it had been awarded by the British. Land speculators, such as Allen and his brothers, and settlers banded together in armed groups to defend their lands. Their methods were threat, intimidation, and actual violence against the New Yorkers, and they managed to keep the region free from New York control, establishing (1777) instead a separate government that ultimately achieved (1791) statehood for Vermont. In the American Revolution the Green Mountain Boys figured prominently in 1775, when, under Allen's leadership, they captured Ticonderoga. In 1777 Seth Warner and John Stark led them to victory at Bennington : one of the notable achievements of the revolutionaries in the Saratoga campaign.
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High on Mayor Bernie Sander's agenda was economic development,
Historical Look at Winooski
Winooski has continued to play an important role in Vermont's history and development. In the early 1770's Ira Allen "led a people through a wilderness of 70 miles" to construct a formidable blockhouse on the Winooski (then "Onion") River which served both as a fort and as general store and office for the land-speculating Onion River Company. "Fort Frederick" was never used for defense, but its protective presence increased value of Onion River property and advanced local settlement.
After the Revolutionary War, Ira Allen returned to build a dam across the Winooski River with a sawmill at each end. The use of the Winooski falls to generate energy had begun; it would continue into the 20th Century with the construction of water-powered mills on both sides of the river. Ira himself built a house on the present site of the Winooski Block around 1785 and enjoyed a garden which was described as "a paradise of fruits and flowers."
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History of the Winooski Police Department
On March 7, 1922 the Village of Winooski Falls became the City of Winooski. Winooski was the commercial and economic center of the Town of Colchester with a vibrant French culture and strong textile industry. After incorporating as an independent City, Winooski continued to have a strong economy and provided a multitude of services to it's citizens.
The first Winooski Police Chief was Charles Barber. Chief Barber was the Village Police Chief prior to incorporation and was appointed Chief by Winooski's first Mayor, H. A. Bailey. Chief Barber served the citizens of Winooski for 45 years, 44 of them as its Police Chief from 1912 to 1956 retiring for health reasons at the age of 75.
The first department consisted of the Chief and two "regular" officers, serving a population of 1,932 on a budget of .88.
In 1749, the governor of New Hampshire began giving away
land to settlers willing to brave the howling wilderness of what is now Vermont. Two decades later, New York State courts decreed those grants void, opening the door for New York speculators to flood into the region vowing to push the original settlers out of the valleys and up into the Green Mountains.
Not surprisingly, this decision didn't sit well with those already there, who established a network of military units, Green Mountain Boys, and promised to drive out the New Yorkers. A hale fellow named Ethan Allen headed up the new militia, which launched a series of effective harrying raids against the impudent New Yorkers. Green Mountain Boys destroyed homes, drove away livestock, and chased the New York sheriffs back across the border.
The American Revolution soon intervened, and Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys took up the revolutionary cause with vigor. They helped sack Fort Ticonderoga in New York in 1775, rallied to the cause at the famed Battle of Bennington,
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Log Schoolhouse Museum
In August of 2000, a 1815 log schoolhouse was discovered inside local camp is saved by historical society and moved to town hall site.
In August of 2004, the select board approved the restoration and mission to use the building as an information center and museum located at Airport Park...project managers appointed to direct and oversee Colchester High School commitments.
In 2006, they constructed foundation at Airport Park and moved schoolhouse 4 miles to new location and began restoration
In May of 2007, building was opened to public as information center and museum serving visitors and those using the bicycle path for alternative transportation and recreation.
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middle-class Maiden Lane
(today's North Union Street, north of Pearl Street) and upper-middle-class Union Street (present-day South Union Street, particularly the portion south of Main Street).
Maiden Lane benefited from its proximity to Pearl Street, the town's wealthiest street in the Federal Period and a "quiet street of handsome residences" in the mid-nineteenth century, which provided an easy transportation route from Maiden Lane to businesses in downtown Burlington. (2) The first Burlington city directory (1865) lists numerous tradesmen who resided on Maiden Lane and had businesses nearby or in the downtown area, including a hat and cap seller, carpenter, grocer, photographer and blacksmith.
Military Post Street Railway
Most of the development in the New North End occurred
after World War II, when mortgages with reduced interest rates were made available to veterans. North Avenue, now a busy thoroughfare, was still a dirt road during the early 1930s. Colonials, raised ranches, and ranch-style homes are prevalent throughout both neighborhoods.
For more than 150 years, the Old North End has attracted a steady stream of immigrants. Between 1885 and 1940, the area surrounding Pomeroy Park was home to Burlington's Jewish Community; synagogues and Hebrew schools allowing the sustenance and preservation of a small-town Eastern European culture. The area has been an important part of the Burlington economy and is now undergoing revitalization, with renovation and restoration of homes and businesses.
(Town_Profiles_-_Burlington.html)
North Street Historic District
, an east-west corridor known as the "Downtown Main Street" in the Old North End of Burlington, Vermont is significant under Criterion A for its contribution to the social development of Burlington as a center for many European immigrant groups. It is also eligible for its contribution to Burlington's economic development for its role as an important commercial district serving the entire city. Immigrant labors working in the lumber and textile industries made up a large portion of the work force that allowed Burlington to be a prosperous industrial town. North Street is also eligible under Criterion C as an example of the city's only residential/commercial district as defined by the City of Burlington Department of Planning and Zoning. The buildings are unified by their physical arrangement and historic functions.
North Union Street--South Union Street corridor
we see today did not exist as a continuous roadway in 1853. The portion of present-day North Union Street running from Winooski Avenue south to Pearl Street appears on that year's Presdee & Edwards map of Burlington under the name of Maiden Lane.
On the day of May 10, 1775 a man named Ethan Allen
Onion River Land Company
was a partnership, originally of Ethan, his brothers Heman, Zimri, and Ira, and their first cousin Remember Baker.
... The land-holding company, formed in 1773, bought land at the mouth of the Winooski (Onion) River, in the intervale, and around the Winooski Falls from its New York owner, Edward Burling. The company purchased only New Hampshire Grant Lands, and owned a total of 65,000 acres in about 15 to 20 towns which constituted major land speculation at that time. The company was dissolved in May 1787; Ethan received 1400 acres of the intervale land in the settlement.
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Peter Clavelle wakes up anxious every morning.
His is not the stressful kind of anxiety, though; Burlington's mayor confesses he wakes up every morning "anxious to come to work." Here is clearly a man with a passion for what he does.
Although he admits that no individual (and no one political party) can take full credit for Burlington's apparent vitality, without doubt, Clavelle deserves a good portion of the applause. With the exception of a couple of years, he has been at the helm since 1989, and before that, served six years as director of Burlington's Community and Economic Development Office under former mayor Bernie Sanders.
Clavelle can sometimes sound a bit didactic when addressing the city's issues, but his infectious enthusiasm bubbles near the surface. It's an enthusiasm he has inherited from his ancestors.
(history-of-clavelle-unused.html)
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Restoring hotel for use as Fanny Allen Hospital
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Shots rang out as soldiers exchanged gunfire today,
turning Battery Park into a battlefield. It was all part of the fun as folks from around the area gathered to celebrate the unveiling of a statue, and a reminder of one of Vermont's finest Civil War generals.
South Burlington was created in 1865,
when Burlingtonians voted to create a separate township. One of the main reasons for separation was the annual occurrence of typhoid fever, a water-borne disease that Burlington Bay residents hoped to avoid by extending the town water intake farther into the lake and moving the main sewer outlet further from the intake source. Rural residents, most of them far removed from the bay, would not benefit from the improvements and objected to paying taxes for them. Thus, South Burlington was born.
The town's rural nature prevailed even as late as the 1950s, when traffic on Williston Road paused for cattle crossing. A farm stood where the Sheraton Burlington Hotel now stands, and Staples Plaza was a pasture. There are still four to five other working dairy farms in South Burlington, according to city manager Chuck Hafter.
... South Bur-lington officially became a city in 1971.
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The first census counted 332 residents,
allowing the opening of a post office in 1792.
The Hill Section once encompassed large estates
that have subsequently been subdivided. A number of the original mansions still exist; some as private homes or apartment buildings, while others are used by the University of Vermont or Champlain College as dormitories, classrooms, or administrative offices. Subdivision occurred during different periods, styles of the homes reflecting the era of their construction. In the part of Burlington that lies between Pearl Street and the South End, and the University and Waterfront, the majority of streets were laid out and homes built before the advent of the automobile. ... Traveling west on Main Street toward the waterfront, the magnificence of the Lake and distant Adirondacks enhance the New England flavor of Burlington. Once the business and commercial center of Burlington, the waterfront is once more regaining prominence. Original buildings, including the Pomeroy House, have been restored, and Union Station has undergone an extensive revitalization project.
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Timothy Follett's
vision was fixed upon another horizon where he saw a cloud a good deal larger than a man's hand. With the iron horse already threatening water-borne transport, the time had come to go into the railroad business. The Rutland and Burlington, the judge planned, would run from his dock south and east to connect with Boston, thus yielding him the fruits both of land transport to the east and the waterborne commerce to the south that he already enjoyed. Building a railroad, of course, took more capital than the Judge had, but he was prepared. He chartered a bank and, as its president, established its office a few steps away from his dock and prospective rail terminal. Unfortunately for Follett, a rival wholesale firm chartered another railroad, the Vermont Central, also aiming toward Boston but taking a more northerly route, and the two companies engaged in marathon of track-laying to reach Burlington first.
Vermont is tucked in the Northeast corner of the United States.
Vermont is the second smallest state in the Country with a population of less than 1 million people. Vermont was originally populated by various indigenous peoples of the Algonquin, Iroquois, and Abenaki nations. Many of Vermont town, county, river, and lake names are derivatives of old Indian names. The original Vermonters traveled and lived off the abundance of the land. Vermont's hills were filled with wildlife, and fish were bountiful in the many rivers, ponds and lakes.
White man came to Vermont in the early 1600's, when in 1609, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed into what is now known as Lake Champlain. It was then, in the summer of 1609, when Vermont was first dubbed "Verde Mont," French for "Green Mountains." Like a good explorer would, Champlain claimed this land in the name of France, who eventually swapped Vermont to the British.
Village of Burlington did play a vital role in the defense
Winooski
dates to the 1780's when one of Vermont's founding fathers, Ira Allen, took possession of the strategic piece of land at Winooski falls, and later erected a dam across the upper falls and established saw mills on both banks of the turgid river. For the next 170 years power generated from the falls help run a variety of businesses, including the woolen mills that closed in the 1950's. The smoke stacks and converted brick buildings in the heart of town are a reminder of Winooski's past as a thriving mill town in the 19th and first part of the 20th century. Oldtimers remember when all the people walking to church on St. Peter St. spoke French--the language of the many Quebec immigrants who settled in the city to work at |
The trolley barn and maintenance complex still stands by the intersection of North Winooski Avenue and Riverside Drive. Vermont Transit uses the entire complex for maintenance and overnight parking garage for their busses.
... The electricity was sent to Burlington by wires mounted on telegraph poles along the Rutland & Burlington Railroad's main line.
The Public Service Commission told Burlington Traction to expand its North Avenue line in 1927. When BTC did not extend the line, the PSC then granted the local bus company, Burlington Rapid Transit Company permission to operate bus a route in direct competition with that trolley route.
was Ethan Allen's last home. The site commands rolling fields and scenic curves of the Winooski (Onion) River. ... Only a short drive from downtown Burlington, the Homestead offers hands-on history, spectacular scenery, and riverside picnic areas and walks. The Homestead provides a genuine slice of 18th century life, and an intimate look at Vermont's most colorful - and controversial founder. ... Ethan Allen, who has become a folk hero in Vermont, was an unusually flamboyant backwoodsman-turned-statesman from Connecticut. He was one of the early inhabitants of Burlington, where he lived on his property in the Winooski River intervale from 1787 until his death in 1789. He made a very significant contribution to the early history of Vermont, at that time called the New Hampshire Grants, when the territory constituted the northern frontier of the New England colonies, and of the emerging nation.
Winooski, with waterpower from a 35-foot falls and dams, was a manufacturing center with a mill complex of factories, offices, dormitories for mill workers, and a shipping building. At one time, 300 hundred workers, including children, were producing 25,000 yards of cloth per month on shifts of 13 hours per day.
In the 1920s, the Champlain Mills manufactured piece-dyed worsteds and serges, that is, fine wool cloth and wool twill suiting fabric. The book American Woolen Company Mills lists the buildings equipment at that time as 4 worsted combs, 295 broad looms, 10,000 worsted spindles, 2 boilers and 2 water wheels.
Today, one loom is the centerpiece of the Heritage Winooski Mill Museum's manufacture of wool display. The museum resides in space donated by the Champlain Mill. Exhibit work is in progress.
affordable housing, waterfront revitalization and citizen participation," says Clavelle, "so we proposed the creation of a Community and Economic Development Office CEDO. It was an unholy alliance of Progressives, Republicans and the business community, with a couple Democrats in there." Peter Clavelle was hired as CEDO's first director.
... Clavelle loved being CEDO director. "There was a great time in Burlington's evolution. We were, I think, quite creative."
Under Clavelle, CEDO started the neighborhood planning assemblies and "made great inroads in the early years of waterfront revitalization. We attracted a lot of money to the city. One program we had great success with was something called the UDAG program Urban Development Action Grants but we also put to bed the myth that the Sanders administration was anti-business.
and his Green Mountain Boys seized and captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British. ... Ethan Allen was a man that stood up for Vermont and made sure that it became an independent state. ... The Green Mountain Boys were a militia of about 300 men, trained by Allen himself. Although the GMB weren't really an army, they fought for their freedom and their pride.
Ethan Allen was born in Litchfield Connecticut on January 21, 1738. In 1751 he served briefly in the French and Indian War, then he settled in Vermont. While in Vermont, New Hampshire granted land to people in the west. Later the British said that the land belonged to New York. In 1770, New York also said that land in Vermont was no good unless the land was bought from them. From this, Allen and Seth Warner decided to create the Green Mountain Boys.
It was a twenty one gun salute as the new and improved General William Wells was revealed to the public. John Reynolds was at today's events because his great-great grandfather fought alongside the famous Civil War general.
Other folks came to see the reenactment of battles between the North and the South, and the Champlain Valley reenactors were on hand to recruit members for their calvary unit.
... Money for the project improvement came from private donations,and a local Vermont artist was hired to clean and renew the statue as accurately as possible.
Bruce Cate referenced books and an original Civil War sword to produce a new sword ....
of the Lakes during the War of 1812. ... As early as June 1812 troops were building a Battery along the lake. This earthen embankment, with some thirteen embrasures, was built by Lt. Sylvester Churchill, upon the high bluff were Battery Park is now located. The original 550 regular Army troops were soon reinforced by additional 700 soldiers marched up from Boston by Brigadier General John Chandler. Initially, 6 24-pounders were the armament.1
Before long, a major military presence was established at Burlington. The Commander of the Cantonment, Colonel Isaac Clark, purchased a 10-acre lot adjacent to the Battery. The Army base was located in the two-block area now fronted by Park and Front Streets. Extending approximately from Pearl to North Street, the base consisted of some 14 buildings. The Soldier's Barracks was a crude single-story, wooden structure,