Off-center to the left at 577 South Prospect Street, a 2.5 story Queen Anne Style home with a Colonial Revival entrance porch and side-gabled roof is visible. The Colonial Revival front porch belies its Queen Anne style and suggests a later addition.[1] According to the Vermont Historic Sites and Structures Survey, the structure may have originally been used as an auxiliary building for the Overlake Day School. Its use as an auxiliary building most likely excluded it from the Burlington Directories.[2] The home appears on the C. M. Hopkins 1890 map of Burlington. However, the 1935 Burlington City Directory is the first reference to the structure; it connects the building to a James C. Burns and Mrs. Florence Holt. The Burlington Country Club covers the vast portion of land beyond the right-hand side of the photograph.

The 1935 photograph shows the large ditch required to construct a catch basin. A total of sixteen catch basins were constructed in Burlington between January 1, 1935 and July 1, 1935.[3] The general purpose of a catch basin is to capture contaminants that may be too large to smoothly flow into the sewer; although more sophisticated versions exist today, catch basins are still used to prevent contamination throughout the country.[4] It is inconclusive as to whether a new sewer was also constructed in this location. The 1936 Annual Report of Burlington is vague on the exact locations of new sewer construction. However, the annual report does state that the federal V.E.R.A. program was responsible for new catch basin construction.[5] V.E.R.A. is one of numerous federal employment prospects aimed at combating unemployment during the Great Depression.[6] It is unclear whether this project was part of the larger V.E.R.A. project conducted in the June 13, 1935 photograph of Ledge Road.

[1] Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, Vermont Historic Sites and Structures Survey. Burlington: South Prospect Street, 1979. (Found at the University of Vermont Library, Special Collections.)

[2] Ibid.

[3] City of Burlington, Vermont, Seventy-first Annual Report of the City of Burlington, Vermont: For the Year and One-half ended June 30 (Burlington, VT: Free Press Printing Co., 1936), 255.

[4] Environmental Protection Agency, “Seminar Publication: National Conference on Urban Runoff Management: Enhancing Urban Watershed Management at the Local, County, and State Levels,” http://www.uvm.edu/~ran/ran/toolbox/bmp/EPA625R-95.pdf (accessed November 7, 2006).

[5] City of Burlington, Vermont, Seventy-first Annual Report of the City of Burlington, Vermont: For the Year and One-half ended June 30 (Burlington, VT: Free Press Printing Co., 1936), 258.

[6] William W. Bremer, “Along the ‘American Way’: The New Deal’s Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed,” The Journal of American History 42, no. 3. (1975): 636.

Although now obscured by a maple tree, the 2.5 story Queen Anne style home still remains. On the right-hand side of the road, a new concrete sidewalk and fence are placed in front of the variety trees that line the edge Burlington Country Club’s property; new power-lines are also visible. On the left-hand side of the photograph, white crushed stone has since been added to the driveway of the stately English Tudor home located at 603 South Prospect Street. At the same approximate site of the 1935 road construction, longitudinal cracks in the road can be plainly seen.