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Robinson Hall is located across the lawn from the gatehouse on the University of Vermont's Redstone campus. Lke the other two remaining buildings from the original Buell Estate --Redstone Lodge and Redstone Hall -- it is constructed of random-coursed, locally quarried redstone. The two-story building is L-shaped in plan with its eastern section covered by a gable roof with slightly flared eaves and its longer western section covered by a hip roof with a slightly lower ridgeline and full-length shed dormers on both slopes. Below Robinson Hall's slate-shingled roof, the gables are sheathed with unevenly-spaced, sawtooth, wooden shingles and the dormer walls are covered with similarly spaced, plain, wooden shingles. Two large, round towers with conical caps frame the building's westernmost wall and a smaller tower rises from the inside corner formed by the intersection of the building's eastern and western sections. Robinson Hall's primary elevation faces north and is composed of the slightly projecting gabled section to the right of which the building extends westward to one of the corner towers. The gable wall forming the eastern portion of the elevation is composed of a redstone first story with a large, multi-light, semicircular-arched opening framed by three-over-three windows that are spanned by splayed stone arches. The slightly overhanging, wood-shingled gable forming the second story is supported by evenly spaced stone corbels and is fenestrated with three, eight-over-eight windows along the eaves line and a Palladian motif vent (originally a window) in the peak area above. The gabled eastern section is entered through an eighteen-light doorway with full-length sidelights and a semicircular fanlight located in its western wall to the left of the interior, corner tower. The entrance is sheltered by a hip-roofed hood that extends from the tower out to the wall's edge where it is supported by an open, triangular bracket. Directly above the hood is a shed dormer with a 6/6 window. The building was originally designed to serve as the Buell Estate's stable by the Buffalo, NY, architecture firm of Marling and Burdett and completed in 1889. After the estate was sold to the University of Vermont in 1921, the stable was converted into a women's dormitory by Louis S. Newton with funds left to the University by Wallace F. Robinson. Newton's substantial alterations to the building included the renovation of the first floor into a reception room, dining room, lounge, kitchen, and laundry and the second floor into eight single rooms, eleven double rooms, and a matron's room. Renovations to the building also included the addition of shed dormers on each roof slope, the replacement of the roof's wooden shingles with slates, and the removal of the two gable dormers on the roof's east slope from which Newton retained the Palladian window surrounds to frame the existing vents in the north and south gable peaks. The building served as a dormitory until 1982, when it was renovated by Parallax, Inc. Architects of Hinesburg, Vermont to house the University's Office of Residential Life. (Excerpted from Redstone Historic District National Register Nomination by Prof. Thomas Visser and Reid Larson, graduate student, UVM Historic Preservation Program) |
Robinson
Hall