National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 7
______________________________________________________________________________________
Old Mill, University Place, 1882.
Facing the historic University Green, Old Mill is a commanding presence along University Place, where it sits with Williams Hall, the Billings Library and the Ira Allen Chapel to form the backbone of the University of Vermontās central campus. The main mass of the building is a three story, twenty-five bay long red brick building, with a fourth story tucked into the space under the eaves. The brick is laid in running bond, usually a veneer bond, but here the walls are structural. The slate-roofed building is dominated on the front facade by a three-bay-wide gable-front pavilion on each end and a three-bay-wide gable-front section in the center of the building that rises above the main roofline and is topped by a massive tower. Between the pavilions, the building is marked by shallow three-story gabled projections that barely break the eaves-line and contain entrances to the building. These projections are contained in the fourth bay out of eight, counting outwards from the central block. Along the main mass of the building, each floor is marked by two brick string courses, and the roofline features a heavy brick cornice. All the windows in the main mass are six-over-six double hung, with nearly identical surrounds. All are crowned by segmental arches, and accented with limestone keystones, springers and sills. First floor windows are slightly differentiated by a band of ornamentation beneath the segmental arch.
On the front wall, the three major pavilions contain three bays of windows organized within a slightly recessed arch, articulated at the top with a brick cornice and a projecting limestone keystone. The archway in the central pavilion is slightly taller than those in the flanking pavilions, and features two standard windows flanking a blind molded-brick arch on the ground floor; three two-story round-topped windows above that; and three single-story windows above that, forced into a segmental arch and two quarter arches at the top of the large brick arch. A trio of round-topped arched windows are set into the peak of the gable. On the end pavilions, there are three standard windows on the first floor, three simpler segmental-arched windows on the second floor, with three round-arched windows on the third floor. The fourth floor is lit by shorter versions of the segmental/quarter-arched triad found in the central block. The smaller projections feature a gabled projection on the ground floor, which contains the entrance door. Above that are two floors of narrow paired windows, with a small oculus in the peak of the gable. Old Millās gabled roof is pierced along the front facade by small gabled dormers ÷ two to the inside of each entrance projection, and three to the outside.
One of the most prominent features of the Universityās campus, Old Millās Tower is important enough to be utilized in the Universityās official logo. The central four-sided tower is supported on a slate shingled base, which seems to grow seamlessly from the slate roof. Each side of the open tower is made up of two sets of paired arches, with detailed pilasters and a handrail with shaped balusters set just behind the plane of the archway. The arches are topped with a decorated cornice and a shallow hipped roof, from which springs the eight sided spire.
Moving around the building, the narrow side facades are only three large bays deep, and are accented with gabled entrance projections, this time stretching well above the eaves-line. The side entrance projections are similar to those on the front facade, although the round window has been replaced with an arched one. Moving behind Old Mill, we see the plain rear facade of the building. Windows on the rear facade are simple rectangular six-over-six sash, with splayed brick lintels. Dormers are not gabled, but are a simpler shed-roofed version.
The rear of Old Mill also shows how the footprint of the building has been altered by later additions, and in fact has been turned into a complex. The Old Mill Annex is a Postmodern four bay addition to the rear of the central pavilion, which joins Old Mill to the center of Lafayette Hall and provides the main entrance hall for the Old Mill complex. Lafayette was originally built in the International Style in 1957, but in 1995 lost its historic integrity in a renovation, which included the construction of Old Mill Annex and numerous changes to Old Mill (see below). Neither of the newer buildings are obvious from the Green, and do not detract from the historic appearance of Old Mill.
Old Mill's impressive site overlooking
the city of Burlington and Lake Champlain is an historic one. The University
of Vermontās original college building was built on the site in 1802, but
was destroyed by fire in 1824. It was replaced in 1825 with two buildings,
North and South Colleges, and Middle College was added in 1829. While there
may be some material remaining in Old Mill from those buildings, the building
has been altered several times. The first major alteration was in 1882,
when architect Jean Jacques Rouseau Randall was hired to update the trio
of linked buildings. The face lift involved a complete rebuilding of the
front facade and removal of Middle Collegeās distinctive golden dome, replacing
it with the current spire. In 1918, a lightning strike caused a fire in
the fourth floor, and the University closed off the fourth floor and removed
the dormer windows. In the most recent alteration, when Old Mill was connected
to Lafayette, the exterior was rehabilitated, including restoration of
the fourth floor dormers and historically sensitive interior restorations.