194 Maple Street - the Giles S. Appleton House
194 Maple Street
(north side between Church and S. Winooski)
Lois H. Coulter

Known locally as the Giles S. Appleton House, it was built in the Gothic Revival style for Vermont Central Railroad ticket agent Giles Appleton in 1853 on the edge of the ravine used as the rail bed. Consequently the trains had right of way across the property. When the house was built, there was an uninterrupted view of the lake to the west from its location on the hill. Typically, the architects employed to design the railway stations also designed houses for the railway employees and the unusual style for this area would indicate that this was the case with Appleton’s house.1 It is a red brick 194 Maple Street - Front door of the Giles S. Appleton Houseveneered 2½ story building with a gable front and steeply pitched cross gables and a patterned slate roof. A pair of handsome symmetrically placed bracketed bay windows once dominated the south façade but the growth of the bushes in front of the house all but obscure them today. The entrance to the house has sidelights and a plain transom surmounted by a flat, relative to the sharply angled roof, peaked and bracketed door hood. The original main entrance was on the side, and is now enclosed in a vestibule. A later addition was made to the original one story wing on the east side. The plan with its one story wing containing the entrance and stairway is unusual. The windows have been replaced with double hung sashes capped by radiating flat arches but the pointed arched gable lights remain. The building remained a single family dwelling until 1920 when it was turned into apartments.2


1
David J. Blow, Look Around Burlington, pp. 16-7
2 Burlington City Directories


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