15. CORNER OF COLCHESTER AVENUE AND BARRETT STREET

October 21, 1929

Photographed after the last image, on October 21, 1929, this shot looks northward from the corner of Colchester Avenue and Barrett Street across the newly constructed Winooski Bridge. It clearly shows the work in progress by the Burlington Street Department. New streetlamps, gutters and curbs have been installed, but the roadway up to the bridge abutments has not yet been paved.

The people at the corner of the street captured by this photograph, a boy holding a cart by its handle, two men in wool caps behind him and another man, visible behind them and behind the plate glass window of the store at 487 Colchester Avenue, create a poignant image for the Wall Street Stock Market would crash just a week later, on October 29, 1929.

This commercial block, an addition to the tenement block at 6-10 Barrett Street, was built in 1924. By comparing this image with the previous one, it is evident that new concrete steps have been built at the entrance to the second shop in this block, while the stairs into grocery store on the corner have not yet been built.

A sign, lettering on the valances of the retractable canvas awnings above the windows, and lettering on the plate glass advertise the multipurpose nature of this shop: vegetables and groceries, ice cream parlor, cigars and cigarettes, Coca-Cola, and Salada Tea. This was the general store and likely a meeting place for the local working class community.

Just beyond this block, attached to the garage at 491 Colchester Avenue, a new sign for Socony gasoline is visible. Street car tracks and electric lines have just recently been removed from the roadway here, after the service was terminated in July 1929.[1] This is the advent of the automobile age in the city of Burlington.

[1] Robert B. Michaud, Salute to Burlington: An Informal History of Burlington, Vermont (Lyndonville: Lyndon State College, 1991), 133.

15. CORNER OF COLCHESTER AVENUE AND BARRETT STREET

October 11, 2005

(18T 0644194   UTM 4927655)

A traffic light has been strung across the roadway and the iron poles and streetlamps in the 1929 image have been replaced by utility poles. A Domino’s pizza shop occupies the ground floor of 6-10 Barrett Street, rebuilt in 1993 in a style reminiscent of the 1924 commercial block.

and

1986 PHOTOGRAPH

This photograph, taken by Thomas Visser for a proposed amendment extending the boundaries of the Winooski Falls National Register District,[1] shows the condition of the property at 485-487 Colchester Avenue, including 6-10 Barrett Street, in 1986.

The 1920’s commercial block has been significantly altered. The entry has been moved from Colchester Avenue to Barrett Street and the old shop fronts have been destroyed. The parapet and bracketed mouldings have been removed, as has all of the clapboard siding. The original double hung, two-over-two sash windows on the upper story and the plate glass shop along the street level have been replaced with fixed windows. However, the form of the structure is substantially intact. Two years later, this section of 6-10 Barrett street was demolished.

[1] Thomas D. Visser, “Winooski Falls Historic District, Proposed Boundary Increase, Amendment to National Register Nomination” (1986).