On Tuesday, December 11, 1990, the view down North Winooski Avenue from the intersection with Riverside Avenue would change forever. At 3 a.m. that morning residents along the street were awoken by the crackle of fire and pounding on their doors from neighbors, who gathered in the street to watch their block burn to the ground.[1] When firefighters finally left the four-alarm blaze 15 hours later, four buildings were reduced to embers causing $1.2 million in damages, but amazingly all 26 residents here escaped unharmed.[2]

At the time the Italianate building that had housed Moses Perelman’s gas station was being used as a warehouse, while the three Victorian, gable-front homes seen in McAllister’s 1932 photograph housed rental tenants.[3]

Since the fire, the homes have all been rebuilt almost exactly where the once stood, with the same orientation to the street as the original buildings.

The only building remaining from the original photograph is 340 (formerly 338) North Winooski Avenue, now a residential building. However, the building has hardly been unscathed. Most of the original detailing other than the cornice has been removed or covered over with vinyl siding.

Across the street, new three-story residential housing units have taken the place of the former Vermont Transit Co. office. In July of 2000, V.T. Co. consolidated its repair facilities in White River Junction, Vt. and vacated the barns that had housed its bus fleets since they hit the Burlington streets in 1929.[4] Soon thereafter, the Burlington Community Land Trust and Housing Vermont, both local non-profit housing organizations, teamed up with the federal Housing and Urban Development agency to transform the former bus facility into commercial space and mixed housing.[5] Along with the redevelopment of the former bus barns, these 25 units of residential apartments were constructed where the office once stood.[6]