Lewis McAllister was standing in the intersection of North Street and North Winooski Avenue looking southwest in the summer of 1929 when he shot this image of road construction. The view here is very close to that of the 1928 and August 1929 photographs shot looking down the center of the avenue. The view captures the street department in the middle of the project that removed the old Burlington Traction Company’s street car tracks and resurfaced the road for the deployment of petrol-powered buses to take over the city’s public transportation system.

However, that July when this photograph was captured, streetcars still roamed Burlington, which explains why the tracks remain elevated and in use amongst the road footings under construction around them. The footings on either side of the tracks that will hold the paved road surface and the gutters are formed from poured concrete.

One house on North Winooski Avenue not shown in the 1928 photograph is 141, the two-and-one-half story, wood-framed, gable-fronted house to the left of the frame. The clapboarded house is two bays wide, with the main entrance located around the side of the house under the wraparound porch. In 1929 A. Harris London, a retired peddler, owned the house and rented a space around the back that Asaph Younes ran as a barber shop.[1]

Of special note are the utility poles and wires. Because of the lofty canopy supplied by the elm trees lining the street, the wires actually run under the tree branches, much closer to the street than do modern utility wires. The canopy masks the wires running between the short poles and across the street, making them much less noticable.