Courthouse built in 1872. Image Courtesy of Special Collections, UVM Bailey-Howe Library.
Parking lot for Chittenden County Superior Court , taken on Church Street looking southeast on October 18, 2012. Photographed by Suzanne Mantegna.
The courthouse built between 1871-2 is the fourth courthouse built in the city of Burlington, although the first built at this Church Street location. Designed by Burlington architect, E. C. Ryder, it used locally quarried redstone for the exterior.(1) The 3-story stone asymmetrical Second Empire building with a slate mansard roof and corner tower was the home of the Chittenden County Superior Court until it moved in 1974 to the newly acquired Old Post Office next door. There were contrasting stone belt courses and window surrounds and a date stone above the second floor window that read 1871. There were bracketed cornices under the roof and dormers in the roof with heavy surrounds. Charles Allen writes in About Burlington, Vermont that it "contains rooms for the Probate Court and County Clerk on the first floor, a large court room and offices on the second floor and offices on the third floor. The building is a handsome and substantial one and cost $60,000" in 1872.(2)
After the federal government no longer needed the post office, the county acquired the building and moved the courthouse there in 1974. A fire in February of 1982 destroyed the 1872 building and now there is a parking lot in its place.(3) The courthouse was listed on the National Register for Historic Places on April 11, 1973, just over one hundred year after it was built.(4)
1. David J. Blow, Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods, vol. 2 (Burlington, VT: Chittenden County Historical Society, 1997), 193-4.
2. Charles E. Allen, About Burlington Vermont (Burlington, VT: Hobart J. Shanley and Company, 1905), 85.
3. David J. Blow, Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods, vol. 2 (Burlington, VT: Chittenden County Historical Society, 1997), 193-4.
4. National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Databases. Accessed October 28, 2012, http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natregsearchresult.do?fullresult=true&recordid=14
