The City Hall Block - College Street to Main Street, West Side
By Adam King
In looking at the history of what is now the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, the block on the west side of Church Street between College Street and Main Street is something of an anomaly. After a southward progression of primarily mercantile establishments from the Unitarian Church, the street encounters civic buildings such as the rear façade of the Burlington City Hall, and the old Ethan Allen fire station. The City Hall block, as one might term this section of the street, is just one building deep on the Church Street side, as the remainder of the block behind it, bordered by St. Paul Street, is entirely occupied by City Hall Park. In planning terms the block is unique, and the principal facades of the buildings on this segment of Church Street have often looked away from the street and over the park, as indeed the current City Hall does. Any history of this section of Church Street, therefore, must necessarily be informed to a great extent by a history of City Hall Park, formerly known as Court House Square.
The very earliest history of Burlington has been meaningfully chronicled, but the particular story of the area being examined here has its origin in what one might call the first period of formal civic and political planning for the burgeoning town. Contemporary with the end of the war of American Independence, a 1790 census recorded 332 persons living in the Town of Burlington. Less than ten years later, after a period of steady but incremental growth, but by no means yet reaching the scale of even a large town, the street grid was laid out in 1798 with a space specifically delineated for what would become City Hall Park.1
Any early history of Burlington would of course touch upon the men and women significant to its founding and establishment, and among the Allens and Chittendens, with their perhaps frontier approaches to business and property, one may also find mention of the King family, who had prospered in Burlington as merchants, ship-builders, political leaders, and tavern-keepers. At that time Gideon King controlled most of the shipbuilding and commerce across Lake Champlain, and as such was one of the city's leading citizens.2 Indeed, King was the man who organized the subscription drive to build the original 1795 City Hall,3 and as we shall examine later, had some additional mercantile motivations for developing that area. As was the case in most other towns in New England having their origins in this period, the town green was the center of social and political life, and the original Court House was constructed directly in the center of Court House Square in 1795.4 Since the first Court House Building was in place prior to the Burlington layout being formally systematized three years later, it is not unreasonable to speculate that it may have served to an extent as an anchor structure, defining and guiding the layout of this part of the town.
The first Court House was relatively short-lived, being supplanted by a new building in 1802, and this replacement served the town until 1829. We know relatively little about the nature of these first buildings, aside from a remarkable sketch drawn on site by a citizen of Burlington, which gives us some clues as to the disposition of the second structure. The sketch was executed on a hot summer's day in 1817 by John Pomeroy, and though the original's whereabouts are unknown, the Vermont Historical Society has in its collection an excellent photograph of the drawing. The inscription on the image is included here in its entirety:
Sketch from my office window northwest corner of the Courthouse Square, in 1817. John N. Pomeroy, 1867.
This little picture is worth preserving if but for the Pine Tree alone, one of the original forest, saved from the axe, for its convenience as a whipping post.
The hay scales illustrate the state of the arts, when, to weigh a load of hay, it was necessary to lift it.
A piece of the second court house shows its relative position and style of architecture – it was built of wood and had a fine steeple. In the hurry, to be ready to accommodate the legislature, the bases to the columns were omitted, and never supplied. The view of the building would have been completed, but for the previous sketch of a crippled young friend who rejoiced in the name of Alfred Bonaparte Brownson.
In the rear of the pine tree is the brick house, built by Col. Seth Pomeroy on the present site of the custom house, in which we commenced housekeeping in May 1819, and left in October 1852.
The east end of a long building erected by Samuel Mills, and long known to us as Mills Row, stands at the right of the hay scales.
Uncle Nye's horse is a capital likeness of that familiar quadruped, standing, as he was wont, in a sultry day, where the unobstructed south wind abstracted the superfluous caloric and swept off the flies.
This evocative description, teamed with the image itself, give a compelling view of the Square and the role it played in Burlington life at the time, depicting the Court House as a substantial timber building with Federal detailing. Moreover, if it truly had a steeple as Pomeroy describes, it might be characterized as more of a New England meeting house in style than anything else. The sketch captures aspects of government life, being the home of the legislature; mercantile life, with the presence of the hay scales, and, by including the pine tree whipping post alongside the Court House, we catch a glimpse into law and order, or perhaps more aptly, crime and punishment. We may also get some idea of the physical layout of the area, as Pomeroy describes Uncle Nye's horse as taking advantage of unobstructed south winds. Given the location of the gorge dividing Burlington at the bottom of College Street, that familiar quadruped may have been able to take advantage of lake breezes coming across a minimally developed southeast corner of the Square. In reading John Pomeroy's statement that the site of his house in the background was later occupied by the customs house, it is likely that the sketch was drawn as a view towards the northwest rather than from it.
In order to begin examining the structures that came to consist the west side of Church Street between College and Main Streets, it is necessary to identify the time at which development expanded beyond the original central court house itself, and started to build up the east side of Court House Square. The second court house burned down in the June of 1829, and its replacement was constructed in the middle of the east side of the square in 1830.5 Examinations of 1830, 1833, and 1836 maps of Burlington show the new location of the Court House, and it wasn't long before other buildings were depicted as springing up alongside it.
The northern half of the block's structures have always been devoted primarily to commercial activity, from the very beginning of the square's existence. The 1836 Johnson map shows the sole structure as being the Court House, and in 1853, a map drawn by Presdee & Edwards shows a block of several narrow, joined buildings on the northeast corner. This is interesting in several respects, because there are reliable accounts that business establishments did in fact exist on that corner prior to the time of the maps drawn in the 1830s. Lyman King, Gideon King's son and sheriff of the county, is said to have owned a tavern on that corner as early as 1798 (perhaps informing his father's motivation to lead the effort to erect Burlington's first major civic building nearby), Indeed, there are a number of sources which indicate that Burlington's jail occupied that corner during a brief period from 1797-1803,6 a jail in which Levi Allen, brother to Ira and Ethan Allen, was said to have died during his imprisonment for debt.7 An article in the Burlington Free Press describes the history of that corner as being one in which the jail was constructed first in 1797, with King's tavern adjoining it. After King donated land to the town upon which to relocate the jail, he was given an expanded site for his tavern by the town, at a perpetual rent of “a pepper corn a year.”8 After expanding the tavern to occupy roughly the footprint that still exists today, he was subsequently sold the building to Captain Henry Thomas, who ran it as the Burlington Hotel until selling it to hardware store proprietor W.L. Strong in 1829.9
Among the more significant owners of businesses at this corner was Samuel Huntington, who operated a print shop, stationery, and book bindery beginning in 1837, when Strong subdivided a 40 by 50 foot corner of his block and sold it to him.10 Other minor businesses came and went in the adjoining buildings, but Huntington's establishment thrived and became what might be known today as an anchor business. Strong's Hardware Store itself was also a fixture of Burlington at this time, described by the Burlington Free Press in 1928 as being “historic,”11 and visible in a remarkable 1870 photograph of City Hall Park which shows the full extent of the wooden so-called “Strong Block” which included Huntington's shop.
Strong was also responsible for dividing the building into the smaller Church Street storefronts and letting them to tenants.12 An 1870 photograph of this corner taken from the opposite angle to the 1859 view over the park shows the Strong Block with Huntington's business bearing the sign of the Burlington Book Bindery.
Mercantile activity came to an abrupt hiatus on that block in 1887 however, when much of the block was destroyed by fire. A final look at that section before its reconstruction, as shown in the 1885 Sanborn fire insurance map, shows the layout of the former King Tavern site as ultimately subdivided and developed by Strong and Huntington.
Just the previous year to the fire, Strong had sold his interest in the block to the YMCA; even though the YMCA only occupied a slice of the block at the southern end, they become the new co-owners of the block, along with Samuel Huntington.13 After the fire, Huntington and the YMCA would ultimately be responsible for shaping the block's reconstruction.
The fire of 1887 would have a dramatic impact on the composition of that part of the street. According to an account from the time, the fire began in a basement storeroom, and quickly spread through the building, burning so fiercely that “most of the plate glass windows on College Street from Church Street to the Merchants” Bank were cracked by the heat.”14 Very little was saved from the fire, which utterly destroyed the building. The 1889 edition of the Sanborn map shows the new structure under construction, subsequently known as the YMCA Block, which had broken ground the previous year.15
The YMCA block was significant in the architectural history of this part of Church Street as an indicator of the increasing prosperity of Burlington. It was a large stone and brick building executed in a Romanesque style, and designed to house not only the YMCA, but a number of other commercial tenants. The Huntington business constructed and built the block in conjunction with the YMCA, but the Huntington part of the building would ultimately be occupied by the McAuliffe Paper Company beginning in 1912, a lineal descendant of Huntington's original business from 1839.17 As was clear from the Vermont Association Notes, the publication run by the Vermont YMCA, the organization had advanced to the state where it required and could afford to construct luxuries which led the YMCA to tout the structure as "one of the largest and best Association buildings in the country, designed by Fuller and Wheeler of Albany, New York."18 Fuller and Wheeler had designed another Romanesque Revival YMCA building in Albany a few years earlier, in 1886, and in addition to the structure in Burlington would execute two more YMCA buildings of similar style in 1889, located in Montreal and New Britain, Connecticut. Of these, only the YMCA building in Albany still stands.19 Interestingly, a newspaper image from an unknown publication which is said to depict the Burlington YMCA does not in fact show the structure as built, but is most likely a concept drawing.
As an architect's rendering it closely resembles other Fuller and Wheeler designs, but the final structure was much plainer in overall massing, lacking the peaked roof and projecting gables. One might presume that the newspaper image was published in 1887 or 1888, before plans for the building were finalized, though it is not known why the plans were altered. Additionally, though the building does give the appearance of being a single structure in the newspaper rendering, it could be more accurately characterized as consisting of two structures joined together in a unified plan. In looking at the final as-built version, it is clear that the part of the building which primarily faces onto College Street is distinct from the more southerly section, with the Burlington Free Press stating that “the entrance to the YMCA was at the southeast corner on Church Street.20 The Association Notes from 1928 describe that 'the block really consisted of two-the YMCA and the store of McAuliffe Paper Company, as they had been built together after the previous fire, in 1887, so that Samuel Huntington could occupy the same site that he had had for his book store for years."21
The YMCA Block served its tenants for thirty years before suffering the same fate as its predecessor structures, being destroyed by fire in 1928. The fire was discovered shortly after 4 o”clock in the morning on February 1, 1928, and “after some pretty narrow escapes and some thrilling experiences” according to the Association Notes, all occupants of the building were safely evacuated. The fire spread very quickly and caused almost total destruction, with “absolutely nothing being saved.”22 The fire burned for more than a day, with firefighters taking it in shifts to attempt to extinguish the blaze, and embers setting fire to awnings of nearby businesses. According to fire officials it was "the most disastrous one in the business district of the town," with a total loss estimated at $500,000 to $750,000 ($7.5-$11 million in 2018 dollars).24 One wistful description included in the account stated that "when the east wall fell, about 9:45 o'clock in the morning, windows were smashed in several stores on Church Street, and two firemen were hit by flying bricks, but were not badly injured. The north, west, and south walls were all left standing for several days, and then they were pulled down only with a good deal of difficulty. These walls showed that the building was splendidly built, back years ago."25
The post-1928 replacements for the YMCA Block were executed in segments, roughly following the footprints delineated by divisions within the original YMCA block, which in turn had been based on the Strong Block before it. Hence, what had once been the Huntington section, with the narrow side on Church Street and having its principal façade on College Street, was rebuilt by the MacAuliffe Paper Company to become known as what is now 117 Church Street. In fact, part of the original YMCA block survives in this building. The ground floor of the YMCA block had been executed in a rusticated red sandstone, which in the case of the MacAuliffe section was retained and reused in the present structure, a three-story brick office building. The stained glass windows above the storefronts advertising books and stationery are remnants of MacAuliffe's business (though now intentionally obscured by a retailer's awnings).
The corner entry to the building has been carved above its lintel with a number of names and dates which are somewhat inscrutable today, but whose significance becomes clear when related to the history of the site. 1837 to 1888 are the dates during which Samuel Huntington's businesses occupied that corner prior to the construction of the YMCA Block, and the McAuliffe dates delineate the time period during which this successor company operated in the YMCA Block from a 1912 reorganization through to the 1928 fire.
The next structure south from the current McAuliffe Building, occupying the remainder of the YMCA Block's footprint, is the Chittenden County Trust Company building, now known as 123 Church Street. Constructed in 1931 on the segment of the block occupied primarily by the YMCA itself. The bank building is unusual in that it wraps entirely around the MacAuliffe Building to face out over City Hall Park, Church Street, and College Street, a vestige of the shape of the plot sold by Strong to the YMCA in 1876. The structure also includes a secondary entrance with a unique address at 131 Church Street. Since its construction in 1931, the building has been a financial institution and office building, and today includes retail storefronts. Architects were Harper and West, and the style typifies the neoclassical manner of pre-war bank buildings.26
The next extant structure on Church Street, south of the Chittenden County Trust Company, is the former home of the Ethan Allen Engine Company No. 4. The history of firefighting and emergency services in Burlington is undoubtedly a colorful one, blending as it did jingoistic civic pride with its role as a herald of the emergence of a developing and ever-sophisticating city. To summarize briefly, the first organized fire fighting brigades in Burlington emerged in the mid-19th century, with the fist true fire company being formed in 1857, albeit one of volunteers.27 The first fire engine in Burlington was purchased a year later in 1858, which was a highly significant moment for the town's citizenry, to read accounts of the time, and was housed originally in a repurposed basement beneath City Hall.28 Despite this marked improvement, for the bulk of its history the firefighting infrastructure in Burlington was somewhat haphazard and not a little bit primitive. Indeed, after the earlier 1829 fire which claimed the old Court House, the Burlington Free Press described the firefighting capabilities of the city as "the feeble means possessed by our citizens."29 A major part of the work of fire preparedness in the 19th century was the care and maintenance not only of the pumps and engines, but the canvas hoses which were prone to deterioration and rot. In order to prolong their service life, these hoses needed to be thoroughly dried prior to storage, which entailed hanging them to drain and air out. In wealthier cities this meant constructing large towers from which to suspend hoses, but in many cases in marginal municipalities, it was more expedient to dig vertical silos into the ground and hang hoses into them. Such was the case in Burlington until the construction of the Ethan Allen Engine Co. firehouse, and a photograph in the collections of the Vermont Historical Society may depict this predecessor structure.30 Part of the effort to increase Burlington's firefighting capabilities was aided by the Ethan Allen Engine Company's role as the civic wing of the Ethan Allen Club, long held as a collection of the city's most prominent, wealthy, and ambitious citizens. A supposedly definitive written history of the Engine Company in fact only mentions the firefighting aspect in passing, and is rather a celebration of the club itself and a commemoration of its history of distinguished members' works, and, to a great extent, lavish dinners.31
In 1889 the city (whose leaders were often members of the Ethan Allen Club) raised $15,000 for construction of a dedicated firehouse just south of the YMCA Block. The building is conspicuous for its considerable size, but it was also designed to serve as the rather opulent clubhouse and meeting rooms for the Ethan Allen Club itself.
The building was, like the YMCA Block next to it, executed in a Romanesque style (though in brick), but whereas the YMCA Block abandoned the more vertical aspects of its initial design, the firehouse could not, as it included a tall, narrow main block surmounted by an 85-foot hose-drying tower.32 The design work for the building was performed by the firm of A.B. Fisher, who were responsible for other civic and residential commissions in Burlington at the time. Fisher himself had moved to Burlington in 1877 to design and construct the Wells Mansion,33 and remained in the city to be engaged on further commissions, though his son Clellan is believed to have actually been principal architect for the firehouse.34
The Ethan Allen Engine Co. firehouse served in that capacity until 1927, the move being precipitated by the completion of the Central Fire Station on South Winooski Avenue,35 and following the move, the building was occupied by the Burlington Police Department until 1967.
As opposed to the manner in which no other structure on this block of Church Street exists in its original form, the Ethan Allen Firehouse remains intact. Indeed, it represents one of the early triumphs of the preservationist movement in the city of Burlington, especially so given how close the structure came to being destroyed. After the Burlington Police Department left the building in 1967, partially due to its deteriorating condition, the city moved to schedule the building for demolition. It was described at the time as having “buckled floors, rotten woodwork, crumbling walls, and fallen ceilings.”36 That said, there was a movement of citizens keen on saving the structure, but funds were proving difficult to come by, at least until the publishing of a New York Times editorial by prominent preservationist, art historian and critic Ada Louise Huxtable. In her article of September 14, 1969, entitled 'the Bucolic Bulldozer," she writes of City Hall Park that 'the building with the most character is the Ethan Allen fire station, a severe brick volume of considerable style and strength in the center of the row, that ties the two lesser volumes of the architecturally nondescript bank and City Hall together. In a sense, it saves them. But it is about to be torn down, for a gap-tooth parklet between the buildings."37
The national attention the piece garnered galvanized Burlington's preservationists and helped them secure a $63,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That, teamed with additional matching grants and fundraising, secured the firehouse from destruction, and ultimately aided its being listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The effort to save the firehouse not only accomplished the preservation of the building itself, but the activities central to its protection had wider impacts in terms of giving the preservationist movement a more established and empowered role within the city. In a follow-up piece written in March of 1972, Huxtable notes that "with local and national press support, the mayor threw his weight behind preservation. He appointed a special group to work on the problem and set up a Historic Sites Committee to consider the general question of the city's patrimony… there is now an architect on the planning board, a concerned city planner, a change in urban renewal developers and … a 'minor renaissance.' … A growing number of people in Burlington seem to realize that these matters are all related, and that the objective is over-all urban quality. That this is being recognized and understood for the first time on a city-wide basis is attested to by the related action on both planning and preservation fronts. Onward and upward, Burlington!"38
The firehouse was renovated shortly afterwards, with the building in apparently such poor condition that the only original elements of the interior to be retained were three mantelpieces and a coffered ceiling.39 Starting in 1974, the former firehouse was occupied by UVM's continuing education department as the Church Street Center. Since the mid-1990s the firehouse has been occupied by Burlington City Arts, who use the building for office spaces, galleries, and studios.
The last part of this study concerns what is now the current site of Burlington's City Hall. Though the building is 20th century, it occupies a site of civic activity having its roots in Burlington's earliest years. As examined earlier, the first Court House buildings, which encompassed much of the civic and legal life of the city, had been set in the middle of the square from 1797 to 1829.40 As seems to plague the history of many buildings on this block, the second Court House (1802-1829) was completely destroyed by fire. The fire was of unknown cause, but had immediately followed a meeting of the Masonic order, who had rooms in the court house, causing one enraged citizen of Castleton to claim that "the Lodge met as usual at mid-night, held their carousal, took a swig or two from the old skull bone, cursed the Anti-Masons, set the house on fire and went home"41 but an improperly extinguished lantern was ultimately deemed the actual cause. In 1830, Burlington constructed the new Court House on the center of the east side of Court House Square, as depicted in maps of the area drawn in the 1830s. The building itself was a departure from the perhaps more conventional meeting-house type structures which preceded it in that it was more Federal in its styling, and was surmounted by a large (indeed oversized), classically detailed octagonal lantern. No other building in Burlington was quite like it, and at the time of its construction, a local poet writing under the name of "Rock" commemorated the changes to Court House Square by noting in the Burlington Free Press that:
The Square, too, is beginning
“New beauties to unfold”-
(Just cleaned of heaps of stone and dust,)
Quite pleasant to behold.
The Court-House, too, is finished,
“On the best plan” to be found,
Surmounted by a “pepper box,”
With a town-room under ground.42
The “town-room” which the author references is in fact the location of town offices, which were located on the ground floor beneath the courtrooms on the principal floor.43 The new court house would serve in that capacity for some time, but ultimately would be given a philanthropic repurposing as the Fletcher Free Library.
Mary L. and Mary M. Fletcher, two local citizens of means, decided in 1873 to donate $10,000 each towards the purchase of books and the founding of a free library for the citizens of Burlington, provided that the city furnish a location for the library itself. At the time it was “the largest donation ever given at one time for a public object in our city.”44 As it so happened, the Court House had been vacant for some time, as the court had outgrown the two-room layout on the principal floor; a space which would be ideally suited for conversion to a library. The city moved quickly, and on November 3, 1873 approved the resolution that “the court room and the two rooms adjoining it, can be put in order and shelving and cases supplied with little delay and at a cost not probably exceeding one thousand dollars. We find the building in much better condition that we supposed from former representations. The roof can be readily repaired with small expense and should be done at once and painted to prevent the tin from further rusting and decay.”45 Simultaneous to the approval of this resolution, a motion was made to appoint a committee responsible for purchasing books for the library. The committee consisted of five individuals including the mayor of Burlington, the president of the University of Vermont, and Samuel Huntington, the very same book binder and stationer from down the block who features heavily in the story of this part of Church Street.46 The committee was lauded as being able to “supply every requisite of familiarity with books, good taste and judgment, experience in buying, and general good sense and business capacity."47
The Fletcher Free Library remained in that location for nearly thirty years, but Andrew Carnegie had launched his global library-building campaign in 1881, seeking to put into practice his philosophy that “all personal wealth beyond that required to supply the needs of one's family should be regarded as a trust fund to be administered for the benefit of the community.”48 Over the course of the project, lasting until 1917, Carnegie would spend more than $41 million building libraries in much the same spirit as the Fletchers, and in addition to Carnegie libraries in Fair Haven, Rockingham, and Morristown, a fourth in Vermont was applied for by the Fletcher Free Library and built in Burlington in 1901.49 As such, the library relocated, leaving the old building free for other occupants. They plainly held a fondness for the old Court House however, as the large leaded glass window above the entryway to the new library on College Street contains a depiction of the old Court House building, a tribute to the library's original home.
As for what to do with the space, the City of Burlington didn't move expeditiously, and it was essentially vacant until 1905, when city aldermen moved to allow the Stannard post of the Grand Army of The Republic to occupy the upper, main floor of the building, with the lower floor dedicated to housing the electric light and street departments, as well as renting to tenants. This same meeting of aldermen as reported in the Burlington Free Press declared that "it would without doubt be called Stannard Memorial Hall." The idea was greeted by Burlington's citizenry with some enthusiasm, and work was done to refresh and refurbish the building to serve not only the GAR, but several other Burlington charitable organizations. The Free Press conveys a certain degree of excitement with their admiring prose on the building, stating that:
The rooms as completed will provide for Stannard Post quarters second to none in the State and the veterans are enthusiastic in their appreciation for them…the staircase which renewed with hard North Carolina pine, finished in the natural color of the wood presents an elegant and substantial appearance…all of the rooms are finished with warm buff wainscoting. The side walls are painted light buff with a blue border while the ceilings are also light buff. The color effect is harmonious and pleasing.51
It appears that the hall was a popular, well-used community fixture as a meeting and event space for several charitable organizations in the city; for just one example, in 1909 “the women of Stannard Relief Corps served a chicken pie dinner … in Stannard Memorial Hall. It was patronized by about 250 people.”52 News reports of meetings, celebrations, and gatherings of all kinds occur with frequency throughout the course of this final phase of the building's use.
As will be the case with the old City Hall building next door, the former Court House was slated for demolition in the mid-1920s to make way for the much larger City Hall which currently occupies the site. Whereas the north end of this segment of Church Street was occupied primarily with mercantile activity, the south part was geared towards governmental purposes. In earlier years the Court House had been a catch-all building to house the bulk of civic functions, but this dual role would prove too much for the capacity of the structure, with the governmental organizations of Burlington ultimately being given their own headquarters in an adjacent building, just south of the Court House itself. The so-called Town-City Hall, indicative of this transitional phase in Burlington's history, was first constructed on the site in 1853, as shown in the Presdee and Edwards map, and was designed by T.S.Whitby.53 The construction was not without its issues, however, as by February of 1853 the building had proven costly, with a request for $12,000 in funds to be voted on at the 1853 town meeting, in addition to the $12,000 already appropriated.54 It appears, however, that the writer of a piece in the Free Press may have been expressing a common frustration, not so much at the extra appropriation, but at the overcrowding of government functions in the Court House building, including the fire company. "We know of nothing that our town requires more than a respectable place to hold their town meetings, and…feel that it is a disgrace to a town like this to make a cellar answer the double purpose of Town Room and Engine House."55 It would seem, however, that even an unfinished building couldn't dampen the spirits of a populace eager for a new space, as the 1854 Town Meeting "was held in the New Town Hall. The spacious, well-lighted room was a comfort. For want of convenient seats (soon to be constructed in it, and because there was only a single floor between the stirring feet and the unfinished rooms of the first story, it was difficult to hear well. Possibly there is some fault in the form of the room; but it is too soon to pronounce surely on that. When all things are finished we can tell better. A good spirit prevailed and there was no strife about anything."
The 1854 Town-City Hall building (termed as such because it predated Burlington's status as a city by eleven years) was a handsome Palladian brick structure, but it appears that the journalist quoted above, reporting from the 1854 Town Meeting, was justified in believing that there was "some fault in the room" in terms of its acoustics. In a piece written in 1928, right at the time the City was approving plans to replace the old City Hall, John Southwick wrote that "the acoustic properties of the City Hall are so woefully bad that echoes absolutely prevent the speaker from making his words audible and intelligible…our people would not go there as a rule except to caucuses, and the hall was not popular even for primary purposes."56 Other accounts seem to adopt a similar attitude, in that they will praise the building architecturally as a picturesque element on City Hall Park, but in terms of function the City Hall never really seemed to satisfy, and accounts in the 1920s leading up to its demolition almost universally express excitement about the building which would come to replace it rather than ruefulness about the loss of the original. It appears that the last decades of the building's existence bore witness to a decline in condition, and its becoming increasingly costly to maintain and repair.57 It's unknown how truly deteriorated City Hall had become by the 1920s, but an earthquake in 1925 may have been the catalyst for developing plans for its replacement.
On Saturday the 28th of February, 1925, in “an experience without parallel in the history of the city” Burlington was struck by a minor earthquake, luridly described by a journalist as occurring when “business had assumed the height of its usual Saturday evening volume on Church Street. Then the shaking, the earthquake. Women hurrying to finish their shopping before the stores closed went into paroxysms of excitement that approached hysteria. The street was transformed into a veritable pandemonium which baffles detailed description.”58
Despite this cataclysmic rendering, the earthquake, though certainly remarkable, was initially reported as not causing any damage or casualties, and lasted about a minute.59 Despite a lack of any obvious damage caused by the quake directly, the fact that the City Hall was already crumbling led the city to essentially close the building to the public, and indeed “since the earthquake, no meetings, with the exceptions of municipal court sessions which only a few persons attend, have been permitted in the auditorium of the City Hall, indicating that it was not deemed safe to allow large gatherings there.”60 With Mayor Beecher declaring that “Burlington's City Hall had served its purposes for that number of years and was now surprisingly inefficient to house the city's business,” and an editorial at the time calling it “a repellent municipal liability” the compact, elegant building's days were numbered.61
In the design process for the new City Hall, McKim, Mead and White were chosen as chief architects. The selection of their design was done by Mayor Beecher (nicknamed Beecher the Builder), as well as J.W. Votey, dean of the University of Vermont's engineering school,62 and preparations were then made to vacate Old City Hall and the Old Court House to temporary quarters so the buildings could be razed. McKim, Mead and White would have a substantial impact on several of Burlington's more substantial buildings, such as Waterman Hall, the Fleming Museum, the Ira Allen Chapel, Southwick Hall, and Slade Hall, and indeed the new City Hall shows a kinship with all of them in its treatment of neoclassical and colonial revival styles.
The city of Burlington also appointed James Cashman to be the lead contractor on City Hall, a man who, like Mayor Beecher, was one of the more prominent figures in prewar Burlington. Cashman had an extremely successful contracting company which was thought at one point to be the largest in Vermont.63 They executed every type of commission, including civic buildings, roads, homes, and bridges. Remarkably enough, in relation to the history of the block this paper focuses on, Cashman not only constructed City Hall, but also built the McAuliffe Paper Company building and the Chittenden County Trust Company, the two buildings erected to replace the YMCA Block. Indeed, the Ethan Allen firehouse is the only building on this block not built by James E. Cashman.64 Cashman started his company in 1906, and was heavily involved in many of the city's most important construction projects until his death in 1931. He was known as an extraordinary organizer of projects and workforces, and in the case of the City Hall construction project, nearly all of the contractors and building materials were sourced in New England, and primarily Vermont. After its construction was completed in 1928 at a cost of $475,000, Mayor Beecher declared it “the most ambitious building project on which the city of Burlington has ever embarked.”65 The structure is essentially unaltered today from the time of it's construction.
So, in effect, we have encompassed in the City Hall block of Church Street three interwoven histories. The first revolves around Court House Square itself, now City Hall Park, as a continuous hub of civic and social life in Burlington since the American Revolution. The second history focuses on the commercial aspects of this block, with the current structures on the block's northeast corner still bearing vestiges in design and layout from the two major landmarks in its earlier history, the Strong Block and the YMCA Block. The third history is that of Burlington's civic buildings, with the former Court House, Town-City Hall, and the Fletcher Free Library all contained within the footprint of the current City Hall. The only extant pre-20thth century building on the block as originally constructed, the Ethan Allen Firehouse, stands as a memorial to the development of Burlington as a true urban center, with a major public service being housed in the same building as the social center of the city's major leading figures. The firehouse is remarkable least of all for its preservation, as it now anchors the block literally in its center, but figuratively in that its foundations were laid at the midpoint of the block's history, and in historical and architectural terms can be thought of as an organizing feature around which everything else is grouped, much as Ada Huxtable pointed out. it is somewhat lost in the streetscape today for its comparatively small footprint, it is undoubtedly the most significant building on the block, as it is the only one still intact and occupying its original site. The City Hall Block, therefore, has an ability to tell a considerably wide-ranging history not only of Church Street, but of the historical evolution of Burlington as a city in both civic and mercantile terms.
NOTES
1. Historic Preservation Program, Department of History, University of Vermont, Chester Liebs, editor, The Burlington Book: Architecture, History, Future (Burlington, Vermont: University of Vermont Historic Preservation Program, 1980). 128.
2. Mary O”Neil, “35 King Street: The Gideon King House.” Historic Preservation Program, Department of History, University of Vermont. Accessed October 23, 2018. http://www.uvm.edu/histpres/HPJ/burl1830/streets/king/35king.html
3. Burlington Bicentennial Committee, Marcia Marshall, ed. Bygone Burlington (Burlington, Vermont: Queen City Press, 1976).
4. Charles E. Allen, About Burlington, Vermont (Burlington, Vermont: Hobart Shanley & Co, 1905). 87.
5. W.S. Rann, A History of Chittenden County Vermont with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1886). 188.
6. David J. Blow, Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods (Burlington, Vermont: Chittenden County Historical Society, 1991). 101.
7. “A Disastrous Fire,” Burlington Free Press, February 2, 1928, https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197108591
8. “A Big Blaze!” Burlington Free Press, Friday, January 21, 1887. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/215115268
9. “A Disastrous Fire,” Burlington Free Press, February 2, 1928, https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197108591
Blow, 100
10. Ibid.
11. Burlington Free Press, “A Big Blaze!”
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. State Committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations of Vermont, Louis Hieb and Byron N. Clark, eds. “Vermont Association Notes, February 1928” Burlington, Vermont,1928. p1.
15. Blow, Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods, 101.
16. Page, John C. “National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Court House Square.” Montpelier, Vermont: Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, 1982.18.
17. “Association Notes,” p.4-5.
18. Robert G. Hill, “Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada 1800-1950.”Accessed October 1, 2018. http://dictionaryofarchitectsincanada.org/node/793
19. Burlington Free Press, “A Disastrous Fire.”
20. “Association Notes,” 3
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Wolfram Alpha LLC. 2009. Wolfram|Alpha. http://www.wolframalpha.com. Accessed September 25, 2018.
“Association Notes,” 3
24. Page, “National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Court House Square”, 30.
25. Wesley T. Abell, History of Ethan Allen Engine Company No. 4 of Burlington, Vermont and of The Ethan Allen Club. (Burlington, Vermont: Queen City Printers, 1957). 262.
26. Abell, History of Ethan Allen Engine Company No. 4, 180.
27. “Friday Morning, June 19, 1829.” Burlington Free Press, 1829, https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/355353004
28. Abell, History of Ethan Allen Engine Company No. 4, 20.
29. Ibid., 3.
30. William B. Pinney. “Ethan Allen Engine Co. #4.” National Resister of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form. (Montpelier, Vermont: Vermont State Board of Historic Sites, 1970).
31. Liebs, The Burlington Book, 28.
32. Blow, Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods, 80.
33. Ibid., 81.
34. Liebs, The Burlington Book, 84.
35. Ada Louise Huxtable, “The Bucolic Bulldozer,” New York Times, September 4, 1969. 42. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/09/14/302044642.html
36. Ada Louise Huxtable, “It's All in The Mind – And Eye,” New York Times, March 19, 1972, 214. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1972/03/19/93416579.html
37. Liebs, The Burlington Book, 84.
38. Burlington Bicentennial Committee, Bygone Burlington, 7
39. “Brilliant Effects of Masonry,” Burlington Free Press, July 10, 1829. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/355353016
40. Rock, “Things.” Burlington Free Press, January 1, 1831. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/355353334
41. Vincent E. Feeney, Burlington: A History of Vermont's Queen City (Bennington, Vermont: Images From The Past, Inc., 2015). 30.
42. “A Free City Library for Burlington,” Burlington Free Press, July 15, 1873. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197217605
43. “Fletcher Free Library,” Burlington Free Press, November 5, 1873. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197229147
44. Burlington Free Press, “A Free City Library for Burlington.”
45. “The Fletcher Library,” Burlington Free Press, November 6, 1873. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197230255
46. Robert J. Resnik, A Short History of Vermont's Carnegie Libraries in Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of The Fletcher Free Library's Carnegie Building (Burlington, Vermont: Fletcher Free Library, 2004). 45.
47. Ibid., 46.
48. “Stannard Memorial Hall,” Burlington Free Press, November 9, 1905. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/145358798
49. “Stannard Post Rooms,” Burlington Free Press, March 27, 1906. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197101318
50. “City and Vicinity,” Burlington Free Press, November 5, 1909. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197866884
51. “To Builders and Others,” Burlington Free Press, February 3 1853. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197271281
52. “Our Town Affairs,” Burlington Free Press, February 28 1853. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197278672
53. Ibid.
54. “A City Hall That Will Be The Pride of Burlington,” The Burlington Free Press, September 4, 1925. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197381406
55. Ibid.
56. “Burlington is Rocked by Brief Earthquake,” Burlington Free Press, March 2, 1925. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197310496
57. Ibid.
58. “New City Hall Project Strongly Supported by Speakers at Meeting of Citizens,” Burlington Free Press, October 14, 1925. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197316470
59. Page, John C. “National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form, City Hall Park Historic District.” (Montpelier, Vermont: Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, 1983).
60. Liebs, The Burlington Book, 102.
61. “Last Chapter to be Written,” Burlington Free Press, January 31, 1936. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/197125386
62. Burlington Free Press, “Last Chapter to be Written.”
63. Page, “National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form, City Hall Park Historic District.”
Additional Bibliography:
Auld, Joseph. Picturesque Burlington. Burlington, Vermont: Free Press Association, 1893.
Conant, Edward. The Geography, History, Constitution and Civil Government of Vermont. Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle Company, 1875.
Lord, Charles. Round About Burlington. Burlington, Vermont: Free Press Association, 1900.
Michaud, Robert B. Salute to Burlington. Burlington, Vermont: Capital City Press, 1991.