Windsor, Vermont: State Street brochure

A one-sheet brochure featuring State Street in Windsor, Vermont. From the brochure: "The rapid expansion of Windsor’s machine tool industry at the turn of the century created a demand for workforce housing. Small apartment buildings and multi-family houses mingled with the stately, single- family homes on State Street. The two apartment houses at #8 and #10 Phelps Court (circa 1885) – one block ahead on the right – are excellent examples of worker housing, with bay windows typical of the Queen Anne style. A combination of religious, institutional, and penal architecture lines the south side of State Street. To the left is the monumental St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, designed in 1822 by renowned Boston architect Alexander Parris (1780-1852). Its Greek Revival style and commanding site on a slight rise recall the lofty democratic ideals of the Greek Republic embodied in the temple form. The church contains an organ designed by local inventor Lemuel Hedge, whose career as a mechanical engineer included the patenting of early machine tools, as well as musical instruments. Farther west is the former Vermont State Prison, adapted for housing in 1975. When completed in 1809, the prison represented the most modern approach to criminal reform, replacing fines and public corporal punishment with long-term incarceration. Constructed of granite quarried on nearby Mount Ascutney, the fortress-like building had walls three feet thick and fourteen feet high. An adjoining brick building housed guards and keepers. Over the years, the local economy relied on prison labor to produce cloth, shoes, and most notably, the rotary pump and guns. When it closed, it was the oldest continuously operating prison in the country. Between these two buildings stands the solid and respectable Windsor Library, designed in the Georgian Revival style by Henry Bacon (1866-1924), architect of the Lincoln Memorial. Its construction in 1905 ended the itinerant history of the town’s lending library, which first had occupied a room in the town hall and later several rooms in the Hiram Harlow house at #45 State Street." Funding for this item was provided in part through a 2007 Preserve America grant to the Town of Windsor, Vermont (grant number 50-07-PA-3038) for the project Welcome to Windsor. The grant was administered by the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Preserve America is a federal initiative that encourages and supports community efforts to preserve and enjoy our priceless cultural and natural heritage. The goals of the program include a greater shared knowledge about the nation's past, strengthened regional identities and local pride, increased local participation in preserving the country's cultural and natural heritage assets, and support for the economic vitality of our communities.

Windsor, Vermont: State Street brochure

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