North Bennington Walking Tour, 43- 2

#44 – Sam C. Loomis House, Federal, c. 1830. This house is hidden by its siding – its graceful front entrance, corner pilasters, and fanlight in the gable still peek through. It is smaller, only 2 windows wide, less imposing than its neighbors down the street (#2, 25, 26).

#45 -Hawkes House, c. 1830, and updated many times. Breaks in the trim indicate a porch location, window changes, and various expansions. Mr.Loomis ( #43) and Mr. Hawkes owned the market in the square (#3).

#26 - Hiland Knapp House, c. 1825. The curving bands – guilloche – at the eaves and at the entrance, slender ionic columns, a subtle brick pattern, dressed marble lintels and sills are graceful and sophisticated. The style, Federal, was inspired by the Adams Brothers, popular English architects at the time.

#25 - B. Hammond House: Federal, c. 1825, is the reverse image of the Welling House (#2). In 1856, there was no roof over the front porch.

#2 –The Welling House end the Green Tour. Its Italianate side porch to the north once circled the house.

North Bennington Walking Tour, 37 - 42a

Bank St. was laid out in 1851 to go to White Creek. It wasn’t Bank St. until the bank was built in 1865. The 3 Greek Revival houses (#37-39) are excellent examples of the style.

The Colvin family farmed the land on this road. They also owned mills.

#37 - Sidney Colvin House, 1855. This house was set back from the road to create a setting, much as was the Robinson House on Prospect Street. Popular authors at the time recommended withdrawing one’s

house from the road to reinforce the Jeffersonian ideal of each family being self-sufficient

.

#38 - Charles Colvin House – Wood could be planed by steam powered machinery in 1835. Wide smooth boards were easy to mill, and readily available. These columns and frieze boards are the result. This house sits close to the street, urban compared to #37.

#39 - built by E. Safford. These cottages (with a central unit and side wing) have corners that look like colum

ns. They were inspired by ‘pattern books’, books showing plans and drawings. Many houses like this were built in upstate New York.

#40 - Originally this was a single family house, built c.1820, with simple trim, no frills, and a center entrance. It is larger than the simple mill houses on West and Sage St. The porch is later.

#41 – G. Robertson House, The Greek Revival house once boasted a frieze and corner pilasters, now hidden by vinyl siding. The Italianate porch is later.

#42 – Elwell House, 1851, Italianate, is very similar in shape and detail to the PL Robinson House on Prospect Street. However, it is not set back but sits directly on the street. One looks up at it and the feeling quite different. Its shape is similar to #41, , but its trim is light and airy, not solid.

#43 - Once the barn for the Elwell House, this building was moved in 1917-18 and remodeled to become a Masonic Temple. Note the similar verge boards at the eaves. Barns have cupolas (the tower at the top) to vent the hay stored inside, because hay heats up and can easily catch fire.

Where the roads met was a square bordered by the post office, 2 stores, an apothecary, a cabinet shop and – where the gas station is today - The Paran Creek House, a 3 story hotel with a broad veranda.

Behind that was a carpenter shop.

SB Loomis owned the hotel. He lived next door and also owned, with WE Hawkes, one of the stores in Lincoln Square.

North Bennington Walking Tour, 31- 36

#31 – H. Hall House’s shape is similar to, but more generous than the housing on Sage St. A wide frieze board has been added at the eaves.

This house and its neighbors were a small community around the Baptist Church which sat here at the intersection of West and Park Street.

Built between 1830 and 1850 they are the beginning of the new style, Greek Revival.

#32 – W.J.Toombs House. The gable of this Greek Revival house

faces the street. Its entrance faces down the hill, to the side in the center of the house.

33 – Known as “the Lodge” because it served as a guest house for the Parks and McCulloughs whose 1864 mansion is across the street. Now a school with many wings and alterations, the original house, built by Martin B. Scott, is in the middle.

# 34 – Baptist Parsonage, 1847, brick, Greek Revival. The door and window casing are similar to the Watson House on Prospect St. The pattern at the eaves creates a frieze in brick. The frieze boards in the neighboring houses show how much easier it was to do in wood. The left wing is later. The original house was quite small.

# 35 – D. O’Brien’s house in 1856, it was built c. 1830 by Nathaniel Hall, brother to Hiland Hall, whose house was down Park Street. This house had a serious fire. The left and rear wings are 20^th century. The shape of this house, gable end to the street, side wing with porch becomes the preferred shape in the village.

Take a walk through the Historic Park-McCullough House grounds. Visit the ‘Big House’ and see what Trenor and Laura Hall Park built in 1864 in their village with money from the California gold rush.

The Hall – Park - McCullough family was a generous contributor to the betterment of the village. Hiland Hall and John McCullough served as governors of Vermont.

The Hiland Hall farmhouse is beyond the Big House.

Church St was not here in 1856. This was Hall and Colvin farm land.

In 1856, as well as the district school (#18) and Asa Doty’s school (#27) there was an academy for older students on Water Street.

The North Bennington Graded School was built in with the help of Hiland Hall and Trenor Park.

# 36 - The Baptist Church, built in 1845, sat on the corner, looking over the town. When Trenor Park wished to build his mansion here, in 1864, he laid out Church Street from here to Bank Street and moved the existing building a block down, out of the way. It has still retained its view out over the village.

North Bennington, Vermont, Walking Tour, # 26 -30

The tour does not include Water Street because in season the greenery makes the buildings on the 1856 map and Paran Creek invisible. The other 6 months of the year there is visibility from the side lawn of the Library. The Water Street side walk is also located on the west side of the road, away from what one would hope to view.

Walking up hill, west from the McCullough Library, corner West and Main Streets, North Bennington, Vermont

GREEN TOUR

In 1856, the Boot and Shoe Factory sat on the right side of West St. with the Union Store (#3) to its north, a tin shop to the west. On the left was the Hawks & Co. mill.

# 27 – Doty Hall, which housed tailor shop and a shoe shop in 1856, was built by Asa Doty as a private school with a second floor auditorium. While the school is a box topped by a stylish pediment, its location and its lack of detail give it much less presence than the stores at Lincoln Park.

#28 - Built in 1827 by Asa Doty, this house matches the Hammond and Welling houses. Its fan light has the same row of balls. About 1850, it was ‘up-dated’ with Italianate details: the corbels under the roof, a bay window on the east side. The Park family lived here while their summer mansion was being built in 1864.

#29 – RW Bangs House, probably c.1830, as the entrance is centered on the front under the roof slope. The shape has not yet been turned so that the gable end faces the street.

#30 – mill housing with little detail other than simple Greek Revival eave returns.

2011 map for N. Bennington walking tour

Here is the map for the actual walking tour, a route around the village paying attention to what was here in 1856.

It is broken into 3 loops for easy walking.

The red tour is the early center with its mills around Paran Creek, and Prospect Street.

The green tour is the west side, just 2 roads: West Street and what is now Bank Street, then the road to White Creek.

The black tour shows the village expanding toward the railroad and north to Shaftsbury.

Each tour includes an extra excursion or two.

Again, this is a work in progress, made possible by the flexibility of the internet. I know I will change it over time. I hope it will be improved with the help of you, the walker.