 Hello and welcome to town meeting TV. My name is Bobby Luciae. I'm joined here today by Bob Blanchard who has published this book here Lost Burlington Vermont a history of some of the architecture in Burlington and what we've lost and what we've managed to keep around in terms of the buildings in Burlington. So Bob thank you so much for joining us today and I'm glad to learn a little bit more about what got this book going and also some of the some of the stories that you've packed into here Which are which are really impressive But do you want to just start by talking a little bit about how this book came about and how you got involved in sort of citizen history in Burlington history. Sure. Well, you know, I was born and raised in Burlington, South End and when I went to college at UVM I majored in history and I've always been interested in it and you know then got married had kids had a long career and Just didn't have time to really do anything with it. It was like to read about it, but that was about it so then I retired and It wasn't immediate, but you know at some point I decided to start doing something with it's a long winter here as you know, and it's a great hobby for me I don't ski or anything like that. So so I started getting into it via Facebook because I saw these other groups. I joined one and did some posts and You know, I just decided to go out of my own That was September of 2019 and so I didn't know what to expect I thought you know if I get to 300 people that that'd be great, you know, and then I Started posting my goal was to put photos on that had not been on the internet before and so It started to really attract people and word spread and I I was getting 200 people a week, you know for The first several years it was crazy. So it really grew and grew and And over time a lot of people said why don't you write a book Bob? And oh, I'd love to have this in a book and so forth. So that was kind of what motivated me to write a book I never intended to but you know as I said on my Facebook group when I introduced the book I don't really have a great deal of confidence in the permanence of anything on the internet even Facebook And that a couple of the fact that people had asked for it was what motivated me to you know, put it on paper Yeah, and as a member of this Facebook group I'm always incredibly impressed by just the sheer amount of Stories and photos and documentation that you have access to a Burlington history and are able to bring to the surface Where is all this coming from? A lot of it comes from the internet, you know There's a lot out there, but if you just Google, you know like Burlington, Vermont old photos you'll kind of find photos that have been on the internet for years The UVM buildings of the Masonic temple and so forth You really have to dig to find new images. I mean and dig and dig and drill down multiple layers The internet archive has a lot of interesting stuff But you really have to drill a lot of dry holes to find some some gold But the main source for you know quality photos is UVM special collections. There's no question about that They have this massive trove of Information and photos I talk about the James Dottori archive all the time. There's two main Photographers who chronicle Burlington in the 20th century L. L. McAllister and his Most of his photos have been digitized on UVM site So they've been kind of mined over and over again. You see him in books and so forth But the Dottori I knew about Dottori actually from an old Channel 17 show for about 30 years ago and these two guys were talking about James Dottori And I had never heard of him and they showed some of his photos and I said well So I did some digging and it turns out he got like 40,000 photos at UVM, but they're all negatives So it took me a long time to kind of figure out, you know, how to do it but I I finally managed to go through the mall and Not all of them are you know of general interest most aren't Family portraits and pictures of your dog and things like that, but there's many many Thousands that are you know of general interest that I Now have and a lot of them have never been seen before except for people that You know special collections really so it's really Been I've been really, you know mining that That load on the group for you know quite a while last couple months at least because it you know They're great photos and the quality is really good and and a lot of them are of things that people remember, you know Which is great and so they're you know, there's tons of photos, but you have a story behind every one of them How do you know so much about what happened? I'm really I don't know all that much But I I'm a digger, you know, and I have a really good memory. Those are the two things people say are you a historian? No, I'm a digger with a good memory, but anyway So I I come across stuff when I'm doing research for other things I stumble across really interesting stories that I didn't know about and I kind of figure if I don't know about it Probably most people don't either because you know, I've done so much digging. I probably know more than the average Joe or Jane and so A lot of just the stories just come from that You know, and I've done a lot of reading of you know, the previous previously published books about Burlington and But a lot of what you know, it's kind of like the the unknown stuff I Just kind of come up come upon from like a photo I'll find a photo and I'll say oh, that's what that is and you start digging and you know You find out what the photo was a lot of times of the torii information is really scant or even not exist in as far as what it is But you you'll find a little sign in the background or you know, something that'll tell you what you're looking at and My main reference is the reference material is for information is the newspaper archives All of the Burlington papers going back to when they were first published Are all online yet at newspapers comm so that's a tremendous resource because as I like to say for about Over a century. Everything was in the paper and I mean everything when a store clerk Went from one store to another that was in the paper. Everything was in the paper. So it's a really tremendous resource Yes, lots of stories coming from those papers and one of them is about the corner That's behind us and Bob. I'm hoping you can just tell us a little bit about the history of the building that was on this corner And and what what it looks like now. Yeah Well, this corner is where a building stood that to me is one of the most egregious examples of knocking down a historic building with a terrible result this corner and it's the corner of Clark and Pearl Street and You can see there's a parking lot there right now but in 1884 There was a beautiful building that opened there And it was called the Howard mission house or sometimes it's called Howard relief building and that was funded by Louisa Howard who also funded the mortuary mortuary chapel in Lakeview Cemetery and she was This the daughter of John Howard who was an early hotel operator in Burlington did quite well I think that's where her money came from inheriting it from him. She also had a Couple of brothers who went into the hotel business in New York City and one in particular John P Howard John purple Howard He became really wealthy and he he funded a lot of Burlington buildings the Howard upper house on Church Street is probably the best known but many many others so Louisa was very interested in charity taken care of the poor and so forth and Back in those days. There really wasn't any public charity outside of the poor house So so Louisa She never married and she was quite sickly and and she really devoted her life to you know Funding through her inheritance This building and other other charities. So this building went up 1884 was a beautiful Chateau style building and right across the street is the Richardson Where Abernathy's used to be for those you know that remember that and this building here was a really great architectural compliment to the Richardson it had turrets and so forth so what happened was the building served as this headquarters of the Howard Relief Society and The Howard name continues to this day. The Howard Center is still in business. So her charity, you know Put down roots and but what happened was by the 60s Church Street was under a lot of pressure the stores from Shopping centers in the you know out in the suburbs They had acres and acres of free parking. That was the big advantage and so Abernathy's which had been around for Decades and decades. They were feeling the pinch several of the Stores that have been a brilliant confer over a century closed So there was a lot of pressure to to make it easier for people to park there were no parking garages back then so The Howard Relief Society Outgrew this building by then and so they wanted to Build elsewhere so they put the building up for sale in 1964 the asking price was $35,000 tell you what's happened to money and there's a picture Photograph of the building with a for sale sign on it and in that same picture at the right You can see a sign for the visiting nurse association They were in the building at that time So Abernathy's said oh, okay Very convenient to our store. We need parking so they bought the building with the intention of tearing it down And I've stated this repeatedly on the group and in the book and everything else There was just one little blurb in the free press about The fact that this building was going to be torn down and that it was going to be a parking lot And there was no outrage at all Nobody said a peep that used to be able to write letters to the editor back then, you know I couldn't find any anything in terms of certainly not the pre-press didn't voice any Alarm at this and you know, so it really was before historic preservation had taken a hold You know locally and it was really just getting off the ground nationally. So the wreckers came in I Sent you a photo of the actual demolition of the building So so this the demolition of this building is probably one of the best documented Lost buildings I've seen because we got a beautiful picture by Dottori. It probably in the 40s of the building Then we have the building for sale Then we have it partially demolished and then we have the parking lot So 60 years later still a parking lot. So that's the worst outcome imaginable for a historic building is to be replaced by a parking lot in my opinion, right? And that's kind of a pattern in the book and a few other Instances there's you know, these these buildings are being lost without a lot of civic Participation or input and you know, we think of Burlington now as a place that prides itself on it's you know It's it's commitment to civic input. So what's changed about Burlington that you know and the way that we've treat our buildings Well, I like I said, I think nationally it really got going I constantly refer to the demolition of the Pennsylvania railroad station in New York City. That was a it was built like a Roman temple It was incredible. It took a whole sat on an entire city block in midtown Manhattan and the building was amazing and They just tore it down took over two years to tear that building down So there was a little group that protested that but they couldn't stop it. But after it was gone Everybody down there said what just happened? What did we allow to happen? So that really got things going nationwide 64 like I said, this was torn down without a peep. So it hadn't really gotten to Burlington yet but Over time the bishops house on South William Street the Catholic bishops house. That was an old big mansion Beautiful would work inside, you know, and the hospital wanted To knock it down for parking lot. This was in the early 80s There was by that time a storm of opposition locally There were citizens groups saved the bishops house lawyers who were doing lots of pro bono work Figuring out ways to try to stop it and they delayed it for a couple years, but it finally did get torn down You know, so there's there's this balance and I talk about this a little bit in the book about the The balance between private property rights and historic preservation. It's a real tough balance to strike another thing that tracks in your book is this arc of the beginning of Burlington history being defined by wealthy capitalists coming and making their fortune on the industrialized Burlington waterfront and then fast forward a hundred hundred fifty years two hundred years later and Burlington is a place that's known for Not only its civic participation, but it's public investment. It's one of the only cities in the United States with a socialist mayor So is there any way that the history of Burlington's buildings? Reflect or tell us anything about the history of Burlington's cultural and political path I think I think the best example of what you're talking about is the actual waterfront itself as you said it was a Haven for industry and Many many people made a lot of money. It was mainly the lumber industry down in the waterfront and that started Back in the 1820s with boats bringing lumber to be processed into Burlington and it in a carried on for Oh goodness close to a hundred years and So There's photos of the waterfront that I sent you one Where it's covered with mills and factories and stacks of lumber and actually a giant pile of sawdust and shavings which they used to fuel their boilers and So that was like the humming industrial waterfront then It kind of dried up because a lot of it had to do with a tariff that was put on lumber. You couldn't send Process lumber from Canada without paying a huge tariff So the they had the mills up there to do it But they instead they they send the rough lumber down here have it processed in Burlington It was a lot of extra handling so it didn't really make any economic sense without the tariff and so in the tariff went away and so did that so what happened was these mills closed and The waterfront became very derelict. There were It was just overgrown with weeds and there was a junkyard and it was it was bad. Nobody wanted to really be down there, you know, and so A battle when Bernie Sanders came in or maybe even a little before See the railroad had created acres and acres of land On the waterfront flatland because the original site Along Burlington's waterfront the land slopes steeply down to the water So they needed to create all this land for the mills and factories and rail lines and everything else So what happened was There was a big battle over who owns this land the railroad said it's ours. We created it Um, and so there was this thing called the public trust doctrine that got involved and I don't understand all the legalities But anyway cut to the end Burlington ended up winning So that land became public land and so the current waterfront park, which you know, I think everybody would agree is a huge asset for Burlington um that Resulted in the revitalization the oil tanks were taken down and it just became you know a green space An event space and much more welcoming to the public than it ever had been before That's really interesting. So I wanted before we um, uh, wrap up or turn to another story I want to just take a minute to focus back on this facebook group that you've built, which is really impressive and understand a little bit about what, uh first of all what the difference is between the history that we typically think of that happens in classrooms and in books Compared to what you've built which is a really engaging reciprocal community of people that are reflecting on Burlington's history together What value does that bring to the stories and the and the buildings that you're that you're kind of Talking about in that in that group. Yeah. Well, I mean you're asking me to blow my own horn. So here I go. I guess Well, you know, I like I said, it's all about the images to me You can tell a story, but if you have images Showing people what that building looked like when it was here, you know, this one's been gone for 60 years It really really drives everything home and it just pulls everything together and it just brings the story to life I think so I've really focused on images. Uh, I I did not want my group to turn into a chat room I've been really strict about that, you know, like, uh, you know, remember Charlie's Red Hots. No, you gotta have a picture, you know, to get to get posted and so, um It's really and I and I only have a few posts a day I was in another group and I posted some great gas station photos I thought but they were getting hundreds of posts a day. So you it just got buried like in five minutes you know, so so I didn't want that to happen so I I'm pretty demanding. I guess and you know, I I I want The group to remain tight And so, uh, the other thing was I When I before I started I followed this guy on a blog and he said if you want to have a successful blog or a facebook group You need to post almost every day. You can't like take a week off and you know every other week so And I probably overdo it because I post for three or four or five posts daily, you know But I'm trying to keep The interest up and so, you know, I think it's been very successful And I do also these long form stories, which I think you were referencing where I really get into the The detailed history and you know, sometimes those those go on for paragraphs Um, but those tend to generate less interest I will say because I think people just you know, they they like the short paragraph and one or two pictures and you know That's onto the next thing. So what do you think gains the is there a pattern about what gains the most traction? What gets the most about that? Um Nostalgia is far far more popular than history. I will say that categorically. I've seen it over and over again If you post something that people remember in their lifetime Um, just a recent example was a picture of the all-american hero, which was a sub shop down on main street You know, that was picture was from the 70s. So tons of people remember that got that got massive response um, so yeah nostalgia Is definitely what what gets the most response no question Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, what was today's post about? Uh, you know, I did him last night and scheduled him to go today. I'm so I'm trying to remember Um, I did four of them one of them is a picture of where police headquarters is now Uh, the building there was a six family apartment building there. Uh, that was torn down in 29. So that was one of them. Um And I'm blanking on the others. I'm sorry It's just I did him last night. There's so many like I told you I was working with my contractor for two days And I'm kind of bushed so How do you you talked about kind of curating this group to make sure that it, you know, uh, Encourages his engagement, but doesn't become flooded with um information or uh, you know become a chat room Uh, do you ever have to kind of moderate the group itself? And you know, how do you approach that? Well, I mean, you know, you don't want any abuse of other people or I don't tolerate any, um Attacks on people groups And I I include dead people, you know, it's like they have relatives still alive and you can't you just can't You know harass people and or verbally attack them That's one thing and you do get a lot of people trying to sell stuff and you know junk like that on the You have to moderate that but I The group is remarkably well behaved considering there's 23 000 members. I don't have to do much of that Um, but I'm pretty strict if somebody, you know post something that's bigoted or whatever I just get rid of them. I don't even I used to warn them But then I got to keep a warning sheet of who's been warned and you know, I don't have time for all this So is it just you who's moderating? That's it. My son is out on the west coast and he helps he um, he's you know Three hours different and so he takes care of what what are called the participation requests Facebook changed their rules a couple years ago where any new Your first comment on any group now just mine has to be approved by The admins and so I just let those accumulate during the day and he takes care of them Some of them, you know, don't get up some do But that takes a load off me. So, you know, your first comment may take a few hours to get on the group Do you think you'll stick with it? Are you are you committed to uh sticking around in the in the group? Well, you know, I I thought oh, I mean I can maybe do this for two years but it's been over three and a half and I got to admit the the book has kind of wetted my appetite to do another book Um, and I only have so much time and you know, I only have so much time left. I'm 72 but um I think To answer your question, I'll stop doing the group when I run out of interesting things to post. Yeah, you know Yeah, uh, so many amazing stories in this book lost burlington Vermont Can you is there anything else that stands out in terms of a favorite story about burlington? And it's it's history that You want to share with us? Well, one of the most interesting things that I found when I was researching the book was The story of the old ethan allen club on college streets where the y is now Um, this house went back to I think the 1830s and it was owned by a wealthy merchant and his wife his name was peck and They bought the house. They didn't build it. They bought it, you know existing and they went through a massive renovation and um Just poured a ton of money into this house because he was wealthy and then they had this gala Grand opening or housewarming whatever you want to call it and people came from you know Burlington and surrounding towns and all the elite were there. They had Sherman's military band was playing. They had spotlight set up so that it could go on into the night and um I think less than a month later. It turned out that peck was bankrupt uh and so he left town left his wife kind of there and He only came back. I think for his own funeral um, but anyway His wife became like a recluse. She didn't really want to see anybody after the shame, you know shame was a big thing back in the old days and um I compare it to a mishavisham whether crumbling, you know wedding dress in great expectations Uh, after she died, you know, people came in and went through the house and her clothing was all hanging Just as it had been like 40 years ago. Nothing had changed. The clothing was all ancient and you know So I thought that was a very interesting story. Um that I didn't know about you know So these are the things when you start peeling back the the leaves of the artichoke you find stuff like that Yeah, that's wild. Are there any areas of Burlington history that you felt left some mysteries some unresolved, uh, you know Stories where you kind of wanted to dig for more information and you couldn't find anything I'm right to mine. Why is Kilburn Street called Kilburn Street? um I know It was the Kilburn and Gates Furniture factory. That's common knowledge That factory is still there as stretches from Pine Street up to st. Paul All along the south side of Kilburn street But the company was Kilburn and Gates Uh, actually it was Gates and Kilburn then it was Kilburn and Gates because Steven Gates died And he was a senior partner. So I guess Kilburn was a senior partner after that But Joel Gates was his partner and Cheney Kilburn went to Philadelphia because the furniture in that factory was It was kits that they made and they were shipped to Philadelphia to be finished and sold So Cheney Kilburn went to Philadelphia and spent the rest of his life there He was only in Burlington for a couple two three four years maybe and Joel Gates was here his whole life He ran that. Whoops. I'm sorry. He ran that furniture factory and they converted it to a cotton mill You know the chase mill on Lounewski River that was actually called the chase mill as well because it was owned by the same group out of Fall River Mass but um So why is it called Kilburn Street? This that's a why isn't it called Gates Street? It's just a A mystery to me. The other thing and I have a theory about this other one is the Howard opera house When it um opened in 1870 and I had had a huge amphitheater where shows were put on And um, there was an interior dome and it had a pyramidal roof kind of like the masonic temple, but not as steep And when the Howard opera house closed in 1904, I think it stopped uh, no more performances The roof was taken off and it now has a flat roof. It's like Um, why did they do that? A lot of expense Flat roofs are not a good idea in Vermont And you know, okay, there was a dome there, I guess inside and they didn't eat it anymore But why take the roof apart? That's the other one that I that's a head scratcher to me. Yeah So you mentioned another book that might be on the way, bob Can you tell us anything about what you're what you're cooking up here? Well, it would be um I kind of would be tilting toward giving people more of what they want There would be a much more nostalgia in it some history, but it wouldn't go back as far and it would be Popular sites, let's put it that way Sites where people had a good time and a lot of places that people will still remember I mean, this is Nothing official. This is just an idea I have at this point. I you know, I haven't I have been asked by the publisher to do another book But um, you know, nothing has been approved or anything. So But I think I know what people like, um, you know, I think the facebook group is verification of that so You know, but I don't want to really start writing a book when it's Beautiful like this so I got to get my outdoor time, you know Thank you so much, bob. Your book lost Burlington, Vermont Is available in stores now and thank you so much for joining us today bob. We really appreciate it my pleasure Thanks for watching town meeting tv. My name is bobby lucia and stay tuned for more programming