 The promotional material for this talk correctly says that I'll talk about how Montpelier's built environment, quote, responded to the natural environment and defined our community. As I thought more about this topic than the other programs that have been part of this basic project, I realized a good approach to this would be to explore the influences that rivers had on Montpelier's built environment. As such, the talk is sort of a meandering look at some of Montpelier's bridges and buildings along the rivers and elsewhere in the city. As some of you may have discovered, I distributed a history hunt in advance and tried to generate some on-the-ground engagement with our wonderful built environment and this topic. I hope some of you had a chance to discover some new aspects of Montpelier's human-made landscape. And if you didn't, no worries, because I'll try to weave some of the answers to the history hunt questions as I look at four themes. I'm going to be looking at river crossings, i.e. ridges, the path of roads and railroads through the city, and finally the location of industrial buildings along river banks. We are here because there are two rivers here, primarily the Wynuski and the North Branch, three if you count the Dog River. These rivers attracted native peoples to this spot before the European settlement. State archaeologist Jess Robinson, who knows more about this topic than I do, writes, quote, while Montpelier's location along the Wynuski River near the mouths of the Dog River and the North Branch, meant that it likely served as a travel corridor for native peoples for at least 11,000 years. Beginning about 1000 AD, native people began to practice intensive agriculture in Vermont. The Wynuski River flood plains became important areas upon which to grow crops. Although no archaeological sites directly attest to maize cultivation in Montpelier, early historic chronicles, i.e. some of the books we've got, the history books, mentioned native cornfields and cleared lands in the general area, one of which, and as many of you are probably aware, Jacob Davis from Worcester County, Massachusetts, is generally credited with being the first settler of European descent to build a permanent home here. Although a Canadian trader by the name of Joe Frizel and his French wife were here when Davis arrived to survey the land in 1786. Accountants are that Davis and his sons cleared the land where the city of Montpelier would eventually develop, suggesting that the land here had not been cultivated recently. Davis was also a proprietor of Calus, but it was in Montpelier where he decided to build his cabin. Significantly, Davis and his sons built a sawmill and a gristmill on the North Branch, emphasizing the importance of the rivers to their calculation of the value of the land that we now call the city of Montpelier. This is the earliest known image of Montpelier, a woodcut by Sarah I. Watris of 1821. Probably you can tell why I have it here so early in the talk. It underscores the importance of the two principal rivers. You can see the North Branch in the center of the image and the mighty Winnowski passing right to left. The State House is the most prominent building in the illustration, along with the church that I haven't figured out, further to the left. So there's the State House and the church which actually may be the Episcopal church, but I'm not sure because it was really down here and I'm not sure about the dates. The Washington Grammar School right there is at the head of Main Street, and then the Main Street Bridge and Dam are right there at the foot of Main Street. This illustration is just 34 years after Jacob Davis first settled here in 1787, and only 13 years after the legislature first met in the new State House, which was built in 1808. Rivers are prominent in this view. The organizing feature of the village, if you will. Remember that this area was just a village of a much larger town of Montpelier. Montpelier used to be Montpelier would not split until 1848, and remember that this view is also from Berlin. Montpelier would not have annexed a portion of Berlin until 1899. So this bank is Berlin. Although the natives and French used the Winnowski transportation, Winnowski doesn't seem to really figure in transportation needs of the Europeans. We're focusing on the rivers of Montpelier tonight because they're influenced over the appearance of our city today, but I think we'll also recognize that we're not talking about rivers that are large and that have been used for transportation for many decades. Winnowski and Montpelier is relatively small as rivers go. It's not the Connecticut. It's not the White River. So when human movement was mostly by land, it was an impediment of transportation rather than the means of transportation. This is the site of the primary crossing in the early years, what we now call Main Street Bridge. In the 1790s until 1826, this was the site of numerous privately constructed bridges. They kept getting washed away by ice and floods. In 1826, Sylvainus Baldwin designed this bridge that, unlike its predecessors, had no supports resting in the water. So it was able to withstand ice flows and floods. The bridge, known as the Old Red Arch Bridge, lasted over 70 years on this site. This is the bridge that replaced it in 1898. It looks very similar to the Grand Street Bridge, which was built only four years later, which we'll see in a moment. Notice the buildings facing the street at the left of the image. Those right there, we're going to come back to those toward the end of the talk. In the right center, right over there, is the E.W. Bailey Gristmill. And the three-story building here is the home of the National Spring Clip Company, one of Montpelier's close bin companies. It's no longer standing but where Sarducci's is today. And you can see the dome of the State House sticking up right over the bridge. Familiar view today. It nicely sticks up over the Main Street Bridge today, although it has been gilded. This was pre-building of the State House dome, because this was in 1900. The dome wasn't gilded until 1907, I believe. And then this is a much grittier view of the same river crossing, perhaps taken in the 1920s. After the concrete E.W. Bailey grain elevators had been built. So here, these are the replacement grain elevators. These were quite a landmark on the skyline of Montpelier, if you will. These were created in the skyline along with the State House dome. These towers lasted in this location until 1965. The bridge was replaced by modern bridge in 1988, I believe. Someone may know a little better than I do. And the building on the right, which I've already mentioned, was demolished in 1962 when Sarducci's building was moved into place. Sarducci's building actually started behind the grain elevator, you can't see it. So just to recap, in order 62, this building leaves 65, this building is demolished. And then in 1988, the bridge is taken down and the bridge we were familiar with today was stolen. 1988 does seem late, so I made it a little off of that. This is looking back again at that 1921 image enlarged a little bit. Because it seems to me the second most important bridge in the city is probably the Rialto Bridge on State Street. I'm not exactly sure when the bridge was first constructed. It seems to be in place when Sarah Watchers made this image in 1821. The bridge in this picture is conceivably the School Street Bridge. It's about examination of later versions of this illustration. And this is me that, in fact, is the bridge where the Rialto Bridge is located today. Sort of a side note of interest, this particular illustration was used on several different Montpelier maps in the 19th century but was revised each time to include new buildings that remove old books. So they would change the state house, they would add churches. And there's sort of interesting illustrations that give us a chance to study the changes in Montpelier's built environment. Why was it called the Rialto Bridge? I'm not exactly sure why, but this is the Rialto Bridge in Venice. Built in 1591, it's definitely arched like the one in the watchers' woodcut. The Venice version has shops on both sides, which ours definitely did not have at the beginning and doesn't today. But as you know, we do have shops on one side. It's not really as dramatic as that. So I'm not sure if that's the reason that it was called the Rialto, or maybe not. Maybe the name represents the aspirations of the residents of the city of Montpelier to be more picturesque, like Italy. Although hopefully not more like Venice, with its water-filled canals. We try to avoid that here. It's also interesting to think about and note that our city hall is built in the Italian Renaissance style. And we have a bridge named after the Italian bridge. So maybe there was great aspirations that we were going to be the Italian hub of Vermont. I don't know. Maybe someone else knows if you can tell us later. So this is the result of a low point in Montpelier's history, the 1875 fires. I show you now because the Rialto Bridge is in the foreground. And it does not seem to have had buildings inside the bridge at that point. So this is the Rialto Bridge here. This is Main Street right there. The corner of Berry and Main is right up there. And this is the building where the country store and stairway to Stiles to be located. That's next to Charlie O's, the empty lock that's next to Charlie O's. Burned in the 1990s, early 2000s, late 90s I think. So the fire missed that building in the 1875, but unfortunately an individual building fire got it. You can see someone installing wood there, new planks for the bridge. And I don't honestly know if it was called the Rialto at this point or not. But it was definitely called the Rialto by this point, which was 1911. And as you can see there was a building on the far side of the bridge at that point. And the bridge is somewhat, the understructure of the bridge is somewhat arched. And maybe the top is a little bit, certainly nothing is dramatic as the Rialto Bridge in Italy. And unfortunately that building was totally destroyed in the 211. But Montpelier persisted and recovered from the 1875 fire, the 1911 fire, and indeed the 1927 fly. So this is actually the current Rialto bridge right here. It was built in 1915, so a few years after that fire, as was the building that's standing behind it. That's a new building as of 1915. The bridge is concrete and steel, famously survived in the 1927 fly, as you can see. Look at the amount of debris that built up behind the bridge. It's really remarkable, I think, that the bridge survived. It's also remarkable how high the water was. If you look at that building right there, there's the water line. And right back here's the water line. So the 27th flood was above the level of the Rialto bridge and the State Street. Okay, I'm going to take a slight sidetrack away from the rivers and look at several photos, several photos of buildings in downtown, especially those on the history hunt, which I just repeated a few months ago. So here's the first one that I'm going to show you. Not the first one on your list. I'm going to mix these up just to keep you all on your toes. This is number four, if anyone's following along. It was James French's 1860s post office building, located right next to the river on the north side of the west end of the Rialto bridge. And you can notice the railing right there. This is the same building, but in a little more context. So you can see a small bank building that sort of sat in the middle of Elm Street. Seems a little remarkable to us today. But that Elm Street intersection is wide, and there is now green space next to the county courthouse. So somehow they fit all that in. The maps show the roads going around either side of the bank building. So it definitely was in the middle of the river. And you can see the building here that we just looked at earlier. The date is probably around the same, well let's see, it's probably 1860s. Well, late 1860s, probably about the same time as this one. Yes. Is that a rebooking right there with two in the office there, the bank and the courthouse? Yep. Is it that section one right there where they buried all the animals? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's not a story that I heard. That's what we do. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is. I don't think I heard. So in 1869, so we go to the fort, 1869, James French, so this is part of the piece of property to James Langdon, is part of the deal, French had to move his building. James Langdon did not want that building there. So James French moved it to Main Street. And this is the picture of the building on Main Street. It's located basically where the south end of the Blanchard block is now. There's also some changes made to the building in the process. Notice, first of all, that a stylish man started a roof was added. They also played around with the front entrances. So those windows were covered over or replaced with some larger display windows. And then the two front doors were still remaining in the same place. The building to the right, which you can barely see, I'm afraid, was a building that was located, that was moved or replaced by the fire station in 1924. This is another view of the Blanchard block, you can see the French building right there. So something that we often forget about the Blanchard block was that it was really built in two pieces. So it is totally conceivable that the French post office was next to the Blanchard block and there's another building next to it. That's where the fire station is today. Because this is just the beginning of the Blanchard block, 1883, and it was expanded in 1883. We'll have a chance to see, I think, as I recall, a larger view of the full blown Blanchard block in a few moments. So this is the 1883 Blanchard block with the French post office next to it. And this is James French's home on Main Street. As you can see, we've had a thing for Mansard roofs. There are certain similarities between this and the building that he has right across, sort of right across the street, across and down the street, the French post office building. So this James French, owner of this house, owner of the pop of the post office building, is also the same James French who built the building. We now call the French block, right across the street from the post office, not across the street. And E.P. Walton, in Abbey Hemingway's Vermont Historical Gazetteer writes, to him or that any one man on Piliar owes the construction of its spacious and elegant stories. So he was quite an influential person in his time. Tend not to remember him, except we honor him in the name of the French block. And by preserving this building is a little post office. So this is the answer to history hunting question number four. It is located behind the fire station in, I guess what's called Pitkin Court. Oddly, somewhat oddly, the building is sitting sideways. This is the front of the building. This is the traditional front. You can see it's got the fancier windows. A couple of those windows have been removed. They're now just two. And this was the side. It's got the square windows. The river would have been flowing right next to this building here. This isn't a modern addition, which is I think pretty sympathetic to the original building. And interesting fun fact that some of the older people in the audience may remember is that in the 1970s, when a booklet, pamphlet called The Walkthrough of Piliar was published, this was Polini's garage. And yes, it was a auto repair garage in this beautiful building. It sort of stares the mind to think about it, but it was, it's been rehabilitated and looks beautiful now. So let's just see that. So that's the front that I was talking about right here. Many more of those arch windows, a lot of ornamentation, a lot of decoration. That is the side of the building that now faces the front, which is sort of parking lot. But yeah. Every idea how they move that over the bridge? Hold on to that question. I've been wondering the same question. I was hoping that you could answer that for me, Sandel. Can I ask you to go back to the old picture again? Just because in the behind it, notice that hill and that there's almost a trace of it. Yes, yes, that's true. So some of the other programs in the place program have been about the regrowth of the hill. And I'm not quite sure the time frame, how long it took to grow up. Some of you may remember from the talk, but we'll see a couple more pictures that show that hill. A much better view of that hill than what we get today. I thought you were going to say behind it were a lot of other buildings, which is something that we will explore in a few moments. What about the staircase? I think it goes down to the, yeah, it sort of somehow goes down to the river. Lower entrances? I don't know. There was, you know, there was talks about a river walk of Feastbomphilia back in the 1970s. There's a book called, well, Feastbomphilia workbook or something. And they envisioned a walk that was sort of suspend behind there, but there's obvious problems with it. And impeding the flow of the river, which we don't want to do. Well, there's a picture on the second floor of the State House, right after the State House was built in 1959. And there are no trees behind it. Or very few. I think you two have seen my talk already. We'll see that too, I think. Well, one of them. That's right. So before we get to the hill behind the State House, I just wanted to stay downtown for a moment and look at this building. This was number one on your history hunt. I'd say this was maybe the toughest picture because it's so up close. I don't know if anyone discovered where this was obviously downtown. One here. So to me, the clue is the brick pattern up here. And I gave a hint about where this building was a few months ago. I don't know if anyone caught it. No? It's in the French block. So that was the creation of James French. This is the French block of 1875. Notice anything about that date? 1875. Yeah, the date of the fire. So this was built right after the fire. And our friend E.P. Walton, again from Hengway's Montestor, Gazetteer wrote, never was more energy to slay than in the rebuilding of the Burge districts. The smoke hadn't barely cleared away when several large and splendid brick blocks were underway in the course of erection. Some of them occupied within four months. Four months. And I don't know, that sounds rather ambitious. But so, yes. So this is located somewhere in the French block. It's the paint center. That's right in here in front. So right there is the same brick. This is the only place in the building where there are three windows over the string course of Granite. And so, yes, that's the answer to number one. And this is a larger view of the French block in 1937. So you can see that this is the only place with three. You think the building is symmetrical, right? No, it's not. This is not the center of the building. It goes from here down to here. And the space we're looking at is right here. I did want to point out that there were some, there was a lot more brickwork in the building originally that has survived. Well, the number on the window. The number on the window is another. 42. Where is it? It's by his head. By his head? Yeah. It's in there, but I saw it on his shoulder. Oh, right, right there. It's the same number. Yeah? No, that's another clue. You don't have faith in life. And there are other clues. I mean, truth be known, there are directories of a lot of your businesses, and one can look that up. You guys didn't have access to that, although you may have. I don't know if you could have told the 42 on your sheets. So that's storefront. I believe changed when First National stores built their store. Notice the swinging windows, the swinging doors there, the double doors, and the display windows are now large plate glass windows. I'll bring back the picture of oceans. So those doors are pretty similar to the doors that they put in there in the 30s. I think the plate glass now is two panes rather than one huge pane. That was probably quite a maintenance issue for the First National stores. And of course, this space was also space occupied by summer's hardware that a lot of us remember. And they, you know, they had the same doors too. You can see they filled in some of this lower area here with this stonework. And they simplified, unfortunately, the brickwork on the side compared to... There's the store, 1913. I used to be able to get down into the cellar. And there was the ornamentation there. And of course, that there was also there. So a very beautiful, small store at the downtown. It's small, but full of goods. I'm going to move now over to State Street. And this is the building that James Langdon wanted to build. And while he told James French to move his little post office out of there. So this was number two on the history hunt. We're getting back to the bridge a little bit. That same railing is still over there. I don't know if you can see it just past that wagon. Okay. And this building is still standing today. Right? Right. This is the building in 1927. And notice a new bandsaw roof on this building. Keep it stylish. And also one entrance has been removed. The other entrances are here. I think the entrance is sort of a test to the size of stores. I'm going to be there at this point. There are five entrances along this building. So in each of those are presumably a different store. So you had fairly small stores back in that day. And this is the building in 1930. Looking very much as it does today. 92 years later. You can see that around the post flood period, they added the marble facade, which makes it look much fancier. And it's appropriate for the bank that was here, the capital savings bank in trust. You want to build trust in your patrons. And so this shows the salinity of the building. Also it's worth noting the small wood frame building behind the bank right here. That obviously is no longer with us. You can see a little bit of one of the Langdon Street. See one of the Langdon Street buildings there. And State Street was a cement highway at that point. And they managed to fit in a lot of cars on the street too. No parking in front of there now. Okay, one more history hunt. Number three on your sheets. Did you figure out where this building was located? Can you look around? Yeah. Okay. First of all, where is this, where are these buildings now? Probably not today. Where was this in 1880 with the photographer today? Anyone know? Upper Main? Nope. That building right there next to us, it looks like a group building. This one? Yeah. No, that's a, well. There's a building just like it right there. That's right. Yeah. This is, maybe this looks a little more familiar. That is Langdon Street. And this is the entrance to Langdon Street. Mr. Langdon took down this building, although it looks very similar to the Cool Jules building, which is on the other side of State Street. The book where Rivendell Books was, the building where Rivendell Books was, is right there and right here. And of course, I mean River Sports and Outdoors was down there on Langdon Street. And this was the, this was a bank on the corner. You can't quite see it beyond the center of the building. It used to be the Montpelier Savings Bank. We're doing a mini tour of Montpelier Banks here. Later, the Howard Bank, now TD Bank. This is looking in a different direction. And I just bring this up because I couldn't find the picture I wanted to use showing the Montpelier Savings Bank in its heyday. Because that same booklet published in 1974, Walk Through Montpelier says, and I quote, Mr. Langdon's ambitious intentions to create a planned shopping area were only partially fulfilled. The Howard Bank, the focal point of downtown Montpelier, remains a busy corner of the city's commercial life. But Langdon Street is today a relatively quiet byway with little traffic. Things have changed, everything. Anyone gone by the Howard Bank or the TD Bank recently? It's a little sad on that corner, but Langdon Street is bustling. And you just want to look at this for a moment. This is the 1930s since I brought it up. So here's the, here's the second half of the Blanchard Block that I was talking about. And you can't see it here, but the fire station had been built by that point. The fire station was built in 1924. So you can see the skirt there on the outside. So that's just looking at the hustle and bustle of Main Street in 1930s. And I guess in the 1970s too, I don't have a picture from 1970s. But I digress. The question was where was the building that we looked that was blocking Langdon Street? And here it is. Same building. Now on Langdon Street, so Mr. Langdon didn't waste any resources. He moved the building across the river. And there of course, there is a bridge there now. But I've always wondered what the woman in the front was wondering was how did these buildings get across the rivers? This one was the one that came to mind first. But of course, as was pointed out, the small post office building had to be moved also. There are no photographs of our buildings being moved. This one is down from Bellows Falls. But it might give you an idea of how they conceivably could have moved it. A lot of cribbing underneath the building. And the only thing that I could think of is that they must have moved the building, the sweep list is building, if you will, across the north branch, and then built the bridge. I would doubt that the bridge could hold the weight of the building. Maybe it could have. But those bridges were trestle bridges. So it wouldn't have been flat. I think they must have done something along these lines. It's also interesting to know that the post office building and this building were moved 20 years apart, as far as I can tell. So they had a lot of time to figure out their techniques and the engineering involved. Well, probably animals. I mean, oxen or horses. Who was it, moved a building in the old way that got some newspaper attention recently. Old Stone House Museum up in Brownington. And they had several teams of oxen pulling one of the buildings. They were rearranging the buildings on the historic site of the museum. So I don't know how they created the locomotion, but it must have been with some sort of I watched a building being moved recently in the last 15 years. And even though they were using bulldozers and stuff, they were using pulleys. Because of the force, there was more force than direct pulling if you put a pulling. Okay, so basic rules of physics to block and tackle sort of thing. Is it possible to move brick buildings? I think so. Yeah, some of the historic preservationists in the room might be able to tell us. But yeah, I think brick buildings have been moved. Just this last year, they moved a brick building in the railroad station and moved Dr. Hill. Okay, I don't know if you can hear that or not, but Paul Kate from the front is saying that recently they moved a brick building in Fairhaven or? Yeah, we're seven. Right, right. Okay, yeah, the railroad station. Yeah, I remember that. So, yes, it is possible. Well, that's a cute house. Yes, there is a mess here. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's possibly how those buildings moved across. I don't have a picture of the first Langdon Street bridge, except I do have a picture of the first Langdon Street bridge. Unfortunately, it was a victim of the 1927 flood. This is a detail of the picture I showed you earlier to show you the Rialto Bridge and the Rialto building behind it. I do think this is a fascinating picture to look at. They've got a ladder coming down here. No OSHA rules at that point. And there's some sort of mechanical winch device up here and up. They've removed some of the sections of the rally. And there's a guy standing down here, a man standing down here. And I believe they are trying to raise the bridge out of the water, the iron. They're not going to use the bridge. But I'm trying to clear that massive pile of rubble. The amount of rubble that they had to move after the 27 flood is just starving. And that may give some credence to the idea that they buried pianos in the front of the courgettes. So this is the bridge that replaced the Langdon Street bridge after 1927. This photo was about 1940. For those of you who are interested in bridge styles, this is called a Warren-Honey Trust, I am told. And the bridge that is there today looks very much like that. But some of you with good memories will remember that the bridge that's today is a replica of this bridge. It's not the exact same bridge. This is Langdon Street. So this is standing on the Rialto Bridge looking upstream. This is the building where Sweet Millises used to be now rusty nails or something like that. Bent nails. Bent nails. Yes. There's a little closer view. You can see that the riverbank is filled with buildings. And this was actually a gas station. Richards's Paralyny. There you go. Excellent. What are the buildings there? Some of them are little mechanics buildings, little small industries. We'll see a better picture of them in a moment. That's just today. If you need a reminder, the gas station is okay. I'm going to look at a different river crossing right here. River crossing of the, we're back on the Winnowski. This is maybe, you might argue, the third most important crossing in town, the Taylor Street Bridge. This bridge served as a bypass to the main street bridge and brought people directly into the State Street area without going through what I assume was a busy state made even in those days. And as you'll see, there were industrial buildings along the south side of the river. So this bridge also had the benefit of providing access to those industrial buildings as well. I don't have actually a chronology on the Winn, the river crossings, and the hillier work were constructed. But I suspect that this was a very early, early crossing and it's a project that some of us should undertake to figure out when the bridges were built or when the first bridges, when the first crossings were built. I thought I would take a look at this picture in a little more detail. It's really great fun to be able to have these historic photos enlarged on this big screen where everyone can see it, where we can point out things. The first thing I would like to point out is just the general overall density of the scene. So you've got lots of buildings sort of cheap to jowl. You don't have the big open areas that we have now for parking lots, unfortunately. You've got gardens behind people's houses. You have a lot more wood frayed buildings. You can see this is the building where the thrush, now capital co, is. It's been pushed back, but that's the same building. Could you pull out so that they can see the capital church? No, but I've got other areas where you can see the cat. I've got another shot where you can see the cat with the church. But I will show you another church that's not there, which sort of interests me. I don't know if you can see that the contrast isn't too good, but that's not a building across the street. That's a square tower. That's the second congregational church that was organized in 1835 at a very short lifespan. It dissolved in 1849, 48, so not even 20 years. It was taken over by another church, which in 1853 is identified as the free church. And then by 1859, it's called Capitol Hall. So it's the seat of the newly independent town government. But it wasn't organized as a city until 1895. So in 1870 here, or in 1859, it's not City Hall, it's sort of a town hall for Montpelier. This building over here no longer stands. That's the first Methodist church. I don't have the dates for it, unfortunately, but of course the Methodist church we know is a much larger brick building on Mainland Street next to the California Library. Not the same location. No, there's a very, there's a three-story brick, fairly forgettable building on the corner there. It's the corner of Court Street and Elm Street and I guess Cornell, yeah, would have been right around there because there's an older house that's still standing that would have been next to it. So it's right where that brick building. Some of the law offices have been in there, other things. That's the Dewey schoolhouse that's still standing. This is the building that was taken down for the various versions of hotels, capital closets there today. This is a building that became the YMCA. We'll see that in different views, so I wanted to point that out now. And this little church down at the end, it had a full steeple at that point. Since we are, I will back up. And that's the Catholic church, since we're talking about churches and the state houses over here. And this building, of course, is still standing owned by the state now. And these are the rail lines, right there. There's more rail beds starting to come into view. We'll be talking about railroads in a few minutes, if you all bear with me. So I'm going to look at another of the history hunts questions. This is number eight. And by context, you probably know where this is. Where is it? I was hoping you would say that, Fred. But you haven't been paying attention. We've been talking about Taylor Street. This is the Taylor Street bridge. That's the greatest street bridge. We're with a trick. So the greatest street bridge is actually Boulder. This is the Taylor Street bridge. It was built after the 27th Flood. The 27th Flood took out the wooden covered bridge. And this, as Fred was noting, is the greatest street bridge, which is actually Boulder. It was actually 1902. And it was, although it looks rather fragile, doesn't it? It stood the 27th Flood, probably because the flood wasn't as strong here. And we'll see a map of the 27th Flood toward the end and we'll have a chance to try out that theory. This is when it was being rehabilitated in the 1990s. For those of you who want to know how to tell the difference, this has got a flat top. And it is called a Baltimore through trust bridge. And the Taylor Street bridge is slightly arched top. And it is called a Parker through trust. I want to go back to that photo and zoom out a little bit to give you a little more context and to show you the buildings on the banks of the river, which I think are pretty remarkable. Sort of industrial buildings on the south side, railroad buildings on the north. Here's the full view, which is a beautiful view of the city. Sort of a gritty view, but a beautiful one. I think it's really remarkable how the National Life Building from the 1920s stands out there. Look how big it is compared to all the residential buildings that were around, and how white it is. It's really picking up the light. It was brand new about this time. So it would have been at its most prestige. And the sun is also catching the dome of the state house. You can see there's a lot of activity back here. There's sort of a car dealership. There's sort of a lot of glare on that screen, isn't there? But there are car repair places here. Oh, that's good. Perfect. Yeah. Do you want to do it even more? Sorry, Bill. So look at the lumber here on the side. Car repair places. These are buildings serving the railroad. This is the building at the extension of the YMCA building. This is the building where the TW Wood Gallery was located. Those are skylights to highlight the art. The art is best presented in natural light. And the railroad station will see that in a moment. It is right nestled in there. And the Catholic Church is gone by this point. But we'll get to see it in a moment. The railroad bridge is down there on the river, too. Still there today. And the railroad bridge. Yes. And I wanted to point out, thank you. I wanted to point out the confluence of the North Branch and the Moosky. So this is sort of the heart of the matter here. Okay. Going back in time a bit. This is not a chronological talk. This is 1876 or 1874. There's a little bit of a discussion about what that is. But there's the Bear Hill that someone was mentioning. This is a very popular photograph, photograph that's used a lot when talking about Montpelier. I'm using it to show the railroads. They're so shown here, both crossing and following the rivers. Rivers aren't just something to cross. They're also the path of land transportation, especially roads and rails. What path did railroads take to get here? Path of least resistance, right? It was usually the river. Rivers, banks. The railroad is shown here both following and crossing the river. I say that railroads usually follow the rivers, but there were geographic and political exceptions to the demands of engineering. In this case, there was a political exception, which was Charles Payne, who was president of the Central Vermont Railroad, and was from Northfield. He built his railroad bypassing both Bear Hill and Montpelier, which would have been a logical place to put it, and instead going through Northfield because he wanted to bring business, of course, to his hometown. This created a somewhat confusing railroad situation in Montpelier, at least in my mind. I've always wondered why we have to get on the Amtrak station at Montpelier Junction, not in downtown Montpelier. Well, that's where the rail line has always been. Railroads were important to Montpelier, but it's always been a spur line from the Central Vermont into Montpelier and then later on to Bear Hill. And there were two railroads in Montpelier. One is the Central Vermont coming in here, and then the other was the Montpelier Wells River going out in that direction. This map is probably a little hard to see and interpret. The point is that there was a lot of railroad tracks and granite companies along the river in Montpelier in 1950. Some of you in the front might be able to read this map, but these are granite sheds all along here, all along here. These are railroad buildings in here. The freight depot is up there. This is Barry Street going along there. So quite a lot of activity. This is a view in the same area. All the tracks going through Montpelier and what is now called Stonecutter's Way. This building, of course, still stands. This is the location of the inner Fox and Brigham Law Office, other offices. These buildings have been replaced by modern buildings. Paul, do you have a sense of whether Montpelier was more of a working woman, working person in this town for a good while? I mean, what do you think of him? Certainly more today, and I was going to make that point when we talk about industry. So, yeah, you've been previewing the talk. But, yeah, those granite sheds brought a lot of working class people to look at. Can you take of Barry as classically having been that over the centuries? I guess I would just tend to think of Montpelier. Montpelier had, as I will mention in a moment, again, Montpelier did have a significant Italian and Spanish population to work in the granite sheds and along the railways. Yes? There was a church on the turnstile. Yeah, yeah, turn table, yeah. Turn table on the fire in his way. Yeah, so you can't really see that. That's right out in there. That was part of the, so, you know, they had to move the engines around and the rolling stock around and needed to turn vehicles, needed to turn trains, and they would store them along each sheds along there. So, let's finish up with the railroads and then we'll get to, eventually, we'll get to the granite industry just very briefly. But I just wanted to show that since we had two rail lines, we had two railroad stations. And this is the one for the central Vermont station, which is across from the Pavilion building, which is a very strategic place to be, both for the railroad and for the pavilion. People can come to the Montpelier and stay across the street at Pavilion. Of course, they would get off the train, walk out toward the street and see the state house right there. In front of them, which must have been a very, very impressive, impressive view. This building was torn down in the 1960s. And the front area, I mean, sort of the parking lot now, the front area is now located, is now occupied by that big People's Now M&T Bank slash State of Vermont and this is the other railroad station that is still standing. This was for the Montpelier Wells River. And that, of course, is on Main Street now with, yes, another bank. Another bank in it. Banks seem to occupy downtown buildings. Okay, I'm going to move away from railroads and talk a little bit about roads because roads took a similar route following the river. So this is Montpelier 1854 and Montpelier 1889. So this is from the state house. I don't know if it was the view that people were, that some of us mentioned earlier. But you can see that 45 years earlier, we've got the carriage coming in here along week two. We have the second state house. This building was an early version of the pavilion building and sort of generalized landscape. This building right here is very interesting. It's where the credit unit is today. And you can see it a little stronger right here. That was a James Landon brick house. This is still Berlin. Okay, so he lived in Berlin, worked in Montpelier, built in Montpelier. And then later passed down through his daughter, became the Nicholas Manor. This area was known as Landon Meadow right here. And what else do I notice about this? What I notice is the sort of the very strong pastoral feeling, the sense of the approach, the general gradual approach to the state house along route two. You must have been able to see the state house looming up ahead as you traveled along the road from Berlin. Also, this one shows the Mont College up here on the hill, which I think is a rather nice touch. This is James Gilman, 1889. If you go into the state house in the card room, you'll see this painting and other versions that Gilman painted. Very fun to look at. Yes. I noticed in some of your pictures that the state house route... Yes, that's because I'm not giving you a chronological talk. So it changed once. So it was 1907. It was gilded. So when it was first built, this building was 1859. It was that red copper sort of coverage. And then it was gilded in 1907, probably to keep up with the style of the times. There are people here who know more about it than I, but government buildings were starting to be gilded and came a little glitzy. And the Italian thing too. Dad, to your Italian thing, the roof was originally red because it was to look like the red roof in Italy. So we do have an Italian theme going here. Someone's going to have to study that a little bit. Okay, this is lower State Street. This is where the big impressive houses were located. We sort of forget about it now because these are all apartment houses or they've been converted into offices. We sort of drive by them on our way to somewhere else. But this is the way that people would have come into the city. They would have proceeded by these somewhat grand, large houses as they approached the center of government and then eventually the commercial areas. Notice the large elms here that really added, I think, to that sense of gentility on State Street. This is much, much later, 1939, but the main entrance to the city of Montpelier is still Route 2. It may be a little deceptive because this is so high up in the air, but this is just a little dirt road over here. This is Langdon Meadow. The Nicholas Manor where the Langdon House is gone. There are sports fields here. This was called the Lusky Drive. Langdon Meadow became known as National Life Field. I'm not sure exactly the timing on that. But this is a little later, the 1950s. You can see that it was really a recreation area for the city. These are tennis courts. You can see a baseball diamond here. And then there are stripes for a football gridiron, I believe. And I think I've seen sort of putting golf type activities and pictures on this. There's some small buildings along here. And the railroad tracks, of course, come in. But the main entrance is right here along Route 2. We want to go back one moment to this picture because it relates to some of the other programs in the place program. That is the talks at Culver Park. You'll see here what we're called the plantations of what were they? White pines? Red pines. Red pines? Norway spruce. Norway spruce. Whole bunch of things. So there's the tower. And there's those spots of pines that they were planting. Looks like a big city from the air, doesn't it? Of course, National Life owned all, not only the field here, but they owned that whole mountainside, which would eventually become the home of their corporate offices. One thing to note here is that there is no way across the river here except down at the Taylor Street Bridge. There was no street of Bailey. There were occasionally temporary bridges, such as this one. 1911 they celebrated Labor Day in a big way, certainly a lot bigger than we celebrated today. There were all sorts of contests. I think as I recall there were some fire department contests, which were a big deal, and so hose pulling contests and things like that. So these people were going across this bridge over to Langdon Meadow for the activities of the day. Pretty impressive that that bridge held up open. So what happened in 1956? The city bought acquired the National Life Field and National Life gave it to them. I don't know what the financial transaction was there, but the city's high school was built there in 1956. Now you still had to get there on Moosky Avenue, that dirt road, which was still a minor road. Before I explain that, I just wanted to look at the building a little closer. I think you can see it was designed in a period when evidently people thought that schools should look like factories. It definitely has an industrial look to it. But although this high school was built in an out of way location, it was done so the full knowledge that things were about to change. And indeed they did. In 1958 the so-called Montpelier Five Hats Bridge was built, also known as Bailey Avenue Extension. On the right is the mayor of Montpelier, Edward Knapp, same gentleman for whom the airfield in Berlin's name. He was actually a state employee who advocated and helped build the state's aeronautic infrastructure. And the gentleman on the left, any old timers recognize who that was? Yes. What's that? That's Bob Vanden. Radio reporter. WSKI maybe? Do you notice anything about the buildings over here? They're different and they're the same. So this building is still there. This building is gone. Interestingly, it was the home of a previous Montpelier mayor, George Blanchard. It was sold to none other than National Life in 1956 and then to the First Church of Christ Scientist the following year. And then it was removed for the Christian Scientist building in 1971. Also just to finish a couple of circles, George Blanchard was the president of the National Spring Flip Company whose building we saw downtown next to the Red Arch Bridge a few slides ago. And while the high school was being built, while that bridge was being built, this was going on also. And I show you just to underscore the point that both roads and rails followed the river. This is, of course, the construction of the interstate 89. I'm not sure exactly where it is. It's somewhere between Waterbury and Montpelier. I initially thought it was Middlesex, but I'm not entirely sure that that is right. I'm going to say yes. You're going to see, yes, someone from Montpelier says, or from Middlesex says yes it is. You can see this is room two. I believe what's happening is that they're maybe creating a new space for room two here because they're putting the interstate right through there. And then room two would continue on. So do you think that's the settlement farm area? It's a little closer to Montpelier than the settlement farm. You can see where room two goes over. It's right where it goes over now. That bridge was replaced a few years ago by a lower Barnett hill in that area. And then you get on the straight away and the settlement farm will be a little bit to your right. Okay, good. So it is Montpelier. But you can see what a massive undertaking it was to build the interstate. Really quite an engineering feat. I want to throw this in here because it is Montpelier again. This is an opening of a section of the interstate on November 19th, 1970. This is November 9th, November 19th, 52 years ago. Rather leak affair. It was raining pretty hard, it looks like. This was the opening of the section from Montpelier south to Bethel. This is Dean Davis, the governor, and the Montpelier president, or we're president of National Life. National Life figures very prominently in the history of Montpelier. Probably the topic for a whole other talk. And these are the cars lined up here. The governor's Lincoln Town car parked right there. They had a band over there. It was quite an event. So the section north from Montpelier, this one, had opened 10 years earlier in 1960. This is 1970. And I was just going to mention that it's important when studying Vermont history in this era, the era of interstates, to remember that the interstate did not open up all at once. Okay. It was very gradual and incremental. And this shows that if you were to drive from Montpelier to Burlington in 1962, let's say, you could get up to here, Waterbury, but then you had to drive on Route 2 on that until you got to Burlington. And then later, 63 and 62. This piece was open, but it wasn't. The final piece there between Montpelier and Burlington wasn't open until 64. And you can see similar things going on down here. If you were going from White River to Montpelier in the late 60s, you could drive on the highway, but then you had to jump off at Bethel and drive on the earlier roads. Okay. So a little lesson about the ride with the interstate. Interstate obviously redirected traffic and changed the built environment in profound ways, most of which I don't have time to address here. But I wanted to take a look at one overlooked category of buildings that was influenced by the interstate and by other roads. And that is gas stations. Two of gas stations are on University Road. This is number 11 on the handout. This was known as Burgantis filling station. And the photo is from 1926. Did you figure out where this is? Berries. Berries. Great. Another trip question. You fell for that one too. No. Parker's quick stop. Yes. There is Parkers. So it doesn't look a whole lot like, but notice the placement of the front door and the windows. And this corner right here. The fish room. Yeah. This photograph is a little misleading. This is not on top of the Saccone overhang. That's the building behind it. And as you look, there is that same building. And also look at the gas pumps here in the front. What do you see right in the front? Right there are some of the filling tanks that I think were right where those pumps were before. This whole section has been tore down. You know, a lot of changes. But I believe that that is the same building. Interesting, the city assessor's database says that this is a 1950s building. I don't think so. And you're right. It looks very much like Perris, which was probably built at the same time. They both had strategic locations. Perris is located right at the entrance to Piliar from the rest. Perris is on Route 2. And this one was located along the other entrance. Both of these strategic places to be. Burgantis was on Route 2, which is a location associated with gas stations. But I just wanted to mention that there were small gas stations scattered around the city. Did you know that you could purchase gas with dry cleaners? It's now located in the corner of Bury and Main Street. You could purchase gas around the corner where the laundromat is next to the Catholic Church. There were gas pumps in front of that building, or at least a gas pump. You could purchase gas where the TD bank drive-in is now. The corner of Stink Main. If you look at that, it does have sort of a garage you're looking at. That's a totally new building, but you can imagine how a garage spilling station could be there. And then we earlier located the, we noticed the back of the gas station located on the corner of Langdon Street and Nome Street. So, gas stations were in many locations around the city. Can I just mention one? Yes, another gas station. Jesse, you head up and not really head up Northfield Street. If you look to your right, there's a concrete with a path from National Islands down. There is a photo of that, which I didn't put into the slide show tonight, which shows the corner of that gas station. It's amazing that one could fit in there. No, as far as I know, M&M beverage was not a gas station. It sort of looks like a gas station building, but that was a much larger block called the Tomasi Block. And I don't believe that it was a gas station. Okay, great. Showing my youth there. Yeah, it does sort of look, it did sort of look like a gas station. But I wanted to show you this one, which you probably all recognize in the corner of Taylor and State Street. I was just going to notice that it was an attractive gas station in its day. I really like the sort of corporate golf design. ILO was thought it would be a great spot for sort of a hip sandwich shop with tables out front and counter inside and, you know, right next to a pavilion building when state workers used to work in state buildings. Thought that would be a great spot. Unfortunately, it was torn down and we have what? Arcade blocks. Of course. Okay, this was number 10 on your history hunt. Elm Street? Did anyone get that? Elm Street? Yes, that's right. Follows my theme of rivers. There is actually a river right back there. That is the building that's now occupied by Birch Grove Bakery. There's no Birch Grove there, as far as I know. I don't think there ever was. Maybe it should have been called Riverside, but whatever the case is, the building still stands. You showed the same location. That is the same location. And Paul, I think since the Dennis Lane mansion is right across from that, that's the building that just got renovated for like three years. Yes. This is the Dennis Lane mansion right across the street and it's got all the, it's, they're probably up on it. Yes, yes, the photographer is probably on the building that's the Dennis Lane mansion. But if you look at this building here and that building there, I think it's the same building. It's got a little inciting, but it's the same building. Okay, so that was, I was just going to tell you that was the 1938 hurricane, which was huge. Okay, scene number five on your history hunt. Anyone follow to find this one? Franklin. Franklin? No. It looks like the building that was moved over to Franklin, which is a whole other story, which we don't have time for tonight. It is Elm Street. Yes. So here is sort of the same location and zooming in a little bit more. And finally, that's the building from a different angle, but giving it a sympathetic look. This is 242 Elm Street. Unfortunately, I don't know much about it, but the National Register nominated papers for Monpelier describes it as a Greek Revival House circa 1840. Also on your quiz, number nine, you must have all gotten that, right? Lane shops, yep, that's probably the easiest one. It looks very similar to today. Just wanted, since we've got this big screen, just wanted to compare the two photos together. You can see the brickwork here. It's quite beautiful. It's right there. The lower building here, still standing. You can see that's the same brickwork there. So this was, the Lane Company was a manufacturer of sawmills and other cast iron items. Those of you who are more interested in learning more about the Lane Company, the newly revived Monpelier Historical Society will be putting in a display in the windows of Walgreens next week on the Lane Company. So be sure to pass by there and take a look at that. And in the historical society there, what's a nice model of one of the Lane shops sawmills, right? Yes, yes. And in the Vermont Historical Society in Barrie, in the lobby, there is a little model that someone made of one of the sawmills that Lane produced. Okay, this, I just wanted to show you this because it shows an earlier use of the river. That is where the Lane shops eventually were built. This is actually the foundry of Alfred Blainwright, which he sold to Denis Lane in 1863. This photo was taken in 1968. We're sort of coming a full circle now from the beginning of the lecture because this is the location of the sawmills built by Jacob Davis and his sons when he first arrived here in the late 18th century. So for you environmental historians, this hillside is also very, very bare. This is not behind the State House. Obviously, this is where the Catholic Cemetery and North Street goes up there. Would it be right on top of that? Yeah, and some of these, it would be interesting to see if these early wood frame houses still stand on North Street or Hillhead or one of those... There you go. Under the bridge is the waterfall right there. So were those water pumps at the dam, or was that what he said? That's been there for a long time, yeah. It was the dam always there. So I don't know exactly when the dam was built, but certainly you probably would have, I don't know if Jacob Davis built a dam or not, but they did at some point power these small businesses. Is there like a footbridge across there now? Yes, yes there's a footbridge across there now. Are there other dams for the upstream on the North Bridge? Yeah, there was an industrial operation at Wrightsville. There was a lowering operation. He could probably tell us more about it, but yeah, before that flood control dam was there, there was, do you think about it in any other locations? Wrightsville? Huttonville. Huttonville, maybe? Was there a dam there? There's a small wood dam like before you get to coming streets, so if you're going up there okay, then I just see the dam and then it crosses the whole bridge. So these were all for fairly small industrial operations, you know, mills, small mills. I mean they were big for our area, but they weren't big mills like you have on the Winooski further down or on Connecticut or the White or certainly further south in the Massachusetts. Just a view of some of the mechanics shops along the North Branch. We saw these a little bit last time. This is a clear view and those are some of the same buildings to now, but today I bet some of them are, some of those buildings here are probably covered with aluminum siding right there. And can you, like you always did in North Max and now the retaining walls? I don't know what year the retaining walls were built. That would be an interesting topic to research over. And here speaking of retaining walls, here's some others, but now we're turning the corner. We're on the Winooski. This is Colton Manufacturing on the Berlin side of the river. Notice the red arch bridge right there. And I was thinking, speaking of other dams on rivers, that this is, I mean this is the furthest upstream on the Winooski that big industrial buildings like this are located, I call Lee. This is where the gas stations are today. Cumberland Farms, yes. And Bob Snoco and the Karpartz Place. Yeah, very different look. And that's what I'll show you about in just a second, one more slide. This is the front of those buildings. This is what they call Winooski Avenue. The grease you mentioned earlier when I said, remember these buildings when we were looking at the red arch bridge? This is the photo I wanted you to look at. Very nice view with the view of the State House again. Views of the State House are very important in Montpelier. It really gives you a sense of place. And this is a detail from 1884 Birds Eye of Montpelier by George Norris. So this gives you an idea of what you're looking at in the industrial buildings on Winooski Avenue. Red Arch here. Early version of the E.W. Bailey. Close pit factory here. The bridges for the Central Vermont and Montpelier and Wells River. And of course the Taylor Street Bridge. And then of course all these people voting. I don't know if that really happened. A rather romantic view. And someone brought up earlier Granite and Comparison of Bering. This is a little bit of the area of Montpelier that was devoted to Granite Sheds. Why are there Granite Sheds in Montpelier instead of Bering? For the simple reason that Granite is not carved at the quarries. The quarries, you extract the Granite, you have to put the Granite onto, well first you have to put it on wagons so you didn't want to take them very far. But once the railroad comes through, you've got to put them on a railroad, you can stop and bury or you can stop in Montpelier. It's really the same. So for whatever the economic reasons are, maybe lands cheaper, more workforce, whatever, it's a granite industry grew up in Montpelier, which we often forget. And we often forget that Montpelier did have a significant, as I mentioned earlier, Italian and Spanish population working in the Sheds. Bering had greater numbers of immigrants and perhaps a wider variety of immigrant groups. But Montpelier can lay claim to some of that same ethnic diversity back in the beginning of the 20th century. Paul, do you know which one of those is the one that just got fixed up? I don't know exactly but I think it's one of these two which look identical. Let's see. So there's the parking lot here. Do you remember the dentists and stuff? They've got the turntable for the train. Nope, this is a different circle. This is actually a Derrick moving granite. So this is a color lithograph, postcard so that it's not as sharp obviously as the black and white photographs I've been using. So you probably can't tell from the distance, but this is granite happening here. No, the dentist's office would be down here. That's the modern building. This is the building that's been taking a long time to refurbish. I think the Conner brothers are working on that. That building was rebuilt after a fire in the 40s by my maternal grandfather. Oh really? By the name of? Connors. Okay, excellent. So this is Sibley. And so the Italian area of Montpelier would have been the very street, the far end of very street, most of the very street. Yes? Where is Far Hill? Far Hill would be right here in the field. And the railroad track goes right by there. And there's the rail line that they've resuscitated now. We built other bridges down there. All sorts of fun things to explore. The building at the bottom of Sibley Street was the Italian social clock. It's now called the What Block? It's escaping me. Anyone live there? Bianchi. Bianchi block. Thank you. Yes, the Bianchi block, which is just off of here. Again, a testing to the Italian population that lived in that area. Okay, I've got two more images from the history hunt. We're getting close date o'clock. I think we've passed it. If you've got to go, feel free. I've only got a few more slides. But I wanted to wrap up the ones on your history hunt. These last two don't have anything to do with my theme of rivers. In fact, both of them are located high on the hills overlooking the rivers. This is number seven, which is Kinstead. The Board of Charities and Probation Shelter Home. You figure out where that one is? Bamba Main Street. Yes. And it's overlooking everything in the city. This is the building now. It's sort of fun to compare the original building is under there. So see this three-part window here and these two little windows. I believe that's probably the same three-part window. They've removed the little window here. I wonder if they didn't move the windows like that window in the front. Why waste a good window, right? Moving forward. This is all filled in. You notice the little dormers or whatever there. Yeah, probably the same thing right there. So that's professional offices now. Used to be where Nicky is. Yes, it had other names, but it was Kinstead at one point. Green Mountain School. I think I heard someone say one point. The other one that has nothing to do with Rivers is number six on your sheet. This is Heaton Hospital. This was the city's hospital. And it's on Seminary Hill. It's called Seminary Hill. Overlooking the city. Fun facts before I show you what it is now. Homer Heaton was the businessman who gave money for this hospital. And he lived down on where? State Street, right? That's where all the business people lived. He lived on State Street in a home that was where the location of where Union Mutual is located now, which was the neighboring house to George Blanchard, which we saw in the ribbon cutting picture for a popular bypass. So all the industrial leaders lived down there on State Street. This is another photograph of the same building. It's somewhat expanded. They now have an expansion pavilion on the side. And this is Heaton Woods, the same building. It's an architectural mess at this point. It's very hard to tell where the front of the building was, but I believe you are looking at the front of the building behind this big white wall. I think that is the front of the building. There's not much left of it, but a center window there. Dormer here. What about the granite foundation, does it match up? I don't know. That's not going to be the granite foundation. This is an extension of the building. But I think that this is the front of the building because this would have overlooked Montpelier. This pavilion has been totally removed. This cute little pavilion here is now this big block of the building, which was added in 1952. Notice anything similar to the high school in 1956? Sorry, it looks like the same architectural style. Oh, and the craziest thing is that this building is all brick, right? That is a wood frame building. But I suspect that it's the same building, which gives credence to my idea that the Burgantis Saccone station is under Harper's Quickstop. Do you have a picture of the front of the building with a big porch? That's where we used to walk in back when I was born. Okay, so I was going to comment on this, which seems to be an attempt to make the front on the back of the building. But now, I think it's the back of the building. Again, because you can't enter here, they've put this nice little, they've done the best they can with this building. They've got a very nice little garden here sitting area. But these columns suggest an entrance, but you can't enter there. So how can you do when it was a hospital? That's where you enter. Is that where you enter? Yeah, we have all their information and stuff. Excellent. Yep, it certainly looks like that to me. That's what I would try to do if I were walking by. But I don't think it's going to work today. This is Heaton Avenue, which is off of Woodrow, which is off of college. It's liberty. It's a rounded street that links liberty to college. It actually changes name in the middle of the street. Which is very confusing. Okay, finally, I would be remiss not to mention the power of the river to destroy human-made structures. We already saw one photo of the 27th flight, but the artillery was plagued by periodic floods until the massive or culminating in the 1927 flood and then the eventual construction of flood control dams further upstream and around the state. This is just one of the many, many, many photographs of the 1927 flood. This is, of course, Spring Street. This building is still standing. It's now business offices. This is Elm Street right here, not far from where the mystery photo was. The mystery photo is on the way down there. You probably recognize this house by the entrance to the public park. It's a very beautiful, washable-style house. And look at the height of the water on this building. Can you imagine? It probably flooded the second floor. I'm not sure the second floor escaped damage there. There was a live rub in that neighborhood and the house across the street, which still stands, the Gleason House, that family was said to have spent that night in the attic because there's second floor. Yeah, so trying to get above the second floor, as you can imagine. You still find flood lines on the second floor in the cabins of the walls? Yeah, because they probably didn't tear it out the way we would now, although they may have. This is an interesting map to show you just how widespread the flooding was in Montpelier. So this is Main Street here, Elm Street. There's a little area, high area, of Elm Street. If you do walking into Elm Street, there's a little bump there. The houses there survived the flood, or escaped the flood. The Grand Street Bridge was down here, so I'm sure the forces on it were not as strong as the forces here on the North Branch or the Taylor Street Bridge that was taken down here. So I've got just one final slide for you and a sort of a long quote. I hope you'll bear with me. This is a beautiful shot of the construction of the interstate in the 1950s. And you can see a couple of the themes here. You can see the railroad tracks and the roads. You can see the supports of the coming interstates. And you also see the Dog River, which we have ignored up until this point today, because it doesn't really form the built environment for Montpelier, although it's part, obviously, the natural environment. But the quote I wanted to read to you is from Timothy Dwight, who was president of Yale University and a respected religious leader. He came to Montpelier in 1806. Okay, so right at the very beginning, he couldn't see this future that we're seeing here today. And he was not impressed with Montpelier's future but he clearly understood the relationship between the natural and built environments. But he didn't think Montpelier had much going for it. So this is what he said, and this is just a small quote from a much larger description. Montpelier is situated at the confluence of two headwaters of the Onion River. The valley is here large enough to contain a village of perhaps 30 or 40 houses within a regional vicinity. The hills, which are high and sudden, approach so near to the river as to form a defile rather than an open valley. The legislature of Vermont has lately fixed upon this spot as the permit seat of government. The determination is obviously unwise. And much and must have resulted from very limited or very prejudiced views. And then goes on to say that the capital should be located in a large and if possible a commercial town with, quote, improved manners, extensive information, and acknowledged respectability. Then he goes on to say, by the association of ideas, which is so prominent and characteristic of the human mind, a little town when the seat of government will always impart its littleness to the legislature. Hopefully we are no longer imparting our littleness to the legislature that we've actually flourished in this type of valley. Thank you all for coming.