Manchester Life 2017 | Page 38

a stroll down memory lane

a stroll down memory lane

Bennington County Courthouse Cuploa
happens to be the most elegant and attractive ? Look around at the slopes to the west – the Taconic Mountain Range is rich with high quality marble and quarries were a major industry for this area throughout the 19th century . Levi Orvis , a storekeeper on the street , is credited with being the first to pave the area outside his establishment with marble in the early 1840s and his son Franklin expanded on his work .
The pair of buildings that anchor the north end of this block are the First Congregational Church from 1871 and the Bennington County Courthouse from 1822 . On the sign for the church it says that the congregation “ gathered ” in 1784 and we know that an earlier brick built church stood on this lot . This one , a rural interpretation of Gothic Revival , was built , in part , with funds from Franklin Orvis , the owner of the Equinox House , as it was then called , the hotel directly across the street . His donation was contingent upon the condition that this entirely new building would be built slightly to the north , so that the guests sitting on the veranda at the hotel could enjoy unobstructed views of the scenic Green Mountains to the east . The Federal-style courthouse is painted brick . Rather plain , it has classical elements , and is embellished by a large cupola topped with a golden dome . The courthouse is situated here because Manchester is a “ shire town ” in Bennington County , or in other words , it is a county seat . To this day , it is known as the Northshire , and the town of Bennington is the Southshire .
Continue walking southwards , on the left-hand side of the street towards the row of shops .
The lovely row of Equinox Village Shops has long been known as Equinox Junior , a name that stuck from a century and a half ago when it was the annex of the hotel across the street . Although at a glance the store fronts appear to be a single structure , at one time these were individual buildings that served a variety
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