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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