a stroll down memory lane
a stroll down memory lane
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BOTTLE SHOP WITH WIDE SELECTION OF LOCAL & RARE CRAFT BEER & CIDER
4026 MAIN STREET MANCHESTER, VT, 05254
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The best you can say of the style is that the houses on Main Street are generally eclectic. Most have a generous setback from the street, which is not typical of many old New England towns.
Yet, on house after house, a trained eye will spot isolated elements that suggest a little of everything – Federal, Greek revival, Colonial Revival, and any one of the many styles historians call“ Victorian.” Look for sidelights on doorways, fan windows below the gables, wide porticos, narrow pilasters on the corners of the facades, bits of bargeboard trim, and try to overlook some of the later alterations, such as porches, columns, and railings that seem to be just a little mismatched for the size and scale of the houses, and windows that are too large to have been original. Most have a generous setback from the street, which is not typical of many old New England towns.
Continue along the street until the marble sidewalk ends and stop here.
The residence called Bunrannoch, also known as Sunshine Cottage, at 3340 Main Street is a good example of how houses grow whether or not it makes sense architecturally speaking – this one was originally three separate parts, the earliest section from the1840s. It was massed into one residence in the 1920s. In the distance, past the next residence on the left, there is a lane that leads to the Ekwanok Country Club, a golf course which opened in 1899( access by members only). During the resort’ s heyday, The New York Times regularly kept abreast of the tournaments played there and it still ranks as one of the“ best places to play” in Vermont according to Golf Digest.
Watch for traffic and cross the street. Turn northwards back towards the start and continue walking on the marble sidewalk.
Old photographs and vintage postcards show that pedestrians on the street seem to have always enjoyed strolling in the shade of large deciduous trees. Dr. William Gould, a Yale grad who practiced in Manchester in the 1770s and‘ 80s, planted the first elm trees on Main Street. Those succumbed to the dreaded Dutch Elm disease, while the maple trees thrived. Some are now a century old. The landscaping that is seen from the street nowadays along Main Street is likely not at all typical of what was there in past centuries. There may have been more elaborate formal plantings between the porches and the sidewalks, with professional gardeners hired to tend to them during the resort’ s high season. Some of the properties on the street had
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