Manchester Life 2019 | Page 104

BY ANITA RAFAEL PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIMOTHY PETERS to two cow lane and back a short stroll on bonnet street The terrain on Bonnet Street is level; the pace is easy and the sidewalks are paved, although uneven in places. Allow about 20 minutes; the loop is a half-mile. Be careful at intersections and especially crossing driveways. Respect private property at all times. There is parking on the street and nearby. On your GPS, this is Route VT-30. H ere is a wonderful walk to take in Manchester Center— something to enjoy after your shopping and your gallery hopping, after you are done exploring along the Riverwalk at the Town Green, and after you have had a bite to eat in town. This is a short, self-guided stroll on Bonnet Street, the perfect block or two to see what adds to Manchester’s charm. In hundreds of towns throughout New England, the earliest churches were erected at the edges of measured and typically rectangular town commons, or village greens. Here, the Gothic revival-style First Baptist Church, 1833, and with additions from 1870, overlooks one of the busiest intersections in town. If you can picture a dozen or more mills and manufacturers within a couple of blocks of the church, with their hundreds of workers, their daily deliveries of raw materials in- bound and their shipments of finished goods out-bound, someone or something always coming and going, plus nearby inns, taverns, shops, and banks, then you can imagine that this corner would have been as full of activity then as it is now. Begin this walking tour at the intersection of Main Street and Bonnet Street at the First Baptist Church. Walk along the right-hand side (eastern side) of the street. Bonnet Street is a good example of how a town grows and changes over time. After you have walked a short distance past the church and the new Manchester Medical Center, stretch out your right arm sideways and point—had you done that a century ago, you would have been looking out across many acres of open farmland down to the banks of the Batten Kill, the trout-famous river that winds through town. Early maps show no houses on the northbound (eastern) side of the street, while on the opposite side, the buildings appear close together on small lots. Before this side of the street was built up beginning in the 1880s, you would have had a clear view of the bucolic countryside, with glimpses of the river, too, and livestock grazing in the far-off pastures. 102 manchester life | manchesterlifemagazine.com