Intersection of Main and St. Paul Streets

Louis L. McAllister, October 1940
Facing South

Sara Casten, October 2006
Facing South, 180642039E 4926278N UTM

Here is another vantage point of the Hotel Vermont and the Van Ness Hotel.  This picture was taken in 1940, and even if a date had not been given, the style of the cars with the more rounded edges shows it was not taken in the 1930s. 

The Hotel Vermont completed in June 1911 quickly became Vermont’s primer hotel, being that it was the tallest hotel in the state.  Many weddings and social functions were held here until its close in the 1970s when it was bought by the Vermont Hotel Association.[1]  The style of the Van Ness Hotel makes it hard to date, and because it no longer exists it is not listed on the National Register.  It does possess a large cornice with brackets typical of an Italianate building, but the entablature over the windows is much more conducive of a federal style building, most likely it is a revival of earlier styles.

 

[1] Author Unknown, National Register of Historic Places Inventory: City Hall Park Historic District, (U.S. Nation Park Service) 6.

The Hotel Vermont now the Vermont House still stands to left.  The Vermont Hotel Association turned the building into efficiency apartments and renamed it Park Center Apartments.[2]  The building was bought again in 1986 by Paul Sprayregen who remodeled it to a luxury apartment building and reopened it as the Vermont House.[3]  Unfortunately the Van Ness Hotel was destroyed by fire in 1951 and in 1957 the Howard Bank built a new facility for their company designed by Freeman French Freeman.[4] Due to bank merging the building is now run by TD Banknorth, and their sign is visible on the structure that replaced the Van Ness Hotel in the late 1950s.

 

[2] Burlington City Directory, H.A. Manning, 1970

[3] Burlington City Directories, H.A. Manning, 1986

[4] Blow pg 204

 

Return to Downtown Burlington, Vermont: Main Street

 

Historic Burlington Project
Depression Era Streetscapes: Old North End | Burlington 1890 | Burlington 1877 | Burlington 1869 | Burlington 1853 | Burlington 1830
Produced by University of Vermont Historic Preservation Program graduate students in HP 206 Researching Historic Structures and Sites - Prof. Thomas Visser - in collaboration with UVM Landscape Change Program
Historic images courtesy of University of Vermont Library Special Collections, Louis L. McAllister Photograph Collection