It’s a Saturday afternoon in 1932, and everyone is crowded on the corner to see their neighborhood being paved. The exclusively male crowd is gathered on the corner of Archibald Street and North Winooski Avenue in front of the Star Feed Store. At the time, Hyman Goldberg ran the feed store where one could get the fuel, be it hay, grain, coal or oil, to feed any type of beast.1 The store at 296 North Winooski Avenue is housed in a two-story vernacular Italianate-style, woodframed building with simple angled cornice brackets for decoration. Large plate-glass windows provide a stage for feed store displays, and if one looks closely, an advertising card bearing the image of a fashionable woman of the period looks out over the gasoline pumps. The price of Standard Oil Company, or SOCONY, gasoline is 13 and 9/10 cents per gallon for regular, and 16 and 9/10 cents for high test.

On the far side of Archibald Street behind a tall elm tree sits Ohavi Zedek Synagogue. Built in 1885 by Jewish immigrants, this vernacular Gothic-style brick structure served as the spiritual and cultural center for the local Jewish population.2

Adjacent to the synagogue on the corner sits 310 to 314 North Winooski Avenue. This two-story, vernacular Italianate-style building is similar to the Star Feed Store, with slightly larger windows, more detailed cornice brackets and a gable-roofed wing. In the wing, #310, lived Morris Bruno, a barber, and in the half of the main house closest to the camera, #312, resided Edward A. Proulx. Albert Rutz’s grocery store operated out of the farther half of the building, and its entrance can just be made out from behind a telephone pole.3