5. STREET DEPARTMENT CREW AND STEAM ROLLER AT ENTRANCE TO GREEN MOUNT CEMETERY

October 8, 1929

A dozen street department employees, wearing canvas jackets, trousers and caps, are at work spreading asphalt while a steamroller approaches to flatten and smooth the layer. An observer is sitting on a lawn near a set of steps next to a newly installed sidewalk. This image was published in the Burlington Annual Report for 1929 with a caption describing the concrete base in the foreground

“with two-inch shoulders at gutters… the asphalt gang is at work laying new two-inch ‘Stone-Filled-Sheet-Asphalt’-wearing surface on concrete base.”[1]

On the opposite side of Colchester Avenue is the entrance to Green Mount Cemetery, one of the first European burial grounds in the city. The oldest grave dates to 1775. [2] Ethan Allen was buried here in 1789. The Vermont legislature commissioned a memorial statue in 1858 but work was not completed until 1873 when a granite column with a statue of Allen atop it was unveiled.[ 3] Mary Fletcher is also buried here. The viewpoint of the photograph looks east. Just beyond the horizon the steep hill descends down to the Winooski River.

[1] Annual Report of the City of Burlington (1929), 236.

[2] Arthur L. And Frances P. Hyde, Burial Grounds of Vermont (Bradford: Vermont Old Cemetery Association, 1991), 48.

[3] Peter S. Jennison, Roadside History of Vermont (Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1989), 63.

5. COLCHESTER AVENUE AT ENTRANCE TO GREEN MOUNT CEMETERY

October 11, 2005

(18T 0644043   UTM 4927230)

Utility poles are visible in this image, as they are in the McAllister photograph, but with streetlights and many more lines strung along them. The cemetery entrance remains in the same location today; here it is hidden behind the line of automobiles. Notice that the deciduous trees in the 1929 image are gone now, but the small pines behind them have grown into tall, mature trees.