Providence Pays

Photo by Michael McKenney

Vermont is known for its thrift, Yankee ingenuity and ice cream.  I'm pretty sure that wasting anything is considered a criminal act and for good reason.  New England colonists struggled through too many frigid winters and toiled over too many stone walls to waste precious time, energy or resources.  Waste not, want not is a daily way of life that also pertains to buildings.  Vermont is brimming with century-old houses, barns and churches, some gleamingly restored and others hanging on by their last leg.  When buildings do finally take their last gasp, they are typically replaced with conservative structures that blend into their surrounding (if they are replaced at all).  Vermonters are often more content to make do with what they have and improvise to make things work than to go to the trouble and expense of building something new and idyllic (maybe because the landscape already is idyllic?).
In Richmond, V.T. I stumbled on a church that epitomizes this idea.  The Unitarian Universalist Church was built in 1897.  The soaring spire and arching windows first caught my eye - what drama - and then I found these two stunning photographs of the church taken by Michael McKennedy - they look like they’re right off the set of a Tim Burton movie.  You can order prints and cards of these images (along with others).  But the coolest thing is that Unitarians moved on 40 years ago and now the space is a public library and community center.  But wait, it also had another life, for 20 some years, as the town’s elementary school.  And it's still standing - they sure don’t make them like that anymore.

The church was actually sold to Walter A. Griffith in 1957.  He passed it on to the school board and it became the town's school.  A $7,000 bond was passed to create a gym and cafeteria in the old church - imagine eating your pb & j while rays of stained glass sun streamed down around you?  The population outgrew the school/church in the 1980s and a new elementary school was constructed.  By that time the library was ready for a new home and the school district deeded the building to the town.  In 1990 voters approved another bond to renovate the first floor into a library space.  Now the library boasts a second floor with two youth libraries, a large community space with a grand piano (for mustic and dance lessons) and four practice rooms with electric pianos.

Richmond a picturesque town in Northern Vermont (population 4,000), not far from Burlington or the Ben & Jerry’s Factory.  Its real claim to fame is a 16-sided meetinghouse that was built in 1812 by five of the town’s religious denominations (this was way before the Universalists teamed up with Unitarians and struck out on their own) and has been beautifully restored.  The meetinghouse is on the registry of National Historic Landmarks, certainly not to be missed, but when I go to Richmond I’m definitely headed to the library/school/church first.