Hiram Allen
Hiram Allen is being honored for his enormous public generosity
that saved a landmark. Ben's Mill, built in 1872 in Barnet, is
one of Vermont's very special treasures. Within it are a
woodworking shop, blacksmith's forge, cider mill, and
wheelwright. The mill is remarkable in that
everything--belts, shaft, equipment, tools--survived and
continued to be in used until about fifteen years ago when
then-owner, Ben Thresher, died. The doors to the mill were
simply shut with the contents left until 1999, when Hiram bought
the mill for $100,000 and went to work to bring it back to
life. In 2002, he donated the property to the recently
formed nonprofit, the Ben's Mill Trust, Ltd. Hiram sits on
the Board and is the #1 volunteer working with the community to
reopen Ben's Mill as an operating, water-powered mill.
Bethel Lympus Church
It was August 1999 and the trustees of Bethel-Lympus Church were
faced with a critical dilemma: either restore the church or
erect a monument to recognize its past existence.
Thankfully they chose the former. Trustees George Carr and
Bill Pollock took the lead...writing articles, sending
fundraising letters, calling community members and the
congregation, and visiting businesses. Impressively, they
had the participation of 60 families and businesses to help pay
for repairs; plus grants from the Division for Historic
Preservation and Preservation Trust of Vermont. On July
20, the restoration was complete and the church
rededicated. Today, this tiny pristine chapel is very much
the same as when it was completed in 1837: no electricity, no
plumbing, no telephone, or running water…and the center of the
Lympus community.
Westminster Selectboard
The Westminster Selectboard is being honored with a 2003
Preservation Award for their leadership and commitment to
rehabilitate the Westminster Town Hall. Built in
1889-1890, the town hall houses municipal offices and an
upstairs auditorium. Since 1999 the Selectboard has worked
with a committee of local citizens to develop a plan, secure
funding, and oversee repairs to the building, including painting
the building in its original Victorian color scheme. Work
on the project continues, but the Selectboard's leadership on
this project ensures that the Town Hall will be a centerpiece
for Westminster for another century.
Pawlet Projects Committee and the People
of Pawlet
Pawlet Projects Committee and the People of Pawlet are being
honored for their work raising funds to rehabilitate the former
Pawlet Schoolhouse for use as the new town library. In
1998, when the schools in the Mettawee district were
consolidated into a single new facility, the 85-year-old
Colonial Revival schoolhouse in the heart of the village closed
its doors. The Selectboard established the Pawlet Projects
Committee, a not-for-profit board of volunteers to undertake
what became a 4-year task of fundraising and rehabilitating the
site into a functioning new library.
Mark Foley
Mark Foley's entrepreneurial spirit combined with a strong sense
of community has led him to invest in and rehabilitate many
older buildings in downtown Rutland including the Service
Building...Vermont's only Art Deco Skyscraper, the Opera House,
the Louras Building, Chittenden Bank, Howard Bank and
others. He is dedicated and a passionate leader-some say a
silent warrior-in the effort to maintain and strengthen the
vitality of downtown Rutland.
Vermont Historical Society
The Vermont Historical Society is being honored for the
rehabilitation of Barre's Spaulding Graded
School for use as the Vermont History Center. A few years
ago Spaulding was empty, deteriorating and in grave danger of
eventual demolition. Today St. Johnsbury architect Lambert
Packard's 1891 Richardsonian Romanesque structure is a lovingly
restored, bustling, vibrant headquarters for the study, display
and interpretation of Vermont's distinctive heritage, as well as
a key factor in the revitalization of Barre's historic downtown
district.
Housing Vermont and the Central Vermont
Community Land Trust
The Green Mountain Seminary was built in 1869 by the Free Will
Baptists of Vermont. In 1885 it was deeded to the town for
use as a graded school-a use that continued until 1960. In
1988, when Central Vermont Community Land Trust began to explore
rehabilitating the building for housing and for continuing use
as a branch library, the seminary was in a state of severe
deterioration. The Land Trust with Housing Vermont worked
for over two years to obtain funding and refine plans to
incorporate accessible public space. The end result is a
vital and beautiful building, an elegant and affordable place to
live for young families and senior citizens, with light
glistening through twelve foot high windows onto hard wood
floors.
Suzanne Boden
Suzanne Boden is being honored for her work to restore
Longfellow House in Hyde Park. In 1893 Vermont Governor
(and later U.S. Senator) Carroll Page built Longfellow House, so
named because it was designed after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's
house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After Governor Page's
daughter died in 1929, the house was boarded up, went through a
series of owners but remained unoccupied until 1970 when it was
purchased and occupied by a family for several years and then
sold to a religious order. The house was again abandoned
in 1990 and sat empty until purchased by Suzanne Boden in
2001. Suzanne spared no expense in restoring the building
and opening it as a bread-and-breakfast, appropriately named The
Governor's House.
Vermont Arts Exchange
The Vermont Arts Exchange is a community arts organization
co-founded in 1994 by Matthew Perry and Patricia Pedreira.
VAE's mission is to strengthen neighborhoods and build
communities through the arts. VAE has, since its
beginnings, quite naturally and consistently woven the
rehabilitation of historic buildings into this mission. In
1994 they converted the largely abandoned Sage Street Mill in
North Bennington to an arts center for dance classes, studios,
music, gallery, summer camps and after-school programs. In
1998, VAE sponsored the Vermont Arts, Housing and Preservation
Project rehabilitating five historic buildings, including two
firehouses in Bennington for affordable living and work space
for artists. Combining entrepreneurial skills, a
believer's zeal, and the creativity of the arts, VAE helps
define what historic preservation in 2003 is all about.
Redstone Commercial Group
The Redstone Commercial Group is being honored for the
restoration of the four-story, multi-tenant retail and office
Hall Block in downtown Burlington. The $1.4 million
project included new electrical and mechanical systems, new
elevator, fire alarm, window and masonry repairs and
restoration. The exterior restoration included rebuilding
window arches, reintroducing pressed metal spandrels, locating
salvage brick from Massachusetts that matched the original,
removing inappropriate Portland mortar repairs, repointing the
entire building with a lime mortar, and reintroducing the
original brick red and putty color scheme.
Lydia and John Makau
Lydia and John Makau are being honored for the painstaking
restoration of the remarkable House II, located in Hardwick,
Vermont. Peter Eisenman, an internationally known
architect for his architectural theories, designed and built
House II in the late 1060s as part of a series of ten
residential buildings. Only four were actually
constructed. The house is based on the geometric cube and
has large expanses of glass and minimal interior walls.
But the client who commissioned the house had expected a more
traditional home. Neglected and in a state of decay for
thirty years, House II was put on the market and eventually
bought by the Makau's, who restored it, fully respecting the
integrity of the original design. This house, without doubt, is
the most important building from the 1960's in Vermont and is
recognized internationally for its design concept. Without
the purchase and careful restoration undertaken by Lydia and
John Makau, this highly significant building would have been
lost.
Emily Wadhams
Our final award, actually a bit a surprise for the recipient, is
recognition of how a person of great passion, commitment,
intelligence, and charm can accomplish much. Emily Wadhams
served us as Vermont's State Historic Preservation Officer for
five years...times when it was enormously important to have a
leader who was able to sort out common sense solutions and was
always willing to stand up for all of our historic
resources...even places like the Jones & Lamson plant in
Springfield- a place rejected by many in the community, but a
place that played a most important role in winning World War II
and a place where, today, Springfield's new economy could
thrive.
