NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-00 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Church Street Historic District Section number_7_ Page _1____ Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont Description Architectural Classification - Continued (Enter categories from instructions) Greek Revival Eastern Stick Romanesque Revival Richardsonian Romanesque Renaissance Revival French Renaissance/Chateauesque Beaux Arts Art Nouveau Colonial Revival Classical Revival Spanish Revival Sullivanesque Commercial style Art Deco Streamlined Moderne Modernistic International Style Miesian Post-Modern Mixed No style NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-00 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Church Street Historic District Section number_7_ Page _2____ Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont Description (continued) Materials - Continued (Enter categories from instructions) foundation STONE: sandstone STONE: other (local redstone) roof TERRA COTTA ASPHALT STONE: slate SYNTHETIC: rubber OTHER: composite/built up walls ASPHALT SYNTHETIC: vinyl SYNTHETIC: plastic BRICK STONE: granite STONE: sandstone STONE: limestone STONE: marble CONCRETE STUCCO GLASS CERAMIC TILE METAL: steel METAL: aluminum METAL: iron METAL: cast iron TERRA COTTA other STONE METAL: copper METAL: lead METAL: nickel METAL: cast iron METAL: tin METAL: aluminum CLOTH/CANVAS NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-00 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Church Street Historic District Section number_7_ Page _3____ Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont Description (continued) Narrative description The Church Street Historic District encompasses the commercial core of downtown Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. The district lies approximately halfway between the waterfront of Lake Champlain, traditionally the city’s industrial center, and the crest of Burlington’s hill, the location of the University of Vermont campus. Church Street runs roughly on a north-south axis and is sited on a small plateau mid-way up the hill. It is mostly closed to traffic and landscaped to function as a pedestrian mall. The district begins at Main Street and terminates on the north end near the 1816 First Unitarian Church. Cross streets extend the district one to three blocks to the east and west. The environment is urban and densely built, with wide streets, contiguous commercial blocks, and fairly uniform setbacks. The one hundred and four buildings within the district are primarily large, two to four story commercial buildings constructed during the second half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. The majority of the buildings are flat-roofed masonry bearing-wall construction, however, there are several older, smaller, wood frame and gable-roofed domestic-scale buildings, as well as newer steel frame structures built during the twentieth century. The contributing buildings date from c. 1820 to 1964 and include modest examples of Federal, Greek Revival and Italianate styles, high style examples of Romanesque, Renaissance, Queen Anne, Beaux Arts, and Classical Revival design, and Modern Movement buildings in the Art Deco, Streamlined Moderne and International Style. The district is remarkably intact and remains the commercial heart of Burlington, a role it assumed more than one hundred and fifty years ago. It has a wealth of historic integrity in terms of its location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. The Church Street Historic District is surrounded by several previously listed districts. Of the Church Street Historic District’s one hundred and four (104) structures: seventy-eight (78) are contributing buildings and twenty-six (26) are non-contributing. Two (2) contributing buildings were formerly listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places (Montgomery Ward, #19, and the First Baptist Church, #89). Reflecting two commercial booms that took place in Burlington during the second half of the nineteenth century, more than one third (38) of the buildings within the district were constructed in the Italianate (26) and Queen Anne (12) styles. Eleven (11) buildings retain their historic architecture from the pre- Victorian era in the Federal (4) and Greek Revival (7) styles. The revival styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are represented by nine (9) buildings. There are a total of NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-00 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Church Street Historic District Section number_7_ Page _4____ Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont Description (continued) twenty (20) buildings that exhibit Modernistic styles. Thirteen (13) of these structures were built after 1945 while the other seven (7) have facades that were refashioned with Modernistic elements. Also within the district are Art Deco (5) and Streamlined Moderne (2) style facades, as well as six (6) early twentieth-century Commercial style and three (3) Commercial Automotive style structures. The remaining ten (10) buildings exhibit a mixture of stylistic influences, have no identifiable style, or were remodeled with stylistic elements from earlier periods. The majority of buildings were constructed for commercial use, but a significant number of residential-scale buildings are interspersed throughout the district. Both types of buildings now serve a mix of commercial and residential functions. As primarily commercial stock, the majority of the buildings within the district either were built of or sheathed in brick or stone. Older buildings have wood frame construction, while more recent structures were built using concrete block, reinforced concrete, or steel (the Oasis Diner, #30). The commercial blocks are generally two and three stories tall, with several one-story and four-story buildings, as well as an eight-story tower (#80), scattered throughout the district. Despite their variety in size, materials and age, however, the buildings within the Church Street Historic District form a view corridor reaching uninterrupted for four blocks between Pearl and Main Streets. The top of the District is anchored by the Unitarian Church and the bottom by City Hall and the Exchange Block (#55). The flanking blocks on Cherry, Bank, College, Center, Pine, and St. Paul streets, with their mix of commercial and domestic-scale buildings, serve as transitions between the more densely built up Church Street and the surrounding residential neighborhoods. The district in its entirety retains a great deal of integrity in the feeling, association, setting, use, design, materials, and workmanship of a late nineteenth and twentieth century commercial quarter. The Church Street Historic District is located in Burlington, Vermont. Known as the Queen City, Burlington lies on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain in the northwestern part of the state. The most populous city in Vermont, Burlington is bounded on the west by Burlington Bay, the north by the Winooski (Onion) River, and the east and south by the town of South Burlington. The land slopes up from the lake four hundred feet to the hillcrest where the University of Vermont is sited. Burlington’s streets were laid out on William Coit’s 1797 grid plan, with Church Street among the town’s earliest north-south corridors. Anchored on the north by the 1816 monumental brick church (now Unitarian) and on the south by Courthouse Square, laid out in the 1790s, Church Street constituted a section of the traditional path from the lakefront to the hilltop and to the NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-00 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Church Street Historic District Section number_7_ Page _5____ Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont Description (continued) Winooski Falls area and beyond. While the lakefront was evolving into the city’s industrial center, Church Street became Burlington’s primary commercial district by the middle decades of the nineteenth century. More than a century and a half later, the Church Street corridor continues to be the business, shopping and entertainment hub of the region. The Church Street Historic District is bounded on the north by Pearl Street and the south by Main Street. South Winooski Avenue and portions of Pine and St. Paul streets respectively mark the east and west boundaries. The district also includes blocks defined by Cherry, Bank, College and Main streets where they intersect with Church Street, as well as sections of South Winooski Avenue, Pine and St. Paul streets. Nearly the entire district is bordered by other historic districts. On the north is the Head of Church Street Historic District, entered in the National Register of Historic Places July 15, 1974 and to the northeast the Pearl Street Historic District, entered November 1, 1984. The South Union Street Historic District, entered October 31, 1988, and the Main-College Street Historic District, entered October 13, 1988, are located to the east. West of the Church Street Historic District lie the City Hall Park Historic District, entered June 9, 1983, and the Wells Richardson Complex Historic District, entered March 5, 1979. The streetscape of the Church Street Historic