The House on Garden Street

Originally printed in the Spring 2015 edition of Rutland Magazine, this article represents only a portion of the information I discovered in my research. It is my hope that one day I’ll be able to add to this story, either in a fuller non-fiction piece or a fictional one (both of which would include a little ghostly action…)

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At the opening of the twentieth century, when a nickel plater named Edgar Wood had risen in society to become an attorney, Rutland was on the verge of complete electrification and bustling with industry. My home, one of the first built on the newly opened Garden Street (renamed Kendall Avenue) in 1887, was home to the Wood family for three-quarters of a century. Its lack of fireplace or chimney, the wrought-iron heating grates, parquet floors, rounded-cornered walls, and molded ceilings are all indications of modernization around 1912, in the midst of an era of great change—for the Woods, for Rutland, and for the country.

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A skating rink?! Fourteen year old Florence Wood was no doubt excited to learn that the opulent Bicycle Club rink, built in 1884, would be within sight of their soon-to-be built family home on a new street bracketed by the grand Baxter estate on Grove Avenue and attorney Redfield Kendall’s lofty home perched high on the corner of Main Street.

What Florence couldn’t foresee was, even before her home was finished, the skating rink would be defunct and within a decade torn down. Neither could she know that the day-to-day life of her little family—the emotional details of which we will never know—would be a reflection of their times in a way only we, in retrospect, can now recognize.

Tracking up to Lake Bomoseen

The fountain behind Trak-In which was once an attraction at Bomoseen Park.

Part 2 of two stories on the Rutland Trolley. See Part 1 here.

Emerging from the greenery which threatens to envelope it, it looks like a beehive, one of those conical ones that Pooh Bear would get excited about. But it is actually a fountain, and it sits behind the Trak-In Restaurant on Route 30 in Bomoseen. A century ago, this rock formation with its metal water spout was a novelty, which, along with other attractions, drew large crowds to Bomoseen Park.

Bomoseen Trolley Park was the last stop on a spur, which from 1906 to 1918 extended off the main trolley line which ran from Rutland to West Rutland to Castleton Corners (and on to Fair Haven or Poultney). One of many amusement parks

When the trolley tracked through town

Part 1 of two stories on the Rutland Trolley. See Part 2 here.

When the street was dug up in front of Green Mountain Power’s new Energy Innovation Center on Merchants Row in the fall of 2013, the workers hit steel. Hiding just below the asphalt on which we daily drive our (one- or two-person, gas-guzzling, road-hogging) cars, they had discovered tracks to another time: The Trolley Era.

It was a short-lived era in Rutland; approximately 40 years, from 1882 to 1924, with its heyday spanning from 1913 to 1916. But the trolley was an innovation that changed the scenery and infrastructure of Rutland County, where people built their homes, and the way in which they spent their weekends.

Rutland’s Poor Farm

Clearing and marking the Poor Farm Cemetery, Rutland VT

“Boy” White died by “suffocation by strangulation.” William McPherson was “found dead at rear of Tyrell’s shop.”

Who were these people? And what’s the rest of their story?

What about Mary Jane Taylor?

Clarendon’s curing waters

Clarendon Springs House Buggies with Visitors c. 1890

Asa Smith, “the strange mystic of Clarendon,” had a vision of “chalybeate water impregnated with lime” that would lead him in 1776 to discover the springs in the western part of town that would cure his “scrofulous humor” (cancer).

Five years later, a business-savvy Mr. George Rounds, saw the potential of the area after another man, a Mr. Shaw, was also cured of cancer by anointing himself with the clay surrounding the springs. He built a simple log cabin and took in as boarders those who traveled in search of a cure and in doing so gained the distinction of opening the first spa in the state of Vermont.

William Barstow, Chittenden’s Electric Man

Barstow Memorial School in Chittenden is, according to many, one of the finest in the state. For a rural town buried in the hills of Green Mountain National Forest, this seems a little surprising. But the fact that this school is just one part of a legacy left by a family of philanthropists, headed by a man of whom it was said, “To know (him) was to admire him; to know him well was to love him,” may help explain why Chittenden is rich in offerings as well as beauty.

Miss Ross & the Rutland Reformatory

UVM/photo

Some Rutlanders today still remember the women who washed laundry. One remembers going with her grandfather to drop it off and pick it up. Someone else remembered their large vegetable garden, another the candied apples they’d hand out at Halloween. Still others recall eating meals served by the women and singing Christmas Carols alongside them.

Believe it or not, these women they remember were inmates;