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.

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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;

Meigs & Farr: Touching the lives of children

Cordelia Meigs & Shirley Farr

I thought this was just going to be a story about two early-20th-century Brandon women who made great contributions to our state. And it still is. But there’s a twist — one that found me reading a conspiracy theory about Howard Dean.

Berenice R. Tuttle: A force to be reckoned with

One of my favorite buildings in Rutland, one I was thrilled to see renovated, is the Tuttle Building on Center Street. The wide central staircase is gorgeous. That it disappears into a false ceiling adds an air of mystery, prompting me to turn in my imagination to a time when slick-haired, ink-smudged men were hurrying up and down, stacks of paper in arm. And apparently there was also at least one long- (or maybe a not so long-) skirted woman.

Julia Dorr: Vermont’s most famous and best loved poets

I knew Julia Dorr’s name. I’ve parked in front of the library and Grace Church enough times for the name atop the green historical marker to bury itself somewhere in my subconscious. But when I looked up her name in preparation for writing this article, I realized I hadn’t read what was on that sign with any attention at all.

You’d think I would have.