Vermont

Hetty Green House, Bellows Falls, Vermont

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The Hetty Green House at the corner of Church and Westminster Streets in Bellows Falls, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2018:

It is hard to tell from its appearance, but this house was the home of the wealthiest woman in America when the first photo was taken at the turn of the 20th century. Throughout her life, even after she had amassed a fortune worth many millions of dollars, Wall Street financier Hetty Green lived a very frugal—and some would say miserly—lifestyle. She wore plain, old clothing, ate inexpensive meals, and shunned most luxuries, supposedly even heat and hot water.

Her house here in Bellows Falls was another example of her modest living. Although certainly a fine house in its own right, it was hardly befitting of a Gilded Age tycoon, especially considering the lavish mansions that many of her contemporaries, most notably the Vanderbilts, were constructing in New York, Newport, and other fashionable places.

The house itself was situated at the corner of Church and Westminster Streets, just to the south of the center of Bellows Falls. It was built in 1806 by William Hall, a wealthy local merchant in the firm of Hall & Green. Hall was also involved in politics, serving on the governor’s council, in the state legislature, and as Vermont’s sole delegate to the 1814-1815 Hartford Convention. He lived here in this house until his death in 1831, at the age of 57, and the house was subsequently purchased by Nathaniel Tucker, the owner of the nearby Tucker Toll Bridge over the Connecticut River.

Nathaniel Tucker had connections to William Hall, as his daughter Anna was married to Hall’s former business partner, Henry Atkinson Green. Their son, Edward Henry Green, would eventually become a successful Boston merchant, and in 1867 he married Henrietta “Hetty” Robinson, the wealthy heiress of a New Bedford whaling family. Then, in 1879 he purchased his grandfather’s old house here in Bellows Falls, and moved his family into it.

Hetty Green was 33 years old when she married Edward, and she was already extremely wealthy, having inherited about $6 million after her father’s death two years earlier. However, her fortune would continue to grow thanks to her shrewd investment strategies, and she came to be known as the “Witch of Wall Street”at a time when high finance was almost exclusively a male profession. By the time she died in 1916 at the age of 81, her estate was valued at over $100 million, equivalent to over $2 billion today, making her the richest woman in America at the time.

Hetty and Edward had two children, Ned and Sylvia, who were about 11 and 8 years old, respectively, when their father purchased this house. During his childhood, Ned became the subject of one of the most famous examples of his mother’s frugality after he injured his knee. Wanting to avoid paying for a doctor, Hetty instead tried to treat him herself. However, infection set in and the leg became gangrenous, and it ultimately had to be amputated.

In adulthood, Ned spent his money much more freely than his mother had. He owned a 225-foot steam yacht, and he built a mansion on Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts, which featured his own private airfield and radio station. In addition, he was an avid collector of coins and stamps, and at one point his collection included all five examples of the extremely rare 1913 Liberty Head nickel, along with the only known sheet of the famous Inverted Jenny postage stamp. Ned also played an important role in historic preservation when, in the 1920s, he purchased the former whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, which had once been a part of his maternal grandfather’s whaling fleet. He put it on display at Round Hill, and after his death it was acquired by Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, where it remains as the last surviving 19th century whaling ship.

Ned’s sister Sylvia, however, was much more like their mother when it came to saving money. In 1909 she married Matthew Wilks, a member of the Astor family who was 25 years her senior, although her mother insisted that they sign a prenuptial agreement to prevent Wilks from inheriting Sylvia’s money. Neither Sylvia nor her brother had any children, and after Ned’s death in 1936 Sylvia inherited his portion of the estate, as a result of a similar prenuptial agreement that he had signed with his wife, Mabel Harlow. Later in life, though, Sylvia became both miserly and reclusive, and her last public appearance was in 1937, when she testified in court to prevent Mabel from receiving a greater share of Ned’s fortune.

Upon her death in 1951 at the age of 80, Sylvia was described by Life magazine as “a friendless, childless, cheerless old woman, abjectly poor in everything but money and devoted only to the preservation of the great Green fortune.” Her net worth at the time was around $95 million, nearly $1 billion today, but with no children or other close relatives she left nearly all of her money to 63 different charities, including a variety of churches, libraries, and hospitals. Among these were the Rockingham Memorial Hospital and the Immanuel Episcopal Church, both of which are located here in Bellows Falls.

In the meantime, the old house here on Church Street in Bellows Falls remained in the Green family until 1940, although Sylvia does not appear to have spent much time here in her later years. By this point the house was in need of repairs, so rather than restoring it, Sylvia had the house demolished, and then gave the property to the town. The property subsequently became a parking lot and a park, which was named Hetty Green Park.

Today, park is still here, on the far right side of the scene, but the actual site of the house is now a bank, which was constructed in 1960. It was originally the Vermont Bank & Trust Company, but after a series of mergers in the late 20th century it is now owned by TD Bank, which continues to operate it as a branch. The bank building certainly does not have the same architectural or historic significance that the old house had, although in retrospect it seems only appropriate that Hetty Green’s former property would be used as a place where large amounts of money are kept.

Fort Bridgman Road, Vernon, Vermont

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The view looking north on Fort Bridgman Road, toward the intersection of Pond Road in Vernon, probably sometime around 1907-1918. Image from author’s collection.

The scene in 2018:

The town of Vernon is located in the extreme southeast corner of Vermont, and for much of its history it was small, with a population that consistently hovered around 600 to 800 people throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of this population was dispersed across 20 square miles, so Vernon never had a densely-settled town center, but the main village in town was here along Fort Bridgman Road, near the corner of Pond Road.

During the 19th century, this area was the commercial hub of the town, with an 1869 map showing a sawmill, blacksmith’s shop, carpenter’s shop, lumber yard, a church, and a building that was occupied by a store, post office, and hotel. There were also about a dozen houses clustered in the immediate vicinity, and the railroad passed through here along the Connecticut River, although the depot itself was located a little further to the north of here.

The first photo was taken at some point in the early 20th century, evidently soon after a snowstorm. It is a real photo postcard, meaning that it is a photograph that was developed directly onto postcard stock, instead of being mass-produced via printing. The photo is undated, but the markings on the reverse suggest that it was taken at some point between 1907 and 1918. On the reverse is a message written by a woman named Ethel Davis, who apparently also took the photo. It reads:

Dear Aunt Jessie,

I thought you probably would like to hear from me as I am up in Vt. with a friend. This is not a very good picture as we take them our selves. It is quite lonsome up here. This is Main St Vernon, Vt.

There is lots of snow up here. I am not very lonsome. But do wish I were home. From your niece Ethel Davis.

The photo shows the view looking north toward the town center, with the Connecticut River just out of view on the far right, and the railroad on an embankment to the left. The most visible building in this scene is the Vernon Union Church, on the right side of the road. It was completed in 1900, and it replaced an earlier one on the same site, which had burned after being struck by lightning a year earlier. Beyond the church is a building that appears to have been the store/post office/hotel from the 1869 map, and on the left side of the road is a house that probably dates to the first half of the 19th century. It appears on the 1869 map as well, when it was listed as the home of Mrs. R. S. Bryant.

In more than a century since the first photo was taken, Vernon has undergone some major changes, the most significant of which was the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which operated in the town from 1972 until 2014. Thanks in part to the resulting jobs and low taxes, Vernon saw rapid population growth in the late 20th century. By the 2010 census, the town had more than 2,200 residents, which was nearly four times its population when the first photo was taken.

However, despite this growth, the town center here along Fort Bridgman Road has remained small. Many of the old buildings are gone, including the mixed-use building beyond the church, which is now the site of the town garage. The church is still here, though, as is the house on the other side of the road. Both are hidden by trees in the present-day view, but they have seen few exterior changes since the first photo was taken, and the church remains in use as an active congregation.

James Fisk, Jr. Monument, Brattleboro, Vermont

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The gravesite of James Fisk, Jr., in Prospect Hill Cemetery on South Main Street in Brattleboro, around 1872-1885. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The scene in 2017:

This ornate marble obelisk marks the final resting place of James Fisk, Jr., a Vermont native who became a prominent Wall Street financier and, in the process, one of the most notorious of the Gilded Age robber barons. Fisk was born in 1835 in Pownal, Vermont, and was the son of James Fisk, Sr., a peddler who sold silk dressed and other high-end dry goods. The family moved to Brattleboro in 1843, and in 1849 the elder James opened the Revere House, which became a successful hotel at the corner of Main and Elliot Street. James, Jr. was about 15 at the time, and he lived in the hotel with his father, his stepmother Love, and his half-sister Mary.

For some time, the younger James worked as a waiter at the Revere House, but in 1850 he quite literally ran away with the circus, joining Van Amburgh’s Mammoth Circus and Menagerie. His flamboyant, outgoing personality was perfectly suited for the circus, although he primarily performed menial tasks like taking ticket, feeding animals, setting up tents, and cleaning cages. However, his time with the circus gave him valuable business experience. When he returned to Brattleboro a few years later, at the age of 18, he joined his father’s peddling business, where he applied some of the techniques he had learned with the circus, including traveling in brightly-colored wagons and wearing fancy clothing.

Fisk’s success as a peddler led to him being hired as a salesman for the Boston-based dry goods firm of Jordan Marsh & Company. However, his career remained unremarkable until the start of the Civil War. In 1861, he traveled to Washington, D.C., where his personality and business skills helped win him lucrative government contracts to provide textiles for army uniforms. He became a wealthy man, largely because of these contracts, but he also profited from the war in less scrupulous ways, including smuggling cotton from the south and selling Confederate bonds to European speculators.

Near the end of the war, Fisk became a stockbroker, and in 1866 he established his own brokerage firm of Fisk & Belden. He worked closely with Daniel Drew and Jay Gould, two of the most ruthless business tycoons of their era. Fisk followed in their ways, teaming up with them to gain control of the Erie Railroad and prevent Cornelius Vanderbilt from adding it to his railroad empire. To do so, the trio issued fraudulent shares of the company, which Vanderbilt purchased in large quantities. He lost a considerable amount of money in the process – over $100 million in today’s dollars – and, despite the fraud, Drew, Fisk, and Gould were able to retain control after bribing the New York state legislature to legalize the fraudulent shares.

A few years later, in 1869, Fisk and Gould would attempt an even more ambitious scheme to corner the gold market. They managed to drive the price as high as $160 per ounce before President Ulysses S. Grant ordered Treasury Secretary George S. Boutwell to release $4 million in treasury gold. The price of gold quickly plummeted, breaking their corner on the market. Fisk and Gould managed to avoid serious financial losses, but many investors were ruined, and the scheme triggered a nationwide economic panic.

Aside from his questionable business practices, Fisk’s personal life also had its share of scandal. He had married his wife, Lucy Moore, in 1854, not long after he left the circus. They remained married even after his rapid ascent from dry goods peddler to Wall Street tycoon, but she spent most of her time in Boston rather than with Fisk in New York. During this time, Fisk had a mistress, the actress Josie Mansfield, whom he housed in a brownstone on 23rd Street in New York. However, after a few years she fell in love with one of Fisk’s business partners, Edward Stiles Stokes, and she began threatening Fisk with blackmail. Fisk refused to pay, and the love triangle eventually led to Stokes shooting Fisk on the staircase of the Grand Central Hotel, in January 6, 1872. Fisk died the following day, at the age of 36, although not before identifying Stokes as the shooter.

Fisk’s body lay in state on January 8, at the Grand Opera House, where around 20,000 mourners came to pay their respects. On Wall Street, Fisk has been a ruthless businessman, but the poor and working-class of New York admired him for his charity work, and many saw him as the typification of the American Dream: a circus laborer and country peddler who rose to greatness through hard work and determination. That night, his body was returned to Brattleboro, where around 5,000 people – equivalent to the town’s entire population at the time – were on hand when the funeral train arrived at almost midnight. His funeral was held the next morning at the Revere House, and then his body was brought here to Prospect Hill Cemetery for burial.

At the time of his death, Fisk’s estate was valued at just under $1 million, or about $20 million today. Of this, $25,000 was spent on a marble obelisk here at his gravesite. It was designed by prominent sculptor Larkin Mead, a Brattleboro native whose other works of this era included Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, Illinois. His design for Fisk’s monument included a bas-relief portrait of Fisk in the center, surrounded on all four corners by partially nude female figures. Each figure symbolized trade and commerce in some way, with one representing railroads, another steamships, a third the stage, and the fourth finance.

The first photo was probably taken soon after the monument was installed, because at this point it did not yet include Fisk’s dates of birth or death. His widow, Lucy, outlived him by 40 years, and she was interned here after her death in 1912. Her inscription was added to the base of the monument, and over the years other members of the family were buried here in this plot, as shown by the many gravestones in the present-day photo.

Overall, though, the monument has not aged well. No longer the brilliant white of the first photo, its marble has been weathered and blackened by nearly 150 years of New England’s climate. Along with this, the bas-relief of Fisk was removed in the early 2000s, leaving a faint shadow in the oval. Souvenir hunters have also caused damage over the years, with Fisk’s admirers occasionally chipping off pieces of the marble. However, as one of Fisk’s friends noted many years later, in an excerpt published by Jay Gould biographer Edward J. Renehan, Jr., these visitors “have made the monument more fitted to commemorate Jim’s career – striking from many aspects, picturesque, but blemished.”

Chapin Street, Brattleboro, Vermont

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Looking east on Chapin Street, from the corner of Oak Street in Brattleboro, around 1894. Image from Picturesque Brattleboro (1894).

The scene in 2017:

Chapin Street was developed in the mid-1880s, less than a decade before the first photo was taken. The street, which runs one block from Oak Street to Linden Street, was built through land that had once belonged to Dr. Charles Chapin, who lived in a house at the end of the road on Linden Street. Chapin was a Harvard-educated physician, but he was also a businessman who served as a state legislator, a U.S. Marshal, and a director of the Vermont Mutual Insurance Company and the Vermont Valley Railroad. He lived here until his death in 1875, and his wife Sophia died five years later.

Soon after Sophia’s death, the property was sold and subdivided. The old house survived, and still stands today, but the rest of the land became building lots for new houses. The new street was named in honor of Chapin, and was developed around the same time as Williston Street, which runs parallel to Chapin Street on land once owned by merchant Nathan B. Williston. Both streets featured ornate, Queen Anne-style homes, most of which were completed by the time the first photo was taken in the early 1890s. A streetcar line was also built on the street in the 1890s, although this apparently happened after the first photo was taken.

The first photo shows a few people walking along an otherwise quiet residential street. In the foreground, three women walk arm-in-arm along the sidewalk, while a man walks further in the distance. On the left side of the street, a boy appears to be sitting on some sort of a bicycle, and far in the distance a pair of horses are harnessed to a wagon. In the distance, beyond the newly-built homes, is the northern slope of Mount Wantastiquet, which forms a scenic backdrop for much of downtown Brattleboro.

Today, most of the houses are hidden by trees from this view, but all of the ones from the first photo appear to still be standing. Chapin Street remains a well-preserved example of a late 19th century middle class neighborhood, and the houses still retain their decorative exterior designs with multi-colored paint schemes. The street itself has changed somewhat over the years, though. The trolley tracks have come and gone, the street has been widened and paved, and the sidewalk on the left is gone, but overall the scene is still easily recognizable from the first photo.

Lindenhurst, Brattleboro, Vermont

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The mansion at the corner of Green and High Streets in Brattleboro, around 1894. Image from Picturesque Brattleboro (1894).

The scene in 2017:

In the years leading up to the Civil War, Brattleboro was a popular summer destination for wealthy southerners, many of whom came to the town for the reputed health benefits of the nearby Wesselhoeft Water Cure. Some ended up building summer homes here, including Simon Bolivar Buckner, an army officer from Kentucky. He purchased this property around 1859 and built a large Italianate-style house, which he subsequently gave to his friend James B. Eustis, a lawyer from New Orleans. Some sources identify Buckner as Eustis’s father-in-law, but this seems unlikely since, at the time, Buckner was about 36 years old and had only been married for nine years.

Neither Buckner nor Eustis would spend much time here at this house, since the Civil War broke out only a few years later. Both men supported the Confederate cause, with Buckner becoming a lieutenant general and Eustis serving as a judge advocate in the Confederate Army. Despite losing the war, though, they would both go on to have successful political careers in the postwar era. Buckner served as governor of Kentucky from 1887 to 1891, and was the father of Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., a U.S. Army general who was killed in action in World War II during the Battle of Okinawa. Eustis became a U.S. Senator from Louisiana, serving from 1876 to 1879 and 1885 to 1891, and he was also the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1893 to 1897, during the second Cleveland administration.

However, after the war, Brattleboro did not regain its popularity as a resort for southerners. In 1871, the house was sold to Elie Charlier, a native of France who lived in New York City. He ran the Charlier Institute, a school in New York that was described in advertisements as “A Protestant French Boarding and Day School. Boys and young men from 7 to 20 prepared for College and Business. School designed to be as perfect as money, science, and experience can make it.” Some of Charlier’s students went on to have successful careers in politics, business, and the arts, including prominent photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Aside from his students, though, Charlier was also the great grandfather of folk singer Pete Seeger. As a boy in the 1920s, Seeger even visited this house in Brattleboro, although it was long after his family had sold the property.

Charlier ultimately sold this house in the late 1880s, to Brattleboro businessman George E. Crowell. Born in Massachusetts in 1834, Crowell grew up in New Hampshire, and served in one of the state’s regiments during the Civil War. However, after the war he came to Brattleboro, where he found a job with the Vermont Record and Farmer newspaper. He was only with the paper for a short time, though, before he went into business for himself. In 1868, he began publishing The Household, which was among the first magazines to focus on domestic living. It quickly gained a widespread readership, with 50,000 subscribers after only three years, and by the mid-1870s it could be found in every state and in a few foreign countries.

Aside from the publishing business, Crowell also invested in real estate, owning significant tracts of land in the western part of town. He also owned industrial properties along Flat Street, and had an ownership stake in several of these companies, including the Carpenter Organ Company and the Brattleboro Jelly Company. Crowell was also responsible for building the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, which served as the town’s public water supply starting in the late 19th century.

Upon purchasing this house, Crowell began a major renovation project that significantly increased its size and altered its exterior and interior appearance. The remodeling took nearly two years, and was finished in 1890, a few years before the first photo was taken. By this point, there was little trace of the original Italianate-style design, and the house instead featured new Queen Anne-style details, such as the turrets and cupola on the roof. The renovated house, which was renamed Lindenhurst, had a total of 37 rooms, and was valued at around $150,000 in 1890, equivalent to over $4 million today.

George Crowell and his wife Mary had five children, although three of them died as children or young adults. George died in 1916, but the rest of the family continued to live here for another decade or so. It was ultimately converted into a boarding house, but was owned by Mary Crowell until 1934, when her mortgage lender, the Vermont National Bank, foreclosed on the property. The Great Depression likely contributed to Mary’s financial downturn, but it also hurt the bank’s ability to resell the property. With no demand for such a large house at the time, the bank ultimately demolished it in 1936, in order to avoid having to pay property taxes on the massive mansion.

The town ultimately purchased the property, and the Green Street School was built on the eastern section. The rest of the lot, including the site of the house, became a public park, named Crowell Park. As the first photo shows, the site of the house is now an open field, with no visible remnants of the Gilded Age mansion that once stood here. However, there are apparently still some old maple trees in the park, which date back to the time when the house was here. Pete Seeger recalled the trees during his childhood visit in the 1920s, and he was reportedly able to recognize these same trees during a 2008 visit to Brattleboro. These trees are probably not visible in the present-day scene, although the tree on the far right looks like it might be old enough to date back to the early 1920s.

Flat Street, Brattleboro, Vermont

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Looking east on Flat Street in Brattleboro, around 1894. Image from Picturesque Brattleboro (1894).

The scene in 2017:

During the second half of the 19th century, Brattleboro became an important manufacturing center, thanks in large part to the water power provided by the fast-moving Whetstone Brook. Much of the town’s industrial development was centered along this brook, including here on Flat Street, which runs along its northern banks. At the time that the first photo was taken, the properties on both sides of the street were owned by George E. Crowell, a prosperous businessman who lived in a large mansion to the northwest of here, at the corner of High and Green Streets. The right side of the street included a cabinet shop, which appears to have been the building on the far right. Further beyond this building, out of view in the first photo, was a carriage shop as well as the Brattleboro Jelly Company, which produced cider jelly and cucumber pickles.

The most visible building in the first photo was the six-story Carpenter Organ Company building. Built around the mid-1860s for the Brattleboro Melodeon Company, this factory was purchased about 20 years later by the Carpenter Organ Company, which still occupied the building when the first photo was taken. At the time, organ manufacturing was a major part of Brattleboro’s economy, and Carpenter was one of several such companies in the town. George Crowell was one of the owners of this company, but he sold his interest in 1914. By then, pump organs were falling out of fashion, and the company only remained in business for a few more years, closing around 1917.

Today, there is nothing remaining in this scene from the first photo, except for Flat Street itself. The old Carpenter Organ building is long gone, as are all of the other industrial buildings on either side of the street. Like most of the other old New England mill towns, there is very little manufacturing left in Brattleboro, and it has been many decades since any organs were produced in the town. The site of the Carpenter factory is now a parking garage, disguised to make its exterior resemble an old brick mill. On the other side of the street, parking lots are now located where the cabinet shop, carriage shop, and jelly company used to be, although at least one of the historic factory buildings on Flat Street – the C. F. Church building – has since been converted into commercial use, and is located just out of view to the right of the 2017 photo.