61 Central Avenue
The Burlington-Winooski area had been a textile manufacturing center since the mid-1830s when, in 1894, a group of Burlington businessmen negotiated an agreement with George Draper and Sons of Hopewell, Massachusetts, manufacturers of textile machinery, forming the Queen City Cotton Company. James Northrop, a Draper engineer, had invented and developed a loom that automatically changed and threaded bobbins, dramatically increasing productivity. Burlington would be a favorable site, Draper thought: no unions, cheaper coal, and better freight rates.
In March 1895 the mill went into operation. Management advertised extensively for workers in nearby Quebec. Soon they decided to build company housing, buying land between the nearby railroad tracks and the lake, part of H.R. Conger’s planned Lakeside Park development. First, they built multifamily tenements on Conger Avenue, which proved unpopular, despite a rent of $12.00 a month. In August of 1899 the company bought a large tract of Conger’s land. On November 23, the following news item appeared on page 5 of the Burlington Free Press:
“Work has just commenced on the construction at the west end of the main mill on a two-story brick structure 60 x 80 feet to be used as a storehouse for cotton. Work on the 16 new tenement houses being built by the company is being rapidly carried forward and some of them will be ready for occupancy in a short time. Fourteen of them are double tenements. Each section is entirely separate and consists of six rooms. They are models of their kind and are much better constructed than the majority of houses built by corporations. Four of them are on Conger Avenue, nine on Harrison Avenue, and one Central Avenue. Two of them are for overseers and are better constructed than the others. They are all built with a view to the comfort of the inmates and the sanitary arrangements are excellent.”
#61 Central Avenue was likely one of this batch. The Vermont State Historic Sites and Structures Survey gives the house a date of 1899; the application for the National Register of Historic Places for Lakeside gives 1899-1900. The first resident I was able to find in the city directory was Joseph Labarge, millhand, listed at Central Avenue in the 1902 directory, and at 61 Central Avenue in the 1902-1903 issue. He is still there in the 1907 directory and then disappears. The mill had a high turnover rate of employees. Though the city started listing residents by their streets in 1901, the Lakeside residents were not so listed until 1917.
In 1917, Ubert Bernard was living at 61; the following year the listing was “vacant”. Albert Benards was there in1919, and Hubert Benard in 1920. Hard to tell if these were misspellings or not.
From 1921 through 1930 the Lajeunesse family was at 61: Jedeon/Gideon, weaver, through 1926, then Alcide.
By 1933, Joseph N. Benoit, weaver, QCCC, and his family had moved in; Benoits then rented and owned the house until the Caulos, the present owners, bought it. The Benoits were renters until 1937, when the company, facing business reverses due to a long strike, changes in the business and competition from mills in the South, decided to sell its real estate, giving workers first choice. A story in the Sept. 16, 1985 Free Press quotes the price for a duplex as $2500.00. In 1937 the city directory lists four Benoits working at the mill: Joseph and his son Medard as weavers, son Mathias as a cleaner, and daughter Margaret as an employee.
By 1940 the company was dissolved, the buildings sold to E.B. and A.C. Whiting, and eventually to Bell Aircraft, so that the mill became a defense plant during World War II and later, to General Electric, Martin Marietta, et al. Lakeside residents found work there or elsewhere. Joseph Benoit soon found work as a weaver at the American Woolen Company in Winooski. He continued there until he retired at age 65, in 1955.
Joseph and his wife Marie stayed on Central Avenue. From about 1952, his daughter Lillian and her husband Richard Carpenter, a custodian at UVM, lived next door at #59. In the mid-1960s their son Leon, unmarried, was living with the older Benoits. He was a city employee with the Traffic Commission. Joseph Nefthalie Benoit died at his home of acute myocardial infarction on October 15, 1965. He was 75 years old. He was born in Valleyfield, P.Q., and had been living in Burlington for 44 years.
Leon, Lillian, and Richard are listed at 59 and 61 Central Avenue in the city directory until at least 1986.
A copy of Joseph’s will is in the folder for 61 Central Avenue at the City Assessor’s office. It contains a list of his nine children, five living and four dead. Leon has paid the outstanding bills, and he is to have the use of the house until he marries or dies. The inheritance rights of the other children are described. So Leon lived in the house. The Caulos bought the house in 2012 from the estate of Leon Benoit et al.
As a company neighborhood, Lakeside took a long time to get paved streets, and early swimmers faced nasty currents from the untreated sewage released from the Burlington system. Commercial oil tanks were part of the waterfront of Lakeside for 35 years. When the oil company sold its land in 1984 to the developer of Harbor Watch condominiums, people began to realize the possibilities of Lakeside as a valued neighborhood, with a distinctive history and architecture. Lakeside remains a treasured Burlington neighborhood.
Image credit: Realtor.com
REFERENCES
Burlington Land Records
Burlington City Directories, 1899 onward
Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods, Vol. I, Chittenden County Historical Society, pp.86-89
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Burlington 1906,1919
Burlington Free Press, Nov.23, 1899, p.5,Sept.16, 1985, p.13A
Vermont Historic Sites and Structures Survey
National Register of Historic Places Inventory: Nomination Form for Lakeside