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Burlington

Buffalo Soldiers Come Out to Vermont

In July of 1909, 750 African-American men known as Buffalo soldiers arrived at Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester, Vt., near the small city of Burlington. Greater Burlington had a population of 25,000. Of those, only 117 people were black.

In addition, the Buffalo soldiers brought with them their wives, children and camp followers, which increased the number of African Americans to about 1,500 in the Burlington area.

Historian David Work called it ‘demographic shock.’

And despite Vermont’s reputation for racial tolerance, Burlington offered a decidedly mixed welcome to the Buffalo soldiers.

Buffalo Soldiers

Buffalo soldiers were all-black units – except for officers – formed after the Civil War. The 10th Cavalry Regiment was one of six regiments, later reduced to four.

Native Americans on the frontier gave them their name. Acccording to various sources, their curly hair reminded the Indians of the fur on top of the buffalo heads. The soldiers took the name as a compliment.

Buffalo soldiers in 1899

The 10^th trained as a combat unit and fought in the Indian wars in the West, the Philippine-American War and the Spanish-American War. During the latter they had charged up San Juan Hill with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Buffalo soldiers in general had a reputation for discipline and valor.

The 10^th cavalry spent 1907-1909 in the Philippines, and returned to New York City by ship. Cheering crowds of New Yorkers, both black and white, greeted the Buffalo soldiers, even giving them a ticker tape parade

But soon enough they got a taste of the treatment that white Americans doled out to the Buffalo soldiers when stationed throughout the South and West.

Brownsville Affair

The Brownsville affair of 1906 tainted all Buffalo soldiers. The 25^th Infantry Regiment, a black unit, was stationed in the segregated town of Brownsville, Texas. When a white bartender was shot and killed, the townspeople blamed the soldiers. Though their commanding officer swore they’d been inside the barracks all night, white residents planted evidence against them.

President Theodore Roosevelt ordered all 167 men of the regiment dishonorably discharged. They weren’t exonerated until 1972.

Vermont

The 10th Cavalry Regiment began to arrive in Colchester on July 28, 1909, replacing an all-white unit at the fort.

The Rutland Daily Herald editor called them a ‘menace.’ The editor of the Burlington Free Press wrote of objections to the presence of such a large body of African Americans. Several racial incidents marred their first arrivals. One bank refused to cash a pay vouchers. Some white people left restaurants when the soldiers entered, and some even insisted on segregating the trolley cars.

Other newspapers in both the north and south took note of the animosity toward the soldiers.

That sparked a backlash among other Burlington-area residents, who wanted to maintain Vermont’s reputation for tolerance. Burlington had been a hotbed of abolitionism, and Vermont had outlawed slavery during its 14 years as a republic.

The president of the streetcar company refused to segregate the cars because the famous Tenth would cause no trouble, he said. A white army officer said he expected the Tenth Cavalry to give the people of Burlington a lesson in patriotism.

In the end, the Buffalo soldiers won over the city. The Bennington Evening Banner reported the 10th proved ‘a happy surprise.’

“They haven’t shot up the town yet, they don’t mob the trolley cars and are civil and courteous to both men and women,” reported the newspaper.

Four Years

David Work described the 10th as ‘experienced, disciplined, relatively well education, professional soldiers…with tremendous unit pride.’

Eventually Vermonters recognized those qualities.

A local club held a dinner dance for the noncommissioned officers. The city also gave them a big send off when they left for New York to conduct maneuvers.

Officers Row at Fort Ethan Allen around the turn of the century.

For the soldiers, the four-year stay in Vermont was luxurious compared to the frontier or the tropics. They had an indoor riding hall, warm barracks and wholesome food. They could even attend college. It was way better than building their own barracks, eating military field rations and suffering tropical fevers—not to mention combat. They also had plenty of time to play baseball in the summer and basketball in the winter.

Their baseball team played the University of Vermont and St. Michael’s to large crowds. They lost narrowly to a professional Negro League team, the Cuban Stars.

In addition to sports, the Buffalo soldiers provided plenty of entertainment to the people of Burlington. They let the public watch their daily mounted drills at the fort. The ban played public concerts and they even raised money for the public library. Once a week they held a parade. They also staged a production of the Merchant of Venice, and in the winter held a Wild West Show in the riding hall. The soldiers even sponsored a public showing of a boxing film about Joe Gans-Battling Nelson.

10th Cavalrymen taken prisoner in Mexico in 1916..

Departure

In 1913, the Buffalo soldiers transferred to Fort Huachuca in Arizona because of rising tensions along the Mexican border.

They left behind a small African-American community in Burlington, one that would later appear in The Negro Motorist Green Book. Some settled in Winooski and actively supported the Winooski Methodist Episcopal Church.

The 10^th stayed in Arizona for 18 years. Then in 1931, the government disbanded the Buffalo soldiers’ units.

In 2009, descendants of the Tenth Cavalry Regiment commemorated the 100^th anniversary of their arrival in Vermont with a museum display, a concert and a celebration. With thanks to The Buffalo Soldiers in Vermont, 1909–1913, by David Work from the Vermont History Journal. This story was updated in 2023.

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The Vermont Eugenics Survey Purifies the Population’s Polluted Protoplasm

The Vermont eugenics survey began with the rural exodus of Vermont farmers and didn’t end until well after Hitler used its ‘philosophy’ to justify his race experiments.

The state’s eugenics supporters thought the westward migration had skimmed the cream from country farms and villages. They believed the people who remained lacked the intelligence and drive of the Yankee Protestants who created Vermont.

Eugenics aims to improve the genetic quality of the human population by promoting more reproduction among ‘biologically fit’ people and less reproduction among ‘degenerates.’

Though eugenicists claimed they based their views on science, the Vermont eugenics survey actually responded to increased immigration from Europe and Canada. It sought to eliminate from the population such traits as harelips, sloppiness, tuberculosis and poor memory. Eugenicists even believed poverty was hereditary.

Original caption reads “Two cretins.” From a book by geneticist Reginald Ruggles Gates.

Inventor Alexander Graham Bell was a proponent. So was birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Even W.E.B. Du Bois believed in developing the best versions of African Americans in order for his race to succeed.

Vermont was far from the only state to use eugenics to breed a better population. Connecticut started the ball rolling in 1896, with a marriage law that prohibited anyone who was epileptic or feebleminded from marrying. The next year, Michigan started compulsory sterilization, which spread to 32 states. In the end, state governments forcibly sterilized 65,000 people, mostly women.

Henry Farnham Perkins

The Vermont eugenics survey began with Henry Farnham Perkins, a Mayflower descendant who married another Mayflower descendant. Both came from families of distinguished academics.

Perkins was born in 1877 in the wealthy section of Burlington, Vt. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1898, and in 1903 got a job at the college as associate professor of Zoology. That same year, the American Breeder’s Association was created to study eugenics.

He plodded along for nearly two decades until he learned of a U.S. Army study after World War I ended. The Army had used the study as part of the draft process, and concluded that men from Vermont had an inordinately high rate of ‘defects, such as diabetes, epilepsy, deformities and mental deficiency.

Perkins set about to correct that problem and preserve Vermont’s Yankee Protestant identity through ‘investigation and social reform.’

The Vermont Eugenics Survey

Perkins started off in 1922 by revamping his Zoology curriculum and started teaching courses on heredity and evolution. He taught that social ills had biological links, and that certain groups of people exhibited a general deterioration toward mental illness, criminality and promiscuity.

That inspired the Vermont eugenics survey, which studied rural Vermonters. Perkins hired fieldworkers to hunt degenerate families in the Vermont countryside. They looked for three categories of degeneracy: chorea, or people with Huntington’s disease; pirates, or people who lived on houseboats; and gypsies, people with dark skin.

In reality, they targeted French Canadians, Indians, African-Americans and immigrants.

Perkins revealed his animus toward immigrants in a comment about French Canadians: You cannot believe a thing they tell you…They are a pretty genial folk but many have a pretty low I.Q….the French are a complacent people; it would be impossible to have a French Mussolini for instance. That kind of drive is lacking…

At least, he thought, they were better than the Irish.

Rural Vermont, the target of the Vermont eugenics survey.

Fieldwork

One fieldworker, Harriet Abbot, gathered information on 4,642 people by the end of 1927. Sometimes they disclosed their family histories to her because they thought she was writing a book.

“Unwittingly, her informants opened up their homes and hearts to her, completely unaware of the real purpose of her research,” wrote Kevin Dann and Christie Carter in From Degeneration to Regeneration: The Eugenics Survey of Vermont, 1925-1936.

She and other Vermont eugenics survey fieldworkers identified such traits as illiterate, illegitimate, insane, thief, queer, pauper, immoral, dishonest, rape, syphilis, liar, epileptic, twin, stillborn, dependent, alcoholic, a little odd, wanderer, wild, cruel, one eye and shiftless.

Fieldworkers went to the Rutland Reformatory for Women, a home for the wayward. The fieldworkers believed the institution’s ‘sex delinquents’ were bad women, and got that way through heredity.

Purifying the State’s Polluted Protoplasm

In 1927, Perkins got funding for a bigger survey, called the Vermont Commission on Country Life. Through it, he developed a program that called for Vermonters to ‘wake up’ so that their grandchildren wouldn’t be dragged down by ‘avoidable low-grade Vermonters.’

The commission concluded that Vermont should prevent the marriage and reproduction of its ‘feeble-minded’ citizens.

On the positive side, the VCCL urged Vermonters to keep track and study their families. “It is the patriotic duty of every normal couple to have children in sufficient number to keep up to par ‘the good old Vermont stock,” the commission reported.

It also recommended ways to promote tourism in order to attract economically successful – therefore biologically fit – visitors and summer residents. Vermont implemented many of those ideas, such as banning billboards, licensing cabins, building highways and encouraging summer homes.

Forced Sterilization

Eventually the Vermont eugenics survey took over the VCCL. Then in 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buck v. Bell that forced sterilization was constitutional. That opened the floodgates for Vermont and other states to pass and enforce their compulsory sterilization laws.

Vermont passed its compulsory sterilization law in 1931, the 25th state to do so. The law targeted ‘idiots,’ ‘imbeciles,’ ‘feeble-minded’ or ‘insane’ persons living in state institutions.

Many state laws targeted the mentally ill, the intellectually disabled, the epileptic, the deaf, the blind and the physically deformed. But at the time, many women deemed ‘feeble-minded’ went to state institutions. In reality, they had had sex or gotten pregnant outside of marriage.

In 1936, a publication of the American Neurological Association reported data on sterilizations in the New England states. Vermont had the lowest disparity between men and women, with 65 women sterilized and 32 men. Connecticut had the worst disparity, sterilizing 372 women, but only 19 men. Maine sterilized 78 women and seven men, while New Hampshire sterilized 170 women and 29 men.

Map showing the Vermont eugenics survey wasn’t the only perpetrator of forced sterilization.

A Bad Name

But eugenics was losing steam in the 1930s. Hitler’s rise to power gave eugenics a bad name, and scientists began to think environment played a large role in human development.

Then in 1942, another U.S. Supreme Court case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, raised legal questions about the practice and discouraged further sterilization. Vermont, however, continued sterilizing its people until 1963. In the end, Vermont sterilized more than 250 people it deemed degenerate — mostly women.

Though Henry Farnham Perkins identified alcoholism as a degenerate trait, he died of liver failure, a bedridden alcoholic, in 1956.

Images: Chester, Vt., By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61935149. Two cretins By https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/63/91/55df9a057497dbe426d95a9fd0bb.jpgGallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0013872.htmlWellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-21): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/v2un3ra7 CC-BY-4.0, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35966587. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six New England Places To Learn About Irish History

Outside of Ireland, New England may be one of the best places to explore Irish history. After all, many people of Irish ancestry live here – and we do love our history.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire have special claims on Irish history. More than one in five residents of each state claims Irish ancestry. And about 18 percent of people living in Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont have Irish ancestors. Connecticut may be the least Irish state in New England, with only 16.6 percent of its people claiming Irish ancestors. But still, it’s in the top ten, with only Delaware claiming slightly more.

We have already brought you six Irish landmarks in New England, but many of them are closed in the winter. So in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we bring you six more places where you can learn about Irish history. Even if it’s cold outside.

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum

Learn about the most tragic chapter in Irish history at the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum

Between 1845-52, half of all immigrants to the United States came from Ireland. A potato blight and English oppression caused mass starvation, disease and death.

The Irish came to the U.S. in vessels called famine ships. If they didn’t die of disease or hunger aboard the ships, they crowded into slums when they arrived. At Quinnipiac University, Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum in Hamden claims the largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials about that tragic episode in Irish history.

The exhibit “Making America: The Irish in the Civil War Era” ends on March 17. The work of Irish immigrant John Mulvany, a sketch artist during the Civil War, accompanies the exhibit.

3011 Whitney Ave, Hamden, Conn.

Burnham Tavern

Both Revolutionary and Irish history can be found at the Burnham Tavern.

During the American Revolution, some of the most notable fighters on both sides had Irish ancestry. Two – Henry Knox and John Sullivan — served as Washington’s generals. Another, Jeremiah O’Brien, fought the first naval battle of the American Revolution.

On June 12, 1775, Jeremiah O’Brien led a group of Machias men – some armed only with pitchforks — in capturing a British schooner called the Margaretta. They planned the maneuver at the Burnham Tavern, today a National Historic Site. Visitors can learn the history of the battle and see some of the O’Brien family’s belongings.

Should you decide to explore Irish history in Machias, you’ll find a classic, picturesque Downeast town. And you can get the best blueberry pie in Maine and therefore the world at Helen’s.

Main Street, Machias, Maine

James Michael Curley House

The James Michael Curley house.

James Michael Curley, Boston’s ‘Rascal King,’ personified the big city political boss for the first half of the 20th century. He spent lavishly on parks and hospitals, which not only served his immigrant constituents but created jobs for them.

Curley first won election as mayor in 1914, and went on to win three more times. He also won as Massachusetts governor and congressman. But he went to prison twice, once for sitting in for a friend on a civil service exam and once for mail fraud. Curley embarrassed the Democratic Party, and he couldn’t get elected as a Democratic delegate to the 1932 convention. Somehow he went as a delegate from Puerto Rico.

Curley built a mansion in Jamaica Plain with shamrocks cut out of the shutters at 350 The Jamaicaway. He never quite explained how he managed to build it on a mayor’s salary. Today there are plans to open the house to the public on a regular basis. Until then, you can embrace Irish history by visiting James Michael Curley Park near Faneuil Hall.

1 Union Street, Boston, Mass.

First Parish Church, East Derry

The First Parish Church, where potato and Irish history were made.

The Scots-Irish arrived in New England at the invitation of the Massachusetts Puritans, who viewed them as a persecuted Protestant minority like themselves.

The Puritans didn’t exactly embrace the poor Scots-Irish who first arrived in five ships in 1718. They strongly encouraged them to push on toward the frontier (Maine and New Hampshire). The Scots-Irish settlers provided a convenient barrier to unfriendly French and Indians.

In 1719, a group of Scots-Irish settled Nutfield, which evolved into the towns of Derry, Londonderry, Windham, and part of Manchester. When they arrived, they planted the first white potato in North America.

A historic marker in front of the First Parish Church in historic East Derry notes the historic planting of the spud:

The marker reads, “In April 1719, sixteen Presbyterian Scotch-Irish families settled here in two rows of cabins along West Running Brook easterly of Beaver Brook. Initially known as Nutfield, the settlement became Londonderry in 1723. The first year, a field was planted, known as the Common Field, where the potato was first grown in North America.”

On April 12, Nutfield kicks off its 300th anniversary celebration, including a strawberry festival, a founders weekend and an old home day.

47 E Derry Rd, East Derry, N.H.

Governor William Sprague Mansion

Not just a Yankee monument, the Gov. William Sprague house also played a role in Irish history.

On New Year’s Eve 1843, Rhode Island textile baron Amasa Sprague went for a walk. His servant later found his body, shot and bludgeoned.

The rich and powerful Sprague owned several textile mills, including the Cranston Print Works and the Slater Mill. he had had a dispute with three Irish brothers who ran a saloon. One of those brothers, John Gordon, was convicted of his murder.

John Gordon’s real crime was to be Irish at a time when hatred of the Irish ran rampant. The judge had actually told the jury to pay more attention to Yankee witnesses than Irish witnesses.

Even though circumstantial evidence showed John Gordon hadn’t committed the crime, the state hanged him. After Gordon’s execution, Rhode Island banned capital punishment. Then in 2011, Gov. Lincoln Chafee pardoned him.

To trace the events in this sad chapter of Irish history, you can visit Cranston to see where Sprague and Gordon lived. Sprague lived in what is now known as the Governor William Sprague Mansion. The house, now a museum, was named for his son who also lived there.

Sprague died on the grounds of St. Mary’s Church in Cranston, a 100-year old building. His Slater Mill is now on the National Register of Historic Places. You can see a video at the mill in March.

And John Gordon lived above a general store and saloon that is now St. George Maronite Catholic Church.

Governor William Sprague Mansion, 1351 Cranston St, Cranston, R.I.

Battery Street Historic District

Burlington, Vt., has a lot of Irish history, especially along the waterfront.

Nathaniel Hawthorne visited Burlington in 1832 and published a sketch of the young city. He noted “the great number of Irish emigrants” to be found there. They were everywhere: “lounging” around the wharves,” “swarming in huts and mean dwellings near the lake,” and “elbow[ing] the native citizens” out of work. (You can read the whole sketch here.)

Burlington had lots of Irish immigrants – 30 percent in the mid-19th century. They first sailed from Ireland to Canada, then came down Lake Champlain on steamboats. Most settled near the steamboat wharf.

Irish laborers lived and worked along the industrial waterfront. Today, a section of that waterfront is known as the Battery Street Historic District.

You can join Burlington’s celebration of its Irish history on St. Patrick’s Day with an annual Irish Heritage Festival.

Battery Street Historic District: rough boundaries are Main, St. Paul, and Maple Streets, and Lake Champlain.

Irish History End Notes

Images: Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, By Jllm06 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50748374; Burnham Tavern By Unknown photographer – Reproduced from an original postcard published by G. W. Morris, Portland, Maine, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19769449; First Parish Church of East Derry By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24513489; Gov. William Sprague Mansion By Swampyank – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23861004; Battery Street Historic District By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8672750.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The First Shopping Mall in Each New England State

In 1947, New England’s first shopping mall broke ground in Stamford, Conn. No one knew for sure whether it would even survive. Few had any idea of the love that New Englanders would shower on the easy parking, bustling crowds and seductive merchandise of their shopping meccas.

Following the upheaval of World War II, everything from religion and politics to gender roles and work went through the tumbler and came out forever changed. Low unemployment, rising wages and the flight to the suburbs combined to create the world’s greatest consumer culture.

Rhode Island, by the way, can claim the oldest shopping mall in the United States – the Westminster Arcade, built in 1828. But what we’re focusing on here is the post-World War II suburban shopping mall, the kind you need a car to get to.

Millions and millions of cars made it to New England’s shopping malls. You met your friends there and did your Christmas shopping there. And you grew up unable to resist the lure of popcorn-scented corridors, stylishly clad mannequins and the sound of Muzak.

Alas, the glory days of the shopping mall have ended. Just as few people predicted their popularity, few could envision the disappearance of anchor stores like Alexander’s, Montgomery Ward, Woolworth’s and The Bon-Ton. Who knew Macy’s would gobble up Jordan Marsh and Filene’s?

Today, hundreds of dead malls litter the American landscape, replaced by Amazon warehouses and harried package deliverers. Perhaps someday they’ll return. In the meantime, here is a look at the first shopping mall in each New England state. Some have even managed to survive.

Ridgeway Center

Postcard showing Stamford’s Ridgeway Center

Alfons Bach, who developed New England’s first shopping mall, understood the future of American consumerism. Bach emigrated from Germany well before World War II and wound up in Connecticut. Perhaps because of his German roots he had no nostalgia for the old ways of New England. That allowed him to shape the future around the tastes of the generation coming of age in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Bach had become a giant in the industrial design field. His work was sought after by companies making all sorts of products. Rugs, pianos, toasters, desk accessories, tube-steel furniture and countless other items all bore his brand.

But he had bigger ideas. He saw how rapidly the automobile was changing the culture. And shopping, he believed, was bound to change. With cars that needed parking, it made less and less sense to travel to congested cities to shop. Suburban consumers, he believed, would respond to convenient new shopping malls with clean, uncluttered design. Shoppers needed parking, he thought, but not the trappings of the city.

Ridgeway Shopping Center today. Image courtesy Google maps.

Bach took this vision to Lerner Shops, a chain of women’s clothing stores. He suggested they should join with him in building a modern shopping center that would satisfy the emerging tastes. The Lerners, however, did not see the wisdom in what he said. So Bach struck out in his own in 1947 and began work on the Ridgeway Center in his hometown of Stamford, Conn., on 15 acres of land he acquired.

Originally opened in 1947 with 110,000 square feet of space, the “motor age merchandising mecca” had such tenants as W. & J. Sloane, Pennsylvania Drug, Deena’s, The Lurie Company, Chizzini, a Slenderella figure salon and a liquor store.

It grew rapidly. In 1951, Bach added a three-level Sears, an office tower, and a cinema — essentially a prototype of today’s New England shopping malls. By 1958 he added a Saks 34th Street boutique-type store. The mall went through several renovations and remains in operation today.

Pine Tree Shopping Center

As you would expect, Maine got its first shopping mall in its biggest city, Portland. The Pine Tree Shopping Center opened in 1959 featuring a Zayre, one of the first 14 stores opened by the Massachusetts retail chain.

The Pine Tree Shopping Center started out with 12 stores, including W.T. Grant, Woolworth’s, Child World, Rexall and Columbia Market grocery store. All are now gone.

Maine’s first shopping mall attracted families, who brought their kids after work because the stores opened late.

The Pine Tree Shopping Center grew to 20 stores. Then, like so many shopping malls, it lost its anchor tenants and started to look tired. A developer came in, revitalized some of the stores and demolished others to make way for big box outlets.

Shopper’s World

Shoppers’ World, the first shopping mall in Massachusetts

In the late 1940s, Bostonians left for the suburbs in droves. New roads and reliable cars created a steady push westward, southward and northward from the center city. Framingham, on Route 9, was in a perfect position to take advantage of the free-traveling Bay Staters.

Enter Huston Rawls, with his plans for Shopper’s World, a shopping destination unlike all other shopping malls.

With 44 stores and parking for an astounding 6,000 cars, Shoppers’ World had virtually any product a consumer could think of. Rawls promised Framingham town fathers, apparently with a straight face, that the new mall’s tenants would not compete with other, existing stores.

Rawls lured Jordan Marsh into leaving Boston for the first time and put the store under a giant clear-span dome. His design team created the rest of the mall in the modern Populuxe style, making Boston’s downtown seem old and dangerous in contrast. The whole thing was built around an enormous town green.

Rawls featured the Lone Ranger, Rin Tin Tin and Rex Trailer to draw crowds. When the grand opening conflicted with the 1951 World Series, Rawls hired “ask me” girls to patrol the shopping center with radios. Anyone who wanted to know the score could just ask them.

The New England weather, however, did not cooperate with his plans. Rain and snow plagued Shoppers’ World throughout its life. Poor construction that didn’t stand up was another problem. And Rawls couldn’t bring a second major tenant to the facility.

Still, his vision lasted for 43 years. Shoppers’ World was torn down in 1994, and another mall of the same name has taken its place.

Nashua Mall

New Hampshire’s status as a no-sales-tax state naturally appealed to developers looking for a way to lure consumers. Less than five miles over the New Hampshire border, they built the state’s first shopping mall in 1969 in Nashua. The Nashua Mall offered convenience for Massachusetts shoppers who wanted to make a quick trip for some tax-free shopping.

With 220,000 square feet of space, the mall was one of the many Woolco malls that featured a Woolco Discount Mart at one end and an Almy’s at the other.

Woolworths envisioned Woolco as a big brother to the smaller five-and-dime stores, but offering discounted pricing on a large scale. They launched in 1962 with Red Grille restaurant tucked inside most, an update to the Woolworth lunch counter. But by 1982, recession snuffed out all the company’s U.S. stores.

In 1969, however, the marketers knew how to bring in the customers in New Hampshire. No celebrities or ultra-modern styling. Instead, the Nashua Mall featured indoor tropical palm trees and the promise of 72-degree temperatures all year round. It finally gave way to more modern retail concepts, such as outlet shopping malls. The Nashua Mall closed in 2003.

Midland Mall

Midland Mall Postcard

When Sears opened Rhode Island’s first shopping mall in 1967, it left little to chance. The modern Midland Mall in Warwick benefited from the collective lessons learned from earlier shopping malls. It hummed from the start.

Victor Gruen, master mall builder, knew the key to success: innovation. Shoppers wanted the latest and greatest. So he built Midland on two floors with an open courtyard – the first such mall in New England. Unlike Shoppers’ World, also on two floors, it was fully enclosed. The retailers had learned the importance of keeping that New England weather at bay.

Adding to the contemporary two-story look, the developers also eschewed escalators in favor of “speedramps.” Like a moving walkway on a slant, the speedramp looked sleeker and more modern than escalators. It also tried to ease the fears of people intimidated by escalators while drawing in curious customers to see these innovative people movers.

The developers also locked in two key anchor stores: Cherry & Webb and downtown Providence’s Shepherd Company took the key spaces in the mall, and its 450,000 square feet of space filled rapidly. It had a Docktor Pet Center, Orange Julius, Spencer Gifts, Thom McAn Shoes, Flagg Brothers Shoes and the Midland Cafeteria. The mall survived through 2011.

Ethan Allen Shopping Plaza

Vermont’s first shopping mall, the Ethan Allen Shopping Plaza

Ethan Allen, who rode the speculative real estate boom of the late 18^th century, would probably have built Vermont’s first shopping mall had he lived into the 1950s. However, a Vermont real estate developer named Tony Pomerleau built Vermont’s first shopping mall in 1951 and named it after the Green Mountain Boy.

The Ethan Allen Shopping Plaza was a simple strip mall in Burlington’s North End, a row of stores with a row of stores with a supermarket in the middle and a lot of parking in front. The mall featured the Ethan Allen Bake Shop, Plouffe’s Pharmacy, Ben Franklin, Carvel Ice Cream, a bowling alley and a movie theater.

Pomerleau went on to build about 20 more shopping malls before he died at 100 in 2018. Today, a real estate investment firm has the property on the block.

For more information about early shopping malls, visit here. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Abandoned Places

What is so appealing about abandoned places? Cyberspace abounds with photos, videos and bloggers waxing elegiac about abandoned old mills, mansions and malls.

Tim Edensor, a geography professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, studies why people like abandoned places.

He called them ‘marginal spaces filled with old and obscure objects,’ where people can see and feel things they can’t in everyday life. They’re about time, nature, mortality and disinvestment, he says.

Perhaps people like abandoned places because they feel genuine in a world full of commercial clutter and Disneyized cityscapes. Or perhaps they long for an industrial past, when manufacturing provided jobs that would support a family.

Here are six abandoned places, one in each New England state.

Remington Arms, Bridgeport, Conn.

Remington Arms, one of the many abandoned places that once made something.

You can barely swing a cat in New England without hitting an abandoned factory. They’re a sad reminder of the region’s past as an industrial powerhouse. The old plants stand as silent witnesses to the impact of trade deals, tax incentives and government policies rewarding finance over manufacturing.

New England’s once-enormous textile industry began to move south around the turn of the 20^th century in search of cheap land and labor. A similar fate befell the high-tech industry that sprang up after World War II.

Factories that made products for the military continued to thrive, however, and successive wars masked manufacturing’s decline. Remington Arms serves as a prime example.

Eliphalet Remington founded the company in 1816 in New York. He sold it in 1888 to a company that also owned the Union Metallic Cartridge Co. in Bridgeport and the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. of New Haven.

Remington made arms for France, Britain, Russia and the United States during World War I. During the Great Depression, it began making ammunition, and it made the Springfield bolt-action rifle for the U.S. government during World War II.

Remington’s Bridgeport factory expanded in 1915. At one point it was called ‘the greatest small arms and ammunition plant in the world.’ At its height, Remington Arms employed more than 17,000 workers.

Remington Arms closed its Bridgeport plant in 1986.

Today the abandoned Remington Arms plant still sits at 812 Barnum Ave. in Bridgeport, though plans call for its demolition.

Since workers were killed there, it is said to be haunted.

Abandoned Locomotives, The Allagash, Maine

One of the ghost locomotives in the Allagash wilderness.

Deep in the heart of Maine’s Allagash region sit two abandoned locomotives silently rusting in the wilderness. Only a few intrepid canoes, hikers and snowmobilers can see the hulking machines, miles from any road or railhead.

An independent logger named King Ed Lacroix, put the ghost locomotives there. He built a 13-mile railroad in the middle of the Allagash — some would call it nowhere — to haul pulpwood to Maine paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket. There the mills turned it into newsprint.

By 1933 the Great Depression had depressed demand for newsprint, so Lacroix abandoned the Allagash, the railroad, the rolling stock and the ghost locomotives.

By the time demand for paper picked up, trucks hauled logs more efficiently than railroads.

Today the abandoned places that Ed Lacroix left are part of the remote and scenic Allagash Wilderness Waterway protected by the State of Maine.

Abandoned Bear Pens, Boston

Bear pens, among Boston’s odder abandoned places.

Abandoned bear pens in Boston? Yup. They’re part of Zoo New England, formerly the Franklin Zoo in Franklin Park.

Frederick Law Olmsted designed an open plan zoological park surrounded by the larger park, also designed by Olmsted. The free zoo was a huge hit when it opened in 1912. Millions came each year. Then came the depression and the decline of the wild zoo.

Bears roamed freely (well, freely-ish) in a large stone enclosure at the bottom of a grand stone staircase. Large bas-reliefs of bears still stand amid the decaying cages.

Bears before their pens became abandoned places. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

In 1958, a city commission took over the zoo and tried to figure out how to revitalize it. They built a fence around the wild menagerie and charged admission for it. The bear pens, hard to tear down, and a badger enclosure, were simply left outside to rot.

They appear in the book and film Mystic River, where a murder victim was found in the pits.

More photos here.

Beech Hill Estate, Dublin, NH

Beech Hill Estate. Even mansions can be abandoned places.

Just because the National Park Service lists a building on the National Register of Historic Places doesn’t mean it’s been preserved. Such is the case with Beech Hill Estate in Dublin, N.H., as it also makes the list of abandoned places.

Noted architect Charles Platt designed the large Georgian Revival manor house for his sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Jencks of Baltimore. Like other wealthy Victorians, they fled the hot cities along the Eastern Seaboard for the summer colony along Dublin Lake. Platt designed several other mansions for the Dublin summer colony, but none so large as the Beech Hill Estate. A prominent landmark, the house has a spectacular view of the surrounding countryside.

Built in 1902-03, the house changed hands before becoming the guest house for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in 1949. Though it remains in private hands, the owners abandoned the house in the 1980s and it shows plenty of signs of neglect. The surrounding property is now conservation land with public hiking trails.

Abandoned Kmart, Cranston, R.I.

Cranston’s abandoned Kmart. Dead retail space make up a lot of abandoned places these days.

The company that incorporated as S.S. Kresge in 1916 had 85 U.S. stores. In 1962, the company had grown to hundreds of discount stores and took on the name Kmart.

By 2000, Kmart peaked with 2,171 stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Then shopping malls started to die, Kmart bought Sears and began to shut down stores. In Rhode Island, both Kmart and Sears stores closed in Warwick, Woonsocket, South Attleboro, Swansea and nearby Fall River in Massachusetts.

In August 2017, the company announced the closing of Rhode Island’s last Kmart in Cranston.

Abandoned Interstate 189, Burlington, Vt.

I-189, one of Vermont’s abandoned places.

Once the Federal Highway Administration planned to build an interstate from Exit 13 on I-89 in Burlington, Vt., to the industrial waterfront where it would service freight carriers. But then a toxic barge canal stopped highway construction just beyond the US Route 7 interchange, only 1.488 miles from its beginning.

About half a mile of unfinished highway remained, though, so Jersey barriers prevented traffic on the orphaned stretch of pavement.

And then industry disappeared. By the 1980s Burlington’s commercial activity mainly involved tourism, so transportation officials abandoned plans to finish I-189, at least for a while.

In 2012, federal highway planners came up with a new plan to extend I-189 to funnel traffic from Route 7 to downtown. Opposition to the plan halted construction, and the abandoned pavement serves as a pedestrian walkway for curious explorers.

Images: Remington Arms by Eric Kilby; Franklin Park Bear Dens By Ekmall – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29727050; Beech Hill Estate By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25650567; abandoned Kmart by JJBers Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0); abandoned interstate by Doug Kerr Attribution Share-Alike 2.0. This story last updated in 2023.

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Six Historic Boats, From Schooners to Submarines

Historic boats are as much a part of New England as Revolutionary battlefields and old taverns. The region has a fascinating maritime history — even in Vermont, which has the 110-mile long Lake Champlain.

Historic boats include everything from submarines to frigates, steamboats to schooners. The luxurious to the prosaic, Gilded Age yachts carried millionaires while workhorse schooners hauled coal and fertilizer.

We decided against including replicas such as tall ships, though we did include historic boats that have undergone extensive restoration.

Here, then, are six historic boats, one in each New England state.

Charles W. Morgan

The Charles W. Morgan in retirement

The Charles W. Morgan, a whaling ship built in 1841, is the oldest surviving merchant vessel and America’s only surviving wooden whaling ship from the 19th century.

She was designed to catch whales and harvest the whale blubber on deck for whale oil. The Charles W. Morgan made 37 voyages from her home port of New Bedford, Mass. They ranged from nine months to five years.

On her very first voyage, her crew caught and processed 59 whales for 2,400 barrels of whale oil. Over the course of her active lifetime, 1,000 men served as her crew and harvested 54,483 barrels of sperm whale oil. Some of her crew survived a cannibal attack in the South Pacific. She also sailed the South Atlantic and Indian oceans.

Difficulties bookended her career as an active whaling ship.

As she was under construction in 1841, the boatbuilders went on strike, demanding a 10-hour work day. Three weeks later the workers accepted a 10-1/2 hour compromise.

After harvesting whales for 80 years, it took 87 years to fully restore the old vessel. Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn., finished restoring the Charles W. Morgan in 2013. In 2014, she sailed her 38th voyage — touring New England.

75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, Conn.

Victory Chimes

Windjamming in Maine

The Victory Chimes, known as a shoal draft centerboard schooner, one of only three surviving examples of a three-masted schooner in the United States. Her owners used her in the Great Lakes, along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Today people call her a windjammer, and she carries passengers on pleasure cruises along the Maine coast.

Schooners carry cargo, wood, coal, fertilizer and grain; empty cans for canning factories; and goods for stores along lumbering rivers. The Victory Chimes, a Chesapeake Ram schooner, was designed for the shallow Chesapeake Bay and Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Ram schooners earned their names because they butted their way through the other schooners on the canal.

Built in 1900 in Delaware, she hauled cargo along the Chesapeake until 1946 under the name Edwin and Maude. In retirement, she worked as a ‘dude schooner’ on the Chesapeake.

Windjamming had started in Maine in the 1930s when a man named Frank Swift of Bucksport came up with the idea. Maine investors bought the Edwin and Maude in 1954, renamed her Victory Chimes and repurposed her as a windjammer.

In 1984, Thomas Monaghan of Domino’s Pizza bought her and called her Domino Effect. In 1988, he refitted – and saved – her, using original techniques. She returned to Maine in 1989, bought by Capts. Kip Files and Paul deGaeta, who renamed her Victory Chimes.

Today, Victory Chimes appears as the windjammer on the back of the Maine state quarter.

Captain Spear Drive, Rockland, Maine

Old Ironsides

Old Ironsides

We simply couldn’t leave the legendary naval frigate Old Ironsides off our list of historic boats.

George Washington named her in 1797, and today she is the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat.

She defeated four English warships of the supposedly invincible British Navy during the War of 1812. On Aug. 19, 1812, she earned her nickname while quickly winning a one-sided battle with the Guerriere off the Nova Scotia coast.

The Guerriere began firing at the Constitution while she was largely out of range. As one shot bounced off her hull, a seamen reportedly shouted, “Huzza, her sides are made of iron!”

During the Quasi-War with France she had come to the rescue of Haiti’s revolutionary government. She besieged Tripoli in the Mediterranean during the Barbary Wars.

The U.S. Navy considered Old Ironsides a piece of junk in 1833, until a young Harvard student found out about their plans to use her for target practice and sink her.

An indignant Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a poem about her and sent it to the Boston Daily Advertiser. Old Ironsides begins:

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky…

You probably know how the storm of protest saved the old warship. Today you can visit Old Ironsides year round at the USS Constitution Museum in Boston.

Charlestown Navy Yard, Charlestown, Mass.

Albacore

The Albacore in action.

The Albacore, once described as ‘the submarine that gave its body to science,’ today ranks as one of the most popular tourist attractions in Portsmouth, N.H.

The experimental sub’s most perilous voyage was her last – from Portsmouth Harbor to her permanent display site on dry land.

In Portsmouth, workers built a marine railway along which she could float to her final resting place. First, they had to remove a railway trestle and make a temporary cut across a four-lane highway. She struck bottom three times and then got stuck in the middle of the road. It took months to build a dam so she could be refloated. Portsmouth commuters were not amused.

During her active life, the Navy used the Albacore to test experimental features used in nuclear submarines. Built in 1952-53 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the Navy launched her on Aug. 1, 1953. For the next two decades she went through many changes as the Navy experimented with hull configurations, propellers, rudders, blow systems and sonar.

Like most of the other historic boats on our list, she is a National Historic Landmark.

Albacore Park, 600 Main St., Portsmouth, N.H.

Coronet

The Coronet back in the day.

Amazingly, Rhode Island has no historic boats listed as National Historic Landmarks. But America’s wateriest state does have the Coronet, one of the world’s oldest and largest schooner yachts. The word ‘yacht’ indicates a vessel built for sport or pleasure rather than hauling freight. And she is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Industrialist Rufus T. Bush had the Coronet built as a luxurious waterborne home and as a Gilded Age status symbol in 1885. She earned worldwide fame when Bush won a transatlantic race against the Dauntless in 1887. The New York Times devoted its entire full page to the race results. Bush then circumnavigated the globe in the Coronet. After he died, she passed through six owners, including the religious organization known as the Kingdom.

Since 2010, the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport has worked on restoring the Coronet. Coronet Restoration Partners manages the project.

449 Thames St, Newport, R.I.

S.S. Ticonderoga

The Ticonderoga, one of Vermont’s most historic boats.

The Ticonderoga, a side-paddle-wheel lakeboat, carried passengers and freight on Lake Champlain. She was built in 1906 on Lake Champlain in the Shelburne Shipyard. In 1950, the historic boat returned to Shelburne – to the Shelburne Museum, where she sits on dry land. The SS Ticonderoga was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

At two-thirds the length of a football field, she required a crew of 28. In the early days, she met the evening train from New York in Westport and steamed to St. Albans carrying passengers, farm produce, livestock and dry goods. During both world wars she carried soldiers between Plattsburgh, N.Y., and Burlington. Later she ran from Burlington west to Port Kent, N.Y., and for a while she operated as a floating casino.

The museum restored her interior, with original furniture and appointments in the dining room, captain’s quarters, promenade deck and barber shop.

6000 Shelburne Rd, Shelburne, Vt.

Images: Charles W. Morgan By Rhvanwinkle at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15032247; Victory Chimes By Raphodon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5516997. Old Ironsides By Yuhan Zhang – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73538648. This story was updated in 2023.

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