Historical Buildings in Burlington VT

Burlington and McKim, Mead and White

Burlington boasts a remarkable number of buildings designed by the most famous U.S. architectural firm of the 19th and early 20th-centuries, McKim, Meade, and White. Renowned for their Greek and Roman revival style, and heavily influenced by l’École des Beaux-Arts movement in France, the firm penned such classics as the Harvard Club building and the Washington Square Arch in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Museum, and Hotel Nacional in Cuba. Here in town, they drew the plans for:

City Hall (1928)
149 Church Street
This large modern Georgian structure—one of the most impressive municipal buildings in New England among cities of comparable size—was built in 1926 at a cost of more than $600,000. One feature often overlooked by visitors is the Contois Auditorium, in which the City Council meets and which is host to a variety of performances by local theatre groups, as well as a number of Burlington's extensive First Night celebrations on New Year's Eve.

Ira Allen Chapel at the University of Vermont (1926)
26 University Place
Named after the university's founder Ira Allen, the Colonial Revival chapel is one of Burlington's most prominent landmarks, with its gold-domed bell tower rising 165 feet above the campus. No longer used for religious practices, Ira Allen Chapel now hosts campus meetings and a variety of performers and speakers.

Robert Hull Fleming Museum (1931)
61 Colchester Avenue
A design that manages to be at once intimate and monumental, the University of Vermont’s art museum is a lovely tribute to the Colonial Revival aesthetic.

Charles and Anna Waterman Building (1941)
85 South Prospect Street
Often chided by critics as a slightly looming, ominous structure, the Waterman building and its combination of Roman Revivalism and Yankee brickwork was conceived as something of a fortress against the elements, and it certainly achieves that.