Windsor House / Post Office

Windsor House, also, Post Office. Windsor Vermont. , Windsor House , This has been Windsor's premier site for hospitality since the early 1800s. Captain Joseph Pettes built a coffee house here in 1801 on the Connecticut River Turnpike, a toll road that ran from Bellows Falls to Thetford, Vermont. He hosted Windsor residents, travelers, and such notables as President James Monroe in 1817 and the Marquis de Lafayette in 1825, until an 1836 fire destroyed the building. In 1838 a group of businessmen rebuilt the modest inn as Windsor House, a fine hotel that rivaled its urban counterparts in service, accommodations, and cuisine. Its imposing Greek Revival style reflected the town's ambition to be a regional center of commerce and politics. The arrival of the railroad in 1849 cemented its importance as lodging for travelers and businessmen., The hotel's fortunes have mirrored those of Windsor. It has welcomed thousands, including opera singer Jenny Lind and President Theodore Roosevelt. When President Woodrow Wilson spent the summers of 1913 to 1915 in Cornish, New Hampshire, his Secret Service staff roomed in Windsor House. In 1913 the Windsor Machine Company purchased the aging hotel and updated it as the company hotel and restaurant, with boarding rooms in the rear section for its workers. The hotel continued to provide space for business meetings, private and public balls, dance lessons, and other social activities., By 1971 Windsor House ceased operation as a hotel and faced demolition. A group of citizens formed Historic Windsor, Inc., to save the building. The nonprofit eventually rehabilitated it and listed it on the National Register of Historic Places. Now privately owned, Windsor House remains a Main Street landmark., [Photo captions, top and bottom, read] , . "Windsor House Polka" sheet music composed for a July 5. 1854, performance by the Windsor Cornett Band , . Windsor House festooned with bunting for Theodore Roosevelt's 1911 visit., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . , Post Office , Windsor was one of the first five Vermont towns to receive a post office in 1784, but the United States government took another 75 years to give it an official home. Ammi B. Young (1798-1874), a Lebanon, New Hampshire, native and the first supervising architect for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, designed the post office in the Italianate style to recall the architecture of the Roman Republic. The formal, symmetrical arrangement of windows and doors and bold ornament convey a sense of authority. The building had a first-floor post office and a second-floor federal courthouse., Young used the Italianate style in many of the federal buildings constructed throughout the country during his tenure in the 1850s. Other Young designs include an identical courthouse in Rutland, Vermont, now the Rutland Free Library, as well as Vermont's second state house in Montpelier, destroyed by fire in 1857. Look closely to discover one of the most historically significant features of the building. The rusticated "quoins” decorating the corners of the building, as well as other details, may look like cut stone but are made of cast iron. Young used this material in the building to comply with a new federal law requiring fireproof construction. Modern technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution made cast iron readily available. Strong structural iron beams permitted more windows than was possible with timber framing., The Windsor Post Office opened in 1859 and is one of the three oldest federal post offices in continuous use in the United States., [Photo captions, top to bottom, read] , . Community bands like this one, posing in front of the Windsor Post Office, were a popular form of entertainment in the 1800s and early 1900s. What appears to be textured masonry on the building is actually cast iron, a popular fireproof material often manufactured to mimic stone. , . Architect Ammi B. Young (1798-1874) , . Windsor draped many of its buildings in patriotic bunting for the visit of former U.S president Theodore Roosevelt on June 9, 1911, on his way to a speaking engagement in White River Junction.