Arlington Inn (Martin Deming House)

The house built by businessman, selectman, and state legislator Martin Chester Deming represents a translation of traditional forms into a remarkable example of Greek Revival domestic architecture. Its sophistication speaks to the wealth and refinement of its patron and reflects a broader awareness by this village on western Vermont's major north– south thoroughfare to tastes at work beyond the limits of the Green Mountains. At the building's heart is a two-story Georgian-plan block, but its massing and details show the influence of such fashionable publications as Minard Lafever's The Modern Builder's Guide (1833) and Edward Shaw's Rural Architecture (1843). One-story symmetrical wings create a play of single-and double-height masses, and engaged paneled pilasters in high relief frame each window bay. Each floor of the house is unified by its simple order of pilasters that carries a continuous entablature made weightier by parapets (solid over the first floor and paneled on the second) that conceal the roofs. On the main facade, where the pilasters read almost as independent square posts, they cast a rich play of light and shadow around windows decorated with corner blocks and central tablets. This effect is enriched by a central portico with unfluted Doric columns in antis and by shadowy columnar porches that recede behind the plane of the facade to shelter entrances into the wings. More than a house dressed up like a temple, the abstract clarity and unity of form and the rich articulation in plane make the house one of the most unusual examples of its style in the state.