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Munson Barn

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c.1845. U.S. 7, 0.75 miles south of exit 17 on I-89
  • (Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)

This one-and-a-half story, gable-front carriage barn is the most stylish antebellum outbuilding remaining in Vermont. It was built for John Munson, heir of William Munson, one of Colchester's early settlers who at one point owned over half of the town's land (see the related Munson family properties in Wallingford, RU75 and RU77). John Munson built a substantial wood-frame, Georgian-plan house here in 1841 with Federal and Greek Revival detailing and a second-floor ballroom. Later in the decade, he commissioned this brick-veneered carriage barn ornamented by a gable pediment with a triangular fan. A central double doorway opens to a plastered carriage bay, and a pass door to one side leads to four horse stalls. M. C. Clark may have been the master mason responsible for the barn, as he is thought to have constructed the brick Munson tavern, built about the same time at the intersection of the stagecoach road and Mallets Bay Road (today U.S. 7 and VT 127). Although a number of brick carriage and wagon ells and small brick smithies survive from the early nineteenth century in Vermont, free-standing outbuildings of comparable architectural ambitions are largely unknown.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson
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Data

What's Nearby

Fort Ethan Allen
Sand Bar State Park Beach House (Bath House)
Batchelder and Brown House
St. Francis Xavier Church
St. Francis Xavier Rectory

Citation

Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson, "Munson Barn", [Colchester, Vermont], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VT-01-CH2.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Vermont

Buildings of Vermont, Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 138-139.

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