Edwin Martin Barn

This three-and-a-half-story, gambrel-roofed barn with twin, steeply pitched rooftop ventilator cupolas is likely the last great bank barn built in Washington County and is representative of the work of local barn builder Lee T. Townsend. At one hundred and forty feet in length and nearly seventy feet high, its large size was necessary for Edwin Martin's farm, which encompassed one thousand acres on both sides of the Winooski River. With fifty cows, one hundred other cattle, and thirty horses, Martin's was a very large farm by the standards of Vermont in 1900. Most of the barn interior was devoted to storing the vast amount of winter feed needed for the livestock. Hay was loaded into the barn from a covered bridge at the northern gambrel end on a steep hill that runs above the river flood-plain. The stabling story for cows and young cattle is entered from under the covered bridge and is lighted by eight pairs of large sash windows along its length. The manure basement opens out onto the road and the flat cropland between it and the river. Nearby a rare private covered bridge, built by the Mar-tins in the late nineteenth century to connect the farm on both sides of the Winooski, has recently been restored by the town to provide public recreational access to the south side of the river.