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Memorial Hall

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1888. North end of GAR Rd., North Calais
  • (Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)
  • (Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)
  • (HABS/HAER)

In 1870 the Civil War veterans of Calais organized into the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) Stow Post 29, named after the three sons of the Stow family who died in the war. They began meeting in the North Calais district schoolhouse near what was then called Wheelock Pond (now Mirror Lake). When that schoolhouse burned in 1884, the veterans banded together with the Sons of Union Veterans and the Women's Relief Corps to build a new G.A.R. hall, acquiring a point of land on the pond in 1885. Here they erected this plain, wood-frame, two-story Memorial Hall, ornamented in the late classical vernacular of rural Vermont with a full entablature at the eaves, corner boards, and window and entrance cornices. The first floor consists of a kitchen, dining room, and men's and ladies' parlors, and the second story is devoted to an open meeting and dance hall with tin ceiling and wall ornament. About 1900 a barn for sixty horses was built to one side and a two-story porch added on the east eaves side, though both are now gone. With the passing of the last of the veterans and their sons, the Women's Relief Corps succeeded to ownership of the hall. The only remaining example of its type in the state, Memorial Hall is now rented out for weddings and events.

Writing Credits

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

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Citation

Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson, "Memorial Hall", [Calais, Vermont], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VT-01-WA8.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Vermont

Buildings of Vermont, Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 294-294.

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