Stoddard-Goodenough House

Shortly after Jonathan Stoddard acquired this land in 1783, he built this gabled, wood frame, one-and-a-half-story bank house, constructed on a sloping grade. Probably the earliest two-family dwelling extant in the state, it was completed when Brattleboro was becoming well settled, recording 1,589 residents in the 1789 census. Evidently the head of a leading local family, Stoddard purchased a prominent center-aisle pew box in the town's second meetinghouse and built the house for his immediate family and that of one of his sons, either Jonathan Jr. or Jacob. What looks like a central-chimney Cape house is divided neatly in two on each floor, and each family had its own stairways and gable-end entrances on the basement and first-floor levels. As a bank house, the basement consists of twin kitchens and a shared stone-walled storage cellar within the bank. Twin best parlors are entered from atop the bank on the first floor. The massive central chimney provides unusual corner fireplaces for the kitchen, parlor, and rear first-floor bedroom for each half of the house; those in the parlors have Georgian raised-panel surrounds. Later in the nineteenth century, a wing was added at one end of the house after it was adapted for single-family use, and the farm came into the possession of the Goodenough family. From 1916 to 1936, it was the home of local poet Arthur Goodenough, whose heirs are responsible for its remarkable preservation.