Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Saint Johnsbury

St. Johnsbury is home to one of the finest collections of Victorian-era architecture in northern New England. In the 19th century, a single family emerged to dominate both the industrial and cultural center of the town, the fortunes of the town rose with the family. The Fairbanks family developed the first commercial platform scale, which could weigh the bulky locally produced crops of hemp using a system of levers. At first the scale was just an addition to their product line of farm implements, but the scale business quickly grew to employ a thousand workers in various shops, forges and foundries. When the railroads arrived in the 1850s, the entrepreneurial family manufactured locomotives. The railroads transformed a meadow below Main Street into a thriving commercial district of banks, shops and hotels on Railroad Street. Dozens of passenger trains passed through each day on their way to Montreal and Boston and points afar. A vibrant French Canadian community of mill workers grew on the slope between the upper and lower part of town. The imprint of all this is reflected in four historic districts in St. Johnsbury that retain the flavor of the times in which they were built. The Fairbanks family, whose legacy lives on in the museum, library, and school they founded, shaped much of the town’s industrial and social history and the architecture of the vibrant downtown they helped to build.

The Athenaeum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is significant because of its construction, the American landscape paintings and books from its original role as a public library and free art gallery, and funding by Horace Fairbanks, manufacturer of the world’s first platform scale. The art collection contains a number of Hudson River School paintings. This building retains a strong, late Victorian (French Second Empire) flavour. It is one of about ten athenaeums in the United States. In 1873, Fairbanks added a small art gallery. This is now one of the few art galleries in the United States that features late 19th century Victorian-style design which highlights intricate paint/stencil schemes, detailed moldings, creative natural lighting, and unique painting installations. The walls and floor are black walnut. The art gallery is lighted naturally from an arched skylight in the ceiling. Cases on two sides of the room contain art books in tooled leather bindings. The paintings are displayed in gilt frames.