Category: historic buildings of Bennington New Hampshire

The Catholic Church

April 1st, 2024

In small towns of northern New England, if you see a Roman Catholic church, you know that you are in a former or current Mill Town. With the influx of people from Quebec Province, Ireland, and Italy in the 1890s, those workers needed a place of worship. And so it was in Bennington, New Hampshire.

The oldest churches in Town were the Congregational Church [1833] and the Baptist Church [1824]. The Town was founded as a place for mills, but originally those were small, local, family-run operations. Immigration to Bennington hit its stride in the late 1800s, when people arrived to work in the Paper Mill. These immigrants needed a church of their own, but there was no Catholic Church.

The first Catholic residents of the Town had to travel to Keene to attend church. Beginning in 1870, a priest from Keene would come to Bennington once a month, to hold mass in some private home. In 1875, they could go to Peterborough, once a church was established there. In the 1880s, Catholic church services were held weekly in the Town Hall, conducted by visiting priests from Hillsboro. It was a dream to have a church of their own and a dedicated cemetery. All this required several steps: purchasing land [1894], receiving permission from the Bishop for a ‘mission church’ without a resident priest [1895], and building a church. Ground was broken in 1895, for a church named Saint Patrick’s which rose on a knoll at the south end of Main Street, where it turns south to Greenfield.

The original church, before it was painted white.

Not until 1936 did the parish finally have its own pastor for the flock. A house was built across Greenfield Road from the church as a rectory and parish hall. By 1942, members of the parish came from Greenfield, Antrim, Francestown, Hancock, and New Boston. In 2005, the Bishop of New Hampshire decided that there weren’t enough priests to go around. Thus the Bennington, Harrisville, and Peterborough parishes were to be com-bined into Divine Mercy parish. In 2011, the church was decommissioned, and for a few years the basement of the building was the location for Town elections, until they moved to the school due to mold in the walls. The building is now a private home.

The next installment of the Bennington NH Historical Society Blog will be posted on April 29, 2024. If you click the Subscribe button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month – for free.
Bennington Architecture: the Federal

February 26th, 2024

One can tell a lot about the economic history of a community by looking at the houses. If one style predominates, that reveals when the fortunes of the town were at their peak. Architecture styles change over time, showing the preferences of the people based on convenience, availability of materials, and outside influences. Bennington is no different, as eight distinct styles were employed from late 1700s to the 1950s: the Cape; the Colonial; the Federal; the Gable-Front; American Gothic; Italianate; Second Empire; the Queen Anne; and the Ranch.

High up on Verney Farm Road, we find this gem of a Federal-style house. Only one room deep, it has extensive additions in wood, built as the family out-grew the original farmhouse.

The ‘Federal Period’ of US history coincides with the years after the Revolutionary War. Our nation was then deciding what type of government to use, and eventually, it was agreed that a Federal System would work best. From about 1780 to 1840, a style of architecture emerged called “Federal.” An evolution of ”Georgian Style“, it is very similar. What makes a house of this era Federal instead of Georgian is that it is built in America — Georgian Style is named after the British king against whom we rebelled. No way was anyone going to name a house style after him any more!

Benjamin Whittemore built his elegant Federal in 1830 at the North end of Main Street. The bricks were produced in Bennington with clay from the Weston family property. Note the wooden El at the back, which most likely housed the kitchen.

There were two stories, like a Colonial, five windows above, two windows flanking the central door. Often built of brick, these buildings had two or four chimneys and were highly symmetrical. One of the hallmark features surrounds the doorway: above the door is a ‘fan’ of wooden slats or often a fan-shaped window. Alongside of the door, on both sides, are small-paned, narrow windows. You see that fan-light, you are seeing a Federal.

Stagecoach Road is the site of another grand Federal house that checks all the style boxes.

Inside of the rectangular or square building were rooms at each corner: four upstairs, four downstairs. There was a large central hall that featured a graceful staircase to the upstairs. Often, a two-story wooden El was built on the back, for more bedrooms and for work space for the servants. The roof is gable-ended or hip-style.

When the Federal Style was popular, owners of older houses would ‘up-date’ their Capes or Colonials by adding windows around the front door to look more modern. That sure muddies the waters when trying to guess the age of an old house!

This Cape-style house on Bible Hill Road has a very Federal doorway.

This house on Main Street has elements of a Colonial, with a Federal-ish doorway and portico.

The next installment of the Bennington NH Historical Society Blog will be posted on March 25, 2024. If you click the ‘Subscribe’ button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.
The Pest House

January 1st, 2024

Nowadays, ‘pest control’ might mean getting the red squirrels out of your attic, but in centuries past, it was a matter of public health and safety. Epidemics would sweep through communities: cholera, diphtheria, measles, chickenpox, influenza. We are vaccinated against diseases these days, but before modern medicine, they could kill. Towns needed a way to deal with pestilence, since there were no hospitals and not every town had a doctor.

Isolation was a method for stopping the spread of infectious disease. An infected family could shelter in place. But for illness in many homes at once, there was the Pest House [that’s short for ‘pestilence’]. Bennington built a simple structure on the West side of the river, outside of the Village Center. The very ill who were highly infectious would be sent there to wait it out. Volunteers, either a family member or a charitable townswoman who had previously survived the disease, would tend the sick.

The building was fair-sized but comfort was doubtful. The sick probably had to provide their own bedding and food. This was not a hospital in the modern sense — it was a holding space to keep the sick away from the well, until they recovered or died.

Eventually the building had other uses. Being near the railway, it became the Tramp House for a while. Homeless men who were out of work would ride the rails in the 1930s, going from place to place looking for jobs. When they arrived in Bennington, they were told to stay in the Tramp House until they left town.

Later, the Pest House was moved next to the Town Hall and used for storage. At last, it was moved down Main Street, to the sight of one of the original factories, to become the building for the Bennington Historical Society.

The next installment of the Bennington NH Historical Society Blog will be posted on January 29, 2024. If you click the Follow button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.