Skip to content

Vermont Rural ~ Architectural Landscapes ~ The Quick (and the Enlightened) and the Dead


Warning: Use of undefined constant gad_content_tag_filter_replace - assumed 'gad_content_tag_filter_replace' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/dx87kwtjkt0i/public_html/wp-content/plugins/web-ninja-google-analytics/webninja_ga.php on line 1813

Back home with some catching up to do on the blog scene. Old Man Winter caught up with us in Vermont, way cold and snow on the ground. Wound our way back to Conway  checking in with each of our daughters and Old Man winter choose to spank us here as well. Cold and snow on the ground with some snow accumulation as well.

Spent a weekend in the great state of Vermont with good friend and photographer Steve Wack.  Lots of photographic adventuring; more architectural detail in rural Vermont than one would think.

Shard Villa

The Columbus Smith Estate

1177 Shard Villa Rd, West Salisbury, Vermont USA • Cut stone, 2-1/2 story. French Second Empire style.

A story to be told here!

The Shard Villa is a stone mansion in Salisbury, VT. Designed by Clinton Smith of Middlebury. Constructed for and by local attorney Columbus Smith in 1870. Columbus made his fortune overseas in the British courts and in particular representing the Mary Francis Shard family land holdings. The Shard family lands in England had been assumed by the British ‘crown’.The mansion was built at a time when Vermont marble was a sign of excellence and permanence in building. The structure is made of Ashlar marble. High arched windows, Italianate style forms, and a Mansard roof characterize this Victorian era mansion in French Second Empire style. Smith imported an Italian muralist to live at the Villa and paint the walls, ceilings, floors. screens and portraits. Surrounding side lawns and woods and a stone mausoleum complete this estate. A third story marble horn would call the field hands in from the surrounding countryside for meals.

Columbus built a stone mausoleum early on much to the notice of local wags. Unfortunately Columbus’ children predeceased him into said mausoleum. Columbus’ demise after his childrens’ deaths have given way to reports of hauntings at the Villa

Columbus’s widow, Harriet, upon her death in 1919, willed the estate and fortune to become a level III  residential-care home. A 2-1/2 story brick addition, with 14 rooms with private baths opened in 1922.

The Estate has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places (#89001789), since 1989.

Wind swept rural cemetery, Champlain Valley.

The village of Middlebury graces central Vermont. Vermont and its independent politics graces the United States.

God Bless Vermont

Categories: Uncategorized
Posted by bigdawg on April 3, 2011

Leave a comment

Note: HTML is allowed. Your email address will never be published.

Comments Feed

required
required