GPS City GuideBurlingtonUnited States Post Office and Customhouse

Stop 9 of 33 · Burlington audio walking tour

United States Post Office and Customhouse

downtown Burlington · 1906 · Beaux-Arts government building

What you'll hear here: about a minute on United States Post Office and Customhouse — the story behind what you're looking at, playing hands-free as you arrive.

At 175 Main Street in downtown Burlington, you face the marble and granite U.S. Post Office and Custom House of 1906, now the Chittenden County Superior Court. Built in 1906 and designed by James Knox Taylor in the Beaux-Arts style, this large three-story masonry structure has an exterior of marble and dressed granite. Once serving as a custom house and post office and known in the 1970s as the Smith-Goldberg U.S. Army Reserve Center, it now houses the Chittenden County Superior Court after the previous county courthouse burned down in 1982.

The principal facade faces Main Street and is five bays wide. The ground floor appears as a basement level, with large blocks of marble in horizontal bands and stylized arching over the window openings. The second and third floors form a U shape opening to the south, with tall windows on the second and shorter ones on the third, each articulated by paired Ionic columns.

The building is crowned by an entablature, dentillated. From the southeast corner of Church and Main, paired Ionic columns rise past you toward a dentillated crown.

Where it is

Coordinates
44.47583, -73.21222
Area
downtown Burlington
Era
1906 · Beaux-Arts government building
Start the Burlington tour →

Three stops free. No account needed. The audio plays itself as you walk.