A single city block holds the Wells-Richardson Complex, the historic commercial-industrial district in downtown Burlington bounded by Main, Pine, College, and St. Paul Streets just west of City Hall Park. This single city block carries nearly a century's worth of development: it is dominated by the former plant of the Wells-Richardson Company, a highly successful maker of patent medicines in the late 19th century, and the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Imagine the stagecoaches arriving here: this site sits at the former northern terminus of a stagecoach route, now United States Route 7, and it sits near the civic center of the city and Chittenden County across St. Paul Street to the south of the park.
Look up at the oldest surviving building at the northern end of the St. Paul Street block — a brick structure first built in the 1820s as a three-story building and later renovated and enlarged in 1870 and 1910, when it was part of the Burlington Steam Laundry. Other buildings facing the park were constructed as hotels beginning in 1872, contributing to the lively mix of commercial life you feel underfoot. Your route crosses a block once dominated by Wells-Richardson's patent-medicine plant, its brick neighbor rising from the 1820s to 1910.