Features

By Lilly St. Angelo

Published in the Burlington Free Press on Nov. 18, 2022

The cream-colored house with dark brown and faded red trim stands out on Chase Street.

Its elegant mid-1800s French architecture, circular attic windows and two huge, ornately carved wooden front doors are from a different era than most of the modest brick and wooden-siding homes on the street, now mostly occupied by a revolving cast of young adult renters. A passerby could mistake 21 Chase Street to be a small museum, preserved only to be looked at and perhaps toured from time to time.

But a look inside reveals dog toys, crowded kitchen counters and shelves filled with family photographs. It's the Barr family's home, well-loved and lived-in, passed down through family by blood and by marriage since the mid 1800s when a wealthy manufacturer built it for his family. The industrial-era wealth, however, was lost throughout the years, the only remaining piece being the house and whatever each new family unit made for themselves. Current owner Jim Barr, who grew up in the house, knows the perceptions people may have.

"We're not rich," he said. "We're not these wealthy people. A lot of people think we are. No, everything goes into the house."

The home's story traverses many eras, tragedies, marriages and families, but it's also a part of a bigger picture. The neighborhood around Chase Street, which stretches from East Avenue to the Winooski River along Colchester Avenue, has evolved greatly over Barr's lifetime. While he is focused on preserving his family home to give to his own children someday, Barr and others have a larger mission to preserve a sense of place in their historic neighborhood.

While 21 Chase Street has never once strayed out of family hands since the mid 1800s, according to historical records, the lineage of its owners has some twists and turns.

It all began with a man named Edwin W. Chase, an enterprising young man and talented carpenter determined to run a factory in the Burlington area, according to an entry in the book "Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods Vol. II." Chase married Jane Edgecumbe, daughter of Winooski mill owner George Edgecumbe, in 1844 and George Edgecumbe sold a plot of land to the couple to build a home. From records, the house that can be seen today at 21 Chase Street was most likely built between 1857 and 1869. It is unclear whether a previous house, most likely built in 1848, was added onto or destroyed and rebuilt into the home that stands today.

Chase, who was a workaholic by today's standards, endured three devastating fires during his career: two that burned down his sash and blinds factory in Winooski on separate occasions and one that burned down his furniture factory on the waterfront. His persistence paid off, however, as his business was booming by the late 1860s. He was known for giving his workers generous wages and being at the office early in the morning until late at night.

Then came a series of tragedies. Chase died at his desk at the age of 60 in 1878 after suffering the loss of his wife two years earlier. Their only child, Mary Sibley, married Eugene Sibley in 1876, six days after her mother died. In the same period of time that Mary lost her parents, Eugene lost his as well. Mary Sibley then died in 1883 from causes unrecorded. She was 28.

"A cloud of sorrow has been over the house, all the way from the first which has grown darker by the recent sorrow...," her obituary read.

Eugene Sibley then gained ownership of the house and lived there until his death in 1910. He remarried in 1909 to his housekeeper, Edna Mead, who received the house after he died. She then willed it to her sister Nellie Mead Lee, who lived in the house until her death in 1933 with her husband Henry Lee. The house was then vacant for about ten years from 1939-1949 before it was claimed by Nellie Mead Lee's daughter Ruth's husband. Ruth Lee had two husbands during her lifetime, Harry P. Barr and Donald Beach. She had a son with her first husband before he died, and his name was John Barr, the father of Jim Barr, the current owner of the house.

Phew, take a breather.

Barr, 61, retired from his career as a University of Vermont director of transportation this past summer. Before working at UVM, he had a military career for 23 years. Though Barr's three kids are all grown, the house is still full of family and pets in true 2022 fashion.

One of Barr's sons, his wife and their two cats moved in a few months before the pandemic hit to have a place to live while they searched for housing in the area. They've now lived there for three years due to the extremely tight housing market.

Barr's grand-dogs — his son's Bernese mountain dog and his daughter's blue heeler puppy — also come over for pet sitting regularly.

The home is a mélange of old and new with pieces of beautifully-carved dark wooden furniture made by Edwin Chase himself all over the house next to TVs and modern kitchen appliances. Because the house has never been fully purged, stacks of old wooden furniture remain in the attic. Barr is torn about whether to keep everything or let some of it go. He thinks most of the pieces were made by Chase.

Now that he's retired, Barr is thinking about the next projects he'll do on the house. So far, he has replaced the roof, the furnace, the garage, the back porch and the windows, not to mention the detailed cleaning he and his wife do with Murphy soap and toothbrushes every year on the front doors. Renovations on historic homes can be quite a bit more expensive than renovations on a newer home. When they replaced all the windows in the late 90s, it cost them $25,000 because of their irregular shapes and sizes by today's standards. Barr estimates that in total, they've spent $500,000 to update and preserve the house.

"We've often said that we'd be rich people if we didn't have it," Barr said.

Though the cost of keeping it has been steep, Barr is happy that one of his sons is interested in inheriting the family home and keeping it in the family.

"I couldn't sell this house and still live in Burlington," he said.

He grew up there, going to Schmanska Park, playing street hockey and skateboarding with his neighbor friends on Chase Street, yelling "car!" when the occasional vehicle passed through. 

Almost the whole street, which runs diagonally off of Colchester Avenue, was owner-occupied homes back then, Barr said, a contrast to the amount of rentals that now are there.

The neighborhood around Chase Street is not closely connected to Burlington itself. The large hill on Colchester Avenue separates it from UVM's campus and the rest of the city, and as a child Barr would go to Winooski for trinkets and candy because it was much closer. From Chase Street's perch on the hill, the residents can see the steeples of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church and downtown Winooski on the other side of the river.

"Most people just think it's a cut-through to get to South Burlington or some people think we're in Winooski," Barr said.

The area between East Avenue and the Winooski River is one of Burlington's oldest neighborhoods. Not only was it near the mills of Winooski, it was also off of the oldest road in Burlington, Colchester Avenue. The road linked Winooski to Burlington's industrial lakefront and also became an important trade route to Canada.

The neighborhood, however, does not have an unofficially sanctioned Burlington name like the Old North End, the South End or the New North End, even though it is distinct from other areas of town. But some residents like Barr are trying to fix that. The Old East End Neighborhood Coalition is a group trying to rebrand the neighborhood using a name that some families in the area have used for generations. According to the coalition's website, their goal is to "help build community, preserve history, and ensure safer streets."

They organize events like Winterlude at Schmanska Park every year, commissioned a neighborhood mural at the corner of Chase and Barrett Streets and communicate with the Department of Public Works about traffic-calming needs.

Barr likes to introduce himself to new renters when they move in, both to try to prevent loud gatherings and to build community as one of the only permanent residents on the street.

"I'm Jim. I live across the street," he says. "My family lives there and I just wanted to say hi."