By Barbara Taylor
It’s Labor Day weekend, September 1965. The car is packed and my parents are driving me up to Windham College (about 500 students) in Putney, VT. We take the highway system up through Connecticut and pick up Interstate 91. We reach Greenfield, MA and have to get off, it hasn’t been finished any further north. We locate US Route 5 and continue on up into Brattleboro and then to Putney. As we get close to Putney, you can see the white dorms in the distance, oh, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. There are only two dorms there and very hard to see.
Putney is a small rural town quite a bit different than where I’m coming from. The first business I see is the Putney Nursery on the left. A low building with ample parking in the front. Although gone today, on occasion we can find some flowers that pop up in odd places reminding us of what was once there. Just down from the nursery is the Windham College Administration building. A sizable building, two stories, as I remember. The building burned down on April 1, 1966. Everyone thought it was an April Fool’s prank but sorry to say it wasn’t.
Across the street is a large field, I could see a large building with sizable columns in front, Currier. I was soon to learn that this was a classroom building, as well as. the College dining hall in the basement and music rooms. Today it is still there, housing quite a few apartments. Several other College buildings were close by. The College campus was actually made up of many downtown buildings used for dorms and classrooms. The only bank in town was the Putney Credit Union. At the time I wasn’t familiar with credit unions. I soon found out that they weren’t pleased to have me deposit money in and then continually withdraw it, it was more of a place for savings.
Putney had no sewer plant. The hill. leading down to where it is currently operating today, was used by the athletic department in the winter to give skiing lessons. The field behind the Community Center was the soccer field.
We continued down the street to the post office and across the street to a lovely three-story building which was actually the College Library. A dorm was on the third floor, but the main floor housed the book collection and small rooms that could be used to listen to music – a requirement of the music department. Today it might be referred to as the Catalpa House since that lovely catalpa tree is still on the front lawn. It has been converted to beautifully designed condos.
Several doors from the library building are two gas stations. These seemed very busy. Charlie Daniels ran one, doing repairs. The Catholic church stood across the street.
Putney center had a large building on the left which I would learn was the Town Hall. The Paper Mill office was in the old tavern on the green. The General Store on the other corner provided almost anything you could need. Going up Kimball Hill, Jenny & Betsy Mellen had a small store and above them was the Putney Co-op. There is a large, impressive church and masonic hall across from it and many more houses. At the top of Kimball Hill is the Windham College Science Building that had once been the Putney Grammar School.
Across from the General Store is the Putney Paper Mill. Small windows lined the Rte. 5 road, and the workers would watch as people would walk by waving from time to time. On the other corner of Mill Street was a huge apartment building and then the Putney Restaurant. Today the apartment house is no longer there, and the restaurant is currently being renovated. In its day, it fed many of the factory workers, college students and local community.
Traveling further north on Rte. 5, we found Basketville, owned by Frank Wilson, on the right. Not quite the size of the building as we see it today. It housed the offices upstairs and the basket store downstairs. Sam’s Market was across the street and the Basketville Factory beside the market. The factory produced baskets, buckets and woodware products. They wove each basket and created each bucket by hand, spraying and sealing them right there.
Continuing north, the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, at the time, privately owned is on the left. It has grown further to Rte. 5 and along Sand Hill Road today. Around the major corner and taking a right on to River Road, the road to the dorms was on the left. Sperling barn was still standing, and the road went up to Aiken and Frost Hall. I was housed in Aiken, the women’s dorm, with Frost, a men’s dorm next to it. They stood on the hill overlooking a gravel pit at the bottom. The area would soon grow adding more dorms. the quad and campus below, as well as, many more students.
For the time being, our campus was in town. We walked down to Currier for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At times it could be hard, venturing around the curve with no sidewalk, in all seasons. There seemed to be lots of activity in town, people in and out of the stores. The traffic seemed to be minimal, only upper classmen were allowed to have cars on campus so many students were seen hitchhiking to Brattleboro when needed.
Putney would be my home for the next four years. During those years, I saw much change take place both on the new campus and downtown. It continues today.