Creamery Covered Bridge

Site: V02-9
Municipality: Brattleboro, VT
Location: Guilford Street off Route 9 west, over Whetstone Brook
Site Type: Covered Bridge
Vt Survey No: ?
UTMs: (Zone 18) Lat: 42 deg 50' 57". Long: 72 deg 35' 11"

DESCRIPTION:

The Creamery Covered Bridge consists of a single span supported by two flanking timber Town lattice trusses, with a covered sidewalk attached to the eastern (downstream) side of the span. The abutments which support the ends of the bridge are built of stone slabs, though the northern abutment has been faced with concrete. The bridge is 80 feet long and 19 feet wide, with a 15-foot roadway; the attached sidewalk is 5.5 feet wide.

Constructed in 1879 of spruce lumber, the Creamery bridge lacked a sidewalk until about 1920.(1) Among other alterations made to the bridge, its original wood shingles have been replaced with slate; and corrugated metal sheeting covers the roof over the sidewalk whose pitch follows that of the main roof. Two guy cables have been strung from the western side of the bridge to the river bank to provide additional lateral support for the superstructure.

On the exterior, the large planks pegged together diagonally to form the trusses (and side walls) of the bridge are partly sheathed with flush boards hung vertically. Above waist level and inward eleven feet from the portals, the trusses have been left exposed along both sides of the bridge. Except on the northeast corner, vertical flush boards protect the ends of the trusses immediately inside the portals. The sidewalk is also open above waist level to the roof. The gables of the bridge are enclosed with flush vertical boards, with cross arms and holes for utility wires that were formerly strung through the bridge. The wood siding of the bridge and the sidewalk is painted red.

(1) Victor Morse (rev. by R. S. Allen), Windham County's Famous Covered Bridges, The Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, Vt., 1960, pp. 6-7.

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

Within the town of Brattleboro, once known for its variety of covered railroad and highway bridges, the Creamery bridge is the only covered wooden bridge to survive.

The structure is the only covered bridge visible from Route 9, the main east-west route across southern Vermont, and is consequently a major scenic resource, appreciated by thousands of travelers, in a region which is rapidly being stripped of its unique and characteristic man-made environment. The bridge serves a heavily traveled road which acts as a bypass route to the south end of Brattleboro from the west end of the city. Consequently, the structure is periodically threatened with destruction. The Vermont Division of Historic Sites hopes that National Register recognition will encourage local planners and engineers to work out alternative means of accommodating increased traffic while retaining this major feature of the historic environment of southeastern Vermont.

MAJOR BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Morse, Victor (rev. by R. S. Allen), Windham County's Famous Covered Bridges, The Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro,Vt., 1960.

Allen, Richard Sanders, Covered Bridges of the Northeast, The Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, Vt.,1957.

FORM PREPARED BY: Hugh H. Henry, Researcher, Vermont Division of Historic Sites, Pavilion Building, Montpelier, VT. Tel: not given. Date: May 17, 1973.

DATE ENTERED: August 28, 1973.
(Source 127)