Landscape, Economics and Transportation: In what ways have these forces shaped Middleburys urban fabric?

Middlebury towns urban fabric has little evidence of a planned urban development or a coherent city plan that would control and organize its expansion throughout time. In contrast Middlebury, like many medieval settlements, is characterized by a series of organic forces that have shaped its development from the origin as small village to the current contemporary town. Middleburys urban growth can be divided into two distinct periods in which different forces interacted to shape its urban fabric. The first stage is characterized by the towns expansion from the core, where the first settlements appeared in the eighteenth century, in a disorganized and often chaotic manner of organic growth patterns. The second stage is defined by the introduction of the automobile to the American society in the twentieth century. In the early 1900s Middleburys urban planning dynamics were drastically transformed by this new way of transportation. As many citizens started to adopt the automobile leaving behind horses and carriages the towns planning focused on the car.

The main element for Middleburys geographic location and urban development is the areas topography. The town is

surrounded by mountains and divided in two by The Otter creek. Most of Middleburys economic and social activity takes place along the creek. Not only because it served as a major water way and transportation route when the Addison County was formed 1 , but also because two of the main settlements that led to the development of the town were built on each side of the creek by Middlebury falls in the late 1780s. These two developments started as mill works seeking to use the water power of the falls for their production process. With these settlements, two different clusters of development appeared on each side of the falls. Since its foundation, Middlebury town grew towards the falls. Initially because the falls were important to generate electric power and later on because, with the building of a bridge connecting the developments on the northern and southern banks of the creek, it became a major transit route. The construction of what today is Battell Bridge was an essential factor for the development of the town. The bridged allowed for the creation of the main street, which merges the two earlier clusters of development and forms the commercial center of the town.

Andres, Glenn M, and Greg Pahl. A Walking History of Middlebury. Middlebury, Vt: Sheldon Museum, 1997. Print.

Main Street runs from the north to the south, crossing the otter creek at the falls. As one of the busiest or probably the busiest street in town it concentrates many commercial settlements. Nearly all of the buildings along Main Street have a commercial

establishment on the ground level and some share residential spaces at the top. At each end, the street has important areas of public flat grounds, which work as intersections to channel traffic from other roads to Main Street and vice versa. On the northern end of Main Street one can find The Green. This public park, which serves as a place for leisure and

entertainment for residents, is delimited by Main Street on the west and Merchants Row, an extension of the commercial establishments on Main Street, on the south. The Green is located in a flat and central area of the town delimited by commercial establishment and near important social buildings like the town hall. However, because most of the economic activity is carried out in Main Street and Merchants Row, The Green has always been oriented to social aspects of the city life rather than to economic ones. At the beginning, The Green was used as a place for public punishments but as time passed it developed as an area for concerts and public events2.

Andres, Glenn M, and Greg Pahl. A Walking History of Middlebury. Middlebury, Vt: Sheldon Museum, 1997. Print.

The town expands in an irregular and non coherent network of roads from both ends of Main Street at each side of the creek. On the northern side of the town, Main Street diversifies into five different roads that expand in a radial manner having The Green as its focal point. These roads developed as the towns population grew and all the Main street business owners needed houses to live in. The roads connect the residential areas of Middlebury Town to its commercial and social centers located near Main Street to the south west and with route seven, a major state transportation route, to the north. On the Northwest side of Main Street, towards the creek banks one can find the industrial district of Marble works. While the area along Main Street developed as a commercial cluster, it was no longer suitable for the originally planned industrial mill works. The mills moved, thanks to tax incentives 3, to what is now the commercial district of marvel works, a flat area close to the creek where they could still take advantage of the falls for electrical power purposes. This industrial area was also located near the railroad tracks, which helped the arrival of raw materials and delivery of finished products. On the southern side of the river, Main Street ends in a public square similar to The Green but smaller in size. Cannon Green, as this square is known, is set up as a monument for the civil war. The

Andres, Glenn M, and Greg Pahl. A Walking History of Middlebury. Middlebury, Vt: Sheldon Museum, 1997. Print.

Cannon Green is surrounded by important public buildings such as the Henry Sheldon museum of Vermont history and the Isley library, which were built to attain the needs of the growing town. From the Cannon Green, Main Street diversifies in a similar manner to its northern end in a variety of roads that serve to connect residential areas and Middlebury College to the core. During throughout this time, stage and the as purpose of each area changed roads

the

population

grew,

more

connecting the residential and industrial areas with the business center where laid out without any logic other than being connected with Main Street. These were the main forces shaping Middleburys urban fabric until the introduction of the automobile at the beginning of the twentieth century. The automobile increased the number of inter state highways and roads, which had an important positive effect on rising traffic and movement between different towns. However, it did little on improving the conditions of the towns local infrastructure that suffered from the increase in traffic. This fact increased the disparity between the mobility across the countryside and the mobility within urban settlements, which local authorities and planners are still trying to reduce4. Characteristics of automobile driven planning and

consequences from the introduction of the automobile to Middlebury

Gutfreund, Owen D. Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print

can be seen almost everywhere in the town. Perhaps the most important and more evident one is the towns sprawl and expansion from a small village centered around main street to its current scattered distribution. Given that the automobile allowed people to move easily to and across town, new developmental units started appearing away from Main Street and The Green. Most residential areas shifted from downtown apartments to separate single family houses in new areas 5 more suitable for living, as the main street cluster became very crowded and business oriented. Now days one can find residential neighborhoods in Middlebury that would not be easily accessible and sustainable without the existence of the automobile. As new residential areas grew apart and the population increased, commercial and industrial developments followed.

Middlebury has a number of banks, supermarkets and different retail shops spread along route 7 that opened in response to car transit. It is hard to imagine the existence of any of these shops, including the shopping plaza with T.J. Max, Hannaford, McDonalds, etc, without the existence of the automobile since these shops are hardily accessible to a pedestrian or by public transportation. The industrial sector was also influenced by the introduction of the automobile given that most of Middleburys industrial zones are in

Gutfreund, Owen D. Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print

areas far away from downtown that require a motor vehicle to get to. This distribution of residential and business spaces helped increase in town traffic and transformed Middlebury into a very pedestrian unfriendly town. Increased car traffic created a major problem in town and forced planners and local authorities to build of street parking and widen streets, which completely changed the towns landscape. Today almost every single commercial building, with the exception of the ones on Main Street and Merchants Row, have been moved back from the street to allow for off street parking making the stores less accessible for pedestrians an breaking with the sense of organization given by uniformity on buildings. Two examples of this modification to Middleburys urban fabric can be found in Shaws supermarket where the store entrance is separated from the street by a large parking lot and in the Addison county courthouse where for the same purpose of having a necessary parking lot the courthouse is completely separated from the street making its access very difficult to pedestrians. The town has also dedicated several on street parking spots along Main Street and Merchants Row to deal with the same issues of traffic. These parking spots do allow costumers to park close to different establishments but also block the views of the buildings facades and at some parts block the views and access to The Green.

The

most

recent

automobile

driven

modification

to

Middleburys urban fabric is the new bridge over Otter Creek. The bridge construction was once again directed to address problems associated with increased in town car traffic. The bridge reduces traffic from the main street bridge and it also allowed for the construction of a centralized of street parking lot, which permits visitors to park close to downtown and moves cars away from on street parking. This construction demonstrate that today, more than one hundred years away form the introduction of the first car in Middlebury, the automobile continues to be one of the major forces shaping its urban fabric. When first introduced, the car modified the way that people lived and consequently modified the way people planned their towns. In many cases, like Middleburys, urban planning around the car was addressed in ways that favored transit between settlements and disregarded the problems associated with intra-urban transit. However, these issues related to increased traffic within towns has taken a major role in current urban planning and will continue to be a major feature of future urban planning in Middlebury and the majority of urban developments.

Sources:

Andres, Glenn M, and Greg Pahl. A Walking History of Middlebury. Middlebury, Vt: Sheldon Museum, 1997. Print.

Gutfreund, Owen D. Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Morris, A E. J. History of Urban Form: Before the Industrial Revolutions. Harlow, Essex, England: Longman Scientific & Technical, 1994. Print.