Unraveling the Mystery of the Museum’s Chimneys

1976 photo of UVM students measuring the building

Sometimes, a single photograph can open the door to an entire historical mystery.

That’s exactly what happened when I came across a 1976 photo of a University of Vermont student perched high on a ladder, measuring one of the chimneys at the American Precision Museum. The question was: why?

At first, I assumed that the student was documenting the rear chimney as a reference for the front chimney’s restoration. A later discovery of another photo → showing the front chimney in seemingly good condition made me question that assumption. So, what was really going on?

1974 photo

To piece together the puzzle, I looked at other historical records. A 1909 photo showed a flaring rim at the top of the rear chimney. This flared rim projecting out from a wall is called “corbeling.” This can serve both as reinforcement and as ornamentation. Interestingly, in that same 1909 photo, there were two chimneys at the front of the building—one belonging to the power plant that once generated electricity for Windsor. This particular chimney stood near what is now the museum’s driveway and was part of the boiler and generator room, located where today’s memorial garden stands.

↑The chimney farther from the camera and to the left, which was the broader, taller, and more dramatically corbelled one, belonged to the power plant where electricity was generated and distributed around Windsor. Most of the power for those generators came from steam.

While many pieces of the puzzle are coming together, some questions remain. Was the 1976 measurement simply for documentation, or was a larger project underway? What prompted the change from straight walls to corbeling on the front chimney?

History is never static—it’s a process of discovery. And sometimes, all it takes is a single photograph to set off an investigation.