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Established | December, 1992 (built before 1893) |
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Location | 58 Bridge Street, White River Junction, Vermont, United States |
Coordinates | 43°39′00″N72°19′08″W / 43.6499°N 72.3189°W |
Visitors | Approximately, 2000/year |
Public transit access | Amtrak, bicycle |
Website | www |
Governance | Beneficent Committee/Non-profit, 501c03 |
The Main Street Museum is an eclectic display space for material culture and a civic organization in White River Junction, Vermont.
The museum's present form and activities resemble the 18th and 19th century "cabinet of curiosities" and point to an interest in the historic roots of museums and museology. However, the Museum also focuses on new technology, notably cataloging its collections and conducting online activity through its Wiki (see below).
The Main Street Museum was founded in 1992 by David Fairbanks Ford in an area of White River Junction known as the Old South End.
The museum's collections of material culture are seemingly unfocused, although this might be the intent of the museum's highly decentralized administration. Categories include: Flora; Fauna; significant objects from around the world; evidence of tramps; Round Things; Tangled Things; journals; extraneous bits of local history; sheet music; postcard collections; electromagnetism devices; relics from the head injury of Phineas Gage; Elvis impersonators; live music; taxidermy and biological anomalies (dehydrated cats). It simultaneously pays homage to the eighteenth century Wünderkammern and a focal point of new technology through its website. The Main Street Museum believes itself to have been the first museum in the world with a (functioning) blog, initiated in September 2005.
Described by the Washington Post as "quirky and avant-garde", a heterodox assortment of the local public, scholars, musicians, artists, historians, scientists, drunks and all other types of people have been drawn to the museum's unusual demonstrations, lectures and entertainments.
Currently located at White River Junction's former fire station on Bridge Street, next to the railroad underpass on the banks of the White River, the museum has been acknowledged as an integral part of White River Junction's downtown revitalization and the new urbanism of the region. The museum has been host to prominent, freighthopping musicians and tramps since 1999. Current publication projects of the Museum include a Seminole War era journal and Dictionary of Seminole, or Muskogean Creek, words, from Florida, 1839 through 1842.
“The Main Street Museum forces one to contemplate the nature of museums and curating. Why do we save what we save? How do we decide what to discard, what to display, what to hide away, and what to destroy.” — Joe Citro, Weird New England, New York, 2006
A catalog of the museum, as well as other pages describing the museum's collections and civic activities, was formatted and presented with Wiki software in the year 2008. Museum goals include cataloging every item in their collections in this ongoing project. [1]
White River Junction is an unincorporated village and census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Hartford in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 2,286 at the 2010 census, making it the largest community within the town of Hartford.
The city of Rutland is the seat of Rutland County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 16,495. It is located approximately 65 miles (105 km) north of the Massachusetts state line, 35 miles (56 km) west of New Hampshire state line, and 20 miles (32 km) east of the New York state line. Rutland is the third largest city in the state of Vermont after Burlington and South Burlington. It is surrounded by the town of Rutland, which is a separate municipality. The downtown area of the city is listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Rutland Railroad was a railroad in the northeastern United States, located primarily in the state of Vermont but extending into the state of New York at both its northernmost and southernmost ends. After its closure in 1963 parts of the railroad were taken over by the State of Vermont and are now operated by the Vermont Railway.
Frederick H. Billings was an American lawyer, financier, and politician. He is best known for his legal work on land claims during the early years of California's statehood and his presidency of the Northern Pacific Railway from 1879 to 1881.
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"Bennington Triangle" is a phrase coined by New England author Joseph A. Citro during a public radio broadcast in 1992 to denote an area of southwestern Vermont within which a number of people went missing between 1945 and 1950. This was further popularized in two books, including Shadow Child, in which he devoted chapters to discussion of these disappearances and various items of folklore surrounding the area. According to Citro, the area shares characteristics with the Bridgewater Triangle in Southeastern Massachusetts.
WNNE, virtual channel 31, branded on air as The Valley CW, is a CW+-affiliated television station licensed to Montpelier, Vermont, United States, serving Northern Vermont's Champlain Valley and Upstate New York's North Country. The station is owned by the Hearst Television subsidiary of New York City-based Hearst Communications, as part of a duopoly with Plattsburgh-licensed NBC affiliate WPTZ. WNNE and WPTZ share studios on Community Drive in South Burlington, with a secondary studio and news bureau on Cornelia Street in Plattsburgh; the two stations also share transmitter facilities on Vermont's highest peak, Mount Mansfield.
Vermont Route 14 (VT 14) is a 108.946-mile-long (175.332 km) north–south state highway in northeastern Vermont, United States. It extends from U.S. Route 4 (US 4) and US 5 in White River Junction to VT 100 in Newport. Between White River Junction and the city of Barre, the route parallels Interstate 89 (I-89). VT 14 was originally designated in 1922 as part of the New England road marking system. Its north end was truncated in 1926 as a result of the designation of US 2 but was extended north along an old alignment of VT 12 in the 1960s.
Vermont Route 133 (VT 133) is a 22.476-mile-long (36.172 km) north–south state highway in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. It runs from VT 30 in Pawlet in the south to VT 4A in West Rutland in the north.
Bellows Falls station is an Amtrak intercity rail station located in the Bellows Falls village of Rockingham, Vermont, United States. The station is served by the single daily round trip of the Washington, D.C.–St. Albans Vermonter. It has a single side platform adjacent to the single track of the New England Central Railroad mainline.
U.S. Route 4 (US 4) in the U.S. state of Vermont extends for 66.06 miles (106.31 km) between the New York state line at Fair Haven and the New Hampshire state line at White River Junction. It is one of the main arteries between New York and New Hampshire.
U.S. Route 7 (US 7) is a north–south highway extending from southern Connecticut to the northernmost part of Vermont. In Vermont, the route extends for 176 miles (283 km) along the western side of the state as a mostly two-lane rural road, with the exception of an expressway section between Bennington and East Dorset. US 7 is known as the Ethan Allen Highway for its entire length through the state. US 7 ends at an interchange with Interstate 89 (I-89) in the town of Highgate, just south of the Canadian border. I-89 continues to the border crossing.
WNHV was a radio station licensed to White River Junction, Vermont, United States. The station served the Lebanon-Rutland-White River area. The station was owned by Nassau Broadcasting III, LLC.
The 2016 Vermont gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2016 and elected the governor of Vermont, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
Julius A. Willcox was a Vermont educator, attorney, and judge. A longtime administrator in Vermont's state government, he is most notable for his service as an Associate Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1929 to 1931.
Milford K. Smith was a Vermont attorney, politician, and judge. He is most notable for his service as an Associate Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1959 to 1976.
Alban J. Parker was a Vermont attorney and politician who served as Vermont Attorney General from 1941 to 1947.
Harry H. Cooley was a Vermont teacher, farmer and public official who served in the Vermont House of Representatives and as Secretary of State.
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