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Vermont House

This intimate stone structure was built as a log home in Shelburne in 1790. When the house was moved to the Museum in 1950, the clapboards and interior walls had deteriorated so badly that little of the structure could be salvaged. Stone from a gristmill in Shelburne Falls, Vermont, was laid in a scatterstone pattern to form replacement façades, and feather-edged boards were removed from Vermont and New Hampshire houses to serve as interior walls.

Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb first used Vermont House to portray the imagined home of a retired wealthy sea captain who had collected high-style American furnishings and French and English decorative accessories in his travels. Today the building displays the Museum’s unparalleled collections of Vermont furniture.