Columns, Plainfield, Weeks Gone By

Greatwood and Goddard College: Legacy of Architectural Innovation

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Greatwood Manor House
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PLAINFIELD – Mansions and estates fascinate me, perhaps because there are multiple stories behind them. There’s the story of the families who built them, the story of the architects who designed them, and often what the late radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey, would have called “the rest of the story” or what became of them.

While exploring Plainfield last spring, I found myself on the campus of Goddard College, clearly at one time the home of a prosperous gentleman farmer. Intrigued, I decided to look for the story behind this unusual property, which seemed more suited to the North Shore of Massachusetts than central Vermont.

The Martin family, who built the property, actually came from the North Shore of Massachusetts, where an early ancestor, Susannah (North) Martin of Amesbury, was hanged for witchcraft in 1692. Jesse Martin, the progenitor of the Washington County Martin clan, was a Revolutionary War veteran from Francestown, N.H., who married Naomi Hopkins in 1779 and settled first in Marshfield and later in Plainfield.

Four of Jesse and Naomi Martin’s six children remained in the area as farmers with the result that, by 1860, there were multiple Martin farms scattered throughout Plainfield, Marshfield, Barre, and East Montpelier.

Hon. Willard S. Martin, Sr. (1827-1902)
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Jesse Martin’s grandson, Willard Shepard Martin Sr., was born January 26, 1827, to Joshua Baxter and Betsey (Shepard) Martin of Marshfield. Joshua was not wealthy, and Willard did not attend college. He married Fannie Lewis of East Montpelier on February 21, 1860, and on 4 April of that year, purchased a 240-acre farm then known as “the Niles place” near the intersection of what is now Routes 2 and 214.

The farm extended from the Winooski River east to Route 214. It was a bold purchase for a 33-year-old farmer of modest means, with the price structured as $1,000 in cash and a $6,000 mortgage, but the Martins persevered and ultimately prospered. The largely self-educated Willard became a judge, state senator, director of the Barre National Bank, and trustee of Goddard Seminary in Barre.

Despite its name, Goddard was neither a theological school nor a college but a state-denominational high school. Chartered by the Vermont State Convention of Universalists in 1863, it was initially known as the Green Mountain Central Institute; the name was changed to Goddard Seminary in 1870 to honor Thomas A. Goddard, a wealthy Boston merchant and significant benefactor. Goddard was also a supporter of Tufts University, where Goddard Chapel is named in his honor.

The Original Goddard Seminary in Barre, Vermont, circa 1910
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All four of Willard and Fannie Martin’s surviving children attended Goddard Seminary. Their eldest son, Willard S. Martin Jr. (Goddard 1889), went on to Tufts, graduating in 1893. In 1895, he married Maude Myra Morrison of Barre (Goddard 1891). The Morrison clan, like the Martins, were passionate farmers with business interests. Maude’s older half-brother, John Gale Morrison (Goddard 1873), had married Nellie Rawson, daughter of George W. Rawson, an inventor of various engines and hoisting machinery, with whom he subsequently founded Rawson & Morrison Manufacturing Co. of Cambridgeport, Mass.

Willard Martin appears to have encountered financial difficulties in the last years of his life, and he came perilously close to losing the family farm.

“The Vermont Watchman,” 25 March 1896
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At approximately the same time, Willard S. Martin Jr. left the insurance business to join his brother-in-law at Rawson & Morrison. By then, control of the Martin family farm had passed to Willard Jr., and his younger brother Orlando L. Martin, yet another Goddard alumnus, State Senator, and Vermont’s Commissioner of Agriculture. Willard S. Martin, Sr. died in 1902.

The younger Willard S. Martin became treasurer of Rawson & Morrison and eventually president of its successor firm, Mead Morrison Manufacturing. While keeping a home at 10 Channing Road in Cambridge, his real interest and affection was for the family’s farm in Plainfield. In 1908, he hired Boston architect James Templeton Kelley to rebuild the modest improvements as a state-of-the-art farm to be called Greatwood, replete with a shingle-style manor house, multiple barns, and other outbuildings.

Greatwood became nationally known for its herds of milking Shorthorn cattle and Shropshire sheep. By 1920 the farm encompassed some 1,500 acres of fields and 4,800 acres of woodland. The Field Illustrated described it as “Vermont’s finest farm.”

Goddard College Barn Complex
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Landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff, best known for his work at Colonial Williamsburg and the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Mass., was hired to create a formal garden at the rear of the manor house and, in 1918, an upper garden. The upper garden includes a small brick building with beams said to have been rescued from the courthouse in Ipswich, where Willard Martin’s ancestor Susannah (North) Martin was tried and sentenced for witchcraft 226 years before. The beams are supported with animal head corbels carved by the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts in Montreal.

In addition, the gardens feature a Korean Boxwood hedge presented to the family by the Japanese government in appreciation for their assistance in establishing a herd of Shorthorn cattle in Korea, then a Japanese protectorate.

Garden House at Greatwood
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On September 14, 1934, Willard S. Martin Jr., was killed when his car overturned while returning from the Barre Country Club. For several years, Greatwood was occupied by Willard and Maude’s son, John Morrison Martin, and his wife Alice, but in 1938, Maude Morrison Martin sold the farm to the trustees of Goddard College, which included luminaries such as Senator George Aiken, author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and journalist Dorothy Thompson, for $40,000. Some have suggested that the Martins, whose ties to Goddard ran deep, had designed Greatwood with this alternative use in mind.

Royce “Tim” Pitkin had assumed the presidency of Goddard Seminary and Junior College in 1936. Seeking to stabilize the struggling school, Pitkin rechartered it as a four-year college with an experiential focus based on Burlington native son John Dewey’s educational theories. Grades and examinations were abolished in favor of students participating in the selection of their curriculum and assuming much of the day-to-day responsibility for operating the college. Pitkin would remain at the helm of the institution for 33 years, retiring in 1969.

Village of Learning Dormitory – 1965
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Goddard’s avowedly progressive values are reflected in the nontraditional architecture of the buildings added in the 1960s and 1970s. The Village of Learning, an 11-building dormitory complex designed by Robert Martin Engelbrecht, was added in 1965, and the Pratt Center and Library, a concrete structure in the Brutalist style designed by Stephen Friedlander, was built in 1968.

In 1970 Goddard established an architecture program under John Mallery and David Sellars, graduates of the Yale School of Architecture and founders of the Design-Build movement. Goddard’s Design Building was constructed using shiplap siding, recycled windows, and the labor of 40 undergraduates at a cost of $40,000. Other Design-Build structures on the campus include the so-called Sculpture Building and the Painting Building.

Goddard College Design Building
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In 1996, Greatwood and its gardens were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sadly, various efforts to preserve them were lost in Goddard’s larger struggle to survive. In 2002, the college terminated its residential undergraduate degree program, opting for a low residency model with additional locations in Port Townsend and Seattle, Wash. Enrollment ultimately fell from 1,900 in the heyday of the 1970s to less than 250 in 2024, when the trustees made the decision to close.

Greatwood Project, a grassroots community-based nonprofit, is pursuing an effort to purchase the Goddard campus, preserve it, and repurpose the existing structures in a manner that will reflect the innovative legacy of both Greatwood Farm and Goddard College.

Elisha Lee’s blog “The Curious Yankee,” offers random investigations into the places and people of old New England and the stories behind them. Find more of his work at: curiousyankee.substack.com/

Elisha Lee

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