Anatomy of a Vermont Village

You're passing through a lot of villages today, and they're built to a pattern that's worth knowing, because once you see it you'll see it in every one.

At the center, a green — a common, originally shared grazing ground. On or facing it: a white clapboard church with a tall steeple, a town hall, a general store, and usually an inn. The houses face the green. Everything important is within a two-minute walk, because it was all laid out before cars.

The style is mostly Greek Revival — those white houses with columns and pediments, built in the eighteen twenties to forties when Vermont was prosperous from sheep. That's why so much of the state looks like the eighteen thirties: the money ran out afterward, and nobody could afford to rebuild.

And Vermont still governs itself from these buildings. On the first Tuesday in March, in that town hall, the town meets — everybody who wants to comes, argues about the school budget and the road grader in person, and votes by raising a hand. Not electing representatives. Actually deciding, directly. It has worked that way for two hundred and fifty years and it still does.

So a Vermont village isn't preserved. It's just still in use.