Spaulding School Building

The former Spaulding School Building is a historic structure that has overlooked the city of Barre, Vermont, United States, since 1891. It now houses the Vermont History Center, the home of the Vermont Historical Society.

The building was designed by Vermont architect and builder Lambert Packard (1832–1906). Trained by his father as a carpenter, Packard found employment as a draftsman and a pattern maker before becoming the carpenter foreman and later the company architect of E. and T. Fairbanks and Company in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Packard designed many of St. Johnsbury's notable buildings, including the Fairbanks Museum and the North Church. According to biographer Allen D. Hodgdon, "During his career, Packard was called upon to design practically ever kind of building known to the profession." He designed over 800 buildings during his Vermont career from 1866 to 1906.

The Spaulding School is Packard's interpretation of a popular mid-19th century architectural style known as Richardsonian Romanesque, named for the work of prominent Victorian architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1881). In red brick and Barre granite, Packard referenced the weighty, polychromatic Romanesque style with large, round-arched entranceways, recessed windows with contrasting sills, carved capitals, and the characteristic towers and turrets.

The school was named for Jacob Shedd Spaulding (1811-188), principal from 1852 to 1880 of the Barre Academy, the private school that occupied the site from 1852 to 1885. Spaulding was a graduate from Dartmouth College and a successful teacher at the Bakersfield Academy in Vermont before coming to Barre. He was a respected Vermont educator of "sound morals and religious principles."

On August 15, 1891, former Academy graduate and Barre businessman Charles A. Smith declared the cornerstone, "a fine specimen of Barre granite," to be "well laid." The new school, dedicated in September 1892, contained nine large classrooms, a chapel, a chemical and physical laboratory, a library and two teachers' rooms; it housed high school and younger students.

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