The Pavilion (government building)

The Pavilion is the principal workplace of the Governor of Vermont, located at 109 State Street in Montpelier, capital of the U.S. state of Vermont. The building is built in the French Second Empire style, and houses the working offices, reception room, press briefing room, and living apartments of Vermont's governor. The term "The Fifth Floor" is sometimes used as a metonym for a governor's administration, or the Vermont governorship, which refers to the location of the governor's offices on the fifth floor of the Pavilion. The offices of two other elected statewide officials, the Vermont Attorney General and the Vermont State Treasurer, are housed in the Pavilion along with the Agency of Administration and the Vermont Historical Society and its museum.

The five story building is a 1971 reconstruction of an 1876 hotel, also called the Pavilion. While a hotel, the Pavilion was colloquially referred to as Vermont's "third house" (after the Senate and House of Representatives) because it was so intertwined with Vermont's political history, and, while a hotel, served as a home for many of Vermont's legislators.

The first hotel on the site was a three-story building built in 1807–1808 by Thomas Davis. This building was designed by Sylvanus Baldwin, representative for Montpelier in the Vermont General Assembly and a self-taught architect-builder who also designed the first Vermont State House sited roughly on the site of the present Vermont Supreme Court. Shortly after construction Davis sold the hotel to Mahlon Cottrill who greatly enlarged the building, rebuilding it in the Greek Revival style. Cottrill established the name The Pavilion, and added piazzas on the south and west sides as in the present building. In 1874 Theron O. Bailey acquired the hotel, razed the second building and erected a new ninety-guestroom Pavilion, adding two full floors, and an attic floor below its fashionable new mansard roof. Steam powered elevators carried guests from the ground to fifth floor. Two new ball rooms, dining rooms, and lounges were added – all lit by gas jet. A large two-story Italianate style piazza was added on the south side facing State Street, and to the west facing the public lawn of the Vermont State House. Bailey's grand new hotel cost $100,000, and opened in time for the 1876 Centennial of American Independence.

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