Uncovered outdoor pedestrian shopping and dining mall consisting of the four blocks of Church Street between Main and Pearl Streets

How to Get There

Overview

The Church Street Marketplace is an uncovered outdoor pedestrian shopping and dining mall in Burlington, Vermont, consisting of the four blocks of Church Street between Main and Pearl Streets. The mall was initially conceived in 1958 and was built in 1980-81 to a design by Carr, Lynch Associates of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It encompasses about 86 storefronts and is managed by the Church Street Marketplace Commission.

Major retailers include five national chain stores as well as local retailers of clothing, home-wares, books, and other goods. It is the site of festivals throughout the year. Events such as the South End Art Hop and public galleries such as The Firehouse Gallery and Pine Street Art Works provide a forum for the visual arts. The American Planning Association named the Church Street Marketplace one of America's "Great Public Spaces" for 2008. The marketplace is also home to dozens of restaurants, bars, and coffee shops.

Historic districts

The mall is largely co-extensive with the Church Street Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010, however several of the buildings located on Church Street - including City Hall, Ethan Allen Engine Company No. 4, the Chittenden County Trust Company Building (#123), and the McAuliffe Building (#117) - are part of the City Hall Park Historic District. Two other buildings on Church Street, the Masonic Temple (#1) and Richardson Place (#2), as well as the Unitarian Church on Pearl St. are part of the Head of Church Street Historic District, which was listed in 1974. In addition, the Montgomery Ward Building (#52-54) is separately listed on the NRHP.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Church Street Marketplace", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0