When Edward Dewey, vice president of National Life Insurance Company, in 1889 decided that he wanted to build a large, ornate Queen Anne-style house across the street from the Statehouse (see “Then & Now,” The Bridge, Sept. 7, 2022), he didn’t tear down his father’s modest Gothic Revival house that occupied the lot. Instead he moved the house 800 feet up the street to an empty lot at 144 State Street. The historic home was used as a guest house and the “Admiral Dewey Antique Shop” from the 1920s until 1968. The Montpelier Women’s Club tried to raise money to turn the building into a museum, but the effort failed, and in 1969 the building was sold to a developer who tore it down and constructed a one-story building for the telephone company. The building was purchased by the state of Vermont in 1999 and is now used by the Green Mountain Care Board.
