After decades of deferred maintenance, the 306-foot Bennington Battle Monument, with its stone sodden in approximately 66,000 gallons of water, is in desperate need of restoration work.
James Duggan, the state’s director of preservation for state historic sites, said the total cost of the restoration effort — including removing moisture and strengthening the walls and foundation — would amount to $40 million, or even more if action is not taken soon.
The monument is Vermont’s most-frequented historic site, attracting 40,000 visitors last year with over $275,000 accrued in state revenue, according to Duggan’s presentation to the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions on Feb. 4.
“Nothing is being done while we’re thinking about how to get some traction and moving forward,” Duggan said during the presentation. “That is going to continue to increase the amount of deterioration, as well as increase the costs and the amount of work that has to be finished later.”
Since the $40 million price tag for the restoration was revealed last month, debate has ensued over whether saving the monument is worth the cost.
Lyman Orton — a proprietor of the Vermont Country Store and Vermont antiquarian, who has acquired the largest private collection of Vermont art — believes there are innovative, potentially holographic solutions to the monument’s age-old problems.
In a recent letter to the editor published in the Manchester Journal, Orton suggested tearing down the original monument and erecting a new kind of memorial to the Battle of Bennington.
Speaking with VTDigger, Orton reminisced about his childhood visiting the monument and the thrill of reaching the overlook with his father, who served as chairman of the Vermont Historic Sites Commission at that time. Orton said he also remembered his father grumbling about the problems with the monument’s stone absorbing water and causing continual need for repairs back in the 1950s.
Orton said he sees history repeating itself and is worried that future generations will be saddled with the monument’s continued maintenance costs due to the ill-chosen stone. Amid federal funding cuts, Orton also voiced doubts that the state could find sufficient funds for the restoration effort.
“How are we going to come up with $40 million to try to patch up a water-soaked bunch of limestone?” Orton asked. “It’s not granite. It’s not even marble. It’s limestone, so it’s not good stuff. It soaks up water.”
Orton floated the idea of developing a hologram of the monument in his opinion piece, but said he hopes to seed a conversation and encourage people to think “outside the box” to imagine other ideas of how to replace the monument as the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bennington approaches in 2027.
“Youth is not so much constrained by history, so they might be able to think of some things that older people would not conceive of,” Orton said. “Maybe we should do something that’s outrageous, rather than just patch it up.”
But Thomas Scheetz — a first-year student at Harvard College and a Bennington resident who grew up near the monument and wrote a book on the history of buildings in Old Bennington — said he believes restoration is a worthwhile investment.
The monument’s draw for tourists is an economic boon to the town and the obelisk structure serves as an important symbol to the local community, he said.
Scheetz said he has observed conversations in favor of removing the monument gaining traction in the past month on social media and in comments posted following a story in Vermont Daily Chronicle. He said he is worried the public discourse could grow and eventually influence the Legislature’s decision-making regarding whether to restore or replace the monument.
Taking down monuments would be disruptive to the local community and would not be effective as a cost-saving measure, Scheetz said. He added that there are centuries of history and people’s markings etched into the stone that would be irrevocably lost if the monument was disassembled.
“I think the community recognizes that there is great potential in the present thing, and great symbolic meaning in the present thing for the community, so I think that might be lost partially by replacement,” Scheetz said. “It’s going to cost a ton of money to take it down and a ton of money to replace, so it doesn’t seem that, if we’re aiming for frugality, that should be the option we take.”
As part of the study of the monument, State Historic Preservation Officer Laura Trieschmann said it was determined it would require an estimated $20 million just to tear down the existing structure.
Trieschmann said she recognized the water absorption problems with the monument’s exterior, composed mostly of Sandy Hill dolomite, a blue-gray magnesian limestone, but said replacing the monument is not as simple as it sounds.
“Was it the best stone to use for today’s climate? Maybe not,” Trieschmann said in an interview. “But replacing it would be a lot more expensive, and it would end up being a reconstruction. We’re looking for a restoration.”
Trieschmann said the state is studying the monument to understand how it responds to weather changes to create long-term solutions, adding that the monument will be more resilient to climate change if proper funding is allocated for the large-scale restoration.
“If we do this correctly, we’re looking at another 100 years of this being a really good, solid monument before it might need another check-up,” Trieschmann said during last month’s presentation to the House committee.
The Division for Historic Preservation has received a handful of calls from people around Vermont urging the state not to take down the monument, Trieschmann said, but none that advocated for the monument to be dismantled and replaced.
Trieschmann said the state is focused on restoration, and the state’s preservation division is looking for piecemeal funding to begin the next phase — to design scaffolding and a dehumidifying system for the structure.
“Taking it down would require justification that all alternatives have been exhausted, and there is no justification for that alternative at this point,” Trieschmann wrote in an emailed statement. “It is the most visited state-owned historic site in Vermont, recognized for its vistas to three states, construction history, and association with the Revolutionary War.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: With $40 million worth of restoration needed, Vermonters debate future of Bennington Battle Monument.