By STEVEN JUPITER
PROCTOR—Located on the former campus of the Vermont Marble Company (VMC) in downtown Proctor, the Vermont Marble Museum (VMM) told the story of one of Vermont’s most important industries and most distinguished companies. There was a time when VMC dominated not only the state’s commerce, but also its politics: several company presidents also became state governor. Moreover, especially in Rutland County, many Vermonters can trace their ancestry back to the miners, cutters, and carvers who came to the U.S. to work for VMC in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The history of VMC is inextricable from the history of Vermont.
But last spring, the museum didn’t open for its big tourist season. And then last fall, the Museum’s board of directors, by then down to 5 members, made the decision to shutter the place for good. VMM’s website now says that it’s closed permanently and that the website will soon disappear as well.
“We just didn’t have the numbers coming in,” said VMM board member Kevin Thornton in a recent conversation. “COVID really killed us. Even after things opened up, habits had changed. We’d relied a lot on bus tours and those didn’t return. Plus, it’s a massive old building with serious maintenance issues. It’s hard to heat in the winter and keep cool in the summer.”
The years since COVID had seen a resurgence of activity by the VMM. Mr. Thornton, who has taught history at UVM, held screenings of archival company films. In 2023, the board even hired a new Executive Director, Molly Wickes. Ms. Wickes had had experience turning around foundering local museums and VMM thought she’d be able to steer the Museum back from the doldrums of COVID.
“She understands the challenges that small museums face, so we’re glad to get her,” Mr. Thornton said at the time.
But despite the best efforts of Ms. Wickes and the VMM board, tourist interest in the Museum remained anemic. Without admission fees and gift-shop sales, the board couldn’t see a viable path forward for the Museum. A fundraising effort ended up costing more than it brought in. They were compelled to part ways with Ms. Wickes.
“We were even running out of items in the gift shop,” said Thornton. “We didn’t have the capital or the logistical expertise to replenish that stock.”
And without Ms. Wickes, there just wasn’t the staff to keep it running.
“The board has only two local members,” said Thornton, who lives in Brandon. “Everyone else lives out of state. We didn’t have anyone with the energy to spend 40 hours per week on the Museum, which is what it needs. There isn’t anyone who could even open the doors every morning.”
A complicated collection
The Museum encompassed 10,000 square feet in a historic 40,000-square-foot building that had originally been owned by VMC and was used as workshops and salesrooms. Even now, some of the rooms are essentially as they were left when VMC was bought by German-owned OMYA in 1977.
There’s the “slab room,” which is still as it was in the 1930s and which Thornton calls the best collection of marble samples in the world. Dozens of massive slabs of various local marbles, all polished and propped up like walls, gave prospective buyers a sense of what the different strains might look like in place. VMC supplied marble for projects as important as the U.S. Supreme Court.
There are model bathrooms outfitted with mid-century modern fixtures and the best Vermont marble.
There’s a workshop that looks like the stone carvers just stepped out to lunch, with half-finished sculptures on the workbenches and shelves, most seemingly intended for cemeteries near and far.
There’s the Hall of Presidents, lined with marble busts of the U.S. Presidents through at least George H.W. Bush.
And there are hundreds of boxes of VMC’s paper records. Some other records were acquired years ago by the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which took an interest in the material from an architectural perspective.
Martin Hemm then purchased the complex from OMYA, who retained only VMC’s quarries for its calcium carbonate manufacturing. Hemm created the Museum and ran it as a for-profit venture for several years before the late Paul Bruhn, then Executive Director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont (PTV), took an interest in the historic building 10 or so years ago.
“Paul was passionate about saving the building,” said Ben Doyle, current Executive Director of PTV. “The Preservation Trust wasn’t interested in owning or operating a museum, but Paul thought the Vermont Marble Company was of national importance.”
PTV ended up buying only the building at 52 Main Street, which housed the Museum, leaving Hemm with the rest of the 27-acre complex. PTV, a 501c3 dedicated to the preservation and restoration of historically important Vermont buildings, created a separate nonprofit 501c3 to operate the Museum, with the goal of transferring ownership of the collection to the Museum as the Museum became able to care for it.
But by the time the Museum ceased operations last fall, only 10% of the collection had been transferred. Around 90% is still the property of PTV, which must now figure out what to do with this massive amount of material.
“We’re looking for appropriate stewards,” said Doyle. “We want the collection to remain accessible to the public. None of it is going to end up on eBay. There is no scenario in which we will make a profit on the collection. If we do end up selling anything from the Museum, it will be something unimportant like office cabinets and whatever money we get will go to support the stewardship of the collection.”
To add another wrinkle, though PTV still owns the collection, it no longer owns the building. Just a few years ago, PTV put out a request for proposals for the building, with the stipulation that the Museum be allowed to occupy its 10,000 square feet for 99 years and that PTV retain a preservation easement on the entire building, which means that no changes can be made to any of the historically significant aspects of the building without PTV’s approval.
Ultimately, they sold the building to ZION Growers, a hemp-processing operation that also ended up purchasing the rest of the 27-acre complex as well, which contains another 400,000 square feet of interior space. Currently, ZION does not appear to be actively utilizing the Museum building. But PTV and VMM have 99 years to figure out how to vacate their 10,000 square feet.
“We’ve spoken with the Proctor Library, with the Town Manager, with Proctor High School, to try to find a home for even some of the collection,” said Doyle. “We want it to remain as close to Proctor as possible, but it’s unlikely one entity will take the whole collection.” Doyle said PTV hoped to have the situation somewhat resolved by the end of this summer.
“This isn’t ending the way we hoped,” Doyle added. “The board made a heroic effort, but it’s time for a pivot.”
Loss of a Vermont legacy
Proctor was a classic company town in VMC’s heyday. The company literally created the town in the late 1800s, stealing bits of Pittsford and West Rutland to form the town of Proctor, named after VMC’s founder, Redfield Proctor. As the company prospered, so did Proctor. The town’s population peaked at roughly 2,800 in 1910. Proctor had its own schools, churches, library, and until the 1970s its own hospital. The stately homes along Ormsbee Avenue and the Tiffany stained glass in the Union Church attest to the company’s wealth.
But like any company town that loses its company, Proctor’s identity has changed. Now, at approximately 1,800 people, it’s become something of a bedroom community for Rutland. Though many residents of Proctor and the surrounding communities had family ties to VMC, the loss of the Museum has now made it harder for them to pass down the knowledge.
It’s a problem that afflicts institutions throughout Vermont: the loss of legacy because of changing demographics and culture. Nonprofits everywhere struggle to attract revenue and donations.
“The fact that we didn’t open last year and no one noticed explains a lot about why we closed,” said Thornton.
“People don’t go to museums the way they used to,” he added. During its most active years, decades ago, the site drew up to 60,000 visitors a year. In 2023, Thornton estimates they welcomed about 1,000.
The ranks of former VMC employees are thinning out because of age, taking their memories with them. A screening of an old company promotional film in 2023 brought a score of locals with VMC connections who happily shared their stories. Without VMM to keep those memories alive, many will be lost.
“More than anything else in this county, this place could’ve answered the question, ‘Who are you?’” said Thornton. “So much of that story is still untold. Now we won’t have that resource.”
