Church Street Marketplace is four blocks of city-owned brick in downtown Burlington, Vermont, closed to cars between Main Street and Pearl.
The street opened on September 15, 1981, and it opened with two blocks. Traffic kept using the two at either end, one above Cherry and one below College. Both stayed ordinary streets for years.
The last of them was converted in 2005, so the four-block street in every photograph of Burlington is 21 years old. The Marketplace turns 45 on September 15.
More than 100 stores and restaurants front it now. Three city workers keep the four blocks, plowing and salting in winter and handling the trees, lights, and trash the rest of the year.
A week with the cars gone
For a full week in the early 1970s, Burlington cleared cars from four blocks of Church Street.
Merchants spread their displays onto the pavement while the street got temporary landscaping, seating, booths, and more transit service downtown.
The estimate was about 50,000 visitors for the week, after roughly 15,000 had come to an earlier one-day fair.
Pedestrianization had been in Burlington planning talk since 1958.
The two trials turned it into something the city had measured on its own street, and when Burlington finally committed to permanent construction, it took two of the four blocks the week-long trial had used.
The two-level plan merchants rejected
By March 1978 Burlington was considering a Marketplace stacked downward instead of upward.
A retail level below Church Street would tie into the adjoining basements, bringing roughly 80,000 square feet into the scheme without adding buildings above the street.
The plan also gave Burlington 20,000 square feet of retail space below grade.
It did not survive public review.
Roundtables in March 1979 drew opposition from merchants and residents, and the steering committee killed the lower level.
The replacement kept the Marketplace at street grade and came in at about $6 million.
The decision is still under your feet.
Brick went across the old roadway at sidewalk grade, so the curb and gutter line disappeared inside those blocks.
The public Marketplace has no escalator, no elevator, and no shopping floor beneath it, because the plan for one went away the year before construction started.
Two blocks of Church Street, 1980 to 1981
The federal money arrived first.
The Urban Mass Transportation Administration awarded $5.4 million in June 1979, which left Burlington to raise $1.5 million of its own.
At a special election in August, voters approved the Marketplace District and its commission, then left the bond just short of the two-thirds majority it needed.
The mayor called a second election. On October 31 the bond passed.
Construction was already under way when the two blocks between College and Cherry closed to ordinary traffic on July 7, 1980.
Bus routes moved around the site, but the finished plan kept a downtown bus loop and let the cross streets through.
The work lasted 16 months without emptying the storefronts. The stores kept trading, and retail sales in the area held up through it.
The Marketplace opened on September 15, 1981.
In October the architects set a granite line into the new brick along Burlington's longitude, 73 degrees 13 minutes west.
Markers for cities went in at a scale of three feet to about 50 miles, with the Eastern Hemisphere placed to be read facing north and the Western Hemisphere facing south.
Nothing on the street explained any of it at first.
One marker, for Ho Chi Minh City, drew complaints during the 1980s and was taken out of the pavement. It was put back later.
Above Cherry Street and below College, the traffic ran as it always had.
The top block got a fountain, then lost it
In 1994 Burlington bricked the block between Cherry and Pearl and closed it to cars, which pushed the pedestrian corridor north to Pearl Street.
A shallow fountain went in with it, a wading feature meant to pull people uphill to the top of the street. It ran for 18 years.
By the early 2010s it cost too much to maintain, and it held space that merchants and the Marketplace wanted usable through more of the year.
The water stopped in the fall of 2012. Removal started in April 2013, and by May the footprint was bricked over.
What the top block had then was clear brick, which is easier to program and easier to rent.
The city planted 22 Callery pear trees that spring, most of them on the same block, and a fish-shaped stainless steel drinking fountain was dedicated on the street in 2014.
In January 2023 the Commission raised the cart fee on the top block from $750 to $1,200, let a cart grow from 32 to 50 square feet, and allowed two vendors to share one location on day and night shifts.
The City Hall block, 2005
For 24 years the Marketplace stopped at College Street.
Main Street had been the south end of the district since 1979, but the block below College, past City Hall Park, still ran as an ordinary street with a roadway through it.
Burlington converted it in 2005 under a $1.8 million capital program.
The Earth Line mosaic went into the pavement, with new trees and rebuilt flower beds along City Hall.
Brick covered the block, and the College Street crossing was raised. The street had 26 outdoor cafes that year, four of them new.
That was the work that made Church Street continuous from Main to Pearl.
The four-block Marketplace people picture is 21 years old. The Marketplace turns 45 on September 15.
Church Street Marketplace today
Church Street Marketplace is an outdoor pedestrian street in Burlington, Vermont, four blocks of city-owned brick between Main Street and Pearl.
It opened in 1981 as two blocks between College and Cherry.
More than 100 stores and restaurants front it now, including more than 45 local retailers, and the current estimate is about 1.5 million visits a year.
By 2024 the brick itself needed rebuilding.
Burlington used $1 million in federal money to reset problem paving and add more truncated-dome warning surfaces at the crossings for people with visual impairments.
The same project repaired the entire world map on the City Hall block.
The next large street job sits beside the Marketplace rather than on it.
Burlington is preparing the Great Streets reconstruction of Bank and Cherry, two of the four cross streets that feed the corridor, with curbless sections and replacement trees in the project area.
Bidding is set for this winter, with Cherry construction in 2027 and Bank in 2029 or 2030; the plan is about $16 million short of its funding.
Three full-time city workers keep the four blocks, plowing and salting in winter and handling trees, lights, decorations, and trash the rest of the year.
The maintenance day starts before the stores do.
Deliveries have the street from 7 to 10:30 in the morning, and once the bollards go back in, the rest of the day belongs to people on foot.
Independent Publisher Notice
BestAttractions is an independent editorial publisher. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any location, business, property owner, manager, government agency, or organization described in this article.
Comments posted on this page are not forwarded to, reviewed by, or acted upon by any entity mentioned in the article.
For official inquiries, complaints, applications, bookings, or other requests, please contact the relevant entity directly through its official website or other verified channels.