Guildhall Village Historic District

The Guildhall Village Historic District encompasses the central common and surrounding buildings in the village center of Guildhall, Vermont. The town, the first to be settled in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, has a history from the late 18th century as a commercial, civic, and industrial center, and is the shire town of Essex County. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The area that is now Guildhall village was first settled in the 1780s, when a dam was built across the adjacent Connecticut River, and saw- and gristmills were erected. Eben Judd, proprietor of the mills in 1797, donated land for the common in that year to secure the town's role as the seat of the newly established Essex County. The town is named for the Guild Hall, part of which was built in 1792 and is the oldest commercial structure in the county. The first county courthouse was built in 1803, followed by other civic, commercial, religious and residential buildings that now line the roughly square common.

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