Letter from THOMAS E. POWERS to GEORGE PERKINS MARSH, dated June 9, 1857.
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Hon. Geo. P. Marsh --
Dear Sir --
Yours of yesterday is rec I herewith send you copies of two elevations, & such floor plans as we have The latter are by no means free from errors, & are to be corrected & reprinted. I should have sent you copies several days ago, but for the fact that we hoped before this time to see a "" The figures representing the size of many of the rooms are wrong, & besides, several safes for clerks & secretaries are to be added, & the Senate chambers is to be some two feet wider Many other corrections are to be made, when I will send you a set of corrected copies --
I send you also at the request of Mr Silloway, a colored lithography of
the Amoskeag
Manufacturing Co., that you may see the style of coloring in which it is proposed to do our
perspective After examining it you will please return it to me --
If the lithographing is to be done at any thing like the expense named, it must be done under the direction of the , & stated in their account The has hardly firmness enough to withstand the noise that I fear might be made about it --
In hasteT. E Powers
References in this letter:
Thomas W. Silloway, (1828-1910), was only thirty years old in 1857 when he was chosen architect for the new State House in Montpelier. Silloway was from Massachusetts, and had worked in the office of Ammi B. Young, the architect who designed the previous building. Silloway and Dr. Powers, the superintendent of construction for the 1857 job, had worked together to design and build a new courthouse in Woodstock, Vermont, that burned in 1854.
Governor Fletcher named three commissioners to oversee the construction of a new State House in Montpelier: Norman Williams, John Porter, and George Perkins Marsh. Dr. Thomas E. Powers was named the Superintendent of Construction.
Dr. Thomas E. Powers, (1808-1876), of Woodstock, Vermont, was appointed by Governor Fletcher to be the Superintendent of Construction of the 1858-1860 project, to build a new State House in Montpelier to rebuild the structure burned in 1857. He and the architect, Thomas W. Silloway, were soon at loggerheads over their roles in the project. Powers became State Senator in 1861.