The Unknowns 

Nancy Bernardo | Rochester, New York, USA 

Breadloaf Inn was a life-long project of publisher and philanthropist Joseph Battell. In 1861, Battell bought a farmhouse in Ripton, Vermont, in the mountains east of Middlebury where he spent time recuperating from ill health. Over the years he added porches, cottages, and other buildings to accommodate a growing number of guests. Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson wrote, “Most visitors arrived in Middlebury by train and transferred to horse-drawn buggies for the trip to the mountains, a testimony to Battell’s enthusiasm for horses and, later, his equal hatred for motorcars. In 1882 he commissioned his personal architect-builder, Clinton G. Smith, to remodel and expand the large farmhouse-like structure into the mansard-roofed Breadloaf Inn, with its wraparound veranda and crowning belvedere. Smith also designed a mansard-roofed barn (1885) and two large annexes (1885) with porches and galleries.

Across the road, guest cottages were built in an array of styles. A bowling alley and the original little theater burned, but other facilities such as the Adirondack Rustic Printer’s Cabin (c. 1895) and Tea House (c. 1890) survive from Battell’s time. Battell also acquired nearly all the land visible from the farmhouse to preserve the natural beauty that surrounded it. By the time of his death in 1915, he was the state’s largest land owner. The summer hotel required a large staff of servants to keep it running. Photographs found in the Stewart-Swift Research Center archive of this unknown community of women and men became a source of inspiration for Nancy Bernardo’s collage. The artist wrote: “While looking and speaking with Henry Sheldon Museum Collections Associate Taylor Rossini, I became interested in those people and places that were foundational, but perhaps unrecognized, in the development of Breadloaf. Especially intriguing were the images of the many people whose names were never recorded. These ‘unknowns’ helped build and foster the community by directing its daily activities and meeting the needs of locals and guests. They are the ones behind the scenes but integral to the infra - structure of a community.” “Focusing on Breadloaf as an inn, but also as a mountain, school and a conference center, I used representative images to show a cross-section of working life in the Breadloaf area. By physically cutting the Breadloaf Mountains in half and ‘opening up’ the landscape, I hope to show how the mountains and the people provide a strong foundation for the community, helping bring it together in a durable way over time.”