Odds and Ends, Randomly Useful and Totally Useless Ideas and Information

Architecture

When traveling through the Vermont countryside, especially in the northern parts of the state, you might notice some old farmhouse windows oriented at an odd angle.

Devin Colman, who works for Vermont’s Division for Historic Preservation, says there’s superstitious lore behind the name, “witch window.”

“The story is that a witch on a broomstick can’t fly through a crooked window opening, which I guess physically is true,” says Colman.“But, it’s the only crooked window in the whole house. And if I were a witch, I would just use one of the other vertical windows,” he adds with a laugh.

These 19th-century architectural anomalies, also known simply as “Vermont windows,” or “lazy windows” have blurred origins. Colman says there’s another theory that doesn’t quite add up.

“You’ll also hear them referred to as coffin windows,” he says. “The idea being that it’s difficult to maneuver a coffin with a body from the second floor down to the first floor in these narrow staircases, so slide it out through the window and down the roof — which does not seem any easier. And, if you think about it, you wouldn’t carry a coffin upstairs to put a body in it. You would bring the body downstairs and put it in the coffin on the first floor. So, I don’t think that holds a lot of truth there.”

Britta Tonn is an architectural historian in the Burlington area, and she’s skeptical about that origin story, too. But she’s willing to concede it might be “another convenient use of the window once it was developed.”

“I think they’re just a really great piece of vernacular Vermont architecture that really kind of points to how unique Vermont is and how resourceful farmers were,” says Tonn.

Colman says the real origin of the witch window is probably much less interesting:

“My interpretation as an architectural historian is that it’s simply a really practical New England response to the need to get daylight and fresh air into a second-story room.”

From today’s perspective, it’s clear that there’s a much less mystical explanation for the curious slanted windows: frugality. The sloped windows were the most practical way of getting enough sunlight and fresh air inside the second floor rooms. The windows are usually wedged under the eaves right between the main building and an added wing of the house.

During the 19th century northern Vermont was very rural and dominated by small farming communities with limited or nonexistent access to things like factory-made mill work. If you were building a new house, you trekked to a hardware store and ordered things like moldings, factory-built mantles, and windows from a catalog. The selections were limited and the best you could hope for was to find a premade and glazed window with a width that allowed you to fit the odd sloping space, which was a much better solution than trying to build something on your own. Vermont farmers have always been recognized for their common sense and ingenuity. It’s likely they also reused windows that didn’t fit above the new gable, so were installed at a diagonal to take full advantage of the sliver of available wall space.

Sources: Atlas Obscura and Vermont Public Radio

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