Company Stores

As management of the Vermont Marble Co., Redfield Proctor built a new store on the same site and hired H.E. Spencer to manage it rather than leasing it. This new store opened the same year and sold primarily staple groceries and feed.

The size of the building and the goods it sold were adequate for about a decade until the growing number of people employed by the company could not be accommodated. A new, larger structure for the company store was completed in 1882. In the early 1890s, an addition was constructed, with the second floor of the building holding the library and Odd Fellows Hall and the basement hosting the post office and a barbershop.

In the early 1880s, when the store was constructed, Proctor began by attempting to run the store as a cooperative store, though the system failed. Thus, the store operated primarily on a passbook basis, where purchases were recorded in a passbook and at the end of the month added up and deducted from the individual's wages. 

In 1903, Proctor again made the store into a cooperative store where the company did not receive any of the profits. Operating expenses like rent, merchandise, and salaries were deducted and the remainder divided among employees depending on the sum of their individual purchases for the year. 

In November of 1913, the 1882 store burned to the ground and was rebuilt on the site of the old stone schoolhouse of brick with marble trimmings; fireproof construction to prevent the loss of thousands of dollars in goods again. 

Proctor's vision for a first-class company store for the Vermont Marble Co.'s employees was fulfilled by this building's construction in 1915. Prices at similar stores in typical towns of Vermont were studied to aim at providing employees with the variety and quality of goods they ought to have with the help of the company's capital. Though these studies were not conclusive, comparisons between the Proctor store and others make it seem as though people could live as cheaply as anywhere in Vermont. 

For a time, there were two cooperative stores in West Rutland. When Sutherland Falls Marble Co. merged with the Rutland Marble Co. in West Rutland in 1880, the newly formed Vermont Marble Co. continued to operate the store. E. Tremayne managed the store that had previously been inside the Rutland Marble Co.'s office. 

In 1892, following the Vermont Marble Co.'s acquisition of the Sheldon Marble Co. and its store, the Rutland Marble Co. store served as a three-family tenement for more than twenty years until it was torn down. 

The store that was part of the Sheldon Marble Co., built in 1855 and run by H.H. Brown, continued to operate following the Vermont Marble Co.'s purchase of the company in 1891. As independent stores in West Rutland began to create competition and residents could reach shops in Rutland via West Rutland's connection on the trolley line, business declined and in 1921, it was decided that the store would close. After 1922, the store was used for storing supplies and what stock could not be sold was taken to the cooperative store in Proctor. 

Since 1989, this building has served as the primary building for the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center.

Around 1880, the Vermont Marble Co. purchased the abandoned Methodist church in Rutland and remodeled it into a store. 

In 1907, the store caught fire and was determined beyond saving. At the time, it housed both the post office and town hall, though the company had been planning to discontinue the store before the following year.