For Immediate Release: December 12, 2025

Contact:  Judy L. Hayward 802.674.6752  peihwi@gmail.com 

70 State Street Sold to Local Contractor 

Windsor, VT- The Board of Historic Windsor, Inc., is pleased to announce that it sold the Stephen Jacob House, 70 State Street in Windsor, VT, to local contractor Richard P. “Rich” Thomas. The closing took place on December 10, 2025. 

Board President Henry Duffy announced the sale and that Historic Windsor will hold the mortgage. Rich Thomas will commence work soon and return the dwelling to a single-family residence, his new home. No stranger to Windsor, Rich was the former owner of Paradise Sports and a past chair of Windsor’s Selectboard. He has “been swinging a hammer” professionally since his teens and brings the experience of several house and commercial rehabilitation projects in Windsor and the Upper Valley to this new project. 

Duffy said that “Rich made a great impression on the board when he met with us, and while we were reluctant to hold a mortgage when he first asked, we came around to working with him specifically.”  The sale price was $115,000. Judy Hayward, executive director of Historic Windsor said, “I knew Rich was the right person to take the ownership of the property when he came into the office to talk with me and said he had wanted to live in the house for many years. Right then and there, I knew he had the ‘right stuff,’ to take on this big and important project. It takes vision, experience, and passion to create a respectful rehabilitation plan.”

Duffy and Hayward mentioned that their realtor, Wade Treadway, had been invaluable in finding the right owner. Treadway has been a realtor for many years, but his previous experience working on the restoration of historic properties enabled him to provide good counsel for those who looked at the house, culminating in Rich Thomas’s offer to buy. 

Historic Windsor’s board did not place easements on the property but opted for a written moratorium on demolition of the main body of the historic building while it holds the mortgage. Rich readily agreed. This will give him some much-needed flexibility to remove part of the northwest ell of the house and possibly restore the symmetry of the primary façade. 

The house is part of an important court case about slavery in Vermont. Dinah, the woman at the center of the case, was recognized by the State of Vermont Historic Marker Program in 2022 with the installation of a marker near the house. There is also a marker acknowledging Dinah’s role as a caregiver of the Jacob family that was placed by the Stopping Stone project in the lawn on State Street. Historic Windsor, Inc., acquired the property in 2008. 

Historic Windsor’s mission is to foster historic preservation through education and by its own action and that of others. For more information about its preservation education programs, please visit www.preservationworks.org or email peihwi@gmail.com or call 802.674.6752.