BENNINGTON – When Jacqueline Marro and her husband purchased the small house at 212 Union St. as a place where her elderly parents could reside instead of trekking up and down Woodford Mountain, Marro remarked how the two-story structure on the northeast corner of Valentine St. made her think of her youth.
“This house reminds me of a dollhouse,” she said recently, sitting behind a small reception table just inside the front door. “I love the design of it. I think it’s very efficient in terms of the use of space.”
Jack and Helen Cleary lived there from 2007 until 2012, when they died within a month of each other. He was 95 and she was about to turn the same age.
With her mom and dad gone, the co-owner needed to decide what to do with the house that was built in 1860.
Eleven years ago, after Jacqueline Marro was able to think of the optimal layout and which of her collection she wanted to display, she opened The Dollhouse and Toy Museum of Vermont.
Admission is $4 for adults, $10 for families and $2 for children three years of age and older. A few of the items are for sale.
“It’s not a non-profit but it’s no-profit,” Marro explained with a laugh. The museum is open from 1 to 4 on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and by appointment. “In essence, it really is a hobby.”
Marro, 81, lived in Bennington until she was in the fifth grade, when her parents moved to the house on top of the mountain. Her prized dollhouses were relocated along with the family. She went to college, married and started a family.
Her husband, Anthony, was a journalist and rose to become the executive editor of Newsday, a newspaper that serves Long Island. For 20 years, Jacqueline Marro operated The Snow Goose – a store that sold dollhouses and dolls and related accessories in Northport, on the island.
“I love making dollhouses,” she said. “During the winter, I’m usually working on a couple projects.”
One of her latest dollhouses is a miniature rendition of the home of Gov. Isaac Tichenor. He was in office when George Washington died and Marro wants to add a scaled recreation of the memorial wallpaper that was sent to each governor after the first president passed away.
The traditional dollhouse scale is one inch to one foot, and the Bennington museum has a number of these on display. Marro has also made the houses using 3/4, 1/2, and 1/4 scales.
Marro said a few hundred people walk through the museum every year.
“I love to go to Jackie’s museum for inspiration,” said Melinda Mull, 66, from Manchester. A collector of miniatures and builder of dollhouses since she was a child, Mull said she typically visits the museum two times a year because she always spots something new inside 212 Union St.
Some dollhouses were donated to the collection. One, from 1963, was made by the artist and author Esphyr Slobodkina – best known for writing and illustrating the children’s book Caps for Sale. The house wound up in Bennington after it was donated by its original recipient.
“It’s all made out of recycled material,” Marro said, standing in the upstairs room where the large, two-level house is displayed. “When her third husband died, Esphyr couldn’t go back to art, so she made this for her 7-year-old step granddaughter. And it took her a year to make it.”
Dozens of dolls – all of them attired in fancy, handmade clothing – are for sale in the museum. According to Marro, one of her regular visitors asked her to sell the dolls after this woman’s estranged sister died and she traveled to Connecticut to clean out her apartment and found it packed with the dolls.
“The sisters hadn’t spoken in years,” Marro said. “But these dolls are amazing. The combination of fabrics. The hats. The detail.”
The Dollhouse and Toy Museum of Vermont is also home of Vermont M.O.M.A – the Museum of Miniature Art. Marro reduces the size of original paintings, prints them and puts a tiny frame around them.
“You can see a lot of paintings all at once, and you get a sense of what the artist is all about,” she said.
But dollhouses remain the focus of the small museum in the little corner house.
Mull, the museum visitor from Manchester, said she had taken a new interest in dollhouses since her retirement and owns between 30 and 40 dollhouses that are in various stages of completion. They remind her of when she was a girl and was presented with her mother’s dollhouse – an example made in 1928. Beyond the sweet memories, she also finds the manual labor to be therapeutic.
“If I had a hard day,” Mull said. “If I’m sad about something. I just start working on them and everything’s fine.”