Arlington has 190 historic buildings along the old Bennington to Rutland stage road and its side streets. St. James Episcopal Church, designed by British architect William Passman and built in 1829-30, is the second Gothic Revival style church in Vermont. The village was an important industrial center, with marble works, mills, a railroad car factory, and from 1909 to 1929 an icebox factory. Novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher lived nearby, as did artists Norman Rockwell and Rockwell Kent and composer Carl Ruggles.