Simsbury Free Library

Eno’s Traffic
Simsbury Free Library, Simsbury
November 2024

Connecticut museum visit #540.

Funny story: I visited this library within a week or two of visiting another unique library in New Haven. There was no question in my brain that that library can be called a museum. But this one in Simsbury? I waffled. I wavered.

In fact, I wrote these introductory paragraphs explaining why The Institute Library in New Haven got the museum tag and this one did not. Then I thought more about it and changed my mind; The Simsbury Free Library is a museum after all.

The stunning library has online “exhibits,” sure, but that’s not what put it over the top for me. Read on, friends…

Established in 1874, the Simsbury Free Library served as the public library for the Town of Simsbury. The designation “Free” was used to distinguish it from the subscription libraries that were common at that time. The building was designed by the well-known Hartford architect Melvin H. Hapgood, and donated by Amos R. Eno, a notable Simsbury resident. Mr. Eno’s daughter, Antoinette Eno Wood later donated the rear addition in 1924. Under the terms of the Eno trust, the library was operated by an independent, unpaid board of ten trustees. In 1970 the Town of Simsbury assumed financial responsibility for the public library and began to lease the building from the trustees. During its years as a public library, thousands of children and adults passed through the building in search of entertainment, knowledge and enlightenment.

As you can see from my picture above, this is a pretty old and small building to house a town like Simsbury’s library. The town agreed, so in 1986 they opened the new public library a stone’s throw away. Today, this little library operates as an unaffiliated private, non-profit institution. Still run by an unpaid board of ten trustees, the Free Library is sustained by its endowment, grants, donations, and membership and user fees.

Yes, I’m fully aware they never call themselves a museum.

It’s big on the genealogical and local history research thing. It also houses the Ensign-Bickford corporate archives, which is pretty cool. (You can learn all about Ensign-Bickford and how much the company means to the town of Simsbury at the town’s expansive historical society complex.) The archives are stored underground in a special vault.

I’ve visited a couple times, but it’s a little weird when it’s clear I have nothing to do there. They do have “normal library” stuff of course, just not much of it. What do they have?

I’ll tell you what they have: a gorgeous Colonial Revival building. The pair of Palladian windows that flank a columned porch at the front entry, marked with a stone plaque above, engraved with the words “Simsbury Free Library.” It is a handsome way to welcome visitors, that’s for sure. I love the copper shingled roof, and any library with fireplaces is a hit for me. The Eno family donations are all over the place; a grandfather clock, paintings, and statuettes.

Museum quality pieces to be sure. There’s even a large model of The Farmington Canal – more accurately, the Farmington Aqueduct on the canal. I couldn’t get a good picture of it because I visited during an art sale, and everything was kind of squished behind the artists’ booths and such. But the canal was important to Simsbury. You can travel it along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail and can even check out an original section of it, hidden away in the middle of a townhouse complex.

The library has also dedicated a lot of effort to telling the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life, and his time in Simsbury. They’ve erected a handsome memorial in front of the library and created an online exhibit as well. (This was all done around the same time that Meadowood, the farm where King worked, was protected from development.)

King’s time in Simsbury was significant as it was his first experience outside the racially segregated South and it seemed to have a profound effect on his outlook. Also, it was here in Simsbury that he decided to enter the ministry.

He attended Simsbury churches, sang with the choir, enjoyed drugstore milkshakes and attended movies at Eno Hall. He made weekend visits to the “big city” of Hartford. In a letter to his mother in June 1944 he remarked that he had eaten in “one of the finest restaurants in Hartford” and that he had “never thought” that people of different races “could eat anywhere” together.

Of course, Dr. King went on to become an iconic figure of the twentieth century. He was a leader of the civil rights movement in the U.S. that led to fundamental and far reaching legal and societal changes. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The coolest find of a project the library sponsored was an unknown audiotape of a 1959 address by Dr. King at the University of Hartford in which he fondly recalled his days in Simsbury. I wonder how Dr. King would feel about the town’s tireless efforts to thwart “affordable” housing, including (but not exclusive to) the Meadowood property.

Okay, you’re starting to get a museum-ish feel here, right? But here’s the thing that sealed the deal for me: William Phelps Eno.

That’s right. William Phelps Eno.

William’s father was Amos Eno, whose summer house is now the Simsbury 1820 House. Amos donated the Free Library (among other things) to the town. Amos was married to Lucy Jane Phelps who was the daughter of Elisha Phelps whose family owned the tavern across the street at the historical museum complex. Amos had a daughter who fathered Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the US Forest Service and for whom Connecticut’s largest tree is named – yes, it’s in Simsbury.

And another of Amos’s children was William Phelps Eno.

The Father of Traffic Safety. Don’t scoff. Among the innovations credited to Eno are traffic regulations, the stop sign, the pedestrian crosswalk, the taxi stand, and pedestrian safety islands. He also helped to popularize the traffic circle and the one-way street. His rotary traffic plan was put into effect at Columbus Circle, New York City, at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Piccadilly Circus, and the Rond Point on the Champs-Élysées.

There is a recreation of Eno’s office here at the library. Boom. Museum.

In 1921 Eno founded the Eno Foundation for Highway Traffic Control in Westport, today a think tank known as the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington DC. The Center is a non-profit organization with the mission of improving transportation policy and leadership. It’s his Westport office that has been recreated as the William Phelps Eno Memorial Center in the library.

(Note to crossword constructors: when cluing Brian ENO next week, because you know you will, how about acknowledging William Phelps ENO? Both were equally important in their fields!)

I could keep going… Eno proposed turn signals, slowing and stopping signals and the idea that vehicles should stay to one side of the street. He promoted “Rules of the Road” and suggested they should be well understood by both police officer and driver. He suggested that traffic regulations, including speed limits and right-of-way laws, be publicly posted. Eno also proposed that the police should have someone to manage street traffic to record information about accidents, provide driver’s exams and licenses among other tasks considered essential today.

Eno was awarded the cross of the Legion of Honour by the French government, and was one of the first honorary members of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. But most importantly, his recreated office at the Simsbury Free Library vaulted the place into the pantheon of CTMQ’s Connecticut Museums.

This website is truly amazing.

Simsbury Free Library
CTMQ’s Museum Visits