Plenty of “06880” readers remember Westport’s original library: a gift from Morris Jesup. Built in 1908 on the corner of the Post Road (then called State Street) and Main Street, its original name was the Morris K. Jesup Memorial Library. He died just 4 months before its dedication, after donating both the land and $5,000 for construction. (Today it’s just east of the downtown Starbucks; the coffee shop occupies part of a 1950s addition.)
Many other readers moved here after the Library moved across the street in 1986, onto landfill by the Saugatuck River. (The present library was “transformed” from the first building there; it reopened in 2019, a few months before COVID shut it down.)
No matter how long they’ve lived here though, more than 2 dozen readers knew that the “Open To All” sign shown in last week’s Photo Challenge was part of the lintel hanging over the main door to Jesup’s library. (Click here to see.)
It stopped serving as the entrance after that ’50s renovation, causing reader Suzanne Wilson to note the irony of “Open To All” over a closed door.
But she joins Bob Grant, Martin Gitlin, Jeff Jacobs, Lawrence Zlatin, Robert Mitchell, Katherine Golomb, Sandra Rothenberg, Richard Hyman, Cindy Zuckerbrod, David Sampson, Lois Himes, Scott Brodie, Rosalie Kaye, Stephen Axthelm, Andrew Colabella, Clark Thiemann, Michael Calise, Patty Gabal, Mary Annn Batsell, Linda Amos, Rindy Higgins, Pete Powell, Fred Cantor, Janice Strizever, Bruce Salvo, Jeanine Esposito and Barb Sherburne as Westporters who, at least occasionally, take their nose out of a book (or their ears off a cellphone), and look up at the architecture that surrounds us.
This week’s Photo Challenge is one of 2 similar images, sent a few days apart. So I know it’s not too obscure.
Bill Ryan sent one; here’s the other. If you know where in Westport you’d see this, click “Comments” below.
(Photo/John Richers)
outside Park and Rec Office! – You can also see in in a photo of the formere estate in the book Boats Against the Current
Longshore planter just on the opposite side of the first tee, next to the entrance to Parks and Recreation building parking lot entrance #boom
It is located on the right side of the Westport parks and recreation building inside the Longshore .
Correct – the planter in front of the Parks & Rec office at Longshore, near the first tee. Fore!
And a good question…how long been at Longshore? It’s old. Was it Lewis? Powers? Later?