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)