Volume 22 Issue 1, Fall & Winter 2015-16

Part 3: After Sixteen Years, the Mission Comes to an End

At the time the Weatogue Neighborhood House was founded in 1905, the area was experiencing an influx of immigrants from Europe, drawn by hopes of a better life through employment on local tobacco farms and in the safety fuse factories of the Ensign-Bickford Company. At first, the primary focus was welcoming and helping to assimilate these workers, but before long its mission expanded to include projects that reached out to the needy in Hartford and beyond. While the people of the Weatogue section of Simsbury were unquestionably the mainstay of the Neighborhood House, it also attracted supporters from far afield.

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Volume 21 Issue 4, Spring–Summer 2015

Part 2:  Antecedents in the Work of Weatogue’s Three Ministers

The preceding part of this article dealt with the founding of Weatogue’s Neighborhood House in 1905, the moving and refurbishing of the donated building and a sampling of the dinners and cultural programs given in the house. This second part will explore some of the events that preceded the founding of this institution, which was dedicated to the wellbeing of all residents of the community and town.

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Volume 21 Issue 3, Fall 2014

Part 1: A Community Center with a Special Mission

Simsbury’s first social club that could boast of a building for its exclusive use was the Casino, which opened in 1898. It stood in the center of town on Hopmeadow Street where Eno Memorial Hall stands today.1 Over the next few decades several other community centers opened in buildings in various parts of the town, each with its own distinctive character. The next was the Neighborhood House in the village of Weatogue and its founders had the stated objective of welcoming and including recent immigrants who had settled in town.

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Volume 21 Issue 2 Summer 2014

From Constantinople to Home

By the time Alice Goodrich Eno wrote to her sister, Polly, on February 27, 1911, the S.S. Arabic, with its towering party of six hundred Americans, had steamed from the Meediterranean Sea through the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara. Near the Bosphorus Strait, the ship had turned northwest and dropped anchor in the curved estuary known as the Golden Horn, a natural harbor used by sailors since before recorded history. Alice Eno had arrived in Constantinople.