Check out this house
Town library has 2nd life as a private residence
During a recent Memorial Day parade, Andrea Mooney had a mother and a small child walk into her house on Main Street, looking for the restroom. Mooney wasn’t that surprised by the occurrence, but the parent and child were certainly taken aback when they opened the door and found a modest singlefamily home.
“(The woman said) ‘Oh, I thought this was the library,’ ” Mooney says. That’s understandable. The words “Hawley Memorial Library” are written in stone over the front door of the home where the Mooneys have been tenants for years. That’s because the house, built in 1936, was the town library until it was converted into a residence in the 1980s.
Today, it is a 3,000 squarefoot home with three bedrooms, three bathrooms and an open floor plan. From the outside, however, it still looks like a library, and not just because the word “library” is still engraved over its front door. The brick exterior and majestic columns flanking the front door scream “town building” (or, at the very least, “small community bank”).
The presence of the sign, and the building’s overall municipal appearance, has made living there a oneofakind experience, Mooney says.
“We’ve had delivery people drive past our house, because they don’t think that’s where they’re supposed to go,” she says.
Mooney says that she’s even doled out special instructions to pizza delivery people, telling them not to turn around in frustration when they see what
looks like a library at the address they’ve been given.
After decades as a rental property, the house is for sale, listed at $369,000, and listing agent Mark Markelz says most of the potential buyers who have visited the house have had the same reaction.
“They all say ‘Wow, that is a cool house,’ ” Markelz says, adding that the home is a good fit for those seeking “something unique and special.”
Indeed, the library plays an interesting role in Trumbull’s history. According to the book “Image of America: Trumbull,” by the Trumbull Historical Society, the land for the library was donated to the Long Hill Library Association by the Miller family in 1931. The library was constructed in 1936, in the memory of David Banks Hawley and his mother, Isadora Abbott Hawley.
The library was one of three serving the town until the Trumbull Main Library at on Quality Street was built in 1974. The book mentions that the building was bought and converted into a private residence “which pleasantly echoes fond memories of literary pursuits.”
Today, the sign on the home’s exterior is one of the few indicators of what the building used to be. That’s largely because the owner gave it a major overhaul, Markelz said. The long list of improvements made to the building include redesigning the interior from a singlestory to a multilevel home with an open interior second floor.
Other changes include basic modernization — adding hot water, central air and new electrical service and plumbing, for example — and restoring and refinishing the maple floor on the main level. There also were improvements to the exterior, including the removal of a large parking lot, which was replaced with a garage and a blacktop driveway. A large brick patio with a builtin gas grill was also added as one of the improvements.
However, Mooney says, many original features of the library remain, including most of the original interior doors.
Markelz said he has heard from a variety of potential buyers, including at least one architect. Though he knows that whoever buys the house will make some cosmetic improvements, such as a coat of paint and some clean up, he hopes the overall character of the building will be retained.
“It sure would be cool to keep the original look,” he says.
Mooney, meanwhile, says she’ll miss the home, which “has suited our family perfectly.” She also admits that there’s a certain cache to living in a former center of information.
“I love the uniqueness of this home,” she says. “Whenever I tell people (about the house) they say ‘Wow! You live in a library?’ ”