History of Maple Court

A Street and Neighborhood is Born

A photo of a December 1923 Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing present day #3 and #4 Maple Court and the four West Street homes. This photo shows that not all homes were built in 1915. Number 4 denoted in pink, meant the house was fireproof (i.e. made of brick). Note the name of the street is arbitrarily labeled Ensign Place. Photo by M. Cook, map courtesy of the Simsbury Historical Society. [Click to Enlarge Photo]

Maple Court, as a street, first appears in the 1932 Dunham's Farmington Valley directory for Simsbury (Connecticut) as one of the 48 streets in town. Six of the 10 homes which now are in the subdivision were built between 1907 and 1920, while the remaining four homes were built 1928-1932. All Maple Court homes were built by Ensign-Bickford Company (E-B Co.) , manufacturer of safety fuses and detonating cords, as single family employee tenements. The homes were built do fill a growing need for affordable housing in a community which had largely been agricultural at a time when people flocked to the Farmington Valley in search of work at the prospering safety fuse manufacturing plant. The neighborhood had a mix of both office and factory workers and their families living in it. The neighborhood is located about a half mile from EB Co's Simsbury plant.

According to a 1923 Sanborn Fire Insurance map for Simsbury (at right), Maple Court was known at the time arbitrarily as Ensign Place. Neither the street Ensign Place nor Maple Court appeared in a 1915 or 1928 town directory. In the 1932 edition where it first appears as a street, Maple Court is described as a road "from Legion [now Old Mill Lane] to Grist Mill Pond [now Ensign Pond]." However, despite the Sanborn map not showing it listed as Maple Court, Ensign-Bickford Company records from the early 1900's-1930 reveal that a portion of the roadway now known as Maple Court was built in 1921. Presumably the first roadway phase served what was initially the first two houses(e.g. numbers 3 and 4) on Maple Court both built in 1920. Sidewalks were also installed shortly after in 1922. Additional roads were built in 1931 presumably to service the last two properties built in the neighborhood (e.g. numbers 6 and 7 Maple Court).

The 1930 United States Census lists many of Maple Court's early tenants as residing on West Street. In the 1940 update to the 1923 Sanborn map, Maple Court and its houses appear as they are today with the exception of two houses having their house numbers reversed (today's #2 Maple Court was in the 1930's and 40's #4 Maple Court and vice versa) perhaps in recognition of the order to which the homes were initially built — that is the current #3 and #4 houses were built prior to 1923 while the current #2 was built after 1923 and most likely in the late 1920's. Company records reveal that in 1928, another home was added to the street to the west of 3 Maple Courtwhich necessitating the change in numbering. A 1934 aerial survey photograph of the Maple Court area reveals that all homes in the subdivision had been built by 1934.

The street was aptly named because of the large Maple Trees which formed a courtyard between numbers 2, 3, 6 and 7 Maple Court. During the formative years, these trees served as a meeting place for families and a playground for children. There were no fences between yards since after all, the company, not single homeowners owned the properties. Two of the large trees feel in the 1980's but many of the properties still have old growth maple trees 36 inches or more in diameter in the yards and along property lines. Some were planted when the houses were built while others remained when the lots were cleared. The formidable stump of the "Maple Court maple tree" still remains at the corner of these four lots.

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