By Sheila Edmunds, Village Historian

The Au

rora Free Library is housed in a tall, Tudor Revival building overlooking Main Street at the corner of Cherry Avenue. When the building was designed in 1898, it was intended—and did for over ninety years—to incorporate not only a library but also the Ledyard Town Hall; the second story contained a large meeting hall to “accommodate all the residents of the village.”

The first sod was turned by the library’s benefactor, Louise Morgan Zabriskie, in November, 1898.  Precisely one year later the building, “profusely lighted by electricity throughout,” was inaugurated,  according to a contemporary newspaper account, to “universal admiration.”  

The building ceased to house the Town Hall in 1996, but the second-story theatre has been carefully restored and under the name, "Morgan Opera House," is the venue for concerts, lectures, plays and movies. The library's contents, which now include videos, CDS, and Internet connections, have expanded into the former rooms of the Justice of the Peace. In 1998, one hundred years after Mrs. Zabriskie’s project was begun, the Aurora Free Library was designated a Village Landmark.