Moorestown Library hosts sled museum

MOORESTOWN – The sleds seem to have a personality of their own.

One, the Model No. 6, stands 81/ 2 feet tall; one has a Mickey Mouse design; there's a Fire Fly Model No. 10a, built from 1890 to 1900, that is only 36 inches long and 12 inches wide.

There are many variations as they beautifully line a well-lit corridor in the Moorestown Library. They are world-famous Flexible Flyer sleds and they are on display at the "Flexible Flyer Sled Museum."

The inventor of these sleds was a Moorestown man Samuel Leeds Allen, then a farm and garden equipment manufacturer, who patented his invention in 1889. He chose the name based on the sled's fast, steerable prototype.

"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" asked library director Joseph Galbraith, who played a large role in getting the exhibit.

Galbraith said the exhibit's benefactor and curator Phil Snow, a former Delran resident with strong family ties to Moorestown, approached him soon after the library opened a year ago.

"He said, 'I have this really large collection of Flexible Flyer sleds and memorabilia and because Flexible Flyer was invented in Moorestown I'd be interested to know whether the library would be interested in allowing me to exhibit them," Galbraith said. "He said, 'my goal and hope is that perhaps this could become a long-term or maybe a permanent loan to the township.' I said that would be even better."

They agreed that the then-empty corridor between the library and the connecting municipal building was the perfect space to house the 26 sleds. After Galbraith got the OK from the township, the museum was born.

"It just came together from there," Galbraith said.

Snow, a banker who resides in Monmouth County, will be at the library Saturday between 1 and 3 p.m. for the grand opening event for the museum, which had a soft launch in February.

"The timing couldn't have been better," Snow said. "My wife says, 'Can you move all those sleds out of the basement and do something with them?' At the same time, I had been thinking about what I could do with the collection."

The Holy Cross High School graduate got into collecting over two decades ago and recently found the Model No. 6 — the largest Flexible Flyer ever made — on Craigslist and paid $300. He's done most of his collecting in the past five years.

"My first sled that started the collection was the 1930s Airline Ace that my wife and I bought 25 years ago after my first child was born," said Snow, whose grandfather owned a farm in Moorestown where he spent a lot of time as a child. "We needed a sled to pull my son, then my daughter, like the sled I used as a child."

Snow has very fond memories of sledding on Flexible Flyers as a kid.

"I had three older brothers and our challenge was who could get on the sled and sled closest to the tree before jumping off," he said with a laugh. "We were always getting a new sled every five years or so because of all the sledding that we did and the damage we did to some of them."

The current owner of the Flexible Flyer brand is Paricon, a Maine-based company, which has been in the snow sport product business for 150 years. The majority of the sleds are made in China, however.

Allen, who once resided in what is known as Breidenhart Castle on Main Street, was known for his Philadelphia-based company, which manufactured farm equipment.

"He wanted something for his employees to do during the winter because you don't sell a lot of farm implements in the Northeast in the winter, so that's where he came up with the idea of the Flexible Flyer sled," said Galbraith, who noted that Eldridge Johnson, the founder of the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, later lived at Breidenhart.

"That house has a whole lot of really good inventive karma in it."

The Flexible Flyer has been a part of many households over the past 126 years. It entered popular American culture in 1942 in the classic movie "Miracle on 34th Street" when a young boy declares that Santa Claus does exist because "He gave me a brand new Flexible Flyer sled last year!"

The sled is here to stay and so is the museum.

"It's going to stay here as long as Mr. Snow wants to leave it here," Galbraith said.

Reach Celeste E. Whittaker at cwhittaker@courierpostonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at cp_CWhittaker.