[1] In 1894, Simmons was awarded the first commission of the Municipal Art Society, a series of murals—Justice, The Fates, and The Rights of Man—for the interior of the Criminal Courthouse at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan.

Later Simmons decorated the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the mural series "Civilization of the Northwest" in the Minnesota State Capitol rotunda in Saint Paul.

[1] In the year 1914, he travelled with Childe Hassam to view the Arizona desert paintings of the rising California artist Xavier Martinez at his Piedmont studio.

In 1996, his painting "The Carpenter’s Son," located in the First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, was yanked from the wall and cut out from its frame.

The section depicting Jesus taken cutout and removed with the rest of the painting left lying on the floor.