Scranton, Pennsylvania

When Lackawanna County was formed in 1878, the city block that now houses the Lackawanna County Courthouse was known as “Lily Pond” or Tamarack Bog.” The property was a dump for ashes and cinders and was used for skating in the winter. In 1879, the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company and the Susquehanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad and Coal Company donate the land as site for public buildings and a park.

Isaac Perry of Binghamton, New York was awarded the commission for the new county courthouse. Perry’s design called for a Victorian Chateau-style built in the warm tones of the city’s native west mountain stone, trimmed in Onondaga limestone. Construction was complete in 1884. In 1896, local architect B. Taylor Lacey designed the building’s third floor, adding eclectic stylistic influences such as a steeply pitched hipped tile roof, wall dormers with scrolled Flemish parapets topped by broken pediments and urns, a dentillated cornice and pyramidal-roofed towers.

The Lackawanna County Courthouse gained national attention in 1902 for its role as the meeting site for the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission’s sessions in Scranton. The Commission - appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt - met in the Superior Courtroom to hear testimony in America’s first non-violent federal intervention between labor and ownership. John Mitchell spoke on behalf of the mine workers and famed attorney Clarence Darrow represented management.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Courthouse received a re-design of the clock tower in 1929 and a two-story rectangular wing in 1964.

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