The Lackawanna Station: A Palace for Passengers

The building at seven hundred Lackawanna Avenue is one of the most remarkable pieces of architecture in northeastern Pennsylvania. It was built as a railroad station and office building in nineteen oh eight for the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, and it was designed by architect Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison in the French Renaissance style. It cost around six hundred thousand dollars to construct at a time when that figure was staggering.

Step inside, and your eyes go immediately to the ceiling. The vaulted Tiffany stained glass catches and bends light in ways that make the space feel like a cathedral. Marble columns rise from the floor. The whole effect was intentional. In the early twentieth century, railroad companies understood that their stations were more than functional infrastructure. They were advertisements for the power and permanence of the railroad itself. A grand station told passengers that they were traveling in the company of wealth, precision, and civilization.

The DL and W built this station seven blocks east of its predecessor on Lackawanna Avenue specifically because the new location allowed for a grander structure that would also house the company's administrative offices. The railroad's executive suite remained in New York City, but the working heart of the Lackawanna operation beat here.

Passenger service declined through the middle of the century, and the station closed in nineteen seventy. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-seven. A thirteen-million-dollar renovation spearheaded by private investors and supported with federal, state, and local funds transformed it into a hotel, which reopened in nineteen eighty-three. It stands today as a working anchor of downtown Scranton's revitalization, a building that survived abandonment to become, again, the centerpiece of the city.