The Tripp House: Oldest in Lackawanna County
Near Scranton, Pennsylvania
The oldest building in Lackawanna County still standing has roots that stretch back before the United States existed.
Isaac Tripp arrived in this valley in seventeen seventy-one, becoming Scranton's first settler. He built a house on this site, and around seventeen seventy-eight his son Isaac the Second began the structure that survives today, completing a home even as the Revolutionary War raged nearby. Both men served as representatives of this region in Connecticut's colonial assembly, since the area was then claimed by Connecticut under its own charter.
The house was expanded over four generations. Isaac the Third enlarged it in the Federal style in eighteen twelve. Colonel Ira Tripp remodeled it along Victorian lines between eighteen seventy and eighteen ninety-one. The family held the property until nineteen hundred, making it a rare survivor that carries the full arc of American architectural history in a single building.
