Scranton is an American city in the northeast of the US state of
Pennsylvania in Lackawanna County. The city has 76,328
inhabitants on an area of 65.9 km² (as of 2020). Scranton has
one airfield, Scranton Municipal Airport.
The city is the
county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest city in an
anthracite coal district. Scranton received city charter on
April 23, 1866.
Isaac Tripp, the first known white settler in the area, built a house
here in 1778 during the colonial period. The house still stands in North
Scranton, another town formerly known as Providence. After the end of
the American Revolution, more settlers from the Connecticut colonies
came to the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
They
established mills and other small businesses in the village that
gradually became known as Slocum Hollow. The people of the village
during this period inherited the characteristics and accents of the New
England settlers, which differed somewhat from those of most of
Pennsylvania. Some of the settlers from Connecticut participated in a
war known as the Pennemite War, in which settlers fought for control of
territory that was included in royal colonial land grants to the two
states. The territorial dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania was
settled through negotiations with the involvement of the federal
government after the Revolutionary War.
Although anthracite coal was mined in Carbondale to the north and
Wilkes-Barre to the south, the industry that fueled the city's early
rapid growth was steel: in the 1840s, brothers Selden T. and George W.
Scranton, who worked for Oxford Furnace in Oxford, New Jersey brothers,
founded Lackawanna Iron & Coal, which later developed into the
Lackawanna Steel Company. Initially, the company began producing iron
nails, but this venture failed due to the low quality of the steel.
Construction of the Erie Railroad in New York State was delayed by the
need to obtain iron rails as an import from England. The Scrantons
decided to concentrate on producing T-rails for the Erie Railroad, and
the company soon became a major producer of rails for the rapidly
expanding railroad.
In 1851, the Scrantons provided most of their
labor to recent Irish immigrants and moved the Lackawanna and Western
Railroad (L&W) northward to join the Erie Railroad at Great Bend,
Pennsylvania. Thus they were able to transport manufactured rail from
the Lackawanna Valley to New York and the Midwest. In 1856, they
expanded the railroad eastward as the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western
Railroad (DL&W) to tap the metropolitan New York market. With Scranton
as its hub, the railroad was Scranton's largest employer for nearly 100
years.
The Pennsylvania Coal Company built a gravity railroad
through the city in the 1850s to transport coal. The gravity railroad
was superseded by a steam railroad built by the Erie and Wyoming Valley
Railroad (later absorbed by the Erie Railroad) in 1886. The Delaware and
Hudson (D&H) Canal Company, which had built its own gravity railroad
from Carbondale to Honesdale, built a steam railroad into Scranton in
1863.
In this short period of time, Scranton rapidly transformed
from a small agricultural-based village with New England roots to a
multicultural-based industrial city; between 1860 and 1900, the city's
population increased more than tenfold. Most of the new immigrants,
including Irish, Italians, South Germans, and Poles, were Catholic, in
contrast to the majority of the early colonial settlers, who were
Protestant. National, ethnic, religious, and class differences were also
reflected in political affiliations, with many new immigrants joining
the Democratic Party and for a time the Greenbacker Labor Party in the
late 1870s.
In 1856, the borough of Scranton was officially
incorporated; in 1866, it was incorporated into Luzerne County as a city
of 35,000, and the surrounding communities of Hyde Park (now part of the
western part of the city) and Providence (now part of North Scranton)
merged with Scranton. 12 years later, in 1878, the state granted the
county passed a law allowing for the creation of a new county if the
population exceeded 150,000, the same as Luzerne. The law allowed for
the creation of a new Lackawanna County, and political maneuvering over
its approval increased. Scranton was designated by the state legislature
as the county seat of the newly formed county and was also established
as an independent judicial district after a court was organized in
October 1878 and the state judge was transferred from Luzerne County.
This county was the last county in the state to be organized.
The
creation of the new county allowed for more local control and political
patronage, and helped to start the Scranton General Strike of 1877. This
was due in part to the massive railroad strike in Martinsburg, West
Virginia, where railroad workers began to organize and participate in
walkouts after wage reductions; since the Panic of 1873, the nation's
economy had been in a slump, and workers in many industries were
suffering from low wages and intermittent work. In Scranton, miners
followed the railroad workers in resigning their jobs, as did other
workers. A protest by 5,000 strikers ended in violence, killing a total
of four people and injuring 20 to 50, including the mayor. The mayor
organized a militia, but sought help from the governor and state
militia. Governor John Hartranft eventually brought in federal troops to
quell the strike. Workers gained nothing in terms of wages, but they
began to organize purposefully in labor unions that could exercise
greater power.
In 1886, the first electrified streetcar (trolley)
service in the nation began, earning the city the nickname "Electric
City. "In 1896, the city's various streetcar companies were consolidated
into the Scranton Railroad Company, which operated trolleys until 1954
By 1890, three railroad companies, including the Erie Railroad, the New
Jersey Central Railroad, and eventually the New York, Ontario and
Western Railway (NYO&W), built lines to take advantage of the abundant
coal supplies in and around the city.
As the vast rail network
spread above ground, an even larger network of railroads began to
service the rapidly expanding underground coal mining system. Early coal
miners, generally of Welsh and Irish descent, were hired as cheaply as
possible by the coal barons. Workers endured low wages, long hours, and
dangerous working conditions; children as young as 8 or 9 years old were
forced to work 14-hour days in crushers separating slate from coal. In
many cases, workers were forced to use company-provided housing and buy
food and other goods at stores owned by the coal companies. As hundreds
of thousands of immigrants arrived in the industrial cities, miners no
longer had to search for labor, and workers struggled to maintain their
positions. Later, coal miners arrived from Italy and Eastern Europe,
fleeing poverty and lack of jobs.
Business was booming at the end
of the 19th century. The tonnage of coal mined increased virtually every
year, as did the steel produced by the Lackawanna Steel Company. At one
time the city had the largest steel mill in the U.S. and was the second
largest producer in the 20th century; by 1900 the population exceeded
100,000.
In the late 1890s, Scranton became home to an early
International League baseball team.
Scranton has a notable labor
history. Throughout the mining era, various coal unions struggled to
improve working conditions, raise wages, and ensure fair treatment of
workers The Panic of 1873 and other economic difficulties led to a
nationwide recession and loss of business. As the economy shrank,
railroads cut wages for most classes of workers (while withholding
raises for top management); a massive strike by railroad workers in
August 1877 was part of the Great Railroad Strike, but it also involved
workers in the steel and mining industries, developed into the Scranton
General Strike. Four rioters were killed in the mayhem during the strike
after the mayor called in the militia. The militia and federal troops
quelled the violence, and the workers finally returned to work, but
without economic relief. William Walker Scranton, from a prominent
family, was then general manager of Lackawanna Iron and Coal. He later
founded the Scranton Steel Company.
Scranton's labor problems and
industrial growth contributed to the state legislature's cession of
territory from Luzerne County in 1878 to create Lackawanna County.
Scranton was designated as the county seat. This strengthened local
autonomy.
Although labor unions failed to raise wages that year,
in 1878 they elected Terence V. Powderly, leader of the Knights of
Labor, as mayor of Scranton. Powderly then became the national leader of
the KoL, a predominantly Catholic organization that had 700,000 members
at its peak around 1880. Although the Catholic Church had prohibited
membership in secret organizations since the mid-18th century, the
influence of Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore, Maryland, led to
support for the Knights of Labor in the late 1880s as an organization to
represent workers and promote labor union organizing.
The landmark 1902 coal strike was led by the Coal Miners Union, led
by John Mitchell, and called by anthracite miners in the area. The
strike was settled by a compromise brokered by President Theodore
Roosevelt. A statue of John Mitchell was erected in his honor on the
grounds of the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton. It is "the site
of negotiations for the 1902 coal strike in which President Roosevelt
participated." Because of the importance of these negotiations, the
statue and courthouse were placed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1997. John Mitchell is buried in Cathedral Cemetery in
Scranton.
According to the 1900 U.S. Census, Scranton had a
population of approximately 102,026, making it the third largest city in
Pennsylvania and the 38th largest in the U.S. In the 20th century,
wealthy businessmen and industrialists built impressive Victorian
mansions in the Hill and Greenridge districts of the city. In the 20th
century, wealthy businessmen and industrialists built impressive
Victorian mansions in the city's Hill and Greenridge districts.
Industrial workers tended to be late immigrants from Ireland, southern
and eastern Europe, and many were Catholics. As immigrants flooded the
market, they suffered from poor working conditions and wages.
In
1902, the city lost its underlying industry due to declining local iron
ore supplies, labor problems, and aging factories. The Lackawanna Steel
Company and many of its workers relocated to Lackawanna, NY, a
development on Lake Erie just south of Buffalo. Because of the port on
the lake, they were able to receive iron ore shipped from the newly
mined Mesabi Mountains in Minnesota.
Scranton developed as the
capital of the anthracite coal industry. Attracting thousands of workers
needed for coal mining, the city developed new neighborhoods dominated
by immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe, who brought with them their
food, culture, and religion. Many of the immigrants joined the
Democratic Party. Their national churches and neighborhoods became part
of the city's history. Several Catholic and Orthodox churches were
founded and built during this period. Jewish communities from the
Russian Empire and Eastern Europe also formed. Through the efforts of
labor leaders such as John Mitchell, who led the miners, working
conditions for the miners improved.
However, underground mining
weakened the entire neighborhood, and when the land collapsed, homes,
schools, and businesses were damaged; in 1913, the state passed the
Davis Act, establishing a Surface Support Office in Scranton. Because of
the difficulty of dealing with coal companies, citizens organized the
Scranton Surface Protection Association, which was chartered by the
state court on November 24, 1913 "for the protection of the lives and
property of the citizens of the City of Scranton and the streets of said
city from injury, loss and damage caused by mining and mine cave-ins."
In 1915 and 1917, the city and the Commonwealth sought and lost
injunctions to prevent the coal companies from sinking the streets.
North Main and Boulevard Avenues caved in as a result of court cases in
which "both had the right to support the surface, but defied the civic
authorities and allowed the coal company to continue its operations.
The case of Penman v. Jones had a different outcome." Lackawanna
Iron and Coal had leased the coal mine site to its affiliate, Lackawanna
Iron and Steel, which in turn assigned the lease to Scranton Coal
Company. Areas such as central Scranton, Hill Section, South Side, Pine
Brook, Green Ridge, and Hyde Park were affected by its mining
activities. Mr. Penman was the private landowner in the case. The coal
operators lost the lawsuit."
Public transportation systems began
to expand beyond the trolley lines pioneered by the predecessor of the
Scranton Railroad. The Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad, commonly
called the Laurel Line, was built as an intercity passenger and freight
transportation system to Wilkes-Barre. The Scranton station, offices,
power plant, and maintenance facility were built on the former site of
the Lackawanna Steel Company and began service in 1903; beginning in
1907, Scranton residents could also take trolley trains to Clarks Summit
and the northern suburb of Dalton. The Northern Electric Railroad could
also take them to Lake Winola and Montrose. no new trolley lines were
built after the 1920s, but bus service began and expanded to meet
service needs. in 1934, the Scranton Railways incorporated as the
Scranton Transit Company.
Beginning in the early 1920s, the
Scranton Button Company (founded in 1885 and a leading manufacturer of
shellac buttons) became one of the major manufacturers of phonograph
records, including Emerson, which it acquired in 1924; Regal; Cameo, In
July 1929, the company merged with Regal, Cameo, Banner, and the U.S.
branch of Putty (makers of Putty and Perfecto) to form American Record
Corporation. By 1938, Scranton was also pressing records for Brunswick,
Mellotone, and Vocalion. 1946, the company was acquired by Capitol
Records, which continued to produce phonograph records through the end
of the record era.
By the mid-1930s, the city's population had
swelled to over 140,000 due to the growth of the mining and silk textile
industries. World War II created a great demand for energy, and the
region had its highest production from mining since World War I.
After World War II, coal was replaced by oil and natural gas as a
heating fuel. While some cities prospered in the postwar boom, the
fortunes and population of Scranton (and other parts of Lackawanna and
Luzerne counties) began to decline; throughout the 1950s, coal
production and rail traffic declined rapidly and jobs were lost.
In 1954, Worthington Scranton and his wife, Marion Marjorie Scranton,
donated $1 million to establish the Scranton Foundation (now the
Scranton Area Community Foundation).
The Knox Mine disaster in
January 1959 effectively ended the mining industry in northeastern
Pennsylvania. The waters of the Susquehanna River flooded the mines. The
DL&W Railroad, on the verge of bankruptcy due to declining coal traffic
and Hurricane Diane, merged with the Erie Railroad in 1960. Federal
subsidies built new highways, and demand for public transportation also
declined as people purchased automobiles; in 1952, the Laurel Line
discontinued passenger service; as the 1954 holiday season approached,
the trolley became the city's nickname The Scranton Transit Company
moved all operations to buses, ending all service by the end of 1971.
The city was left without public transportation for almost a year until
Lackawanna County government created COLTS and brought in 1950s-era GM
buses from New Jersey to begin service in late 1972.
Scranton was
the hub of this service until the Erie-Lackawanna merger. This also
dealt a serious blow to the local labor market. The NYO&W Railroad,
which relied heavily on the Scranton branch line for freight traffic,
was abandoned in 1957. Mine subsidence became a widespread problem in
the city as abandoned mine shafts began to break. The area was scarred
by abandoned mine structures, strip mines, and huge culm dumps, some of
which caught fire and burned for years until government efforts
extinguished the fires. in 1970, the Pennsylvania Secretary of Mines
concluded that the Scranton underground had been mined suggested that
there were so many underground cavities left by the mining that it would
be "more economical" to abandon the city than to make them safe. In
1973, Lackawanna County's last mining operation (now McDade Park and
another mine on the Scranton/Dixon City border) closed; during the 1960s
and 1970s, the silk and other textile industries shrank as jobs moved to
the South and overseas.
In 1962, businessman Alex Glass opened
the first drugstore, the Thrift D Discount Center, on Lackawanna Avenue
in downtown Scranton; the 17-by-75-foot (5-by-23 m) store was an
immediate success and became the national drugstore chain, Rite Aid's
which became the progenitor of the national drugstore chain, Rite-Aid.
During the 1970s and 1980s, many downtown stores and theaters became
vacant. Suburban development followed the freeways, and suburban
shopping malls became the primary venues for shopping and entertainment.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, the city began to emphasize
revitalization. The local government and the community at large took a
renewed interest in the city's buildings and history. Some historic
buildings have been renovated and marketed as tourist attractions. The
Steamtown National Historic Site is a testament to the area's once
preeminent position in the railroad industry. The former DL&W Railroad
Station has been restored as the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel. The
Electric City Trolley Museum was built next to the DL&W yard used by the
Steamtown NHS.
Since the mid-1980s, the Scranton Cultural Center
has operated the architecturally significant Masonic Temple and Scottish
Rite Cathedral, designed by Raymond Hood, as a regional performing arts
center. The Houdini Museum was opened in Scranton in 1990 by nationally
renowned magician Dorothy Dietrich.
According to the Guardian, in July 2012, the city was pushed to the
brink of bankruptcy and the wages of all city employees, including the
mayor and fire chief, were cut to $7.25 per hour. Scranton resident Gary
Lewis, a financial consultant, estimates that "on July 5, the city had
only $5,000 on hand."
Since the revitalization began, many coffee
shops, restaurants, and bars have opened downtown, creating a vibrant
nightlife. The low cost of living, pedestrian-friendly downtown, and the
construction of loft-style apartments in architecturally significant
older buildings have attracted young professionals and artists. Many of
them grew up in Scranton, moved to the big city after high school or
college, and returned for the amenities of the area. Many buildings in
town that were once vacant are now undergoing restoration. Many of the
restored buildings will be used to attract new businesses to the city.
Some of the newly renovated buildings are already in use.
Attractions include Montage Mountain Ski Resort, the Pittsburgh
Penguins' AHL affiliate the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the New York
Yankees' AAA affiliate the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, PNC Field
and the Toyota Pavilion, a concert venue at Montage Mountain.
According to a 2019 estimate, Scranton is home to 76,653 people. The population breaks down in the same year into 83.1% White, 5.9% African American, 0.1% Native American, 4.7% Asian, 0.1% Oceanian, and 4.4% with two or more ethnicities. Hispanics or Latinos of all ethnicities made up 14.8% of the population. The median household income was $40,608 and the poverty rate was 23.2%.
William P. Burnham (1860–1930), Major General, United States Army
Henry Theophilus Klonowski (1898–1977), Roman Catholic minister,
Auxiliary Bishop of Scranton
Harry M. Leonard (1900–1985), sound
engineer
Martin John O'Connor (1900-1986), Roman Catholic minister,
Auxiliary Bishop of Scranton, Rector of the Pontifical North American
College and first President of the Pontifical Commission on Social
Communications
Russ Morgan (1904–1969), bandleader, pianist,
trombonist and composer
Jane Jacobs (1916–2006), activist and
publicist on urban issues
Lizabeth Scott (1922–2015), actress
Frank Carlucci (1930–2018), Republican Party politician
Frank Manley
(1930–2009), university lecturer, poet, playwright and narrator
Joseph M. McDade (1931–2017), Republican Party politician
John Martin
Dougherty (1932–2022), Catholic minister, Auxiliary Bishop of Scranton
Teddy Mayer (1935–2009), motorsport executive
Carmen J. Cavezza (b.
1937), Lieutenant General, United States Army
Jason Anthony Miller
(1939–2001), actor
Joe Biden (b. 1942), 46th and Acting President of
the United States of America, Vice President of the United States of
America and former US Senator for Delaware (Democratic Party)
William
Kotzwinkle (born 1943), writer
Bob Degen (born 1944), pianist and
composer of modern jazz
Robert B. Reich (born 1946), political
scientist and economist
Robert Charles Morlino (1946–2018), Roman
Catholic minister and Bishop of Madison
Judith McGrath (born 1952),
media executive
James J. Clauss (b. 1953), Greek scholar
Michael
Patrick King (born 1954), television producer, screenwriter and director
Bob Casey (born 1960), Democratic Party politician, US Senator for
Pennsylvania
Mike Munchak (born 1960), American football player and
coach
Mike J Dunleavy (born 1961), politician
Mark Weinberger
(born 1961), tax advisor, former chairman and CEO of Ernst & Young (EY)
Moppa Elliott (born 1978), jazz musician
Stephen Karam (born c.
1980), playwright, screenwriter
Chris Cerulli (born 1986), singer
Adam Rippon (born 1989), figure skater