The Pomeroy Building: Down to Details
Visible progress is being made on the Pomeroy Building, set to house a restaurant, retail and residences.
Photos
After so many months of watching work slowly progress, it's beginning to look like it's getting down to the details with the Pomeroy Building.
As the building visually takes shape and workmen appear to be putting on final touches on the exterior facade, like painting the window trim, other signs that the building will be occupied soon are also appearing.
Before city council on Wednesday evening is a resolution approving the transfer of a liquor license from Hanover Township for Maxim's 22.
The restaurant is to occupy space on the ground floor.
No firm date has been given for the restaurant opening or the building's occupation, though sometime in spring of 2012 looks likely.
Many Downtown residents and pedestrians, however, it has been heard, most fervently hope the sidewalk in front of the building, closed since the project began, is opened much sooner, especially as the inevitable snow and ice of winter approach.
Chauncey Howell
11:00 am on Monday, December 12, 2011
I am so happy that, little by little, the beautiful cityscape that Easton once was is being restored by imaginative business people. There are so many handsome buildings that have been torn down in the past, in our panic to be modern: they will never return, but the aching holes can be patched up with nifty new buildings of charm and utility.
Also, there is nothing like TREES. If you examine pictures of Downtown Easton before World War I, you will notice the large, magnificent trees in Centre Square, Third Street, everywhere. What happened to them, why did they disappear so fast?
Years ago, an amiable geezer, of old Easton stock, told me the following:
"Sonny, around 1912 some fools in this town thought we were going to be an important city, like Cincinnati. We were always the biggest town directly west of New York City, if you don't waffle up towards Paterson! Well, wasn't that enough? Did we need to be like Allentown?
"Well, these fools thought to themselves, what do big important booming cities have in common in 1912? Lots of telegraph poles, telephone poles, trolley wires, trolley tracks, trucks---horsecarts should be banned! And trees? Tear 'em down, they thought. Because trees meant that your town is backward and never goin' to boom!"
Chauncey Howell
11:12 am on Monday, December 12, 2011
More on Easton's (former) pretentions to grandeur...
There is a fantasy postcard from the early Twenties that is a fascinating look at the mindset of the burghers who wanted Easton to "boom".
It shows Centre Square as they hoped it would become. The suddenly humungous building are all surmounted by giant billboards touting local merchants. (" 'Jes like Broadway!" our visionary burghers must have thought.
There is a steady, stately flow of Packards and Pierce Arrows being directed by a traffic cop on a high stand in the middle of the street. "'Jes like Fifth Avenoo!"
But one detail that most lovers of this post card----available, I believe, at the Sigal Museum---is that....there are no TREES! in the downtown Easton of their dreams. Trees mean it's a small town that is never going to boom! they must have thought. Besides, stray dogs pee on them. We can't have that!
Interesting. I recommend oaks and sweet gums.