Courthouse project moving ahead

[cjseliga]

Originally Posted by scrantonluna

The guys doing the bore work said bedrock was around 90 feet down and there were a LOT of gaps in between. There were several directly under the courthouse as well, with voids under the main entrance and several spots in the basement. As a result they had to reinforce all the ground floors so as not to destabilize the building. I think they pounded in almost 200 beams on the outside to get the ground where they wanted it.

That's because most of downtown Scranton including Courthouse Square was actually swamps or marshland, back when the Indians lived there. It's wierd thinking about what the downtown area looked like 300 or 400 years ago.

[scrantonluna]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

That's because most of downtown Scranton including Courthouse Square was actually swamps or marshland, back when the Indians lived there. It's wierd thinking about what the downtown area looked like 300 or 400 years ago.

It's odd to see the old photos and there are houses all around where the square is now. The actual spot of the square, as you said, was a sort of marsh land; it contained a pond called 'Lily Lake,' and children would skate on it in the winter. The land was donated to the newly formed county by coal barons, who were using it as a culm dump. The Times ran an article on this as well, I have a copy around here somewhere. It printed this past winter, and I think it was an excerpt from a diary entry of a young girl (at the time) describing her journey to the pond and the events that took place. It was destinctive because the picture printed along with it showed the adams side of the courthouse, PRIOR to the 1896 addition, which is a very rare site.