Albright Memorial Library | Reading

Albright Memorial Library is the central branch of the Scranton Public Library system and one of northeastern Pennsylvania’s finest examples of Gothic Revival civic architecture. It stands at 500 Vine Street on the corner of Washington Avenue, directly across from Nay Aug Park’s western edge, anchoring Scranton’s cultural district with the adjoining Everhart Museum and Scranton Cultural Center.

Origins and Architecture

The library was built between 1891 and 1893, funded by coal barons John Joseph and Joseph Jacob Albright in memory of their parents. Philadelphia architects Green & Wicks designed the building in a French-influenced Gothic style using Indiana limestone trimmed with Medina brownstone. Steep slate roofs, tall lancet windows, and carved gargoyles give it a collegiate-chapel presence. A pair of bronze doors modeled after Ghiberti’s Florentine “Gates of Paradise” open into a vaulted vestibule lined with mosaic floor tiles and oak wainscoting.

Interior Highlights

Narrow stained-glass windows filter colored light onto the central reading room, whose twenty-five-foot hammer-beam ceiling is supported by carved oak corbels depicting Pennsylvania wildlife. Original brass chandeliers still hang above rows of study tables. A marble fireplace on the south wall, framed by sculpted tympanum panels of Chaucer and Shakespeare, bears soot marks from coal heating that warmed early patrons.

The reference wing holds stacks on three open mezzanine levels reached by iron spiral stairs. Each tier is edged with ornamental railings cast at Scranton’s Lackawanna Iron Works. Of special note is the Local History Room, paneled in cherry wood and housing more than ten thousand volumes, city directories from 1850 onward, and microfilmed issues of the Scranton Times dating to 1870.

Collections and Services

Albright Memorial Library circulates roughly 400,000 volumes, including strong holdings in Pennsylvania coal-industry history, genealogy, and immigrant studies. The children’s department offers weekly story hours beneath murals painted in 1932 by Works Progress Administration artist A. F. Sauer depicting folktales from the city’s Welsh, Irish, and Italian communities. Modern amenities include a twenty-station computer lab, 3-D printing for cardholders, and a newly renovated makerspace with sewing machines and podcast studios.

Community Programs

The library hosts a long-running “Pages and Pints” book club that meets off-site at downtown breweries, a spring Local Authors’ Fair on the front lawn, and an autumn Haunted Architecture tour that sells out weeks ahead. Every summer it partners with the Lackawanna River Conservation Association for the “River Reads” series, combining stream-bank cleanups with outdoor poetry workshops. ESL classes taught by volunteer retired teachers serve Scranton’s growing Nepalese and Dominican populations.

Conservation and Restoration

A major exterior restoration completed in 2019 repointed seventy percent of the limestone blocks, replaced failing slate tiles, and installed energy-efficient storm glazing behind the original leaded glass. Interior climate-control upgrades safeguard the historic collection while maintaining the building’s original cast-iron radiators as aesthetic features. The project earned a Preservation Pennsylvania award for adaptive stewardship.

Practical Information

The library is open Monday through Thursday from nine in the morning to eight at night, Friday and Saturday until five, and Sundays one to five during the academic year. Street parking is metered; a small free lot behind the building fills quickly. The Vine Street entrance is wheelchair-accessible via a gently graded limestone ramp installed in 2004, and elevator service reaches all public floors.

Significance

For more than a century Albright Memorial Library has combined architectural grandeur with egalitarian purpose, offering Scrantonians both a civic landmark and a welcoming place to read, research, create, and gather. Its carved stone walls and book-lined rooms embody the city’s industrial past while its ever-evolving programs keep pace with twenty-first-century community needs.