Brooks Building

Brooks Building

Brooks Building Photograph by William E. Fischer, Jr.
Photo 2 of Brooks Building
1896, Lansing C. Holden. 436 Spruce St.

Here H. H. Richardson's intensely personal interpretation of the Romanesque Revival is filtered into the realm of the typical urban office building by a New York City architect associated with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and architect of the Scranton Armory (1900; 900 Adams Street). Here multistory bays, topped by oversized arched windows, ripple across a brick mass that erupts, at the important corner of Courthouse Square, into a semicircular entrance bay grounded by a hulking stone base. The original Richardsonian Romanesque building received a later vertical addition. Next door is the neoclassical wall of the Connell Building (129 N. Washington Avenue), a large office building constructed concurrently to Holden's design.

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