A Feast for the Eyes in Easton

by Geoff Gehman

The text originally ran in The Morning Call Inc. (copyright Sept. 6, 2003); reprinted by permission.

I 've been walking downtown Easton for pleasure since 1976, when I was a rare Lafayette College freshman hungry for life below College Hill. The city has become a lot cleaner, hipper and more accommodating to the college crowd. What hasn't changed, what keeps me walking for pleasure, is a rousing brand of homey funkiness.

My favorite pastime in Easton is architecture hopping. The city offers a splendid tour through three centuries of American and European styles, from WPA Art Deco to Dutch Revival. Lined up on the 200 block of Spring Garden Street is a romantic Romanesque Victorian with a balcony, a tidy colonial with a covered porch and a baroque brownstone that's a skyline unto itself. Like many American cities, Easton has destroyed a ton of treasures. A parking garage replaced the Boyd Theater, a plaster palace with starry lights on the ceiling and a Spanish village on the walls. Fortunately, the city is full of recycled relics. Archive, an architecture firm that marries present to past, operates in an elegant Federal on Second Street that served as Easton's first library from 1814 to 1902. Moscato's, an engaging Italian restaurant on Ferry Street, serves shrimp-and-gorgonzola pizza in a former firehouse. Moscato's is at the southern end of Sitgreaves Street, one of Easton's many fascinating alleyways. Sitgreaves has a lovely walled garden with a majestic tree, a garage straight out of a '30s gangster movie and a salon that housed firemen

Mosaics and paintings by local artists line the wall of South Bank Street.

Easton is the Lehigh Valley's biggest work-in-progress, which means every visit reveals something radically new. Last week I discovered Smithsonneum.com, a Northampton Street store devoted to the art of Lars Tetens, a true rock 'n' roller. It sells handmade cigars favored by members of Aerosmith and ZZ Top, skateboard decks of aircraft aluminum and winged sofas that resemble electric guitars.

Easton has a zesty, zigzag neighborliness. Cozy Porters' Pub serves Guinness across Northampton and Seventh from the Banana Tree, an emporium of tropical plants run by a botanist who sells exotic seeds all over the globe. On Centre Square a gallery named Id shares a wall with the Carmel Corn Shop, a shrine for sweets since 1931. One of its best customers was my father, an Easton native with a sweet tooth.

My top pit stops are neighborly, too. Josie's New York Deli, on Centre Square, stuffs pitas with pastrami and corned beef for a very thrifty $3.20. Coffee Works, on Northampton by Bank, serves hearty cappuccino and apricot scones in a kind of New Mexico living room. And where else but on Bank can you eat papaya sorbet from a creamery named for a purple cow, scan a half-block-long mosaic of broken glass and plates and eavesdrop on kids raving about visiting a crayon factory?