Moving - Easton, Pennsylvania

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Please enjoy this brief history of Easton. PA. We hope to hear from you.

A Brief History of Easton, Pennsylvania

The Lafayette Inn

The elegant mansion which is now The Lafayette Inn was built as an investment property by Elizabeth Wagner Leary in 1895. The land was part of the Wagner farm owned by one of the families that helped settle Easton three generations earlier in the mid 1700s.

By the late 19th century, development of College Hill was booming and the former Wagner farm properties on the west side of Cattell St. were very desirable. As a former winding country road, Cattell St. became the main thoroughfare from the north to downtown Easton. It was widened during the summer of 1885 and in 1890 was the route of Easton's first trolley.

The first known tenant and eventually the owner of 510 Cattell St. was George Elder (1862-1930), superintendent of Ingersoll Iron Works later the Ingersoll Rand Co. The Elder family renovated and enlarged the house around 1917, and owned it for another twenty years.

George Elder died in 1930 and his will bequeathed the contents of the home to his married daughter Emily Fillmore and her husband Theodore. According to the Bureau of Wills, the first floor had living and dining rooms, a sun parlor, kitchen, library, and a card room in the basement. On the second floor were four bedrooms and a den. The third floor had two bedrooms and attic space.

The Depression of 1929 must have hurt the Fillmores financially and the building was carved into smaller apartments.

In 1937 it was sold at a Sheriff's sale and over the next two decades changed hands several times.

In 1958 it was purchased by the Sigma Chapter of Pi Lambda Phi, a Lafayette fraternity. During the 1970s, the fraternity itself declined and by 1980, it had disbanded and the once grand house was left vacant.

Early in 1986, a local builder and a group of architects, recognizing the abandoned building's beautiful proportions and potential, purchased and renovated the property. Less than one year (and nearly one million dollars later), on December 19, 1986, the completely refurbished mansion, now The Lafayette Inn, opened its doors.