The St. Charles
Hotel

128 Penn Avenue

One of Scranton’s first hostelries, opened July 4, 1859 by David Kressler, formerly of the Scranton House, at 128 Penn Avenue across from the DL&W terminal in the wholesale district. From the 1880s until 1902, under the Brainerd family and later Thomas Melvin, it served as the unofficial headquarters of local Democratic politics. John Lohmann ran the Conway House next door at 132–134 Penn, and Battin’s Hardware held the corner at 126. Unable to compete with hotels offering more modern amenities, the St. Charles closed in 1911. The Salvation Army bought the building and razed it in 1913 for a new headquarters, which the Globe Store in turn acquired and razed in 1956 to expand its store and parking.

Then	Photograph, the St. Charles Hotel, Penn Avenue, Scranton. Undated; the Brainerd/Melvin management years and the absence of automobiles place it around 1900. Lackawanna Historical Society.
Now	Google Street View. Imagery © Google.
On the fit	Both frames arrived already matched to the corner, so this pair is a straight crop rather than an alignment, and it keeps its source photographs’ own tall, narrow frame rather than the series’ usual wide crop — nothing here is trimmed to fit a fixed ratio. Nothing survives to register against: the hotel, the Salvation Army building that replaced it and the Globe Store expansion that replaced that are all gone, and the parking garage now on the site shares only the corner, not a single wall.