Main Street

Main Street is a vibrant commercial district of densely packed buildings. The centerpiece at Market Square is Stroup Fountain (1892), a circular cast-iron fountain from J. L. Mott Co., in New York City, dedicated to a local candy merchant who donated funds to the waterworks. It shares the heart of town with a sixty-foot-tall granite Civil War monument (1908, L. Kurtz and Son). Around the square, the Peacock and Moyer building (1894, Jacoby and Weishampel; 102 W. Main Street) and the Morning Press building (1908, Verus T. Ritter; 111 W. Main Street) have cast-iron fronts. At 149–150 W. Market Street, Caldwell Consistory (1906) is a Freemasons Lodge designed by Williamsport architect Truman P. Reitmeyer in the Tudor Revival style. Ritter reprised his Society of the Colonial Dames of America headquarters design in Philadelphia for the Georgian Revival wing of the Public Library (1925) on the southeast corner of the square where the restored cast-iron fountain Man, Dog and Beast (1892) was placed in 1991. The Art Deco Mellon Bank (former Farmers National Bank, 1941) at 37 W. Main Street is complemented by two buildings: First Federal Savings and Loan (c. 1950) at 17 E. Main Street, a sleek Moderne design in polished red granite trimmed with aluminum, and the Art Deco–crowned Alvina Krause Theatre (1940; 226 Center Street), housed in the former Columbia Theater. St. Paul's Episcopal Church, a Victorian Gothic building erected in 1868 at E. Main and Iron streets, is the oldest church in Bloomsburg; Richard Upjohn may have been the architect. The bell tower and rectory next door were constructed in 1891–1892 to Amos S. Wagner's design. One block east, at E. Main and Light streets, stands the town hall (1890, E. E. Ritter), built at the same time as the courthouse and echoing its Romanesque style.