Center Square

Easton's first courthouse stood here from 1765 to 1862, when it was demolished despite the objections of protestors who felt that a building from whose steps the Declaration of Independence had been read should not be swept away. Today the square is dominated by P. F. Eisenbrown's lofty Soldiers and Sailors Monument (1900). Standing seventy-five feet high, this square granite shaft was fabricated in four sections by the Eagle Granite Works of Reading. Atop the shaft a bugler stands ten feet and three inches tall, playing “Taps” as he faces the setting sun. At the base four life-sized figures, representing the branches of the service, face the cardinal points. The sculptor was William Lehmler, an employee of Milton Masters Monuments of Shenandoah, Virginia, who were hired to execute Eisenbrown's sketch. Since 1951, the monument is enclosed every Christmas by a one-hundred-foot-tall square wood and plaster replica of a candle, claimed by Easton to be the world's largest (only?) “Peace Candle.”