Starrucca House, Susquehanna Depot

Starrucca House is a rare relic of America's first fast-food era. In the years before the introduction of dining and sleeping cars, many railroad stations, like Starrucca House, served quick meals to passengers during short feeding-and-fueling stops and offered over-night lodging. Built by the Erie Railroad during the Civil War, Starrucca House offered sleeping accommodations for two hundred guests, and its central portion, two-and-one-half stories in height, was a cavernous arched dining room. Pointed-arched windows throughout the building and trefoil gable windows gave the imposing building a sense of style. By 1903, improvements in travel comforts rendered the 170-foot-long brick building obsolete and the railroad converted it to company offices and a residence for railroad workers. The railroad located its first rail shops here in 1848, and when Starrucca House opened, the rail shops covered eight acres. The Erie discontinued passenger service in 1968, and by the time the line became part of Conrail in 1975, the shops were closed; they were demolished after a fire. Starrucca House, however, was restored and a restaurant was opened in its north end.