Hawley's Historic Downtown

Downtown Hawley's business section lies primarily along Main Avenue and the portion of Church Street from Main to the corner of Bishop Avenue.

The Pennsylvania Coal Company laid out the streets in this section in the 1840s and 1850s. The part of Main Avenue from the Lackawaxen River bridge to Hudson Street was not laid out until the canal basin was drained after 1898. Previously, the public could take roadways such as Park Place which hugged the river bank to reach First Street.

One business on Main Avenue remains from the very beginning: Teeter's Furniture, which has occupied the corner of Main and Church since 1849. (The building was rebuilt after a fire in 1986.)

A landmark business on Church Street was the Wayne County House built in 1860, which still stands (2019). The business section experienced two infernos, taking out many buildings in 1897 and 1898. The Hawley Fire Department was started in 1898. 1902 saw the construction of the 1^st National Bank of Hawley and the Hotel Belvidere.

[Photo captions, clockwise from bottom left, read] , . This late 19th century view look[s] up Main Avenue from the intersection with Keystone Street. At the far corner on the left is the elegant Keystone Hotel, built in 1876. The first borough election was held there in February 1884. Most of this side of the 200 block was destroyed in a fire in 1897. In the far distance, PA Coal Company gravity railroad, elevated tracks are visible.

. This view, circa 1910, looks up Main Avenue from the intersection with Keystone Street. Hawley Bank puts up its new facility in 1929, on the site of the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co. at left.

. The Keystone Hotel was replaced with the Odd Fellows Hall, at left next to the second utility pole, in 1898. Joseph Skier's dry good store is on the corner at right. Note the steam from locomotives, in the background. Electric lights came to Hawley in 1897; streets were not paved until the early 1920s.

. Church Street is shown during a parade, which may have been part of Hawley's centennial celebration in 1927. In the distance at right is the Wayne County House, an old hotel built in 1860.

. The east side of Main Avenue is shown in the early 20^th century. These buildings stand today (2019). AMSkier Insurance is the first building on the left (2019).

The fourth building from left (217 Main Avenue), with the two upstairs windows, was used in the early 1900s for a silent movie theater, the Hippodrome. At far right is the 1st National Bank, which was built in 1902.

. Photographer Louis Hensel had a studio in Hawley from 1878 to 1927. His store and studio reopened in November 1897 after a fire destroyed the original building along with many of his photographs and negatives.

. The Murray building, seen at center, on the western side of Hawley's 300 block of Main Avenue dates to the early 1900's. Most of this side of the block was lost in an inferno in 1898.

Hotel Belvidere, at far left, was erected in 1902. Long known as the Hawley Inn and by other names, the original name was restored in 2014 when the property changed hands.

. This early view of the east side of the 300 block of Main Avenue shows the Teeters building at far right. Teeters, which has both a furniture and funeral business, has been in the same family and at the same corner since opening in 1849. . This historical marker was erected in 2020 by Wayne and Pike Trails and Waterways Alliance and Many Partners. It is in Hawley in Wayne County Pennsylvania