[ Source: ErieReader.com ]

"The first thing you see when you walk in is the original Lackawanna Steel Company staircase, topped with 100-year-old Pennsylvania slate," says Mark Tanenbaum, PACA's executive director. "You can ride in the oldest working elevator in Erie County." The elevator was installed in 1913 at the height of a typhoid epidemic, when the fourth floor was used to house the sick and the dying. "We've salvaged lighting and fixtures from the Erie Coke plant and other local historic properties. Our new arts and entrepreneur center features a stone wall hewn by members of Henry Mayer's Army company, the Pennsylvania 102nd. In the back of the building is the only physical evidence remaining of the Great Mill Creek Flood of 1915 — a bent i-beam that was used to shuttle cargo off boats running the creek. There's history everywhere you look."

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