In 1905, Dr. Isaiah F. Everhart drafted a will specifying that funds from his estate should be used to construct the “Dr. I.F. Everhart general museum to be built in Nay Aug Park in the City of Scranton, Pennsylvania.” Construction was completed in 1908 at which time the Everhart became the 9th museum in the Commonwealth. In order to satisfy Dr. Everhart’s original plan calling for “three buildings forming three sides of a square, one for natural history, one for science, one for art,” the Trustees added two wings to the original building in 1928. On May 30, 2008, the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art celebrated its 100th anniversary of serving the people of Northeast Pennsylvania.
The creation of the Everhart Museum represents late Victorian traditions that celebrated the museum as a generalist educational institution. Strategically located at the entrance to Scranton’s Nay Aug Park, the Everhart is also a visible expression of the “City Beautiful” movement. This national movement, which emerged in the 1890’s, was response to the squalid conditions of worker housing and general well being in America’s urban environments. The “City Beautiful” movement was promoted by the middle and upper-class reformers who sought to improve their cities through beautification of the landscape. While other reformers concentrated on improving sanitary conditions or opening social missions, “City Beautiful” leaders believed the emphasis should be on creating a beautiful city, which in turn would inspire its inhabitants to moral and civic virtue.
The idiom that the “City Beautiful” leaders used in their civic centers was the Beaux-Arts style, first presented to great public acclaim at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. The Everhart Museum, designed by Harvey J. Blackwood & John Nelson, is Scranton’s expression of the ideals of the “City Beautiful” movement.
