Rachel Zanders would probably never have opened a candle shop in the historic district of Easton, Pa., had her brother, Steven Zanders, not moved to the city from Allentown a decade ago to help open a diner in there.
When Mr. Zanders, now 47, first rented a place in Easton, he assumed he had made a mistake. The city, which lies on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers, feels stricken with extreme weather and extremes. But he soon discovered that the city of 27,000 in Northampton County was in a period of dramatic transformation.
So in December 2014, he paid $90,000 for a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath suite in West Ward, a working-class neighborhood. When friends asked why he bought there, he told them he believed in what everyone in Easton was doing.
“I feel like Easton is a little Manhattan,” said Mr. Zanders, who refinanced his home last year. “It’s like one of the buildings of Manhattan falling over Easton.”
The city, about 75 miles west of Manhattan, now has a reviving downtown, with new shops and restaurants flanked by restored historic homes. “There is a lot of life. You see people you know, and people say hello, “Miss Zanders, 34.” You can tell they really value history here. ”
A former Brooklyn resident, Ms. Zanders has grown her business, Easton Candle Co., from an online wholesale company to include a brick-and-mortar store. And while she’s still renting spaces in Easton where she lives and works, she’s seriously thinking about buying.
For more than a decade, Easton has been a haven for expats in New York and New Jersey who want more real estate for their money, along with lower property tax bills. Elizabeth Slevin and her husband, Gene Ciccone, who moved to Easton from Maplewood, NJ, in 2014, are a prime example: Both retired, they discovered they could buy a four-bedroom home in Easton for the same price as their three bedrooms. house in Maplewood, which means they will have a living room for their grandchildren, who live nearby. And the tax bill is a third of what they pay in Jersey.
“As I told my husband, “We can sit in the yard and watch the roses grow in Maplewood, or find a less expensive area and use the cash for fun things like travel,” Ms. Slevin, a former speaker. – speech-language pathologist.
So she and Mr. Ciccone, a former Newark public school superintendent, paid $388,000 for a 2003 home in Easton’s Old Orchard neighborhood. He can still teach part-time at Montclair State University, and their community-theater friends in Maplewood are just an hour away.
And if they choose to volunteer their time, there are plenty of opportunities. Megan McBride, of the Greater Easton Development Partnership, a nonprofit that oversees popular public markets and agricultural markets, says newcomers often become volunteers: “They love the feeling of I feel like I’m part of the action.”
What you will find
Interstate 78 sweeps south of Easton and winds east to New York, a journey residents say takes about an hour and a half. But the city is also about an hour from Poconos and an hour and a half from Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore.
Easton was founded in 1752, later becoming a city of foundries and a hub for steel shipping, many of the buildings and bridges a vestige of those days. But by the time the Crayola Experience – one of the main catalysts of Easton’s recent change – opened 20 years ago in Central Square, not far from the company’s headquarters in Forks Township, the city already had better days. Salvatore J. Panto Jr., a Democrat during his fourth straight term as mayor of Easton, said students from stately Lafayette College, in the College Hill neighborhood, are encouraged. Foxes should not venture into the nearby city center. ). When Mr. Panto began his second term as mayor in 2008, he strengthened the city’s police force, he said, and people began to rediscover the city, with its riverside parks, Hiking trails and historic charm.
The Crayola Experience now welcomes more than 400,000 visitors a year, mostly family day hikers. “It puts Easton in the spotlight,” said Kim Kmetz, manager of the Easton Main Street Initiative, a nonprofit group promoting the city’s central business district.
What you will have to pay
At the end of May, there were 84 properties with Easton mailing addresses for sale, according to data from Greater Lehigh Valley Realtors. That includes homes in the city, as well as in the counties of Wilson, West Easton and Glendon, and in the towns of Williams, Forks and Palmer. Prices range from $110,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home in West Ward to $4.5 million for a five-bedroom, three-bathroom townhouse in the historic district.
So far in 2022, sales are down and prices are up. As of the end of May, 382 properties sold for an average price of $314,947, with an average time on the market of 16 days. In contrast, the first five months of 2021 saw 418 properties sold for an average of $274,027 – about 13% lower – and had an average of 26 days on the market.
The Vibe
Looming over Scott Park, near where the fast-flowing Lehigh River meets deep Delaware, is a statue of a boxer delivering a left-hand strike. The avatar is Larry Holmes, better known as the Easton Assassin, who grew up in the city and held the World Boxing Council heavyweight belt from 1978 to 1983.
It seems Easton doesn’t want to relive his days as a burly riverside town. The grit adds to its aura. But the historic district is also a big draw. Today, it has become so exclusive that potential buyers are willing to consider homes in the West Ward and South Side neighborhoods. One of Mr Panto’s challenges as mayor, he said, is to make sure that longtime residents of those areas are not pushed out. Creating more affordable housing is another challenge.
Old people sometimes complain that Easton isn’t what it used to be, Mr. Panto said, but he believes the new arrivals have made the city stronger. Jonathan A. Miller, an agent with Bethlehem-based RE/MAX Real Estate, said recent transplants are often referred to as “front plates,” because motorists in New York and New Jersey need the plates. numbers on the front of their cars, and Pennsylvania drivers not.
“But we have a lot going on here, admitting that the city has grown,” said Mr. “Now you don’t have to drive to New York or Philly anymore.”
Schools
The Easton Area School District, which serves students in the city of Easton and all or part of the three surrounding towns, includes seven elementary schools, one cyber academy, one middle school, and one high school. pine. As of August 2021, 44.2 percent of the district’s 8,300 students identified as white, 17 percent as black or African-American, and 28.1 percent as Hispanic. Hispanic or Latino, 5.4 percent were Asian and 5.1 percent were of two or more races.
According to the state Department of Education, Easton-area students taking the 2019 SAT scored an average of 512 in math and 537 in reading and writing, compared with state averages of 537 and 545.
Route to work
Trans-Bridge Lines provides daily bus service from the Multimodal Transit Center in downtown Easton to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. With one exception, Easton was the next stop on the way to New York and the second on the way back.
Seven buses depart to New York from 4:20 a.m. to 8:10 a.m. on weekdays, and there are three or four daily buses on weekends. The trip takes between an hour and 35 minutes and is almost two hours. Round trip fare is $82.55; a book of 40 one-way tickets is about $672.
History
Every Thanksgiving, Fisher Stadium at Lafayette University hosts one of the fiercest high school football matches in the country: Easton Red Rovers vs Phillipsburg Stateliners. The series was born in 1905, has attracted more than 20,000 ticket sellers and has been broadcast many times on national television. In 2021, the Red Rovers scored a last-minute winner to win the game.
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