Scranton’s next mural downtown will cover a large side wall of a building in the 300 block of Penn Avenue that had been hidden for over a century.

“Song of the City,” a Vaudeville-themed mural by artist Jon Laidacker of Philadelphia, will go on a side wall of the building at 305-307 Penn Ave. owned by local developer Art Russo, and overlooking a parking lot along nearby Linden Street, organizers of the mural said Tuesday.

A joint venture by Lackawanna County and the nonprofit Scranton Tomorrow’s Mural Arts Program, the mural will feature a top-hatted man on a stage floating out bubbles containing images of several Vaudeville stars who had performed in Scranton, including Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West and the Marx Brothers, as well as vintage scenes of Scranton streetscapes flanking the stage, and a ribbon stretched across the bottom with the saying, “If you can play Scranton, you can play anywhere.”

“It’s not only a tribute to the Vaudeville era, but it’s also a tribute to the (former) theater district on Penn Avenue. You will see in the background a very strong architectural theme of the way Penn Avenue looked in the Vaudeville era,” said Scranton Tomorrow’s Mural Arts Program Chairwoman Rose Randazzo-Pizzuto.

Most of the wall that will host the mural had been unseen for over a century, until it was exposed in March of 2023 by the demolition of the building next door, the former J.G. Plotkin & Son Shoe Co. at 301 Penn Ave. The over-120-year-old Plotkin shoe store along Linden Street was destroyed by fire Dec. 19, 2020. With its construction dating to at least 1898, Plotkin long had been an anchor of the Penn Avenue Historic District. A firm of developer Don Mammano bought the fire-ravaged Plotkin property, but the building was too far gone to save and he demolished it. In recent months, Mammano completed converting the vacant Plotkin site into a parking lot.

With the bottom two-thirds of the Plotkin wall exposed, Russo had repointed the brick on that portion of the “party” wall previously shared between adjoining buildings and never exposed to the elements until the Plotkin demolition.

“It had no architectural interest and only a few windows” along the top part of the wall, Randazzo-Pizzuto said. “This is perfect wall for a mural — a wall that has nothing special about it. It was hidden and could have been considered blight. Now, it will have a beautiful mural.”

The mural would cover 6,500 square-feet of wall space, she said.

Lackawanna County Arts and Culture Director Maureen McGuigan also believes the mural would be a welcome addition to the 300 block of Penn Avenue and its nearby areas.

“When the shoe store burned down, there was suddenly a wall, and that block (300 Penn Avenue) is so beautiful, you want to highlight it,” McGuigan said. “I think the mural will really pop there and it ties into the history.”

They also credited Russo, Mammano and restaurateur Rob Friedman for their support for the mural. A company of Friedman, whose hospitality group owns numerous venues in Luzerne County, last year purchased The 16th Ward restaurant/bar and its building at 306 Penn Ave. in Scranton; and he also is leasing the first floor and basement of Mammano’s neighboring GAR Building at 300-304 Penn Ave., which is right next door to The 16th Ward, for a future restaurant underway there. Mammano’s parking lot at 301 Penn Ave. will provide parking for those establishments across the street.

Laidacker’s works include Philadelphia’s largest mural, a 2011 acrylic paint on polytab work titled “How Philly Moves” and covering 86,000 square feet of space, and stretching for a half-mile across six parking garages at the Philadelphia International Airport. He will do the mural in Scranton in a realist ‘trompe l’oeil’ (to fool the eye) style, also painted on polytab in a studio in Philadelphia and then applied to the wall in Scranton in the fall, Randazzo-Pizzuto said. She expects the studio work to begin soon and the application onto the wall to occur in the fall.

At their meeting Wedneday, the Lackawanna County Commissioners have on their agenda a resolution to approve a “Mural Artist Agreement” with Scranton Tomorrow and Laidacker for work on the mural from March 1 through Oct. 1 at a total cost of $72,500. The county’s commitment would be capped at $50,000 and Scranton Tomorrow would be responsible for covering the rest, McGuigan said.

The murals partnership between the county and Scranton Tomorrow last year produced “Remembrance and Continuance: The Lenape Story in Scranton,” an 8,000-square-foot piece of public art adorning the north side of the Brixx Building, 130 N. Washington Ave., owned by Russo’s ATR Properties.

In 2024, the county completed “The Four Seasons of Lackawanna County” murals on the large retaining walls on both sides of the Biden Expressway. Randazzo-Pizzuto also collaborated with the county on that production.

That expressway project’s leftover paint spawned a smaller mural, titled “Somnium Orbis,” which is Latin for “Dream World,” that also was painted in 2024 on a side wall of the 414 Biden St. building of Tequila Mexican Pub.

Prior murals done by Scranton Tomorrow’s Mural Arts Program include:

• “The Dream,” a Martin Luther King Jr. mural at 607 Mulberry St. in 2021.

• “Danseur de Corde (Rope Dancer),” a vaudeville-themed mural at 328 Penn Ave. in 2021.

• “The Good of the Hive” bee motif on a rear wall of the Scranton Civic Ballet Company building at 234 Mifflin Ave. in 2022.

• “The Office: The Story of Us” on a side wall of 503 Lackawanna Ave. in 2023.

• “The Big Band,” a 130-foot-long, 30-foot-tall mural on a side wall of 217-219 Wyoming Ave. in 2024.

Meanwhile, in 2020, Frank Dubas had a mural of John Lennon painted on the east-facing, blank stucco wall of a building he owns at 518 Lackawanna Ave.

“I think the murals are just a great addition” to the city, McGuigan said. “It’s like an open-air museum.”