SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 A celebration of the arts was held Thursday morning in Lackawanna County as the county\u2019s Arts and Culture Department hosted its 17th Annual Wake Up with the Arts Breakfast.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Place We Call Home\u201d was this year\u2019s theme, and this year\u2019s presenter showcased a glimpse into the past of a city that over 75 thousand people call home.<\/p>\n
In the early 1930s, the building now known as the Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple was built in the quickly growing city of Scranton.<\/p>\n
Now, nearly one hundred years later, local historian Nick Petula stands in front of a small crowd to talk about what the Electric City was like before the building\u2019s construction was even planned.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe faces are kind of a reflection of the immigrant status at the time, of the social status at the time, and some of the unusual crimes that were part of a pretty big city at the time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
These faces are those of the accused; mugshots from a time before cars filled the streets, and colorful lights shone above the square. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople stealing horses, cows, chickens, wagons. There was a lot of big-time crime, a lot of murders, a lot of assaults, there was a lot of black hand activity in this area,\u201d said Petula.<\/p>\n
A former history teacher, Petula had never considered himself much of an artist until he stepped back to view his work from a new perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt ties in with this aspect of photography as a form of art and culturally significant. What are the faces of these people? Their dress? What does it say about the times they lived in?\u201d He asked.<\/p>\n
Petula\u2019s presentation serves as a small part of Lackawanna County\u2019s rich art history, as the only county in the Commonwealth with an arts and culture tax to provide government funding to local artists and organizations, as county Commissioner Bill Gaughan explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet us leave here today after this presentation with a renewed commitment to lift up our artists, to defend their freedom and to invest in the creative spirit that makes Lackawanna County worth calling home. When the arts thrive, our community doesn\u2019t just grow, it soars,\u201d said Commissioner Gaughan.<\/p>\n
Petula’s mugshot project can be seen in his latest book, Faces of the Accused: A History of Scranton Mugshots and Criminal Activity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 A celebration of the arts was held Thursday morning in Lackawanna County as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-58387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}