Welcome to the Lehigh Valley Landmarks with Leon podcast series, celebrating 250 years of independence. I'm your host, Rachel Leon. Since being elected in 2022 and serving as Vice President of Bethlehem City Council, I'm humbled by the opportunity to serve the diverse communities that make up our great city. But to understand where we're going, we need to understand our past. Each week, I'll share a short feature with a big story about the 250 years that made the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, known as the Christmas City, as we explore historic landmarks.
At noon on July 8, 1776, three crowds in three different towns heard the same words for the first time when the Declaration of Independence was read.
One location was Philadelphia. One location was Trenton, New Jersey. And one location was Easton, Pennsylvania, where a county official named Robert Levers climbed the courthouse steps and read aloud: “That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”
The public gathered in downtown Easton’s Centre Square. Today the traffic circle at Northampton and Third Streets has anchored the city since its founding.
In one compact block, you can trace two and a half centuries of American history: a revolutionary reading, a Civil War monument, and a Christmas tradition that turns a memorial to the dead into a hundred-foot beacon of peace.
Centre Square’s story begins in 1750, when surveyor William Parsons laid out Easton’s street grid around a central plaza called the Great Square. When Northampton County was created in 1752, Easton became its county seat and the square the center of civic life — home by 1791 to one of the oldest outdoor farmers’ markets in the country, a tradition that still continues.
In 1765, the county built its first courthouse in the middle of the square. Eleven years later, Robert Levers stood on those steps and read the Declaration to Easton’s citizens — one of only three public readings Congress designated for July 8, 1776. For many in the crowd, it was the first time they heard, in their own square, that they were no longer subjects of the Crown.
By 1861, the county had outgrown the building. A new courthouse opened several blocks away and the 1765 structure came down. A temporary fence left a circular path when removed — giving Centre Square the rotary traffic pattern that defines it today.
On May 10, 1900, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument was dedicated on the spot where the old courthouse — and Robert Levers — had stood. It is a 75-foot obelisk of Barre granite, with four bronze statues at its base representing the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and navy. The granite face bears the names of campaigns where Northampton County’s men fought and died: Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and others. At the top stands a bronze bugler facing west. Local tradition holds he was modeled after Francis Reed, a teenage drummer in the 96th Pennsylvania Regiment — a legend no contemporary record confirms, but one the city has carried for more than a century.
The monument’s meaning shifted in 1951, when a citizens’ committee erected a towering candle around it, answering a local newspaper’s call for better holiday decorations. In 1967 it was renamed the Peace Candle, dedicated to Easton-area veterans.
The current version, built in 1990, stands 106 feet tall — painted white with blue wax-drip detailing, a 15-foot flame at its peak, and four smaller candles at its base. It is widely recognized as the largest non-wax Christmas candle in the United States.
What makes Centre Square remarkable is not any single event but the way three centuries of history share the same ground. The spot where Robert Levers proclaimed independence in 1776 is where Easton honored its Civil War dead in 1900 — and every winter since 1951, that same monument has been wrapped in a symbol of peace. Few places ask a visitor to hold revolution, mourning, and reconciliation in mind all at once.
Centre Square remains the civic heart of Easton at Northampton and Third Streets. Each July, Heritage Day brings thousands to hear the Declaration read aloud once more. Each November, the Peace Candle is lit the Saturday after Thanksgiving, drawing crowds for cocoa, a holiday market, and the glow of Easton’s most beloved tradition.
For current hours, visit easton-pa.com.
Information for this episode was provided by the City of Easton; the Library of Congress; the Journal of the American Revolution and Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; Lehigh Valley Passport to History; Northampton County Court records; and Wikipedia’s documented history of the Peace Candle, cross-referenced with LehighValleyNews.com and The Lafayette.
