SCRANTON — Lackawanna County commissioners approved Wednesday a pair of easements to protect two murals in the city: an existing mural featuring civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. and another celebrating Scranton’s vaudeville history that should be installed later this year.

The MLK mural, titled “The Dream,” has adorned the Mulberry Street side of a building at Mulberry and Adams Avenue since its creation in 2021. Painted by Eric Bussart with lettering by Emmanuel Wisdom, it was the first mural of the nonprofit Scranton Tomorrow’s Mural Arts Program that’s beautified and aesthetically bolstered the downtown with public art since its inception.

The planned vaudeville mural by artist Jon Laidacker of Philadelphia, a joint venture by the county and Scranton Tomorrow’s Mural Arts Program, will cover a large side wall of a building at 305-307 Penn Ave. that had been hidden for over a century. The wall targeted for the mural, titled “Song of the City,” was exposed in March 2023 by the demolition of the building next door, the former J.G. Plotkin & Son Shoe Co. building that was destroyed by fire Dec. 19, 2020.

Commissioners approved in February a “Mural Artist Agreement” with Scranton Tomorrow and Laidacker for work on the mural, which will feature a top-hatted man on a stage floating out bubbles containing images of several vaudeville stars that performed in Scranton, including Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West and the Marx Brothers. It will also feature 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.”

Lackawanna County Arts and Culture Director Maureen McGuigan said the vaudeville mural should be installed by Nov. 15.

She confirmed the project’s timeline after Commissioners Thom Welby and Chris Chermak approved a façade easement agreement for the vaudeville mural and a mural preservation easement agreement for the MLK mural. Commissioner Bill Gaughan did not attend the meeting due to a family medical issue.

The façade easement, which lists the county and Scranton Tomorrow as grantees and building owners Arthur Russo and Tara Cawley Russo as grantors, protects the prospective vaudeville mural from removal for 40 years regardless of whether the building changes hands.

The other agreement between the county and EFH Homes LLC, which owns the building bearing the MLK mural, protects the public art for 10 years, unless the property is sold or transferred. In that case, the county would have to negotiate a new agreement with the next owner. The agreement would also become null and void if Scranton’s planned streetscape project to install new sidewalks in front of the mural “does not come to fruition by the earlier of (the) conclusion of the proposed Downtown District Infrastructure Project” or the end of 2027, per the document.

Both agreements say the grantors are conveying the easements for the nominal amount of $1.