📍2446 North Washington Avenue, Scranton, PA 18509, USA
1942 – 1953“Joe Biden spent his first ten years in this house at 2446 North Washington Avenue in Green Ridge, a neighbourhood of Scranton, Pennsylvania, filled with working-class Irish-Catholic families. His parents had moved in with his mother's parents, Ambrose and Geraldine Finnegan, and the house was crowded: his great-aunt Gertie, his uncle Edward, and soon his younger brother and sister too. The kitchen table was where he said he learned politics. His grandfather, Grandpop Finnegan, held court there with talk of unions, the Church, fairness and the Democrats, and Biden later described that house as the place he learned his first principles. Outside, there were porches and alleys, the parish church and school, and a gang of neighbourhood friends he stayed close to for life. He also had a severe stutter, and was teased for it at school; he worked at it for years, later reciting poetry in front of a mirror until the words came. In the early 1950s Scranton's coal economy was declining, and his father, Joseph Sr., could not find steady work. In 1953 the family moved to Claymont, Delaware, where his father later sold cars. Biden often recalled his father explaining that a job is about far more than a paycheck; it is about dignity and being able to look your children in the eye. He returned to Green Ridge for summers and holidays as a boy, and as a candidate and as president he came back to the house, and during a 2020 visit he signed a wall inside, writing that he had come from this house to the White House.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today