Honesdale in the Poconos was dubbed cool in 2020 — and it’s hotter than ever

HONESDALE, Pa. — The Wayne County Art Alliance walls are painted Guggenheim white, and were awash in local landscapes and abstract paintings during a gallery sale on the Friday before Christmas.

Next door, behind the glow of a giant, neon happy face, a South Philly man was getting a Star Wars tattoo. The gallery and Happy Tattoo, which opened in 2021, were both visible from Honesdale’s newest Airbnb across the street, a simple, chic loft with hardwood floors and white linens. The loft is owned by a man who opened the new wine, charcuterie, and nonalcoholic wine shop around the corner, across the street from a new brewery.

Philadelphia Magazine described Honesdale as “accidentally cool” in 2020 and today, on the cusp of 2025, it’s certifiable, stamped by the type of businesses — yoga studios, plant shops, coffeehouses, breweries, and galleries — that can terraform a sleepy rural town into a place tourists want to visit, alongside Wayne County’s longtime draws like Lake Wallenpaupack and the Delaware River.

“It has only gotten better here,” said Damian Grzejka, 30, owner of the Airbnb loft and Pocono Provision. “It’s still up-and-coming, too.”

Grzejka grew up in Honesdale, about 150 miles north of Philadelphia, and splits his time between the town of 4,438 and New York City. The urge to leave small, rural towns is almost a cultural cliche and many of Honesdale’s newest and most popular businesses, like the restaurant Native, or Get Flexy Yoga & Stretch Studio, were founded by people who grew up there and felt the urge to explore, only to be pulled back.

“I definitely wanted to get away,” said Alexandra Johnson, co-owner of Native. “If you told my younger self that I would be back here in Honesdale, opening a restaurant, I would have laughed.”

Stacy Brown, owner of Get Flexy Yoga, spent almost four decades away from her hometown, living in Chester and Berks Counties, along with Minnesota. She wasn’t sure she’d have enough clients to open a studio in Honesdale, but with virtual training and a steady group of in-person practitioners that grows in the summer, she’s made it work.

“I grew up there and my grandparents were dairy farmers and we used to deliver milk with them before school,” Brown, 59, said.

Brown said she contemplated opening a studio in Lititz, a quaint town with a thriving main street in Lancaster County.

“It was called the No. 1 small town in America, but I think that’s Honesdale now,” she said. “The entire vibe’s been lifted.“

On the Friday before Christmas, Native had a full house, with diners at the bar and by the open kitchen ordering rib eyes, craft cocktails, butternut squash agrodolce, and, perhaps in a nod to Wayne County’s deeply embedded outdoors culture, venison tartare. Johnson, who co-owns Native with her husband, Caleb Johnson, left Honesdale for Temple University and worked in restaurants in New York City and Philadelphia, including Lolita and Little Nonna’s.

“We moved here eight years ago when we had our first child and decided we would bring what we learned in the city and apply it here, like the open-kitchen concept,” Johnson, 36, said.

Younger couples having children and opening a business, like the Johnsons, are exactly what rural Pennsylvania needs, particularly the Poconos. A 2023 study by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania predicted major popular declines for rural counties in the state from 2020 to 2030. The state is growing older, officials with the nonprofit said, and fewer children are being born.

The Poconos, including Wayne and Pike Counties, were expected to have some of the steepest declines, though officials there say the COVID-19 pandemic saw real estate booms that still haven’t subsided.

“I do see the population being flat and it may not increase dramatically, but I don’t see it declining by the predictions they’re saying,” Wayne County commissioner James Shook said. “There’s actually a bit of a housing crisis and we need about 1,500 more homes in the next five years.”

The pandemic did bring city residents, particularly New Yorkers, into rural Pennsylvania. Some stayed temporarily, grappling with the state’s notoriously spotty broadband coverage while they worked and their children took online classes. Artists found the real estate prices mind-boggling (in a good way) compared to traditional retreats in Upstate New York and bought homes, hotels, and schoolhouses there, turning them into residencies, rentals, and studios. It’s one of the reasons the Wayne County Arts Alliance, which has a gallery on Main Street, has continued to grow.

Debby Pollak, a painter and ceramic artist, spent 35 years teaching art in Philadelphia before moving to Wayne County. The weekend before Christmas was the alliance’s $100-and-under art sale and Pollak, the gallery’s cocurator and the alliance’s education coordinator, said the nonprofit serves an even higher purpose for the region, introducing both children and the elderly to art.

“People who don’t normally get a chance to see art in museums can come here,” Pollak said in the gallery.

Caitlin Cowger was looking for homes outside New York around 2014, particularly in Monticello, in the Catskills. Her attention wandered south, over the border and into Wayne County, where prices were cheaper and A-frames abounded. She closed on her first home in Honesdale in 2015 and “Camp Caitlin” became a refuge.

“It was sort of like a summer camp for me and my friends,” Cowger said. “I think I got addicted to people telling me how cute it was and I put it on Airbnb and it blew up.”

Cowger has six Airbnbs in the area and a coffeehouse/plant shop on Main Street in Honesdale. She lives above the store now, with her partner, Lucas Green, and their son, Hunter.

“People make fun of us because we moved from the city and instead of moving into a country house we built like a New York City apartment,” she said.

Cowger said she’d like to transition into long-term rentals and is scouring listings for a home for her mother in the Honesdale area. She finds herself on Zillow a lot.

“It’s like online dating for houses,” she said.

The dating pool for hidden property gems in Wayne County is expansive too. About 10 miles south of Honesdale, on the edge of Lake Wallenpaupack, the town of Hawley is almost a twin city, itself on the cusp of transformation. There’s a newer, large brewery there, along with a playhouse, antique shops, and American House, a tattoo studio that could double as an art gallery and museum of oddities. Owner Dan Santoro bought a second home in Hawley in 2013, and moved there several years ago, from Brooklyn. He also opened a fly fishing shop in town.

“It’s usually the artists who come first,” Santoro said. “They come to places like this. But on the other hand, I moved here for the outdoors, and I don’t want that to go away.”

Across the street from Santoro’s studio, a quintessential American diner sits shuttered.

Santoro’s betting on a visionary chef investing in it.