TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface.......................................................................................... 1
Prologue: The Day the Candles Died: November 18, 1995........ 7
Part I: The Rise and Fall of an American Industrial City: An Abbreviated History of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania .................... 17
Chapter 1: Moravians ........................................................... 19
Chapter 2: The Industrialists................................................ 29
Chapter 3: Immigrants and Migrants ................................... 43
Chapter 4: Sprawl, Blight, Preservation, and Renewal......... 49
Chapter 5: A Bold New Plan for Downtown ........................ 71
Chapter 6: Deindustrialization ............................................. 83
Part II: A New Paradigm, 1982–2000........................................ 89
Chapter 7: Tourism: An Economic Development Fantasy .. 91
Chapter 8: A Signature Festival ............................................ 97
Chapter 9: Financing a Vision ............................................ 113
Chapter 10: Festival Entrepreneurship............................... 125
Chapter 11: The Summer of ’84 ......................................... 135
Chapter 12: Musikfest Unveiled ......................................... 145
Chapter 13: “A Success Beyond Anyone’s Wildest Dreams”............................................................................... 157
Chapter 14: Growing Roots................................................ 173
Chapter 15: Growing Pains................................................. 191
Chapter 16: Keeping Christmas in the Christmas City ..... 203
Chapter 17: The Banana Factory Arts Center.................... 213
Chapter 18: The Millennium.............................................. 231
Chapter 19: The Lehigh Valley Emerges ............................ 241
Part III: Transformation: SteelStacks and the Redevelopment of the Bethlehem Steel Plant, 1992–2016.................................... 251
Chapter 20: The Last Will and Testament of Bethlehem Steel..................................................................................... 253
Chapter 21: A Change of Plan ............................................ 265
Chapter 22: And the New Owners Are... .......................... 275
Chapter 23: Gambling on the Future ................................. 281
Chapter 24: Designing a Twenty-first-Century Performing Arts Center.......................................................................... 289
Chapter 25: Raising Money in a Recession ........................ 299
Chapter 26: SteelStacks: Campus, Staff, and Programs ..... 309
Chapter 27: A New Era Begins ........................................... 323
Chapter 28: Bethlehem at 275 ............................................ 337
Chapter 29: Why the Arts Are Essential to Community Development....................................................................... 343
Acknowledgements.................................................................. 351
Notes ........................................................................................ 353
NOTES
Ann Markusen and Anna Gadwa Nicodemus, Creative Placemaking, executive summary of white paper for the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, Markusen Economic Research Services and Metris Arts Consulting, 2010.
See tables 28.1–28.3.
Thomas Kupper, “The End Begins When ‘the Steel’ Falls Silent,” (Allentown) Morning Call, special report, October 22–25, 1995, 18.
Bette Kovach, interview by author, January 11, 2016, Bethlehem.
Ibid.
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, “German Settlement in Pennsylvania: An Overview,” n.d., http://hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/germanstudentreading.pdf
Chester S. Davis, Hidden Seed and Harvest: A History of the Moravians (Winston-Salem, NC: Winston, 1973).
W. Ross Yates, Bethlehem of Pennsylvania, The First Hundred Years, 1741–1841 (Bethlehem, PA: Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce, 1968), 23–29; deed of William Allen to Henry Antes, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA.
Kenneth G. Hamilton, Church Street in Old Bethlehem (Bethlehem, PA: Author, 1942).
Ibid.
Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites, “Colonial Industrial Quarter,” 2017, https://historicbethlehem.org/?historic-site=colonial-industrial-quarter
Raymond Walters, Bethlehem Long Ago and Today (Bethlehem, PA: Carey Printing, 1923), 102, 106.
Yates, Bethlehem of Pennsylvania, 158–63.
Schwarz Gallery, “View by Artist: Gustavus Johann Grunewald,” 2017, http://www.schwarzgallery.com/artist/239/Gustavus-Johann-Grunewald
Christopher Bowen, Bethlehem Brewed and Distilled, Exhibit, Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites, 2014, Bethlehem, PA.
Old Breweries, “John Sebastian Goundie Brewery—PA 39B,” undated table “Breweries Listed Under Bethlehem, PA 39,” http://www.oldbreweries.com/breweries-by-state/pennsylvania/bethlehem-pa-8-breweries/john-sebastian-goundie-brewery-pa-39b/
Frank Whelan, John Sebastian Goundie, Nineteenth-Century Moravian Entrepreneur (Bethlehem, PA: Oaks Printing, 1988), 16, 22. A reprint of the book is available at the Historic Bethlehem Visitor Center.
Yates, Bethlehem of Pennsylvania, 137.
Walters, Bethlehem Long Ago and Today, 36.
Joseph Mortimer Levering, A History of Bethlehem Pennsylvania, 1741–1892 (Bethlehem, PA: Times Publishing, 1903), 678.
R. D. Billinger, “Early Zinc Works in the Lehigh Valley,” Journal of the American Chemical Society, February 1936, 60.
W. Ross Yates, “Samuel Wetherill, Joseph Wharton, and the Founding of the American Zinc Industry,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 98, no. 4 (1974): 485.
W. Ross Yates, Lehigh University, A History of Education in Engineering, Business and the Human Condition (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1992), 17–18.
W. Ross Yates, Bethlehem of Pennsylvania: The Golden Years (Bethlehem, PA: Chamber of Commerce, 1976), 22.
Until the 1950s a freight station stood at what is now the Banana Factory Arts Center. The passenger terminal on Second Street was the last union station—one shared by two or more independent railroad companies—built in the United States, shortly before cars, buses, and planes became more popular modes of travel.
“First Steel Rails Historical Marker,” ExplorePAHistory.com, http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-1CA; Terence Bell, “A Short History of Steel,” thebalance.com, August 21, 2017, https://www.thebalance.com/a-short-history-of-steel-part-ii-2340103; “Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel,” Morning Call, December 14, 2003, 22. I am greatly indebted to the work of the Morning Call.
“Forging America,” 26, 22–23; David Colamaria, “The Story of the New Steel Navy,” steelnavy.org, 2010, http://www.steelnavy.org/history/exhibits/show/steelnavy/introduction/story
“Forging America,” 27, 36.
Ibid., 23–25.
Ibid., 33; Christopher Gray, “The Late Great Charles Schwab Mansion,” New York Times, July 8, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/realestate/11streets.html
“Forging America,” 40.
Ibid., 41–42, 45.
Ibid., 100.
Ibid., 102.
Ibid., 64.
“Lehigh Valley Silk Mills,” National Park Service, n.d., https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/delaware/sil.htm
Jeremy Hachey, R. K. Laros, the Patron of Bethlehem (Bethlehem, PA: R. L. Laros Foundation, 2014).
Ibid.
Ross Born and David Shaffer, interviews by author, June 16, 2016, Bethlehem, PA.
Ibid.
Ibid.
David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 66. The houses of worship of South Bethlehem remain to tell the story: Holy Infancy Church originally was the first Roman Catholic church, established in 1861, for the Irish community and later was home church for the Portuguese, Mexican, and Puerto Rican communities. It started the wave and was followed by St. Peter’s Lutheran (German), Fritz Memorial Methodist (English); Holy Ghost Roman Catholic (German); St. Joseph’s (German, now Puerto Rican); Our Lady of Pompeii (Italian); St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (African American); Saints Cyril and Methodius (Slovak); St. John Capistrano Roman Catholic (Hungarian); St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic (Slovenian); St. John’s Windish Lutheran (Slovenian); St. John’s Slovak Lutheran; Cathedral Church of the Nativity (Episcopalian); St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic (Polish); St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church; St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church (Ukrainian); Congregation Brith Sholom ( Jewish, primarily from greater Russia and greater Germany).
On Italian immigration see “Italy from 1870 to 1945,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/Unification#toc27743
Venditta and Hilliard, Forging America, 67, 82–83.
Ibid., 83.
Basilio Huertas, interview by author, June 17, 2015, Bethlehem, PA.
Ken Raniere, “South Bethlehem’s First Brewery,” Bethlehem Press, April 10, 2014.
Ibid.
Raymond Walters, Bethlehem Long Ago and Today (Bethlehem, PA: Carey Printing, 1923), 110–11.
Ibid., 111–12.
Ibid., 115, 116.
Federal Highway Administration, “State Motor Vehicle Registration, by Years, 1900–1995,” https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf
The other phenomenon they financed was white flight. The federally insured mortgage programs of both the Federal Housing Administration and the VA were designed to lure whites out of public housing and into single-family homes in the suburbs. The government’s “explicit program” was not to insure suburban mortgages for African Americans. See Richard Rothstein, “Public Housing: Government-Sponsored Segregation,” American Prospect, October 11, 2012, http://prospect.org/article/public-housing-government-sponsored-segregation.
Bethlehem’s population in 1940 was 58,490 and just over sixty-six thousand in 1950. Bureau of the Census, US Department of Commerce, “Population of Pennsylvania by Counties, April 1, 1950,” 1950 Census of Population, Preliminary Counts, September 19, 1950, 8, https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/pc-02/pc-2-46.pdf
I recently came across a copy of the history of the company, typed on onionskin, in my father’s scrapbook and have donated it to the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, PA.
The first urban planning conference in the United States was held in New York in 1898. Amanda Erickson, “A Brief History of the Birth of Urban Planning,” CityLab, August 24, 2012, https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/08/brief-history-birth-urban-planning/2365/
Robinson and Cole, and National Association of Realtors, Urban Blight: An Analysis of State Blight Statutes and Their Implications for Eminent Domain Reform (Chicago: National Association of Realtors, 2007), 3, https://www.nar.realtor/smart_growth.nsf/docfiles/blight_study_revised.pdf/$FILE/blight_study_revised.pdf
Ibid., 4.
Ibid.
Wendell E. Pritchett, “The ‘Public Menace of Blight’: Urban Renewal and the Private Uses of Eminent Domain,” Yale Law Journal 21, no .1 (2003), http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylpr/vol21/iss1/2/
Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, overview of program leading to an MS in historic preservation, 2017, https://www.arch.columbia.edu/programs/7-m-s-historic-preservation
James Risen, “Another Blow to Flint, Mich.: Auto World Theme Park to Close,” Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1985.
Laura Curtis Gross’s first husband was a New York attorney and assistant secretary of the treasury under President Taft. She was known for her hospitality while living in the nation’s capital. When she married John Gross and moved to Bethlehem, she converted her Washington home into the 1925 F Street Club, which is in operation today as one of the capital’s most exclusive gathering places. Originally a refuge for Republicans during the New Deal, today the club has members of all political affiliations. See “The F Street Club, A Nice Quiet Place,” New York Times, April 26, 1983.
Ralph Schwarz, interview by author, May 31, 2016, Bethlehem.
Ibid.
Clarke & Rapuano, and Russell VanNest Black, An Interim Report on the City of Bethlehem, May 1, 1956. Copies of the report are available at the Lehigh University Library.
Schwarz, interview.
Ruth Hutchison, “What’s Going on in Bethlehem?” New York Herald Tribune, October 1, 1961, Sunday suppl., 4.
Schwarz, interview.
Bethlehem Globe Times, November 28, 1967, 1.
Ibid., November 29, 1967, 4.
Ibid.
The report also recommended removing “blighted properties” along the Reading Railroad tracks bisecting the south side and perhaps using some of that land for parking to support the south side business district. Pursuant to the report’s parking recommendations, the city made spot improvements throughout the city and built the first parking structure in the north side downtown. Bethlehem Steel made improvements to its hotel and built a parking garage overhanging the hillside along the Monocacy Valley. The Steel also saw to it that a four-lane controlled access highway from Route 22 to the Hill to Hill Bridge, a major component of the transportation recommendations, was completed in 1966. Unrelated to the city’s plans, during the same period the school district developed a new campus with a second high school, middle school, and home for the regional vocational technical school on the border between the city and Bethlehem Township.
Ken Raniere, “The Heights—Declaration of Doom,” Bethlehem Press, September 5, 2013.
Clarke & Rapuano, Center City Bethlehem (New York: December 1969), 7, Records of the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Bethlehem, Lehigh University Library.
Bethlehem Globe-Times, March 22, 1976, 3.
“Reese Jones, Man of the Decade,” editorial, Bethlehem Globe-Times, March 22, 1976, A-6.
Moravian House 2 with 106 residential units opened in 1977. It, Moravian House 1, and the Bethlehem Housing Authority’s Monocacy House provided housing for more than five hundred low- to moderate-income senior citizens and people with disabilities. The downtown now had four of the eight high-rises depicted in the Clarke & Rapuano plan, which had envisioned office towers next to apartments and condominiums that would house the office workers who would live and play in downtown Bethlehem. Instead the city now had one partially filled office tower, a mall with no anchor and few customers, and residents of limited income to support retail, restaurants, and a performing arts center. Construction of these projects traces directly to one man whose commitment and access to resources and community connections made it possible but whose legacy is, at best, mixed.
John H. Koch, “Reese Jones and First Valley Bank: Banking on Bigness,” Sunday Call Chronicle, April 22, 1979, B-1.
Before the campaign for the arts center could get under way, Mowrer changed the strategy for Main Street to preservation. That decision, as well as a movement to save the Sun Inn, put an end to the fund-raising effort.
Koch, “Reese Jones and First Valley Bank.”
“Reese Jones, Man of the Decade”; Reese Jones obituary, Bethlehem Globe-Times, March 22, 1976, 1; Koch, “Reese Jones and First Valley Bank,” B-5.
Gordon B. Mowrer, The Comeback Kid (Bethlehem, PA: Author, 2010), 59.
Urban Land Institute report on Bethlehem, April 2, 1976, 4, Records of the Redevelopment Authority.
Ibid., 5.
Ibid., 43.
On February 20, 2013, the city celebrated improvements to Main Street and a new star of Bethlehem, a graphic representation of the star on South Mountain, embedded at the intersection of Main and Market streets. Mayor John Callahan and Gordon Mowrer unveiled a plaque honoring Mowrer as the “Main Street mayor.” It was a fine moment for the Moravian minister, mayor, insurance man, father, and grandfather. Mowrer died on July 19, 2016, leaving an enduring legacy for the people of Bethlehem.
Jeffrey Feather and four associates left IBM in 1970 to form a software and services group called Pentamation, which was based in Bethlehem, where IBM had its regional offices, primarily because of Bethlehem Steel. While capital was difficult to find in those days, the startup managed to pull together enough financing to focus on serving three sectors: government, education, and medicine, especially software for hospitals. By 1975 Pentamation was able to take advantage of discounted rates to move into the First Valley Bank tower, which first brought the business to downtown Bethlehem. As the business grew, and the mall was losing tenants, Pentamation rented a former fitness club in the mall to use as a computer center. By 1983 Pentamation had grown even more while the mall had completely failed. Feather and his business partner in Pentamation, Dave Bloys, bought the mall and started using portions of it for Pentamation’s offices. Eventually their business used most of the mall for its business needs while renting some space to the Internal Revenue Service and a small convenience store. Jeffrey P. Feather, interview by author, June 17, 2016, Bethlehem.
Hughetta Bender obituary, Morning Call, March 14, 1995.
David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 147.
Marlene A. Lee and Mark Mather, “U.S. Labor Force Trends,” Population Bulletin, June 2008, fig. 5, p. 7, http://www.prb.org/pdf08/63.2uslabor.pdf
Alan Mallach, In Philadelphia’s Shadow: Small Cities in the Third Federal Reserve District (Philadelphia: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, May 2012), 11, https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/community-development/publications/special-reports/small-cities-in-third-federal-reserve-district.pdf
David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 113.
John Strohmeyer, Crisis in Bethlehem (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1986), 114.
Ibid.
Thomas Kupper, “The End Begins: When ‘the Steel’ Falls Silent,” Morning Call, supplement, November 1995, 18.
Strohmeyer, Crisis in Bethlehem, 114; Venditta and Hilliard, Forging America, 147.
Strohmeyer, Crisis in Bethlehem, 158.
John Strohmeyer, “City Services for Musikfest ’84 Are Investment in the Future,” Bethlehem Globe Times, July 3, 1984; Bill Toland, “In Desperate 1983, There Was Nowhere for Pittsburgh’s Economy to Go but Up,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 23, 2012.
David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 148.
Mary Procter and Bill Matuszeski, Gritty Cities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978).
Gregory Ashworth, abstract for “The Instruments of Place Branding: How Is It Done?” European and Spatial Research Policy 16, no. 1 ( June 2009), doi.org/10.2478/ v10105-009-0001-9; Ghazali Musa and T. C. Melwar, “Kuala Lumpur: Searching for the Right Brand,” in City Branding Theory and Cases, ed. Keith Dinnie (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 163.
The organizations included the Moravian College, Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Sun Inn Preservation Association, Historic Bethlehem, Inc., Beethoven Choruses, Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, Moravian Museum, Bethlehem Steel, C. F. Martin & Company, Wainwright Travel, Northampton County Tourism Council, and the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce.
Jeffrey A. Parks, Tourism Task Force on Special Events, Report to the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, June 1983, 2, 3, in the author’s files.
Pennsylvania law categorizes cities in three classes based on population. Philadelphia is the only first-class city, Pittsburgh the only second-class city; Scranton is classified as 2A (as the runner-up to Pittsburgh), and all the rest are third class—and a bit insulted by the designation.
David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 148.
In the exuberance between the chamber’s approval and the garnering of actual support, I added a site to the plan. The short-lived Amerika Platz was to feature American music, such as rock ’n’ roll, blues, and country. It was to be located on City Center Plaza. But I had a moment of sanity in December 1983 dropped this platz as a bit too ambitious for the first year of the event.
The members of the first board of directors were Carol Henn, director of Institutional Advancement of Moravian College; Anne McGeady, executive director of the Sun Inn Preservation Association; Jim Davis, executive director of the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce; Llyena Boylan, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra; Janet Goloub, curator, Historic Bethlehem, Inc.; Jean Kessler, chair, Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce Tourism Committee; Gustave K. Skrivanek, Beethoven Choruses; Barbara Caldwell, administrative assistant to the mayor of the City of Bethlehem; Stephanie Katz, executive director of the Northampton County Tourism Bureau; Elizabeth Emslander, manager of the Hotel Bethlehem; Jack Trotter, senior vice president of marketing, First National Bank; Wayne Steeb, vice president of marketing, First Valley Bank; Jeffrey Gordon, public relations manager, First National Bank; Carol Heller, marketing manager, Union Bank and Trust Company; Helene Whitaker, community relations manager, Bethlehem Steel Corporation; Mary Ellen Gallo, president, Banko Beverage of Allentown; James Connell, attorney; Paul Meilinger, merchant and member of the board of the Downtown Bethlehem Association; Barbara M. Stout, public relations professional; Bob Steinmetz, representative of the Stadtkapelle Berching; and Jeffrey A. Parks, attorney. I was the association’s president; Henn was vice president, and the board’s other officers were McGeady, treasurer, and Davis, secretary.
David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 148.
Roland Kushner, interview by author, December 1, 2015, Bethlehem, PA.
The local employment figure is from David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 148.
John Strohmeyer, “City Services for Musikfest ’84 Are Investment in the Future,” Bethlehem Globe Times, July 3, 1984.
Like Musikfest, A Night in Old Vienna offered different foods in its different locations. The Continental Room was serving German specialty foods, German and Austrian wines, and of course beer. The Candlelight Room was the place for dessert—Viennese pastries and exotic coffees.
By 1990, the seventh year of Musikfest, sixty food vendors fed the festival, just a few less than we have today. Foods offered that year included shrimp cocktail, crab cake sandwich, chicken éttouffée; smoked turkey legs; peaches and cream (August is the month for local peaches); Belgian waffles; German chocolate cake; swordfish sandwich; homemade fudge; funnel cake (a staple at a Pennsylvania festival); curried rice salad; gyros; pizza; bratwurst; jumbo shrimp scampi; apple, cherry, cheese, and apricot strudels; open-faced rib-eye sandwich; Cornish pasties; potato pancakes; tacos; spinach pies; pancit lo mein; linguini with white clam sauce; egg roll; cabbage and noodles; caldo verde (Portuguese soup with collard greens and sausage); napoleons, cream puffs, and raspberry trifle. The committee wanted to offer an around-the-world food experience and succeeded.
Wine sales were modest but gave a big boost to Franklin Hill. Musikfest continued to feature Franklin Hill’s wine for several years, but when a major wine company offered an exclusive sponsorship, the festival board accepted. Wine remains only a small part of overall beverage sales. It is not the preferred beverage of summer music festivalgoers.
Ticket revenue has rarely covered the entire cost of a show. According to Americans for the Arts, ticket sales for all performing arts (theater, dance, music) account for only 60 percent of the cost of presenting the show. The remainder of the revenue comes from gifts and memberships from individual donors (25 percent), gifts from corporate donors (3 percent), and foundation and government grants (12 percent). Musikfest created a bold new model by covering a major percentage of the costs by selling food, beverages, and sponsorships.
Because Monocacy Creek frequently flooded the Colonial Industrial Quarter, the city removed a Depression-era dam at Johnston Park (Volksplatz) in 2013 and the flooding ceased.
For the employment figures see David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 148.
David Venditta and Ardith Hilliard, eds., Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: Morning Call, 2010), 148. Bethlehem Steel also announced in late 1996 that it was forming an entity called Bethlehem Works to “preserve, interpret and redevelop portions of the plant” in Bethlehem (148).
Willard G. Rouse III was the nephew of James Rouse, who, with his brother Willard G. Rouse Jr. (father of Willard G. III), developed Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston and Harborplace in Baltimore, as well as planned communities like Columbia, Maryland, and many other commercial developments.
Curtis “Hank” Barnette, interview by author, November 29, 2016, Bethlehem, PA.
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, “Land Recycling Program,” 2017, http://www.dep.pa.gov/BUSINESS/LAND/LANDRECYCLING/Pages/default.aspx
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, “Program Results: Success Stories,” 2017, http://www.dep.pa.gov/Business/Land/LandRecycling/Pages/Program-Results.aspx
The total acreage of the Bethlehem plant was 1,760. Bethlehem Commerce Center, the industrial park, was to include all but the 126 acres set aside for Bethlehem Works. When the dust settled, the 126 acres were conveyed to BethWorks Now; 450 acres had been conveyed to Majestic Realty; and 1,100 went to Lehigh Valley Industrial Park. The remaining 84 acres, which had been intended for the Commerce Center, were deemed too difficult to remediate under Act 2 and were retained by ISG’s real estate entity. In 2017 the value of the land had increased so much that a developer bought part of it and immediately began to bring in the required two feet of topsoil to remediate the land for development.
Ralph G. Schwarz, Memorandum on Executive Summary of Understanding re Bethlehem Steel Museum, July 6, 1994, in the personal files of Ralph Grayson Schwarz, Bethlehem, PA.
Conceptual Design Proposal, Bob Weis Design Island Associates, June 13, 1995, in the personal files of Ralph Grayson Schwarz.
Economic Research Associates, “Market Analysis and Evaluation of Warranted Investment for Bethlehem Works, PA,” Final Report, San Francisco, CA, 1995, in the personal files of Ralph Grayson Schwarz.
Barnette, interview.
Ralph Grayson Schwarz, interview by author, May 31, 2016, Bethlehem, PA.
For more about Smithsonian Affiliations, see https://affiliations.si.edu/about-us/faq/#toggle-id-1
Thomas Kupper, “Steel Influence Permeates City Debate over Rezoning 160 Acres of Idle Plant Highlights Connections, Steel Ties,” Morning Call, April 1, 1996.
Hugh Bronstein, “Bethlehem Steel Rezoning Plan Cleared,” Morning Call, April 3, 1996.
Barnette, interview.
Bronstein, “Bethlehem Steel Rezoning Plan Cleared.”
The TIF district included properties not owned by Bethlehem Steel to the east and south of the designated Bethlehem Works project. These properties were thought to be good candidates for development that would contribute to the TIF and thus to Bethlehem Works.
Don Cunningham, interview by author, January 4, 2017, Bethlehem, PA.
“Riverside Arts Park, Bethlehem, PA: A Proposal,” March 21, 2003, in the author’s files.
Ibid. The Sasaki study is no longer in my possession. The quote I have used appears in a footnote in “Riverside Arts Park.” The city’s Office of Community and Economic Development retains a copy of the study.
Peter Zeihan, The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder (New York: Twelve, 2014), 38.
Anne Brownley Raines, “Change Through Industrial Culture: Conservation and Renewal in the Ruhrgebeit,” Planning Perspectives Journal 26, no. 2 (2011): 183–207.
According to UNESCO, “The Zollverein XII Coal Mine Industrial Complex is an important example of a European primary industry of great economic significance in the 19th and 20th centuries. It consists of the complete installations of a historical coal-mining site: the pits, coking plants, railway lines, pit heaps, miner’s housing and consumer and welfare facilities. The mine is especially noteworthy of the high architectural quality of its buildings of the Modern Movement.” See UNESCO, “Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen,” http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/ 975
In fact, the spelling Jonathan suggested was SteelStax, which we all agreed was sexier than SteelStacks but turned out to be a potential conflict with rights of the owners of the Stax record company so we changed it.
Jeffrey Feather, interview by author, May 18, 2016, Bethlehem, PA
Michael Perrucci, interview by author, January 14, 2016, Bethlehem, PA.
Michael Perrucci, interview by author, January 14, 2016, Bethlehem, PA.
Minutes, Bethlehem City Council, October 3, 2006.
See the postings at Film-Tech Cinema Systems, http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f5/t001340.html
It is important to note that the most prosperous counties in Pennsylvania in terms of median household income are the four Philadelphia suburban counties, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, which also are attracting young, educated residents.
Wayfinding “refers to information systems that guide people through a physical environment and enhance their understanding and experience of the space.” Society for Experiential Graphic Design, “What Is Wayfinding?” SEGD, n.d., https://segd.org/what-wayfinding. The Sands Casino alone reports 8 million guests per year (some of whom are presumably city residents) and ArtsQuest reports more than 1,500,000 guests per year for Musikfest, Christkindlmarkt and various other events, while many visitors come throughout the year to visit Lehigh University, Moravian College or the various heritage sites. The Hotel Bethlehem, with its prized location in the center of the Moravian Historic District has become a favorite lodging place for guests of regional businesses many of which are international companies with headquarters in Germany, Japan, Denmark and China.
Nicole Radzievich, “Bethlehem Advances in Bid to Be World Heritage Site,” Morning Call, December 9, 2016, http://www.mcall.com/news/local/bethlehem/mc-bethlehem-world-heritage-nomination-20161209-story.html
4Ward Planning, Inc., South Bethlehem Eastern Gateway Study, March 12, 2014, Philadelphia, 20, available at the Community Action Development Corporation of Bethlehem.
Lynne McCormack, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Creative Placemaking,” Local Initiatives Support Corporation, June 30, 2016, http://www.lisc.org/our-stories/story/creative-placemaking-q-and-a
Naomi Lewin, “Attraction or Annoyances? Orchestras Invite Audiences to Use Their Smartphones,” WQXR, March 28, 2012, https://www.wqxr.org/story/194745-attraction-annoyance-orchestras-invite-audiences-use-smartphones/
Lindsey Gruson, “Bethlehem Pins Hopes on Music,” New York Times, August 25, 1985.
Natalie Grigson, “These Are the Ten Most Exciting Places to Live in Pennsylvania,” Movoto Blog, July 2014, https://www.movoto.com/blog/real-estate-and-more/most-exciting-places-in-pennsylvania/; Megan H. Weiler, “Reader Recs: Best Summer
Music Festivals,” National Geographic Travel, July 17, 2014, http://intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/17/reader-recs-best-summer-music-festivals/; Rebecca Lake, “The Best Christmas Markets Around the World,” Condé Nast Traveler, December 19, 2014, https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-12-19/the-best-christmas-markets-around-the-world-bryant-park-tivoli-gardens-salzburg/
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