Visit Us
Walk through history as we guide you to things to learn, places to discover, and events that help connect us to our rich heritage.
GetawayMavens.com: Bethlehem PA – Steel, Song, Study, and Skill in PA’s Moravian Town
April 11th, 2019 | In The News
WHY: The Lehigh River cuts the town of Bethlehem PA in two – with the hulking bones of Bethlehem Steel and Lehigh University on the South Side and the stone Germanic Colonial buildings of Historic Moravian Bethlehem on the other.
Bethlehem Steel, which you may recall from Billy Joel’s song, Allentown (“Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time/Filling out forms/Standing in line”) once employed 30,000 people, closing in 1995 after 135 years. Behemoth blast furnaces – five of them lined up for a quarter mile – emitted cobalt-blue flames and were focal points of this working class town. The factory turned out steel that built the New York City skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge, and thousands of structures in between.
