More Silliness From Allentown's Improvement Fathers.

In a move to improve it's image, the NIZ Board is moving out of City Hall. They're moving to the AEDC building at S.10th and Harrison Street, which is an old Mack Truck Factory. According to The Morning Call, Ken Heffentrager, a local landlord slayer and activist, isn't happy, because it makes attending meetings more inconvenient. Bob Lovett, board member, counters that it's easier parking there and no meters! Bob and Sy Traub could accommodate their desire to put some distance between themselves and Pawlowski, and satisify Heffentraugher at the same time. They could simply ask the lord and master for an office. Supposedly, CityCenter Development has about a 25% vacancy factor,  and J.B. Reilly could give some space with no pain. I suppose such an arrangement would have a conflict appearance, but who are they kidding anyway?

Today, readers will find a second post below this one.  It is my intention to reprint some previous railroad posts, to accommodate those who couldn't attend Molovinsky University last week. Until the railroad series is complete,  two post will be necessary on days when silly political shenanigans take top billing.

 molovinsky on allentown will be shortly changing the comment policy. Anonymous comments, per se, will no longer be hosted. Commenters will be using or creating a Google/Blogger/Open ID. The identity need not be your real name, pseudonyms are permitted. The registration is with Google or such, and I have no access to the information provided.  It is my hope that regular contributors to this blog get such a registered handle, to both help elevate the dialogue here, and protect the integrity of their input.

Junkyard Train

Today, once again we ride a freight train of Allentown's great industrial past. In the early 1970's, the Redevelopment Authority tore down the neighborhood on either side of the Lehigh Street hill. At that time they had persuaded Conrail to move the the Barber's Quarry Branch line exclusively to the southern side of the Little Lehigh. The branch had crossed over and back to service the great Wire Mill. After crossing Lehigh Street, the train would proceed along the creek passing under the 8th Street Bridge. At the 10th Street crossing it would service another great industrial giant, Traylor Engineering.
In 2009 President Obama visited a successor, Allentown Manufacturing, which has since closed. The line would continue along the creek until it turned north along Cedar Creek to Union Terrace. After crossing Hamilton Street by the current Hamilton Family Diner, it would end at the current park department building. Nothing remains of the line, the tracks were removed. The Allentown Economic Development Corporation recently received a grant to rebuild the line to 10th Street, even though the plant Obama visited has closed. The neighboring former Mack Plant now houses a go cart track. How the money will be squandered remains to be seen. The top photograph was taken by local train historian Mark Rabenold in 1989. It shows the later relocated section of the track that was just east of the Lehigh Street crossing.

UPDATE: The County Commissioners recently denied a request by AEDC to grant KOZ status to the closed Metal Manufacturing building. Although the company never cited lack of rail service or property taxes as the reason for closing, the rail grant is still on the table. $Millions of $Dollars would be needed to lay bed and track from 3th and Union to S. 10th Street, to service an empty building; Truly, The Track To Nothing.

reprinted from December of 2013

Done With Meetings, Mostly

I'm generally done with meetings, after 30 years of jostling against the windmills. I noticed that Saucon approved removing a local dam, after a campaign by The Wildlands Conservancy. They got the Pa. Fish and Boat, Pa. Dept. of Environment, etc. to sign on. It's a grant sharing cabal, not unlike the politicians who used to share girls on the Monkey Business Yacht.  Now, if that anaology suggests comtempt for all the players, it was well chosen. I still get off the sofa for local history. Last week, I offered a short notice lesson on the LVRR branch lines at a local coffee shop. I will continue to defend the WPA structures in the Allentown park system. Annoyed by the corruption in Harrisburg, I might  even still throw my hat in the ring as an independent for the 183rd District.  However, for the most part, I'll let this blog speak for me.  molovinsky on allentown will be 9 years old this coming May, which is 63  in blog life.

molovinsky on allentown will be shortly changing the comment policy. Anonymous comments, per se, will no longer be hosted. Commenters will be using or creating a Google/Blogger/Open ID. The identity need not be your real name, pseudonyms are permitted. The registration is with Google or such, and I have no access to the information provided.  It is my hope that regular contributors to this blog get such a registered handle, to both help elevate the dialogue here, and protect the integrity of their input.

photocredit: Mary Ellen Mark

Allentown's First Waterfront

Although cheerleaders for the current waterfront NIZ think that they're inventing the Lehigh River, Allentonians already had a river port in the 1800's. As this section of the 1899 map shows, Wharf Street, which is still partically there, led to a man made river port, with two channels back to the river. The Lehigh Port was dug out in 1829, and was used in conjunction with the canal on the other side of the river. In the early 20th century, as the canal commerce was replaced by the railroads,  the port was filled in,  by an expanding Arbogast & Bastian Meat Packing.  Currently, a private boat club utilizes the river front near that location.  I exhibited the map at a recent session of Molovinsky University.

 molovinsky on allentown will be shortly changing the comment policy. Anonymous comments, per se, will no longer be hosted. Commenters will be using or creating a blogger/google/Open ID. The identity need not be your real name, pseudonyms are permitted. The registration is with google or such, and I have no access to the information provided.  It is my hope that regular contributors to this blog get such a registered handle, to both help elevate the dialogue here, and protect the integrity of their input.

The riverport was slightly north of the current America On Wheels Museum, by the Hamilton Street Bridge, going over the Lehigh River to East Allentown.

Nonsense News From Allentown

There has been some recent national news stories which state that Allentown is a desirable place to live, that's nonsense. These stories are written or researched by reporters, regurgitating misconceptions from previous erroneous articles, that appear in google searches. While a puff piece written last year by The Morning Call may praise downtown as a renaissance in motion, it doesn't mention a fraught school system. Articles about all the new jobs don't mention that they were hijacked from elsewhere in the valley.

For those who doubt the existence of nonsense articles, witness the report that Pawlowski does well in a matchup with Toomey. Never mind that the mayor hasn't been a candidate for eight months, or is implicated so far in three guilty pleas.

Pity the poor SOB moving to Allentown on the merits of such nonsense articles.

In a piece today, a study reveals that despite a $Billion dollar of revitalization, center city Allentown remains mired in poverty. It doesn't take a study to make that determination. Simply drive down Turner Street to 4th, turn north one block to Chew Street, and drive back west to 17th Street. Repeat the process on adjoining streets, and soon anybody not blind will realize that there is no revitalization.  What we have is one man, with a portfolio of new taxpayer financed buildings between 5th and 9th streets. While a few more men will add a few more buildings,  and the phenomena will be repeated in the 6th Ward by the river, revitalization only exists in the vocabulary of the newspaper, and a few optimists, most of whom have something to gain for their enthusiasm.

The reality is that Allentown is just another city in the rust belt, but with a bunch of new buildings. For millennials, who desire an urban experience, the unprecedented state subsidy is creating more dining and buzz than any real marketplace would have generated.

The optimists, needless to say, hate posts such as this.  Although, they will dismiss it as naysaying, they needn't worry.  Neither optimism or pessimism changes the facts.  With enough  money you can create an illusion that can last for a couple of decades, take Baltimore's Inner Harbor for example.  Eventually, reality catches up with such staged productions, but, by then our professional optimists can retire to Hilton Head.

photocredit:Harry Fisher/The Morning Call

A Former Factory and Neighborhood of Allentown, Pa.

The Wire Mill was a sprawling industrial plant along 13 acres of the Little Lehigh Creek, just east of Lehigh Street, near the current Martin Luther King Drive.  An 1899 map of Allentown contains the footprint of various industries of the time, and the Wire Mill was the most prominent.  The Lehigh Valley RailRoad constructed two bridges over the Little Lehigh, to bring its Barber Quarry spur line into and out of the plant. Began in 1886, it produced wire and nails until 1943, and then sat abandoned for another twenty years. During WW1, it employed up to 1,200 men around the clock, producing barbed wire for the trench warfare in Europe. The factory sat on the south side of the former Wire Street, which housed narrow row houses on the other side of the street, and the neighborhood above it.



That entire neighborhood was demolished in the early 1970's, as Allentown embraced the modern urban renewal models of the time. The old, modest neighborhood of small row houses, between Lawrence and Union Streets, and on both sides of Lehigh Street, between 4th and 8th Street, were bulldozed away.  It was, in a large part, home to Allentown's black community. How ironic that we destroyed the cohesion of a neighborhood, but renamed Lawrence Street after Martin Luther King. The only remnant of that community and neighborhood still there is the St. James A.M.E. and Zion Church. A former vibrant neighborhood was replaced by a sterile bank call center, sitting alone on a large vacant hill. That building is now the new Building 21 city operated charter school. I would have complained about that urban renewal plan if I was blogging back then. Now, 50 years later, I still consider that plan a failure. Hopefully, future bloggers will have something better to say about Allentown's current revitalization.

The Wire Mill was at the bottom of the Lehigh Street hill, shown above

Portion of 1899 City Map of Allentown Showing Wire Mill