Allentown's Teeming Success

These two photos, together showing Allentown center square, were taken on Monday afternoon (March18,2019) at 4:30PM, by John Mortensen. Readers of The Morning Call would never know what a failure the NIZ is. While diverting $70 million dollars a year of taxpayer money to private debt service, nobody has benefited, except one man, who owns most of the new buildings. 

Meanwhile, back in Deceptionville, the paper promotes the NIZ district as if it was a humming, teeming success. Meanwhile, back in Deceptionville, they report the ANIZDA meetings as if they are real deliberations.

Mortensen's pictures were posted to a local facebook group.  In addition to the paper providing no balance to the NIZ story,  neither do the facebook groups, for the most part.  This particular group found the pictures misleading and negative.  I was actually called a "bitter old man" by the moderator, and muted.

John Mortensen is a write-in candidate for city council.

Depot At Overlook Park

Old timers have noticed that the contractor's building on Hanover Avenue transformed into a community center for Overlook Park. But only the oldest, or train buffs, realized that the building was the freight depot and office for the Lehigh & New England Railroad. Lehigh & New England was formed in 1895, primarily as a coal carrier. The line ran from Allentown to Maybrook, New York.

In 1904 it was acquired by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. The line ceased operation in 1961. Among it's infrastructure were impressive bridges across both the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers, both of which were dismantled. Ironic that a remnant of our industrial era is being utilized by the successor of a public housing project.

reprinted from February of 2014

Another Morning Call Infomercial

As an advocate for the park system, seeing the above photograph from the Morning Call article on the Lehigh River parks, was a harsh joke.  The article is subtitled, Insider's Guide To The Lehigh Valley. It actually is an outsider's guide. The reporter states that he has never been to these parks previously, and his tour gulde is Pawlowski.  I'll go further, and doubt that any of recent park directors have ever been to Canal Park, which is in a condition somewhere between neglect and hazard.  Before I go further, let's be clear that the Morning Call asked Pawlowski, whose negligence allowed the iconic Lehigh Parkway entrance wall to collapse, to be it's tour guide in the parks.  Nothing has been done in Canal Park since Pawlowski was elected as mayor in 2005, or before that, when he served as Community Development Director, under Mayor Afflerbach.  Pawlowski even refers to the train line through Canal Park as a problem.  Someone should inform him that it is the main west line of Norfolk Southern, and more relevant to Allentown than he is, certainly at this time. As if that wasn't enough irony, Pawlowski is considering a new park to neglect,  for boat launching. All this attention about the river is part of the paper's hype for the new NIZ construction, soon to begin by the Tilghman Street Bridge. In a recent exchange with a Morning Call writer/editor, he defended the informercials
concerning the NIZ. Although I have been sending notes to the paper about the deplorable conditions in the existing parks, they choose instead to engage in a puff promotion for the NIZ, featuring a future indictee. Pass the Tums.

ADDENDUM: In regard to an earlier post, regarding emergency repairs needed at Union Terrace, shared by somebody on facebook,  Joe McDermott commented, "Fine, who is willing to pay more taxes to make those repairs, Mike Molvinsky, maybe?"  This is disturbing, because McDermott is a former Morning Call reporter who now pens for Pawlowski.  So, although this administration paid Abe Atiyeh $1.4 million dollars for land it's not using or needs for the park system, it employs a hack to link park maintenance with higher taxes.

photo by April Bartholomew/The Morning Call

above reprinted from October of 2015

UPDATE MARCH 18, 2019: Pawlowski is gone. The park department has a new director, and while I'm more optimistic about the parks than I have been since 2005, Canal Park's neglect and isolation is still a problem. My advocacy and outspokenness for the parks continues...

Best By Test

Growing up in Little Lehigh Parkway, now called Little Lehigh Manor by the Realtors, the milkman was an early morning fixture.  Almost every house had the insulated aluminum milkbox.  The milk trucks were distinctive, and the drivers wore a uniform, indicative of their responsibility.  Freeman's milk was the best by test, or so the slogan said.  Their trucks were red and immaculate.  The dairy building  still stands, a quarter block north of 13th and Tilghman Streets.  They competed with a giant, Lehigh Valley Co-Operative Farmers.  That dairy, on the Allentown/Whitehall border, just north of the Sumner Avenue Bridge on 7th Street, even sported an ice cream parlor.  Milk, up to the mid 50's, came in a bottle.  The milkman would take the empties away when delivering your fresh order.  In addition to white and chocolate,  they produced strawberry milk  in the summer.  About once a week the milkman would knock on the door to settle up;  times have changed.






Occasionally the bottle, and later the cartons, would feature themes and advertisements.  A picture of Hopalong Cassidy would entertain young boys as they poured milk into their Corn Flakes.  Earlier, during the War, (Second World) bottles would encourage customers to do their part;  buy a bond or scrap some metal for the war effort.

reprinted from 2015

Smelling The Roses In Allentown

Paul Pozzi started working for the Allentown Parks Department in 1979. In 1985, he joined the small crew at the Rose and Old Fashioned Gardens. For the last decade, the gardens have been solely under his magnificent care. We who take solace in that magic place owe him a debt of gratitude. 

Unfortunately, the rose garden has been infected by a disease, and some drastic measures are necessary. The Morning Call reports that a large portion of the roses must be removed, the planting beds sanitized, before new rose bushes can be planted. We are fortunate that Paul is on hand for this project.

photo by Molovinsky, flowers by Paul Pozzi

No Mercy For Little Lehigh Creek

Over the years I have documented the sewage leaks in Lehigh Parkway, both into the creek and onto the adjoining banks. The EPA was on Allentown's case for over a decade. Allentown ran down the clock with different proposals, until they leased the water systems to Lehigh County Authority. The different municipalities, then on the hook, came up with bandaid solutions. For instance, South Whitehall, rather than improve their pipes, decided to bang the homeowners. Each house would be inspected, and any condensation from central air conditioning would have to pumped out of the house, rather than dripping into a basement drain. The floor drains, which were installed to protect the house from leaks, would have to be closed off.

According to a Morning Call article, this past summer saw more sewage than ever flow into the Little Lehigh. Despite this worsening reality, the EPA has withdrawn their mandates, and will settle for a drop in the bucket...the banging the homeowner plan.

While the rate payers of LCA might, I say might, enjoy a reprieve, clean water advocates should be outraged.

photocredit:molovinsky

The Mad Men Of Allentown

Back in the day, the titans of Allentown would fill the five barberchairs of the Colonial Barbershop, 538 Hamilton Street. That was when the town had three department stores. That was when Wetherhold and Metzger had two shoe stores on Hamilton Street. That was when Harvey Farr would meet Donald Miller and John Leh at the Livingston Club for lunch, and discuss acquiring more lots for Park & Shop. By 1995 all that was gone, but Frank Gallucci, 82, would still give some old timers a trim. The Colonial Barbershop property, closed for many years, has been purchased by J.B. Reilly. It is my pleasure to present this previously unseen portrait of Gallucci, toward the end of his career.

photocredit:molovinsky

reprinted from September of 2017

Allentown's West End Train

The Lehigh Valley Railroad operated a train branch line which served Allentown's commercial west end. It ran along Sumner Avenue servicing the scrap metal yards, warehouses and numerous coal dealers located there. The line then crossed Tilghman Street on a diagonal at 17th, before looping back east by Liberty Street at the Fairgrounds. The line ended at a rail yard now housing the small shopping center at 12th and Liberty. Although many of former commercial buildings still exist, all now house more retail type businesses. The B'nai Brith Apartments occupy the site of the former Trexler Lumber Yard. These historical shorts are difficult to write. Most current residents have no frame of reference to our former commercial past. True historians, such as the local railroad buffs, cringe at the lack of detail and specific location of the tracks. Suffice to say, that once upon a time, the mid-section of Allentown had much more commerce.

photo of train crossing Tilghman at 17th Street taken by Kermit E. Geary in 1974, from the Mark Rabenold Collection.

above reprinted from March 2014


Although there are several Facebook groups about Allentown, I decided to fashion and start another. Like this blog, the group will focus on local history and politics, but with a markedly different tone.... It is intended to discuss the city's past, present and future in a non-partisan manner. It will neither be liberal nor conservative. It is not a nostalgia site for the best pizza, nor a gripe site about the worst city council member. Posts will not be restricted to Allentown, but anywhere in the Lehigh Valley. Unlike this blog, most of the posts will be submitted by members other than myself. While I start out as the default moderator, I may be joined by others with a local history background. You're invited to join. The group is named ALLENTOWN CHRONICLES, and another link can be found on my facebook page.