Misguided Molovinsky On The NIZ

According to The Morning Call, $32.84 million $dollars of state taxes was diverted last year to pay the debt service on J.B. Reilly's growing empire of center city buildings. While this was over 90% of the $36.3 million diverted, Jaindl's got $2.1 million, and Butz got 3/4 of $1 million. The Morning Call headline referred to developers. NIZ articles always refer to developers. In reality, the NIZ should be called JBR, that would be much more accurate and truthful.

As someone who went to city hall meetings with the former merchants of Hamilton street, I can tell you that there was no truthfulness about the whole deal. Strawbuyers threatened former building owners with eminent domain, and Reilly bought up downtown. The Allentown Parking Authority even offered its lots for sale, so that development would even be cheaper for the developers.

I sat on the stage at WFMZ debating Mike Fleck about the ethics of the NIZ. The Morning Call's Bill White wrote that I was misguided. Reilly now owns the Morning Call building, and Mike Fleck is in prison.

Supermarket Comes To Allentown

The concrete monolith still stands five stories above Lehigh Street at the Parkway Shopping Center. Currently it sports a clock and a sign for St. Luke's medical offices. It was built in 1953 as the modernistic sign tower for Food Fair supermarket, which then was a stand alone store. Behind it, on South 12th Street was the Black and Decker Factory. The shopping center would not be built to decades later, connecting the former supermarket to the bowling alley built in the 60's. Food Fair was started in the 1920's by Russian immigrant Samuel Friedland in Harrisburg. By 1957 he had 275 stores. 1953 was a rough year for the butcher, baker and candle stick maker; the huge supermarkets were too much competition, even for the bigger independent markets, such as Lehigh Street Superette; it was further east on Lehigh, now the site of a Turkey Hill Market. The sign tower also remains at the 15th and Allen Shopping center, which was another stand alone Food Fair. That parcel remains an independent supermarket. Food Fair would eventually absorb Penn Fruit, which had a market on N. 7th Street, then turn into Pantry Pride. When the Food Fair was built, there was as yet no 15th Street Bridge. Allentown only connected to the south side by the 8th Street Bridge and the Lehigh/Union Street hill. (stone arch bridge, near Regency Tower, was route to West End) Allentown was booming and Mack Trucks were rolling off the line, a block east off Lehigh Street, as fast as they could build them. The factories on S. 12th st. are now flea markets. Mack Headquarters is being sold to a real estate developer. Perhaps those concrete monoliths are the monuments to better times, by those of us who remember.

reprinted from June 2009

Sign Of The Times

As Allentown eagerly awaits the opening of the Cosmopolitan Restaurant and banquet facility on 6th Street, lets go back in time. Before the former Sal's Spaghetti House was demolished on that parcel, preservationists from Bucks County saved the historic sign. Had the couple been somewhat more familiar with Allentown's history, they may have realized that the sign was neither very historic or iconic.

Before Hamilton Street was bi-sected architecturally by the now gone canopy, the street was lined with large neon signs, many of which were much more elaborate than Sal's; That sign became historic by default. Interestingly, the Sal's sign for most of it's


business days, said Pat's. Pat's and the sign go back to the mid 1950's. In the late 70's, the business was taken over by Sal, and the P and T were simply changed to an S and L. But time goes on; Sal's family is now in the sauce business and have a most interesting website.

1963 Pat's advertisement courtesy of Larry P
Hamilton Steet watercolor by Karoline Schaub-Peeler
photo of Sal's sign by molovinsky                                                 

reprinted from 2010

Revisiting Black Philadelphia

Last summer I presented several posts on the shrinking Black neighborhood in South Philadelphia. Gentrification is creeping south from the area between Rittenhouse Square and Broad Street, infringing on this former Black middle class area.  Most of the middle class Blacks moved away years ago, to more integrated areas, leaving behind a poorer neighborhood, but rich in history.

I have written about the Philadelphia Tribune, the Jack and Jill Society and other middle class Black institutions.  In a recent exploration, I discovered the last remnant of Father Divine,  a charismatic Black preacher, who amassed thousands of followers in the 1930's and 40's.  By the mid 40's, his church moved from Harlem to Philadelphia's Broad Street.  Divine died in 1965. There are numerous articles and documentaries on his ministry.  

Although I have no expertise on gentrification or Black Philadelphia history,  as I explore the neighborhood a year later,  I can see more and more signs advertising new expensive luxury apartments.    

Reflecting On The Allentown Park System

Every spring for the last decade I have met with the Allentown Park Department. Sometimes I have been invited for a meeting, and other years I just barged into an office, and inflicted my sermon on unappreciative ears. My sermon essentially never changes. Spend a very small portion of the park budget to maintain the iconic WPA structures, which this city could never afford to replace. Leave some openings in the Riparian Buffers, so that families might access and enjoy the creeks.

My mission has had limited success. I failed to convince city council to keep the little dam and its musical water sound by the Robin Hood Bridge. I failed to convince the city to maintain the Lehigh Parkway entrance wall, which then collapsed, closing the main park entrance for two years. My efforts have resulted in two structures being partially restored.

I lack any diplomatic skills. I'm used to officials cringing when I enter the room. My reward is when someone comes up to me in a park to complain about something there. Those people know that I care, and that I will speak out for them.

A Changing Confluence

Future cartographers will locate the confluence of the Little Lehigh Creek and the Lehigh River as south, and slightly east of the current LCA sewage plant. Historians will know better. Up to forty years ago, nature joined the Little Lehigh with with western channel of the Lehigh, halfway down the side of Kline's Island. Around 1970, the City of Allentown decided to reclaim the river channel north of the confluence, ending Kline's status as an island. What is now the last section of the Little Lehigh, was previously the Lehigh. The map shown was produced in 1900. Also gone from current geography is the man made harbors, shown north of the Hamilton Street bridge. The new google map shows that the

former bridge to Kline's Island still stands, crossing the now reclaimed former west channel of the Lehigh River. Also visible is the footprint of Allentown's former gas tank.




reprinted from June of 2013

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.

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

reprinted for March of 2016

East Side Middle School

The local news has been covering Nat Hyman's lawsuit against Pennsylvania's plan to sell the State Hospital parcel. Also covering the case today is fellow blogger Bernie O'Hare.  I take exception to one premise in his otherwise excellent piece,  that another middle school isn't needed on the east side.  While I don't know the student figures for the existing middle schools, or even if they are overcrowded, I do know that no east sider can easily walk to Harrison Morton, which is the closest middle school to the east side.  Now as the crow flies, perhaps Harrison isn't that much farther than Raub is to the west end,  but there is only one practical route across the Lehigh River.*

Community activist Dennis Pearson has long said that the east side always gets shortchanged.... I believe that there is a lot of evidence for his accusation.  Allentown city council has also asked the state to put the planned sale of the property on hold, so that they can hold a hearing, and get community input on the parcel's future.

* Only the Hamilton Street Bridge connects to a populated area of the east side.  Both the Tilghman  and the new American Parkway Bridges are of little use to students.