Zeppelin Over Jerusalem

The German airship LZ127 Graf Zeppelin was in service from 1928 to 1937. Two of it's 590 flights were over Jerusalem. The first occurred on March 26, 1929. It was a night flight, during which they dropped mail into the German colony at Jaffa. The second flight, pictured above, was from Cairo on April 11, 1931. The ship hovered above the Church of Holy Sepulchre for several minutes.

reprinted from May 2011 

ADDENDUM OCTOBER 2023: Clouds over Jerusalem.

Allentown's Orange Car

While the Orange Car, on Union St. near the Lehigh River, went out of business over twenty years ago, the building sat there vacant, fading away.  Although recently demolished, there's a story behind the slow demise.

When the Lehigh Valley Railroad went bankrupt in 1976, its rolling stock and track went to Conrail. However its other assets, such as real estate, were tied up in bankruptcy.  The Orange Car building was owned by LVRR.  Many years ago there was a small six track rail yard between the Orange Car and the meat packing business to its east.  Carloads of fresh citrus fruit would arrive weekly from Florida. After the rail service ended, the lessee continued operating the fruit stand for another twenty years. 

I labeled this post Allentown's Orange Car, because there was an identical looking sister store in Reading.  That location also had a major event in 1976,  a flood from which it never recovered. 

above reprinted from April of 2021 

2nd & Hamilton

Up to the mid 1960's,  before Allentown started tinkering with urban redevelopment, lower Hamilton Street still teemed with businesses. The City had grown from the river west,  and lower Hamilton Street was a vibrant area.  Two train stations and several rail lines crossed the busy thoroughfare.  Front, Ridge and Second were major streets in the first half of the twentieth century.  My grandparents settled on the 600 block of 2nd Street in 1895, along with other Jewish immigrants from Russia and Lithuania.  As a boy, I worked at my father's meat market on Union Street.  I would have lunch at a diner, just out of view in the photo above.  The diner was across from the A&P,  set back from the people shown on the corner.  A&P featured bags of ground to order 8 O'Clock coffee, the Starbucks of its day.

please click on photo

photocredit:Ed Miller, 1953

reprinted from 2011

The Trexler Greenhouse

The former greenhouse at the current Trexler Park was the pride of Harry and Mary Trexler. The General was very specific in his will about its future;

I, Harry C. Trexler declare this to be my last Will and Testament: ......into the Treasury of the City of Allentown, for the perpetual maintenance of said Park, (Trexler) as well as the Greenhouse thereon located. This bequest shall include all the plants and other contents of said Greenhouse (1929)

Although nobody in charge of Allentown remembers, the greenhouse was a thing of wonder... Full of banana trees and other tropical plants, it was a true escape from winter for all visitors. The park director at the time touted all the money in maintenance to be saved if it was demolished. A couple years later the same director replanted the creek banks by the intersection of Cedar Crest Blvd. and Cetronia Rd.. That planting cost $750,000. I recall the price, because Longwood Gardens built a new greenhouse for that same amount, we had just lost our greenhouse, and only had a new creek weedwall to show in its place.  

Several years ago Allentown Park Department cut down all those plantings, and we now have nothing to show for our loss of the greenhouse. Even back then, I was an advocate for the traditional park system. Current visitors to Trexler Park don't notice that the weed wall has been cut down, and certainly don't know that they lost a beautiful greenhouse in the backstory.

reprinted from 2014. Postcard of Trexler duckpond from the glory days of the Allentown Park System

The Magic Of Allentown

We who grew up in Allentown during the 50's know that Hess's was a magical place, but did you know that Hess's actually sold magic. The advertisement shown above is from 1941.

By 1915, Allentown sported the Willard Magic Shop on Allen Street. In the 1940's Allentown's own Houdini, Harry Beehrle, started his shop on Hamilton near 4th. Later, after a wave of urban renewal, he would move to 9th and Linden Streets.

I remember Arthur Neimeyer's Fun shop on 9th Street. It was on the corner, below ground level. As I got older, into jr. high school, I rarely went to Neimeyer's, because he really didn't carry club or stage props, no apparatus actually, just the little S.S. Adams & the Robbins' E-Z Magic line, of basically packet magic and/or gag items. So, for magic, there was only one shop at that time (the 1950's) and that was Harry Beehrle's Magic shop, downtown on Hamilton, just up from the train station....... Harry was a gruff curmudgeon type, not kid friendly at all. In his youth he had been an escape artist, Allentown's "Houdini" and there were photos in the shop of him as a young man hanging upside down doing the straitjacket escape, etc., etc. That was where I purchased all my U.F. Grant magic and such. By the time I was in high school, Harry was either ill or had died, ........ I can't remember which, and his daughter was running the shop. notes from a former Allentonian and magician.

In the mid 80's Jim Karol sold magic from his home on Front Street. Years later, Ed White would continue the tradition from his home shop.

reprinted from March of 2020

Ring 32

When I was growing up in the mid-50's, stage magic was still popular. Famous magicians of the day would occasionally appear at the Lyric Theater (Symphony Hall). Local magicians were popular for entertainment at parties. Allentown always had at least one magic shop, back then Beehrle's on N. 9th St. was the local favorite. The valley chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, Ring 32, dates back to the early 1930's. The Brotherhood now numbers over 300 chapters worldwide. Up till about 15 years ago, the local chapter would have a show and dealer convention each year in May. As special effects in movies and television evolved, the wonder of performing illusions, and it's popularity diminished; For a while, until Las Vegas once again put magic center stage. I've always been in awe of the performer posters from the early 1920's, lithography at it's best. They were meant to be exotic, to mystify, to be magic.

reprinted from December of 2008

A Cookie For Old Allentown

About once a year, Mayor Pawlowski gives the boys and girls of the Old Allentown Preservation Association a cookie. Last year, he gave them new historic street signs. Unfortunately, they didn't have much structural integrity, and within 3 hours every one of them was bent. This year we're dressing up the corner where the Association has its office. Brick crosswalks will be added to 10th and Turner, and the the stoplight and other utility poles will be painted a more historic color. The boys and girls have been good. There hasn't been one peep from them about the demolition of the historic mercantile district, and the construction of the Great White Elephant. More important, they're behaving about the traffic cluster that the arena will bring their way, when all the patrons exit at the same time. I see more cookies in their future.

above reprinted from October of 2013

ADDENDUM SEPTEMBER 29, 2023: The boys and girls of the Preservation Association still behave themselves. In current time they have turned a blind eye to both the sale of Zion Church/Liberty Bell Museum and the decaying WPA/art deco post office. Add the Art Museum and Historical Society to the list of deaf and blind. Enjoy your wine and cheese.

Using A Bad Lesson Well Taught In Philadelphia

Back on May 4th, before the death in police custody in Minneapolis, I wrote about Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.  She instructed the police force not to arrest for minor infractions, like theft and prostitution, during the virus crisis. Large groups of young people were running amok in center city Philadelphia convenience stores,  scooping up everything their backpacks could hold. Meanwhile at City Hall, woke mayor Jim Kenney stayed silent about this decline in civilization. Only after a couple weeks, after a merchant and citizen backlash, did Outlaw and Kenney finally reverse policy.

Philadelphia inner city kids were taught a bad lesson by their police commissioner and mayor. 

Perhaps with that lesson fresh in their mind, some of them may have graduated to the looting this past weekend.

My first reaction to the looting on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was that the police must have stood down. How could looters smash windows and enter a Wells Fargo Bank without being stopped? How could all that theft and destruction only result in 13 arrests Saturday night?

I realize that there are a limited number of police and that Philadelphia is a large city. While I can't pass judgement on the police response, I will on the looters shown above. I do not believe that their thinking centered on George Floyd and institutional racism, but rather about what they could steal.

Here in the Lehigh Valley, the mayors and police chiefs conveyed their commitment to social justice.  But more importantly,  the local protestors expressed their hopes and solidarity in a lawful manner.

photocredit:Steven Falk/Philadelphia Inquirer

above reprinted from January of 2020

ADDENDUM SEPTEMBER 28, 2023:On Tuesday night looters once again had their way in several areas of Philadelphia. In large cities throughout America retailers are closing shop because of everyday shoplifting.