Dec 11, 2013

Temporary Inconvenience


Urban renewal projects are nothing new to Allentown. Every couple decades some Mayor thinks he has a brighter idea. In a previous post, I showed the historic Lehigh and Union Street neighborhood, totally destroyed by city planners. Today, an under used Bank calling center sits awkwardly alone on that Lehigh Street hill. The picture above shows another hill of merchants and residents, fed to a mayor's bulldozer. The picture is from 1953, and shows Hamilton Street, from Penn Street down toward the railroad stations. At that time we still had two stations, The Lehigh Valley Railroad and The New Jersey Central. The current closed bar and restaurant occupies the Jersey Central. Everything on Hamilton Street, west of the bridge over the Jordan creek, with the exception of the Post Office, was demolished up to Fifth Street. Government Center would be built on the north side of the street, and a new hotel on the south, to accommodate the many anticipated visitors. Recently we had to remove and replace the facade of the county courthouse, which leaked since it was constructed. The hotel is now a rooming house.

Unannounced plans are underway for a new hotel to service anticipated visitors to Pawlowski's Palace of Sports. It will be up to some future blogger to document how that hotel becomes a rooming house.

reprinted from July of 2011

1 comment:

  1. Convention center, sports arena, substitute whatever "transformative project" paid for with city vs. city public assistance...

    http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/12/9/memphis-cant-win-convention-center-race.html#.UqieMWRDvns

    I'm rooting for the arena. Cause its coming now. It's gonna be here and for better or worse its future is important.

    And I do think the associated office space makes the entirety of what's going on downtown stronger then if it was just an arena.

    One thing going for our arena is the Phantoms. NHL minor league team with the hyper popular parent team 60 miles south. If it wasn't for the phantoms I'd be pretty skeptical. Arena finances look alot better with a very popular anchor putting people in seats on a regular basis. Still uphill battle...

    We shall see.... time will time.

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