As Allentown Turns

Linden Street is reduced to one lane today, as a private contractor installs stencils on the street for the bike lane. I had forgotten about this idiotic plan. Let us hope that the projections for the arena's success are more realistic than their vision for the bike lane's use. Also observed on my patrol today was the unbelievably slow progress of the 15th Street Bridge project. More concrete and steel is completed in one day on the arena and City Center buildings, than has yet to be completed on the bridge. The entire southside of Allentown remains prisoner to misplaced priorities. Talking of misplaced priorities, yesterday the Administration applauded itself for starting the eastside fire house, a year and half late.
UPDATE: ABOUT THIS POSTCARD- Earlier this week I used a postcard of Lehigh Parkway in the Give A Damn, Save A Dam post.  Both cards have a similar coloration and were photographed by Harold Becraft in the early 1950's.  Becraft was a photographer from Suffern N.Y.,  who produced many of the images used in the postcards of Allentown's parks.  These cards were produced locally by E.H. Schall Co.  In addition to Becraft's name on the front, they're also marked Kodachrome.  Although Becraft did many park scenes for Schall, the image shown above is one of his few cityscapes.

reprinted from May of 2013

UPDATE OCTOBER 15, 2015: We seem to have two types of government, slow or greedy. The entire square arena block was built before the 15th street bridge was completed. While two and four men worked on the bridge for two years, 300 men worked around the clock on the arena. The old 15th Street Bridge, built around 1953, was a study in neglect. One city administration after another deferred maintenance,  because there was a plan for a new bridge, although the plan took decades to come to fruition. Then the contract, to save money, wasn't time sensitive. The greater NIZ arena project, including affiliated buildings, which allows the developers to reap an unaccounted for money stream of public taxes, was built as if money was no object, because it wasn't.  So, while a city was inconvenienced by a snail pace public bridge project, our state taxes were used for overtime, to speed up a bonanza for the barons.