Jan 8, 2018

1953 In Allentown

In 1953 you could escape the crowds on Hamilton Street by walking down beyond the third department store, Zollinger Harned, to the 500 Block. The malls in Whitehall were still two decades away, and Hamilton Street was where the Lehigh Valley shopped. Although the photograph above shows a trolley and a bus, the last trolly would run in June of that year. South side Allentown was bustling with Mack Truck and General Electric. The first supermarket, FoodFair, opened that year on Lehigh Street, now the Parkway Shopping center. In addition to the three department stores, downtown Allentown boasted three five and dimes and five movie theaters. Ike was our President, and Brighton Diefenderfer was our mayor. In the scene above, Man In The Dark is playing at the Colonial Theater. In that 3D movie, a criminal gets a second chance if he submits to an operation to excise the criminal portion of his brain. In 2018, could we give our elected officials that option?

reprinted from May of 2012

5 comments:

  1. Apparently the Hispanic and Syrian communities thought Mr. Pawlowski received such an operation. They gave him another chance! Or should I say the wayward O'Connell/Hendricks plan, which totally backfired, allowed the indicted one to slip in. Take your choice, one is bad as the other. Unless you subscribe to the conspiratory theory that this was a plan generated by our illustrious mayor supported covertly by O'Connell and Hendricks.

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  2. fire@6:59, i wrote this post in 2012. when I reprinted it early this morning, I did change the date in the sentence about politicians from 2012 to 2018. Never the less, I intended the post, both then (2012) and now (2018), as a commentary on the mercantile changes on hamilton street.

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  3. Most of the buildings on the north side of Hamilton Street are gone :( Wasn't the Breining and Bachman building a nightclub in the 1950s also? At least the first floor.

    Also the traffic pattern is different. Sixth street is one-way northbound now, the photo says southbouund, and they let two-way traffic west of Sixth also..

    So many changes...

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  4. LV Transit fans will love this video. It brings MM's photo to life.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJJkIELtNU&feature=youtu.be

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  5. They messed up 7th st. I was used to allentown the old way and not the new way. Anything past 7th st is still bad.

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