During the summer of 1952, Lehigh Valley Transit rode and pulled its trolley stock over to Bethlehem Steel, to be chopped up and fed to the blast furnaces. The furnaces themselves ceased operation in 1995, and are now a visual backdrop for young artists, most of whom never saw those flames that lit up that skyline. Allentown will now salvage some architectural items documented on this blog, and begin tearing down its shopping district, which was serviced by those trolleys. As young toothless athletes from Canada, entertain people from Catasauqua, on the ice maintained by a Philadelphia company, Allentown begins another chapter in it's history of cannibalism.
photo from August 1952, showing last run on St. John Street to Bethlehem Steel
reprinted from December of 2011
my father operated these for a few years before they were decommissioned
ReplyDeleteIt is a disgrace what downtown Allentown has become.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's a 'disgrace' but they absolutely could have done better in historical preservation. I do wonder about what happens when the arena eventually fails. Not easy to convert a hockey rink into housing.
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