Local Scenery / Bethlehem, PA

sfp
2/1/2004

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South Main Street, Bethlehem, PA looking southwest toward the Hill to Hill Bridge, South Bethlehem and Fountain Hill. Market Street runs off to the left. At the far bend of the road are some of the buildings of the old colonial Moravian settlement. At the right hand far distance is the front of the Hotel Bethlehem.

The street, once the main everyday business cross street of North Bethlehem, today has a distinctly "boutiquey", touristy air.

View of the Hill to Hill Bridge in Bethlehem from "The Lookout" in Sayre park on the campus of Alma Mater #1, Lehigh University. The Lehigh River flows through the arches. The large building at dead center is the old Lehigh Valley RR passenger depot. The spire and flag on Lehigh's Packer Hall can be seen at left.

The tri-directional bridge in Bethlehem, which once called itself "America's Christmas City" was once a site of yuletide splendor, attracting tourists from far and near. It had a magnificent Christmas Tree in the center traffic circle where the three branches of the bridge met.
The Moravaian Book Shop on South Main street, Bethlehem, PA. In college days this store was the main bookstore aside from that one on the Lehigh campus. It has expanded to annex the three earlier storefronts alongside it. Note the Moravian Star hanging in the doorway.
The "Old Sun Inn" on Main Street. This building dates from Bethlehem's earliest colonial days in the mid Eighteenth Century.
A view of one of the defunct blast furnaces of the Bethlehem Steel Company in South Bethlehem, PA. That workplace, once the mainstay of the city of Bethlehem, finally closed down in the later decades of the late 20th century when it could not meet the competition of foreign steel makers. Viewpoint is across the Lehigh River from the Nisky Hill Cemetery near the resting place of uncle, Oscar L. Payer, and his wife Emily (Good) Payer.

 

See a much more complete and well done set of Bethlehem, PA photographs at this site.