One observation I have made as I drive through America is the poverty visible, especially in the black community: half are speaking and yelling to themselves (schizophrenIa), a quarter are disabled, and the rest are destitute. I am panhandled every time I stop.
PENNSYLVANIA
Officially, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is located in the Northeastern, Great Lakes, Appalachian, and Mid-Atlantic regions. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area and the 5th-most populous state. Its two most populous cities are Philadelphia (1,580,863) and Pittsburgh (302,407). The state capital and its 10th-largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles (225 km) of waterfront along Lake Erie and the Delaware River.
The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States; it came into being in 1681 due to a royal land grant to William Penn, the son of the state’s namesake. Part of Pennsylvania (along the Delaware River) and the present State of Delaware had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in Philadelphia. The Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the state’s south-central region during the American Civil War. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington’s headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78.
Philadelphia in the southeast corner, Pittsburgh in the southwest corner, Erie in the northwest corner, Scranton-Wilkes-Barre in the northeast corner, and Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton in the east central region are urban manufacturing centers. Much of the Commonwealth is rural, which affects state politics and the state economy. Philadelphia is home to six Fortune 500 companies, with more located in suburbs like King of Prussia; it is a financial and insurance industry leader.
Pittsburgh has eight Fortune 500 companies, including U.S. Steel, PPG Industries, and H.J. Heinz. Hershey is home to The Hershey Company, one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world. Erie is also home to GE Transportation, the largest train locomotive producer in the United States.
PHILADELPHIA (pop 1,585,000)
Known colloquially as Philly, Philadelphia is the sixth-most populous U.S. city. It is the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, which has a population of 7.2 million.
Philadelphia is one of the oldest municipalities in the United States. William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city in 1682 to serve as the capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia played an instrumental role in the American Revolution as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 at the Second Continental Congress, and the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Several other key events occurred in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War, including the First Continental Congress, the preservation of the Liberty Bell, the Battle of Germantown, and the Siege of Fort Mifflin. Philadelphia remained the nation’s largest city until being overtaken by New York City in 1790; the town was also one of the nation’s capitals during the Revolution, serving as the temporary U.S. capital while Washington, D.C. was under construction. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became a major industrial center and a railroad hub. The city grew from an influx of European immigrants, most of whom came from Ireland, Italy, and Germany, the city’s three largest reported ancestry groups as of 2015. In the early 20th century, Philadelphia became a prime destination for African Americans and Puerto Ricans during the Great Migration after the Civil War. The city’s population doubled from one million to two million between 1890 and 1950.
Its many universities and colleges make it a top study destination. Philadelphia has more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city. The city is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial history, attracting 42 million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8 billion,
Philadelphia is the birthplace of the United States Marine Corps. It is also the home of many U.S. firsts, including the first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks and the World Heritage Site of Independence Hall. Although Philadelphia is rapidly undergoing gentrification, the city actively maintains strategies to minimize the displacement of homeowners in gentrifying neighbourhoods.
The United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and adopted in Independence Hall. It is now the centrepiece of the Independence National Historical Park and is listed as a World Heritage Site.[3]
The building was completed in 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House, and served as the capital for the Province and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania until the state capital moved to Lancaster in 1799. It became the principal meeting place of the Second Continental Congress from 1775 to 1783 and was the site of the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787.
Architecture. Independence Hall boasts a red brick facade designed in the Georgian style. It consists of a central building with a bell tower and a steeple attached to two smaller wings via arcaded hyphens. The highest point to the tip of the steeple spire is 168 feet, 71⁄4 inches above the ground.
While the shell of the central portion of the building is original, the side wings, steeple and much of the interior were reconstructed. In 1781, the steeple had rotted, and a more elaborate steeple was added in 1828. The original wings and hyphens were demolished and replaced in 1812. In 1898, these were demolished and replaced with reconstructions of the original wings. The current interior is a mid-20th-century reconstruction by the National Park Service with the public rooms restored to their 18th-century appearance.
Two smaller buildings adjoin the wings of Independence Hall: Old City Hall to the east, and Congress Hall to the west. These three buildings are together on a city block known as Independence Square. Since its construction in the mid-20th century, to the north has been Independence Mall, which includes the current home of the Liberty Bell.
Liberty Bell. The lowest chamber of the original wooden steeple was the first home of the Liberty Bell. When that steeple was removed in the 1780s, the bell was lowered into the highest chamber of the brick tower, where it remained until the 1850s. The much larger Centennial Bell, created for the United States Centennial Exposition in 1876, hangs in the cupola of the 1828 steeple. The Liberty Bell, with its distinctive crack, was displayed on the hall’s ground floor from the 1850s until 1976, and is now on display across the street in the Liberty Bell Center.
Second Continental Congress. From May 10, 1775, to 1783, the Pennsylvania State House was the principal meeting place of the Second Continental Congress, a body of representatives from the thirteen British North American colonies. They nominated George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General.
The Declaration of Independence was approved there on July 4, 1776. This document unified the colonies in North America that declared themselves independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain and explained their justifications for doing so.
Lincoln’s Funeral Train. His body was carried by a hearse past a crowd of 85,000 people. Over 300,000 mourners viewed the body.
In 1915, the League to Enforce Peace was formed here. This international governing body would have participating nations commit to “jointly…use…their economic and military forces against any one of their number making war against another” and “to formulate and codify rules of international law.”
Independence Hall is pictured on the back of the U.S. $100 bill and the bicentennial Kennedy half dollar, and the Assembly Room is pictured on the reverse of the U.S. two-dollar bill.
Philadelphia 30th Street Station is an intermodal transit station: the metropolitan area’s main railroad station (a major stop on Amtrak’s Northeast and Keystone corridors) doubles as a major commuter rail station and is also served by several SEPTA city and suburban buses, as well as buses operated by NJ Transit and intercity operators.
The station served more than 4 million inter-city rail passengers in 2018 and is Amtrak’s third-busiest, after Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., and the nation’s 12th-busiest train station overall.
The station opened in 1933. The vast waiting room faces travertine and the coffered ceiling is painted gold, red and cream. The building’s exterior has columned porte-cocheres on the west and east facade, and shows a balance between classical and modern architectural styles.
The following five sights are in the NM “Modern Architecture Buildings” series:
Philadelphia City Hall is the world’s largest free-standing masonry building made of brick, white marble, limestone and granite and functions as the seat of government for the city of Philadelphia. It was constructed from 1871 to 1901. Upon completion of its tower in 1894, and at 548 ft (167 m), it became the world’s tallest habitable building. It was also the first secular building to have this distinction, as the world’s tallest buildings were religious structures, including European cathedrals and—for the previous 3,800 years—the Great Pyramid of Giza.
It contains 700 rooms, is the largest municipal building in the United States, and is one of the largest in the world. It uses over 88 million bricks and tons of marble and granite. The tower features a clock face on each side that is 26 ft (7.9 m) in diameter. The observation deck is located directly below the base of the statue, about 500 ft (150 m) above street level reached in a 6-person elevator The building is topped by a 37 ft bronze statue weighing 53,348 lb of city founder William Penn, one of 250 sculptures created by Alexander Milne Calder that adorn the building inside and out. The statue is the tallest atop any building in the world.
Richards Medical Research Laboratories. Located on the University of Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia campus, it was designed by architect Louis Kahn and considered a breakthrough in his career. The building is configured as a group of laboratory towers with a central service tower. Brick shafts on the periphery hold stairwells and air ducts, producing an effect reminiscent of the ancient Italian towers that Kahn had painted several years earlier.
Rather than being supported by a hidden steel frame, the building has a reinforced concrete structure that is clearly visible and openly depicted as bearing weight. Built with precisely formed prefabricated concrete elements, the techniques used in its construction advanced the state of the art for reinforced concrete.
Despite observable shortcomings, this building helped set new directions for modern architecture by clearly expressing the served and servant spaces and evoking past architecture.
The Bellevue Hotel. Constructed in 1904, costing over $ 8 million (in 1904$), it was described as the most luxurious hotel in the nation and perhaps the most spectacular hotel building in the world. It had hundreds of guest suites in a variety of styles, the most magnificent ballroom in the United States, delicate lighting fixtures designed by Thomas Edison, stained and leaded glass embellishments in the form of transoms and Venetian windows and sky-lights by Alfred Godwin, and the most celebrated marble and hand-worked iron elliptical staircase in the city. In 1912, a large 9-story extension increased it to 1,090 guest rooms, adding the top floor’s domed function rooms.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the hotel’s classic architecture and rich decorative details were considered overpowering, anachronistic, and offensive.
The hotel gained worldwide notoriety in July 1976, when it hosted a statewide convention of the American Legion. Soon after, a pneumonia-like disease killed 29 people and sickened 182 more who had been in the hotel. The negative publicity associated with what became known as “Legionnaires’ Disease” caused occupancy at the Bellevue-Stratford to plummet to 4 percent, and the hotel finally closed in 1976. The new bacterium thrives in hot, damp places like the water of the cooling towers for the Bellevue-Stratford’s air-conditioning system, which spread the disease throughout the hotel. The bacterium was named Legionella and the disease, legionellosis, after the first victims.
It was sold in 1978 and had a $25-million restoration. The guest rooms were completely gutted, and their number was reduced from 725 to 565, while the public areas were painstakingly restored to their 1904 appearance. 44,000 square yards of carpet were imported from Ireland, 25 tons of marble came from Portugal, and crystal chandeliers were sourced from Uruguay.
In another extensive $100 million renovation, the ground floor was converted to retail space. The hotel rooms on floors 3 to 11 were converted into office space, and the hotel portion was condensed to 170 guest rooms on floors 12-18, which are owned by Hyatt.
PSFS Building. The Loews Philadelphia Hotel was the first International-style skyscraper to be constructed in the United States. Built for the Philadelphia Saving (later Savings) Fund Society in 1932, it lacked features such as domes and ornamentation. The building featured an innovative T-shaped tower allowing maximum natural light and rentable space. Office tenants were attracted by modern facilities such as radio receivers, and the second high-rise in the U.S. to be equipped with air conditioning. The skyscraper is topped by a red neon sign with the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society’s initials (PSFS). Visible for 20 miles (32 km), the sign has become a Philadelphia icon.
Reading Terminal Market. This busy downtown market has various American foods (cheese steak), ethnic foods, fresh veggies, meat, and seafood.
AKA Rittenhouse Hotel. Across from Rittenhouse Square, the jewel of William Penn’s plan for Philadelphia, it was built in 1912. This historic landmark has been transformed with 78 elegantly-furnished suites, full kitchens, and stylish contemporary interiors while preserving the building’s magnificent Beaux-Arts façade. It provides luxury extended accommodations for short- and long-term stays.
Break Through Your Mould Sculpture (Freedom Sculpture). The NM “Bizzarium” series instantly recognizes that it is about struggling to break free. Almost everyone has the need to escape from some situation—be it an internal struggle or an adversarial circumstance—and to be free from it. Twenty feet long x 8 feet high, the bronze 7,000-pound sculpture by Zenos Frudakis was dedicated in 2001.
Although four figures are represented, the work moves from left to right, beginning with a mummy/death-like captive figure locked into its background. The second figure begins to stir and struggles to escape. The third has torn himself from the wall and is stepping out, reaching for freedom, and the fourth is entirely free, victorious, arms outstretched, completely away from the wall and from the grave space he left behind.
There are several other elements: a cast of the sculptor’s hand holding the sculpture tool, his fingerprints are all over the sculpture, callipers, an anatomical man and his cat, mother, father, and self-portrait are in the work. 
Guild House is a residential building, an important and influential work of 20th-century architecture, and the first major work by Robert Venturi. Along with the Vanna Venturi House, it is considered one of the earliest expressions of Postmodern architecture and helped establish Venturi as one of the leading architects of the 20th century.
The 6-story building, which houses 91 apartments for low-income senior citizens, was commissioned by a local Quaker organization, Friends Rehabilitation Program, Inc. and completed in 1963. The exterior is red clay brick and “inelegant” double-hung windows. The facade’s stepped organization allowed most units to have south, east-facing, or west-facing windows, giving the inhabitants sunlight and a view of the street below. Winding interior corridors were intended to create a more intimate and informal space.
Eastern State Penitentiary. In the NM “The Dark Side” series, this former prison was operational from 1829 until 1971. The penitentiary refined the revolutionary system of separate incarceration, which emphasized reform principles rather than punishment.
Notorious criminals like Al Capone and bank robber Willie Sutton were held inside its innovative wagon wheel design. At its completion, the building was the most extensive and most expensive public structure ever erected in the United States. And quickly became a model for more than 300 prisons worldwide.
Considered to be the world’s first true penitentiary. Eastern State’s radial floor plan and revolutionary system of incarceration, dubbed the “Pennsylvania system” or separate system, encouraged separate confinement as a form of rehabilitation. The warden was legally required to visit every inmate daily, and the overseers were mandated to see each inmate thrice daily. It was opposed contemporaneously by the New York system, where prisoners were forced to work together in silence and could be subjected to physical punishment.
Outside the cell was an individual area for exercise, enclosed by high walls so prisoners could not communicate. Exercise time was synchronized so that no two prisoners next to each other would be out simultaneously. Prisoners were allowed to garden and even keep pets in their exercise yards. When a prisoner left his cell, an accompanying guard would wrap a hood over his head to prevent him from being recognized by other prisoners.
Cell accommodations, including a faucet with running water over a flush toilet, were advanced for their time. Curved pipes along part of one wall served as central heating during the winter months, running hot water through the pipes to keep the cells reasonably heated. The cellblock guards remotely flush toilets twice a week.
Inmates were punished with the “individual-treatment system.” This form of punishment was thought to be most effective at the time. They would be separated from others.
On April 3, 1945, twelve inmates (including the infamous Willie Sutton) carried out a major escape. Over a year, they dug an undiscovered 97-foot (30 m) tunnel under the prison wall. During renovations in the 1930s, 30 incomplete inmate-dug tunnels were discovered.
The prison was closed in 1971. During the abandoned era (until the late 80s), a “forest” grew in the cell blocks and outside within the walls. The prison also became home to many stray cats. In 1994, Eastern State opened to the public for history tours.
The solitary confinement system eventually collapsed due to overcrowding problems by 1913. Proponents of the system believed strongly that the criminals, exposed, in silence, to thoughts of their behaviour and the ugliness of their crimes, would become genuinely penitent. In reality, the facility designed a variety of physical and psychological torture regimens for various infractions, including dousing prisoners in freezing water outside during winter months, chaining their tongues to their wrists in a fashion such that struggling against the chains could cause the tongue to tear, strapping prisoners into chairs with tight leather restraints for days on end, and putting the worst behaved prisoners into a pit called “The Hole”, an underground cellblock dug under cellblock 14 where they would have no light, no human contact, and little food for as long as two weeks. Before its closing in late 1969, it had established a far-reaching program of group therapy to involve all inmates.
Vanna Venturi House. One of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture movement, it was designed by architect Robert Venturi for his mother, Vanna Venturi, and constructed between 1962 and 1964.
The five-room house is 30 feet tall at the top of the chimney, but has a monumental front facade. It was called the biggest small building in the second half of the twentieth century.
As a widow nearing the age of 70, as the house was completed, Vanna required that all her daily routine could be conducted on one floor: the master bedroom, a full bathroom, the caretaker’s room, the kitchen and a living/dining area. Her son, the architect, occupied the second floor, which contains a bedroom/studio with a large lunette window, a private balcony, and a half-bath on the stair landing. Vanna Venturi lived in the house from 1964 to 1973 and died in 1975.
Many of the house’s basic elements are a reaction against standard Modernist architectural elements: the pitched roof rather than a flat roof, the emphasis on the central hearth and chimney, a closed ground floor “set firmly on the ground” rather than the Modernist columns and glass walls that open up the ground floor. Unusually, the gable is placed on the long side of the rectangle formed by the house, and there is no matching gable at the rear.
Chestnut Hill is a residential neighbourhood located in the northwestern part of Philadelphia. It was first settled in the early eighteenth century and still has many stone buildings.
Awards: the prestigious Twenty-five Year Award by the American Institute of Architects; Pritzker Architecture Prize for work that “has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity … through the art of architecture; 2005, The United States Postal Service featured the house on a postage stamp in a series of “Twelve masterworks of modern American architecture.” I2n 2012, hanna Venturi House was awarded the 2012 AIA Philadelphia Landmark Building Award.
Fortunately, the owner’s son walked by and allowed me to walk around the house.
King of Prussia is the second-largest shopping mall in the United States. It is an upscale mall with numerous retailers, anchored by Lord & Taylor, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Primark, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s with one vacant anchor last occupied by JCPenney. The mall is located in King of Prussia, northwest of Philadelphia. The mall, which opened in 1963, consisted of two distinct buildings known as The Plaza and The Court until August 2016, when a major expansion was completed and the two buildings were finally connected to create one massive shopping mall.
Bryn Athyn Cathedral, Bryn Athyn. It is the episcopal seat of The General Church of the New Jerusalem, a denomination of Swedenborgianism. The main building is of the Early Gothic style, while the adjoining structures are of a transitional period reflective of a combination of Gothic and Norman styles. Bryn Athyn is also the site of the General Church affiliated Academy of the New Church, which publishes Swedenborgian literature, and is the parent organization of a high school, a four-year college (Bryn Athyn College of the New Church), a theological school, and the Emanuel Swedenborg Library.
The Cathedral was constructed from 1913 to 1919. The stained glass windows use the medieval method of creating stained glass, namely, melting various pigments and metallic oxides into the glass itself and then having a glassblower create a disk of glass with varying degrees of thickness and brightness. The windows themselves were not completed until the 1960s.
The Academy-affiliated Glencairn Museum is next to the college, the library, and the cathedral. Originally Raymond Pitcairn’s private residence, this castle-like building now houses a collection of mostly religious artwork from around the world and is open to the public.
Fonthill Castle, Doylestown. This was the home of the archaeologist and tile maker Henry Chapman Mercer. Built between 1908 and 1912, it is an early example of poured-in-place concrete and features 44 rooms, over 200 windows, 18 fireplaces, 10 bathrooms and one powder room. The castle contains built-in furniture and is embellished with decorative tiles, made by Mercer at the height of the Arts and Crafts movement. The castle is filled with an extensive collection of ceramics embedded in the house’s concrete and other artifacts from his travels, including cuneiform tablets discovered in Mesopotamia dating back to over 2300 BCE. The home also contains around 1,000 prints from Mercer’s extensive collection and over six thousand books, almost all of which were annotated by Mercer himself.
Volendam Windmill is a smock mill located on Adamic Hill Road in Holland Township, New Jersey. It was designed and built in 1965 as a working mill driven by wind, grinding raw grain into flour. The 60-foot structure is seven stories high, with sail arms 68 feet from tip to tip. As of November 2010, the county’s website shows the museum is closed.
BETHLEHEM Moravian Church Settlements.WHS
Historic Moravian Bethlehem occupies approximately 14 acres in the heart of the city. The first Moravians arrived in 1741 at the confluence of the Monocacy Creek and the Lehigh River. The Moravians eventually acquired close to 4,000 acres in Bethlehem, which was to be the principal center for Moravians in the New World. From here, they sent missionaries throughout the American colonies and the West Indies.
The Moravians in Bethlehem lived in a communal society organized into groups called choirs based on age, sex, and marital status. Everyone worked for the good of the community and received care from cradle to grave. Based on their societal organization, the community developed large institutional choir houses, superb examples of colonial Germanic-style architecture in America.
By 1747, thirty-five crafts, trades and industries were established including a butchery, tawery, clockmaker, tinsmith, nailor, pewterer, hatter, spinning, weaving, cooper, dye house, community bakery, candlemaker, linen bleachery, fulling mill, saddlery, tailor, cobbler, flax processing, wheelwright, carpenter, mason. As the community developed and needed greater output, they replaced the log buildings with larger limestone buildings. The pottery, tannery, butchery, dye house, smith complex, oil mill, and waterworks were built of stone from the late 1740s through the early 1770s.
Many buildings still standing today reflect Moravian thinking and philosophy’s ingenuity, creativity, and universality. The Moravians believed that all people, both men and women, should receive the same education; that all people should receive health care; that women should have equal rights with men in the community; and that all people should work together for the good of the community without prejudice regarding race, gender, or ethnicity. In the mid-18th century, 15 different languages were spoken in Bethlehem.
Historic Moravian Bethlehem has a high degree of integrity and authenticity and encompasses excellent examples of the architecture and town planning of the 18th-century community.
History. The Moravian Church in North America is part of the worldwide Moravian Church Unity. It dates from the arrival of the first Moravian missionaries to the United States in 1735, from their Herrnhut settlement in present-day Saxony, Germany. They came to minister to the scattered German immigrants, to the Native Americans and enslaved Africans. They founded communities to serve as home bases for these missions. The missionary “messengers” were financially supported by the work of the “labourers” in these settlements. Currently, there are more than 60,000 members.
The first Moravians to come to North America were August Gottlieb Spangenberg and Wenzel Neisser, who accompanied a group of persecuted Schwenkfelders to Pennsylvania in 1735 at Zinzendorf’s direction. The first, and unsuccessful, attempt to found a Moravian community in North America was in Savannah Georgia that also began in 1735; it collapsed because of internal discord, and government pressure for Moravians to serve in the militia in defense against Spanish raids from Florida (1740, the so-called “War of Jenkins’ Ear”).
The beginning of the church’s work in North America is usually given as 1740, when Christian Henry Rauch arrived in New York City on a mission to preach and convert native peoples, but was expelled in 1744.
The Moravians were more successful in Pennsylvania, where the colony’s charter provided religious freedom. The towns of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Emmaus, and Lititz, Pennsylvania, were founded along with Graceham, Maryland, and Wachovia in Maryland (Bethabara (1753), Bethania (1759), and Salem (now Winston-Salem) (1766).
Winston-Salem became the headquarters of the Southern church. The Moravian denomination continues in America today, with congregations in 18 states. The highest concentrations of Moravians exist in Bethlehem and Winston-Salem.
The Moravian emphasis on openness and tolerance, combined with the conversion experience of new birth, undermined ethnic homogeneity and provided a source of communal cohesion. The primary intermingling and intermarriage was between Germans and English.
Moravians’ beliefs centred on a feminized Holy Spirit, the right of women to preach, sacralizing the sex act, and metaphorically re-gendering Jesus Christ. These teachings were perceived as threats to more mainstream Christian articles of faith. Moravians welcomed anyone into their church services, and they were perceived as a serious religious and social threat. Moravians valued work highly.
Architecture. A Moravian architectural style has emerged in the United States, predominantly in Winston-Salem (Old Salem). Some Moravian churches in the area feature copper steeple tops which have oxidized and reached a green patina. The Moravian “Bonnet” or “eyebrow” arch is an example of the style used mainly over building entrances. It is an unsupported half-cylinder. Combined Moravian arches were used to form the dome of the Wachovia Center (now called 100 North Main Street).
There are diverse views regarding social issues in the denomination. The Moravian Church Northern Province has voted in favour of opening up ordination to gay and lesbian ministers, permits religious ceremonies for same-sex couples, and supports the right to abortion for certain situations.
Moravian Museum of Bethlehem
Historic Hotel Bethlehem. The predecessor was the Moravians’ “Golden Eagle Hotel” from 1794 to 1919. It is seven stories.
Harrisburg (pop 50,000). The capital of Pennsylvania lies on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, 107 miles (172 km) west of Philadelphia. During part of the 19th century, the building of the Pennsylvania Canal and later the Pennsylvania Railroad allowed Harrisburg to become one of the most industrialized cities in the Northeastern United States. In the mid-to-late 20th century, the city’s economic fortunes fluctuated with its major industries comprising government, heavy manufacturing, agriculture, and food services (nearby Hershey is just 10 miles east.
The Pennsylvania Farm Show, the largest free indoor agriculture exposition in the United States, was first held in Harrisburg in 1917 and has been held there every early-to-mid January since then. Harrisburg is also known for the Three Mile Island accident on March 28, 1979, near Middletown. The region’s financial stability is partly due to the high concentration of state and federal government agencies.
Broad Street Market is a small, old-fashioned place in a poor area of Harrisburg. It is primarily a food outlet.
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PENNSYLVANIA WEST (Pittsburgh, Altoona, Erie)
Flight 93 National Memorial is located at the site of the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked in the September 11 attacks. The memorial was made to honour the passengers and crew of Flight 93, who stopped the terrorists from reaching their target by fighting the hijackers. The permanent memorial was completed, opened, and dedicated on September 10, 2011.
Of the four aircraft hijacked on September 11, Flight 93 is the only one that did not reach its intended target, presumed to be the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Several passengers and crew members made cellular telephone calls aboard the flight and learned about the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. As a result, the passengers and crew members decided to mount an assault against the hijackers and wrest control of the aircraft. The plane crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, about 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Washington, D.C., killing all 39 civilians, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officer, two U.S. Bureau of the Census employees and four terrorists aboard.
The cost of the permanent memorial is estimated at $60 million. In 2017, construction of a 93 ft (28 m)-tall monumental “Tower of Voices” began. The tower contains 40 wind chimes — one for each passenger and crew member who died in the crash. The largest such structure ever built, the precast concrete tower supports polished aluminum chimes varying in length from 5 feet (1.5 m) to 10 feet (3.0 m) and varying tonalities, or voice.
Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings. Eight of Wright’s buildings – Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, the Hollyhock House, the Jacobs House, the Robie House, Taliesin, Taliesin West, and the Unity Temple – were inscribed on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Fallingwater. Built in 1935, 43 miles (69 km) southeast of Pittsburgh, the house was built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run. The house was designed as a weekend home for the family of Liliane Kaufmann and her husband, Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., owner of Kaufmann’s Department Store. In 1991, American Institute of Architects members named Fallingwater the “best all-time work of American architecture.”
The main house was completed in 1938, and the guest house was completed the following year at a final cost of $155,000, which included $75,000 for the home; $22,000 for finishings and furnishings; $50,000 for the guest house, garage and servants’ quarters; and an $8,000 architect’s fee. From 1938 through 1941, more than $22,000 was spent on additional details and for changes in the hardware and lighting. This is equivalent to about $2.8 million in 2019. The cost of the house’s restoration in 2001 was estimated to be $11.5 million (approximately $16.6 million in 2019).
Fallingwater was the family’s weekend home from 1937 until 1963, when Edgar Kaufmann Jr. donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Bear Run and the sound of its water permeate the house, especially during the spring when the snow is melting, and locally quarried stone walls and cantilevered terraces resembling the nearby rock formations are meant to be in harmony. The design incorporates broad expanses of windows and balconies which reach out into their surroundings. In conformance with Wright’s views, the main entry door is away from the falls.
The house blends into its natural settings, and he limited his colour choices to light ochre for the concrete and his signature Cherokee red for the steel.
Cost $33 (reservation necessary), $10 to tour the grounds.
PITTSBURGH (pop 303,000 metropolitan 2,325,000)
Pittsburgh is located in the state’s southwest, at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers. Pittsburgh is known as “the Steel City” for its more than 300 steel-related businesses and as the “City of Bridges” for its 446 bridges. The city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclined railways, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. The town developed as a vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest, as the mineral-rich Allegheny Mountains made the area coveted by the French and British empires, Virginians, Whiskey Rebels, and Civil War raiders.
Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led manufacturing in aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York City and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment; it had the most U.S. stockholders per capita.
Deindustrialization in the 1970s and 80s laid off area blue-collar workers as steel and other heavy industries declined, and thousands of downtown white-collar workers also lost jobs when several Pittsburgh-based companies moved out. The population dropped from 675,000 in 1950 to 370,000 in 1990. However, this rich industrial history left the area with renowned museums, medical centers, parks, research centers, and a diverse cultural district.
After the mid-20th-century deindustrialization, Pittsburgh transformed into a hub for the health care, education, and technology industries. Pittsburgh is a leader in the health care sector, home to large medical providers such as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). The area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Google, AppleInc., Bosch, Facebook, Uber, Nokia, Autodesk, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are among 1,600 technology firms generating $20.7 billion in annual Pittsburgh payrolls. The area has long served as the headquarters of the federal agency for cyber defence, software engineering, robotics, energy research, and the nuclear navy.
In 2015, Pittsburgh was listed among the “eleven most livable cities in the world”. The Economist‘s Global Liveability Ranking placed Pittsburgh as the most or second-most livable city in the United States in 2005, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2014.
PPG Place. The NM “Modern Architecture Buildings” consists of six buildings within three city blocks and five and a half acres. Named for its anchor tenant, PPG Industries, which initiated the project for its headquarters, the buildings are all of matching glass design, consisting of 19,750 pieces of glass. The complex centers on One PPG Place, a 40-story office building. The complex buildings opened between 1983 and 1984 at a total cost of $200 million ($529.9 million today).
The project was started by PPG Industries (formerly Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company) to serve as the company’s headquarters after it had been based in Downtown Pittsburgh since 1895.
The buildings are recognized by their 231 glass spires, with the largest one 82 feet (25 m) tall. Also notable are the reflective insulating glass surfaces, which served to advertise the project’s founder. The buildings contain over one million square feet of PPG’s Solarban 550 T window, 19,750 pieces. The primary building, One PPG Place, is a 40-story tower, with PPG Industries occupying half of the space. The lobby of One PPG is a 50-foot (15 m) high entrance with red glass. The building has 21 elevators, each with walls constructed of clear panels enclosing fractured glass. The complex also contains a 14-story building and four 6-story structures.
The building’s design made it distinct and created high energy efficiency. The glass reflects heat away from the building in the summer, while infrared heat is reflected and contained within the building in winter. The surface walls feature a barrier construction that effectively separates the interior walls from the exterior. The building also collects heat from computer equipment and recycles it throughout the structure.
PPG Place opened an ice skating rink in 2001, becoming a popular seasonal attraction downtown. A 60-foot (18 m) Christmas tree is in the rink’s center. During the rest of the year, the area with the ice rink is a plaza with tables open to the public and a fountain with 140 water jets and uses 280 underground lights.
Pittsburgh Public Market. Only about 200m from PPG Place, this lovely open square has two rows of trees and an open center.
Omni William Penn Hotel is a 23-floor (3 underground) hotel in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Various luminaries have stayed at the hotel, including John F. Kennedy. The hotel staff invented Lawrence Welk’s now-famous bubble machine, and it was the site of Bob Hope’s marriage proposal in 1934. The hotel has won numerous awards, including being named to The Knot’s “Best of Weddings 2009” list.
The hotel also features an award-winning restaurant from 1916, the Terrace Room, which, among other amenities, features a long mural on the wall entitled “The taking of Fort Pitt. ” Readers of the Pittsburgh City Paper voted the Terrace Room “Best Hotel Dining” establishment in 2008 and 2009. It is outfitted with numerous furnishings in the Art Deco style.
I returned to northern Pennsylvania after Ohio, driving along the south side of Lake Erie.
ERIE (pop 96,500, metro 276,000)
Erie is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie, named for the lake and the Native American Erie people who lived there until the mid-17th century. It is halfway between Buffalo, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio, and due north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Erie’s manufacturing sector remains prominent in the local economy, though healthcare, higher education, technology, service industries, and tourism are emerging as significant economic drivers. Over four million people visit Erie during the summer for recreation at Presque Isle State Park and attractions such as Waldameer Park.
Erie is known as the “Flagship City” because it is the home port of Oliver Hazard Perry’s flagship Niagara. In 2012, Erie hosted the Perry 200, commemorating 200 years of peace between Britain, America, and Canada following the War of 1812 and the Battle of Lake Erie.
Millcreek Mall. This is a typical suburban mall with a large parking lot.
