Last week, I traveled east to visit my brother at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Without a doubt, the Lehigh campus is stunning. For those of you familiar with the University of Michigan campus, here’s a description of Lehigh: take U-M’s Law Quad, multiply it, and build it all into the side of a tree-covered mountain.
Praise the Lord and pass the architecture (25 July 2007).
The Packer Memorial Church, built in memory of Asa Packer’s wife by his daughter, is representative of the beauty of the rest of Lehigh’s campus.
Water you looking at? (25 July 2007)
The Alumni Memorial Building enjoys the company of a newly-constructed fountain, and that fountain provides a view I couldn’t resist.
The castle of knowledge (25 July 2007).
The Linderman Library is almost spectacular enough to make you forget about the books. The second picture shows the interior of the rotunda (slightly visible on the right side of the first picture); the third picture shows the view you get when you look up while you’re standing in the rotunda.
But Lehigh wasn’t all I saw during my trip. The city of Bethlehem has a rich industrial history; it was the home of Bethlehem Steel, once one of the largest steel companies in the world. But a changing market and internal problems toppled the seemingly-indestructible steel empire, and now its sprawling facilities — stretching for nearly two miles through southern Bethlehem — lie mostly abandoned, a crumbling reminder that nothing is too big or too powerful to be humbled.
(Current redevelopment plans promise to revitalize the site while preserving a number of the Bethlehem Steel buildings; sadly, the main cog of that plan is a casino.)
How the mighty have fallen (26 July 2007).
The first picture shows one of Bethlehem Steel’s previous headquarters; where once you might have approached the entrance and been impressed with the obvious power of the company, you now simply drive past a vacant building adorned with a name and logo that have been relegated to the dust bin of industrial history.
The second and third pictures show two of the older deteriorating structures; despite the poor condition, the stone construction is still beautiful.
The fourth picture shows what is likely the most-photographed landmark in Bethlehem: the Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces. The city and the site’s developers, wisely acknowledging the furnaces’ important place in the city history and skyline, have made the restoration of the furnaces part of the redevelopment plans.
(See the full Lehigh / Bethlehem gallery.)
