Learning from Lewisburg
2. University Avenue -- connecting the parts
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Walk down University Avenue: |
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Note as you pass: Cooley Hall (the 1890's Italianate
mansion on the right at the corner of University Ave. and Malcolm
St.) and surrounding buildings in which the machines of University
Relations (e.g. alumni relations, fund raising) hum away at a safe
remove from the academic programs. |
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Bull Run (running under University Avenue) a quaint,
but periodically, deadly creek which flows into the Susquehanna River
just out of sight to the right. Some of you are familiar with its
dangers from the September flood of 1999. |
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Bull Run, acting calm. Draining agricultural
and suburbanizing land, the creek carries a heavy load of eroded soil
almost year 'round. |
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The Civil War monument at the end of University Avenue
on the right which commemorates the town's terrible losses, typical
of those suffered by small towns all over during the Civil War. |
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The Civil War monument, built
ca. 1902 . This was the era of the poorly-justified imperial "Spanish
War", when the nation needed to remind itself of the virtue of
military sacrifice. |
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Monuments commemorate the commemorators,
too; monuments are tales of the virtue of the creators. |
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Turn right down Barton St. (the little one-way road)
cross over to the Historical Marker on Brown St.: |
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If you look to the right (east) you see Mill
St. headed toward the river and, tracing it back the way you have
just come, you may see that you are on the path of the old mill race
for a grist mill, which took its water from a weir on Bull Run. |
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The Derr House was originally the home of Ludwig Derr,
founder of Lewisburg in 1785. He purchased a large parcel of land
on the banks of the Susquehanna where he built a profitable grist
mill, surveyed the parcel for settlement using the grid plan with
which we are familiar, but died while early plans for the settlement
were going forward. |
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Like many of the towns in central Pennsylvania, Lewisburg was founded
by a German. Ludwig Derr laid out the town in 1785 as Derrstown. The
"Lewis" in Lewisburg is an anglicization of Ludwig; the
street names — St. Catherine, St. Mary, St. George—are
misreadings of the signs for streets named after his children —
"St." was "Strasse" for Strasse Katrina, Strasse
Maria, Strasse Georg. |
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The original Derr house stands somewhere
within this structure |
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Mill Street is laid on the head race
(incoming flow of water) for Derr's mill |
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The early Derr house was beyond the
town's grid pattern that Derr laid out ... and Derr died before more
than a few houses were built |
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The typical college town combination of
student, faculty, and other local resident housing. Brown &
St. George mark the transition of the street pattern from the casual
point-to-point course of the river road, to the compulsively rectilinear
grid pattern of a typical Pennsylvania German town ... the town is
built to a Platonic ideal of town shape, with each block built to
a precise size. |
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1868 map showing Mill St. head race,
and Lewisburg grid pattern connecting ungracefully to non-gridded
regional roads. |
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