Learning from Lewisburg
4. Pre-industrial Lewisburg |
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Note the houses at #s 37 & 27 S. Water
St. These are two of the earliest houses in Lewisburg (dated to 1786
and 1789 respectively). No. 37 was the first store and school. Note
the orientation of these houses toward the river. (Look at the
houses across the street at #24 & 26 [built in the 1850s] and
#18 & 20 [built in the 1860s] — which way do these houses
face? What does this say about the importance of the river and the
outlook of the town 60 years later? Why didn’t people love the river
then?) The east/ west alley on the left runs parallel to Market
St. rather than at a right angle to it, as does the mirroring alley
in the first block north of Market. Note the flood gauge on the back
of the garage nearest to S. Water St. Recall that was the height of
the 1972 flood was 34 feet ... now look at the level of the houses
on the river side of the road nearby. Hmmm. |
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Why we call it Water St ... the 25
foot flood is expected every 15 years. |
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Knee-deep living-room flood levels
documented by strand line preserved on a basement door since 1972. |
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Turn right and walk out on the bridge until you are
standing over the river’s edge: |
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Note that the houses along the river have no alley
or garages; in fact, their yards (and first floors, sometimes) lie
within the flood plain of the river. The river rose over the lower
yards of these houses in January 1996. Depending on the time of day
you are here, you should be able to notice the high level of traffic
(especially truck traffic) across this bridge and through downtown
Lewisburg. The passage of Rt. 45, an important east/west corridor,
through town is both a blessing and a curse — good for business,
bad for sleeping. |
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When the railroad was built beside the canal in 1855,
a long covered bridge was built for a spur line. By these means the
town, well connected to Buffalo Valley behind it, stayed moderately
well connected to the rest of the world to the east and downstream.
The derelict iron bridge upstream is the descendent of that too-flammable
first bridge. |
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One thing that is obvious from the bridge to the observant
visitor is the extent to which Lewisburg is disconnected from the
river. Only five or six houses don't have a road between them and
water (even though much of this part of town isn't even on the statutory
floodplain), and the borough has only a few scraggly parks on the
river (even though it controls significant river-front land). Perhaps
this is understandable for historical reasons. Historically the river
was filthy — those houses you're looking at dumped their sewage
directly into the river as recently as the 1950's. And this part of
town was dirty, industrial, unsavory, smelly, or noisy at various
times throughout its history. |
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Panorama of Susquehanna from the bridge
... slack-water dam is visible in the river 150 yards downstream. |
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The river-side lands have supported
human lives since the stone age ... here at Slifer House soccer fields,
five blocks north. |
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Walk back off the bridge to the corner of Water St.: |
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Historic map of economic situation
of Lewisburg in 1884 when woodwork and river access were premier.
Note: canal boat works, the way industry and housing are intergrown
(the tannery, e.g.), the covered railroad bridge, a log-raft moving
downstream, the slack-water dam, the amount of unbuilt-up land, and
the small size of university. A much larger (3 meg) version of this
map at 1884 Bird's Eye View |
| Industrialization and de-industrialization. |
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Some classic stages of the development of US city structure
are visible around us here near the bridge. Soldiers Memorial Park,
upstream of the bridge,is a reclaimed abandoned industrial site —
see the round twin foundations of water towers right by the bridge
which are also visible in bird's-eye, above, and the low, red former
factory building of Pennsylvania House beyond the old railroad grade
just past the park. Lewisburg is still a local center for handling
wood and grain two hundred years after Derr built a saw mill and a
grist mill on Mill St. A furniture factory is historically one of
the town's biggest employers (even as jobs are leaking south from
here). |
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Established at the site of a canal boat works, this
was the “Chair Factory” for decades, and has become an antique mall
in the last few years … it’s the pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial
story of the town in one building. |
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The preindustrial "city"
featured numerous artisans working in small shops, with residential,
commercial, and manufacturing activities intergrown. Low levels of
class differentiation into neighborhoods or of differentiation of
urban function is seen — rich and poor, business and home, are
adjacent. |
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In the industrial city, factories
became more concentrated as capital and transportation advances favored
larger operations. Workers' housing was confined to poorer districts,
and the wealthy chose to live further from the polluting and unpleasant
sites of industry. |
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In the post-industrial city, factory
jobs have been drawn elsewhere by lower wages or even better transportation
conditions; service jobs predominate The automobile fractures the
city, as wealthy move further away and take their purchasing power
to accessible suburban and strip businesses, while cars and parking
(usually) render the downtown congested, inaccessible, and unpleasant
(although Lewisburg has largely escaped this fate, through a certain
urban judo, by using post-industrial tastes to its own advantage). |
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Preindustrial Lewisburg: the home was
a also store; the one next door was a tavern. |
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Preindustrial Lewisburg: a small mill
every four miles served local farmers for grinding grain, like this
mill west of town that is still powered by water |
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Industrial Lewisburg: the railroad
connected Lewisburg to the cities to the east, to the sources of raw
materials to the north and west — and the line through town
was the main access to Penn State, in the Nittany Valley (blue arrows). |
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Industrial Lewisburg: the big Pennsylvania
House furniture factory arrayed along the (abandoned) Pennsylvania
RR line, west of Rt. 15. |
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Post-industrial Lewisburg: the recycled
Chair Factory shifted from manufacturing to low-margin sales about
12 years ago. |
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Post-industrial Lewisburg: the second
largest employer is the Big House, the Federal Penitentiary ... one
of four federal prisons in the county and ten prisons within Union
and the adjacent counties. |
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Post-industrial Lewisburg: recycling
the Reading RR freight terminal as Borough Hall; the functional (and
once-ugly?) becomes the stylish. |
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Post-industrial Lewisburg: the university
sets the tone for gentrification. |
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Deindustrialization in action: the
former International Paper Factory gets torn down for restaurants
and a Walmart; manufacturing jobs are replaced by service jobs on
the same spot within just a few years. |
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Deindustrialization in action: the
parent company of Pennsylvania House Furniture announces that the
local factories are closing while production is shifted to China. |
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Post-industrial Milton, Sunbury &
Williamsports: the next few towns up and down the river carry the
burden of empty storefronts in their downtown — symptomatic
of the movement of commerce to the highway strip, and a depressing
signal to anyone thinking of investing downtown. |
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Start down Market St. away from the river: |
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The Ionic architecture of the neo-classical
Presbyterian church building on the right between Water and Front
Sts. |
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From its nucleus where Market meets the river, Lewisburg
has grown more-or-less continuously toward the west for two centuries
now. The progression of architecture from the river along Market St.
is the town's chronology. Growth has average about a block per decade
for two centuries (with obvious spurts and stops). It took four decades
to fill in to Third St., and about 22 blocks west you can see new
houses going up today (220 years later). |
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The compact old brick and stone houses by the river
along Water St. were built in the 18th Century by store keepers and
millers. The bulky Federal buildings from the early period of commercial
growth stretch from Front St. to Second St. The Hotel was built in
1831, two years before the canal arrived. Other fine buildings were
homes for grain merchants and the schoolmaster. |
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