Allentown, PA

The Liberty Bell spent part of the Revolutionary War hidden beneath the building now occupied by Zion’s Reformed United Church of Christ in downtown Allentown. It arrived in 1777 with other bells removed from Philadelphia to keep them from British forces. The episode belongs to a city William Allen had laid out in 1762 as Northamptontown; residents commonly shortened the founder’s name into “Allen’s town,” and Allentown became the official name in 1838. That same year, the Lehigh Canal opened regional markets to iron, lime, lumber, and other goods. Rail service followed in 1851, helping turn the Lehigh County seat on the Lehigh River into an industrial city. These layers remain close together downtown, where the bell-hiding site stands a few blocks from newer cultural buildings on Hamilton Street.

Allentown’s working life has changed with each transportation and industrial era. Factories once made silk, automotive products, beer, transistor radios, and electronics; factory consolidation accelerated during the 1970s. Health care, offices, education, finance, and logistics now share the economy with continuing manufacturing. Regional health systems operate major facilities in the city, and PPL Corporation’s headquarters occupies Two City Center at 645 Hamilton Street downtown. Warehousing and freight work reflect Allentown’s position between the New York and Philadelphia markets, while small businesses line neighborhood commercial streets. Seventh Street has its own business district north of downtown, and Hamilton Street remains the principal east-west route through Center City. Hospitals, offices, industrial sites, shops, and service businesses occupy several corridors across the city. Hamilton Street also concentrates much of Allentown’s public cultural life.

The downtown Arts Walk passes the Allentown Art Museum, Arts Park, public art, and Miller Symphony Hall. As of 2026, the museum offered free admission on every open day and stayed open late for art-making on the third Thursday of each month. A newer neighbor, the Da Vinci Science Center at PPL Pavilion, opened on Hamilton Street in May 2024 with interactive galleries devoted to the human body, invention, and the Lehigh River watershed. These institutions place visual art, orchestral performance, and hands-on science within the same downtown area. The Arts Walk gives a newcomer useful orientation: several of the city’s major cultural destinations can be reached along a short sequence of downtown blocks.

West Park supplies a different civic setting. Dedicated in 1909 as Allentown’s first official municipal park, the 6.5-acre square was planted as an arboretum and contains a Beaux-Arts bandshell used for summer concerts. Farther west, the Great Allentown Fair traces its agricultural mission to 1852 and has occupied its present fairgrounds since 1889. Livestock, produce, competitions, rides, and grandstand entertainment fill the grounds during the annual fair. The Fairgrounds Farmers Market and Agri-Plex give the property year-round uses beyond that event. The park and fairgrounds preserve two long-running forms of local gathering on the west side; downtown museums and performance spaces provide another. Summer concerts still gather audiences among specimen trees in the first park Allentown formally dedicated.