Bethlehem, PA

The Lehigh River divides Bethlehem into two downtowns with different histories and concentrations of civic and cultural activity. On the north side, Main Street, Moravian University buildings, stone colonial structures, and the Monocacy Creek define the Historic District. South of the river, Third and Fourth streets run between Lehigh University’s hillside campus and the former Bethlehem Steel works. The city officially distinguishes the Northside Historic District from the SouthSide Arts District, and bridges make the two centers part of one municipality spanning Northampton and Lehigh counties. Restaurants, university activity, festivals, historic sites, and arts venues occupy separate riverbank centers. South Mountain rises behind Lehigh, while five preserved blast furnaces dominate the industrial horizon on the South Side.

Bethlehem began beside the confluence of the Monocacy Creek and Lehigh River in 1741 as a planned Moravian religious community. On Christmas Eve that year, Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf named the settlement Bethlehem after a hymn sung in the first house. The Moravians organized communal residences, worship, education, craft production, and water-powered industry within a coherent town plan. In July 2024, Bethlehem joined Herrnhut in Germany, Gracehill in Northern Ireland, and Christiansfeld in Denmark as the transnational Moravian Church Settlements World Heritage site. UNESCO describes Bethlehem as the first permanent, best-preserved, and most important Moravian settlement in North America. The designation covers buildings, ruins, common ground, God’s Acre cemetery, and the Colonial Industrial Quarter that residents still encounter around Main and Church streets. Central Moravian Church and Moravian University keep many of these historic buildings in religious, educational, and cultural use.

Industry transformed the opposite bank. Bethlehem Iron began making rails in South Bethlehem during the 1860s, and its successor, Bethlehem Steel, became one of the nation’s largest steelmakers. The local plant supplied material for bridges, skyscrapers, dams, and naval ships before closing in 1995. The surviving stacks now form the backdrop for the ten-acre SteelStacks arts campus, opened in 2011. Concert rooms, cinemas, festival grounds, and the outdoor Levitt Pavilion share the former works with the National Museum of Industrial History, which occupies the plant’s old Electric Repair Shop. Lehigh University, founded by railroad and coal entrepreneur Asa Packer in 1865, climbs South Mountain directly above this district. The former works now hold museums, performance venues, hospitality businesses, and redevelopment sites, while Lehigh’s classrooms rise directly uphill. The furnaces remain large enough to structure views across the river.

Bethlehem’s cultural calendar crosses these histories. The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, founded at Central Moravian Church in 1898, presents its annual Bach Festival on Lehigh’s campus and at historic neighborhood venues. Musikfest began in 1984 as a community effort tied to economic revitalization and now fills ten August days with stages and street activity. ArtsQuest operates year-round concerts, films, classes, and festivals at SteelStacks, where audiences sit beneath furnaces preserved from the plant that closed in 1995. North-side cultural life includes Main Street, historic church grounds, and the Moravian Book Shop, founded in 1745 and now also the university’s student bookstore. Residents encounter culture on both sides of the river: a spring choral performance can fill an eighteenth-century church, students use a bookstore opened before the American Revolution, and a summer concert unfolds below a quarter-mile line of steel furnaces.