- City:
- Allentown, PA
- Site Type:
- Infrastructure and Utilities, Sidewalks and Stairs
- New Deal Agencies:
- Works Progress Administration (WPA), Work Relief Programs
- Completed:
- 1936
Description
“The stone steps that run from Union Street down to Martin Luther King Boulevard in Allentown were built by WPA.”
mcall.com, 2011:
“[T]he stairway from Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, once Lawrence Street, stretches from Fountain Park to the Union Street retaining wall, which is 50 feet high and two blocks long. Homes clung to the hillside at Lawrence Street, just steps from the barbed-wire factories that once occupied the open field.
“For them, it was very difficult to get up and down that hillside,” Whelan said.
So the WPA built stairs.”
The staircase features one entrance on Martin Luther King Boulevard (at S 10th St.), and forks toward two entrances on Union Street.
Source notes
https://articles.mcall.com/1999-06-27/news/3245291_1_wpa-monocacy-creek-monocacy-park (accessed Dec. 25, 2017)
https://articles.mcall.com/2011-09-04/news/mc-allentown-wpa-preservation-20110904_1_wpa-workers-lehigh-parkway-allentown (accessed Dec. 25, 2017)
Site originally submitted by Evan Kalish on December 25, 2017.
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