Bethlehem, Pennsylvania —
On a recent cloudless afternoon on a plaza outside this city’s industrial history museum, a small crowd has gathered to soak up some sun, drink beer and listen to Robbie Lawrence and the Steelworkers, a local polka band.
“I come from Bethlehem and I’m proud of it, Bethlehem is my home,” Lawrence sings as an accordion player wheezes out a jaunty melody over his right shoulder. “I come from Bethlehem and brag about it, no matter where I roam.”
Behind Lawrence’s band towers a former Bethlehem Steel office building, long vacant but slated to become apartments. Across a parking lot to the north, the rusting blast furnaces of the defunct Bethlehem Steel plant form a dramatic backdrop to the sangria festival happening on the street below. And on a hillside eight blocks west, a railroad magnate’s 1865 mansion is now a boutique hotel.
Wherever you go in this handsome city, the past is never far away. Settled by Moravians in the mid-1700s, it was made famous two centuries later by the booming steel industry, which attracted thousands of immigrants from around the world to work in the mills, build churches and import their colorful food and culture – including polka music.
