This year, Bethlehem was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list alongside Moravian sites in Europe in a rare transnational designation.Chris Flachs/Supplied
I pulled in to Nazareth
Was feeling ‘bout half past dead
I just need someplace
Where I can lay my head
“Hey, mister, can you tell me
Where a man might find a bed?”
He just grinned and shook my hand
“No” was all he said.
From The Weight by Robbie Robertson
To avoid being caught without a bed in the small Pennsylvania town of Nazareth at the end of a long road trip, we booked rooms in nearby Bethlehem, a larger place with nice hotels. It was devout Moravian immigrants in the 18th century who gave these towns their biblical names. Since those days, Nazareth and Bethlehem have been immortalized in pop songs and made famous by their best exports: guitars and steel.
The towns set in the green hills of eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, about 90 minutes west of Philadelphia, not only offer colonial heritage but also reminders of the industries that blossomed there in the 19th century. The steel mills in Bethlehem stopped production in the 1990s but today the towering furnaces have been turned into a public park, entertainment venue and art centre. Meanwhile, up the road in Nazareth, they are still making musical instruments by hand at the Martin Guitar Factory, in operation since 1833.
The writer's husband and son sing together in 2020 with the Martin 000-28 on the right.Kate Taylor/The Globe and Mail
Our mother-and-son road trip was a sentimental journey with the guitar factory as our ultimate destination. When he died last January, my husband left us his poems, his paintings and his most precious belonging, a Martin 000-28. He had bought it about 20 years before and played it often. A good guitar ages well, its sound growing richer with regular use, and increasingly it was my son who played the 000-28 daily on the understanding it would soon be his. A few months after his father’s death, he opened the case and was devastated to discover a crack in the guitar’s binding. Had we not been scrupulous enough with the humidifier? No Toronto music shop would do: The cherished Martin had to go home to Nazareth, Pa., for repairs.
But before we could head to Nazareth, I became distracted by the history of the area, enjoying Bethlehem’s cobblestone heritage district. A self-guided walking tour features 18th-century stone buildings including a waterworks, tannery and dormitories as well as the log structure that was the first community centre and now houses a historical museum. This year, Bethlehem was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list alongside Moravian sites in Europe in a rare transnational designation.
Pacifists and communitarians, the Moravians belonged to an early Protestant sect founded in what is now Czechia, and arrived in colonial America in the 18th century, establishing Bethlehem in 1741. Today, there are about one million Moravians in the world, but only 60,000 in the U.S. and Canada.
Their town, however, is best remembered for what happened next: Iron production came to Bethlehem in 1857 and evolved into a booming steel industry. Bethlehem Steel could boast it built the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building and the U.S. Navy’s fleet during the Second World War.
The steel industry struggled in the 1980s and production halted in Bethlehem in 1995. Seeking a solution for the massive brownfield site left behind, the town launched a project to save the “stacks,” the giant furnaces where the steel was forged.
Today, no visitor to the area should miss the SteelStacks, which opened in 2015. Stairs lead up several storeys to a walkway built along the track that was once used to move materials in rail carts. Like a mini version of New York’s High Line, the Hoover-Mason Trestle allows visitors to see these industrial cathedrals up close. Didactic panels explain how steel is made and recount the history of the immigrants who earned their living doing that hot and dangerous work.
Also on the site, the National Museum of Industrial History offers displays about multiple industries including propane, silk and textiles as well as iron and steel.
If all the hard labour is now gone, it is not forgotten: On the final panel that speculates Bethlehem management lost its touch in the era of the mini mill, my son spotted a second sentence scratched out with a key. We could just make out something about union demands and the pension plan. Billy Joel lamented those job losses in his 1982 song Allentown, named for the nearby city, singing “Out in Bethlehem they are killing time/Filling out forms and standing in line …”
On the other hand, 14 kilometres up the road in Nazareth, the town’s most famous industry has never stopped. Handmade Martin guitars are highly prized musical instruments, fashioned from rosewood, mahogany and sycamore since the early 19th-century. C.F. Martin, a German luthier, immigrated to the United States in 1833, settling in Nazareth because it reminded him of home. The location has changed a few times but today’s factory is still making guitars by hand.
There, we joined a tour group to watch the long process, from the selection of appropriate woods to the construction, gluing and polishing of the body and the tricky attachment of the neck. Some aspects have been mechanized – a robotic arm does an initial polish before a human steps in – but detail and care are crucial to a reputation built on the guitars’ remarkable tone.
Our tour guide also pointed out the repair department where several dozen guitar cases sat waiting. We were told it would be six or eight weeks to get an estimate on what needed to be done on our guitar, and some months for the repairs to be completed. After a 700-kilometre trip, there didn’t seem to be much choice but to hand it over and wait.
The factory is still owned by Martin’s descendants and a small museum follows both company and cultural history: Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, James Taylor and Kurt Cobain all played Martin Guitars.
For decades, fans speculated about the implication of Robertson’s song The Weight, recorded with The Band in 1968. Was Nazareth a biblical reference?
In his 2016 memoir, the Canadian singer confirmed the lyrics had come to him after he looked in the sound hole of his guitar and saw these words: C.F. Martin & Co. Inc./Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
We left our inheritance in safe hands and a storied place, climbed back in the car and headed north.
If you go
Tours of the Martin Guitar factory are offered Monday to Friday and have to be booked in advance at martinguitar.com.
The Hoover-Mason Trestle at SteelStacks is a public park but sometimes closed due to special events. See steelstacks.org
The National Museum of Industrial History offers tours of the stacks, sometimes lead by former steelworkers, on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets can be purchased online at nmih.org
There are lots of chain hotels on the outskirts of Bethlehem and in nearby Allentown. In Bethlehem, the more elegant options are Hotel Bethlehem, a 1922 Beaux-Arts building in the heritage district and a member of the Historic Hotels of America, or the smaller Wilbur Mansion.