A Brewery and a Bridge

The following morning we were all up early to wish Anhtuan luck then left him with Nimrod to go over the flight and paperwork. We drove to Allentown to look at Neuweiler Brewery, built between 1911 and 1913, which closed in 1968.It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. An extensive range of beers were produced here and after closure many of those recipes were purchased by Ortlieb's Brewery.

I loved the arched windows, blocked out by some cute art work on wooden boards.

The place is pretty much a shell from what we could see and well fenced, keeping nosy people like me out.

There's rumors that it could once again be made into a brewery since a New York brewing company purchased the place last year, The plans are for it to be converted into the new Ruckus headquarters with a brewpub and center for tours, and there may even be a beer named after the building.  Mary and I tried entering around the back but were soon told to leave by residents next door.
We all hopped back into the car as the cold was biting with an unforgiving wind whipping around us. We came across a city oddity while driving along a narrow back street. An adjacent row of houses was squashed up tight against the buttresses of a huge concrete bridge that spans the Lehigh river. There was barely a foot between the two and we had to get out of the car and investigate it further. We walked up and down snapping photos and an argument ensued as to which came first, the bridge or the houses. Later, back at the hotel, we started researching and after about 20 minutes had our answer. The bridge, built to allow about 22,000 cross the river daily, was built in 1929. The row houses were built earlier in 1900, and we discovered they are 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom homes worth about $43,000.

 I had almost missed this graffiti on the pillar, recognizing the name from the abandoned industrial park I'd visited a couple of weeks earlier. This guy gets about.
At noon we went to a bar near the hotel, and waited for Anhtuan to arrive. He finally turned up looking ashen and tired. He's been flying for about 20 years but said he'd never come that close to being sick before. They had been buffeted about tremendously while doing his review and I'm sure that it must have been a little unsettling trying to fly slowly, execute a perfect circle and stall the engine while wrestling to control the plane at the same time. But he passed and soon felt well enough to rapidly polish off the many plates of appetizers that we'd ordered in his absence. And so with curiosities and appetites sated we all started the long drive home, but I'm thinking a return trip to Bethlehem Steel could be in the future.