William Allen founded the city of Allentown in 1760. Allen, one of the wealthiest men in eighteenth century Pennsylvania, acquired thousands of acres of land in the Lehigh Valley. On Sept. 10, 1735, Joseph Turner, a business partner of Allen, sold him 5,000 acres close to the Lehigh River.
uhlenberg College began in downtown Allentown in 1848 as Allentown Seminary, an institution that trained teachers. In 1864, the name changed to Allentown Collegiate and Military Institute (a name typical for Civil War-era schools). The Institute failed and was put up for sale in 1867, only to be bought by the local Lutheran Church and renamed Muhlenberg College in honor of the Reverend Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the father of the Lutheran Church in America.
For nearly 80 years after its founding in 1762, Allentown's economy grew only slightly. As the newest major town in the Lehigh Valley and the one farthest from the Delaware River, which was then the major artery of transportation, Allentown served mainly as a market center to which the agricultural produce from surrounding farms was sent and from which finished products were distributed.
f the slow death of Bethlehem Steel was tragedy, then the imminent slots-and-lofts redevelopment of its idled riverside steelworks is farce. Harmless and predictable farce, but farce still. Twenty-eight years after "Black Sunday"-ten years since the company shuttered its flagship Bethlehem plant and a mere four years since bankruptcy-a consortium of developers led by casino giant Las Vegas Sands plans to turn 130 acres of abandoned foundries and blast furnaces into a theme-park mix of stores, apartments, a casino hotel and even a concert arena.