Allentown, PA

It's late March and Christmas lights are still up. Maybe they stay up year-round, I don't know, but I think it's past time to take them down.

All the lights sure make this building look pretty at night. It's the only tall building in Allentown.

The downtown area has a lot of nice churches that date back to late 1700s and early 1800s.

I like the real bells. One of Allentown's claims to fame is that that the Liberty Bell was stashed here for a while.

I went to the Allentown Art Museum and almost immediately was greeted with an excellent work. This masterpiece is titled "Crow" by Leonard Baskin. Completed in 1961, it is Pine painted Black over Red.

The Sinking of the Cumberland by the Merrimac
date unknown
oil on canvas
Edward Moran
American, 1829-1901

Where They Were
1975 (a great year!)
oil on canvas
William Haney
American, Born 1939

I thought the whole museum would have a nautical theme because of the entrance, but I was wrong. It's probably some Illuminati/Mason thing.

This is across the courtyard from the art museum, and I have to say they did a nice job of making a huge brick wall look nice.

The whole scene in Allentown was dominated by construction. Every building seemed to have some portion of it falling down and wrapped in plastic with construction equipment sitting around. I did see some work crews working, but mostly just empty equipment and broken down buildings.

I don't know happened here. In this photo it kind of looks pretty with the shadow chasing the scaffolding, but when you're there it looks like you could be hit be falling debris at any moment and the plastic wraps are all flapping noisily in the breeze.

I don't know what happened here either. Fire, collapse, bomb...Something bad went down.