This column, written by LVEDC President & CEO Don Cunningham, originally appeared in The Morning Call and on the newspaper’s website on May 2, 2025.
On the South Side of Allentown in Fairview Cemetery there’s a scenic view looking north where you see the city’s past, present, and future in one gaze. 
Amidst the aging gravestones of names synonymous with Allentown history — like Trexler, Boyle, Butz, Dent, Miller and Mosser — the view takes in the water tank of a former Mack Trucks plant now incubating new manufacturers and the grand Art Deco PPL Tower of the skyline that anchors a revitalizing downtown. It’s a vista that includes both the striking Eighth Street Bridge that links the city’s north and south sides and the lush green of parks and ballfields along the Little Lehigh Creek.
Fairview Cemetery is a historic treasure. Bordered by the alleys and rear of row homes behind South 10th and South Eighth streets and Lehigh Street, the 24-acre cemetery was built during the height of America’s grand cemetery movement in 1873, when many urban cemeteries were landscaped and designed like parks upon rolling hillsides with granite mausoleums and stone decorative features. Other examples in the Lehigh Valley are Easton Cemetery and St. Michael’s and Nisky Hill in Bethlehem. Green-Wood in Brooklyn and Laurel Hill in Philadelphia are the big city versions of the cemetery style.
Unfortunately, like St. Michael’s in south Bethlehem, the original deep-pocketed owners of Fairview Cemetery Association are long gone, and underfunded volunteers and new operators fight to retain the splendor and history of these urban green spaces. Weeds, crumbling driveways and broken or overgrown headstones are a constant challenge.
As with all the cemeteries of the post-Civil War era, it’s like taking a stroll through history. The headstones in Fairview Cemetery are a reminder of Allentown’s Pennsylvania Dutch roots. Most of the names in the large plots and hillside mausoleums are of the Zimmerman, Fenstemacher, Knecht, Hunsicker and Shimer variety. It clearly wasn’t a Catholic resting place, although I did stumble upon a large cluster of Cunninghams all buried prior to 1960 that were of a different tribe.
Sprinkled along the outer ring of some walkways are the occasional new grave and fresh flowers, most of them belonging to Allentown’s recent wave of Hispanic immigration, some of whom died far too young. The sound of light music drifted from a group of young people who sat cross-legged on the grass around a new grave during the afternoon of my visit.
The evolution of surnames reminded me of the songwriting of Allentown’s Steve Brosky, who captured the cultural and immigration changes taking place in the city during the 1990s on his album Limestone and James, intersecting alleys where he grew up in the Sixth Ward.
“The sun always shined, the moon always rose on Limestone and James,” Brosky sings, reflecting on a youth long gone and the changed terrain of a new generation. “It still appears to look the same, but I can see that it’s all changed, no one speaks my language, and no one remembers my name.”
It’s the evolution of a location from yesterday to today that’s happening in the manufacturing buildings of South 10th in the shadow of Fairview Cemetery. Under the iconic Mack Trucks Plant 4A water tower, the nonprofit Allentown Economic Development Corp. runs an award-winning manufacturing incubator called Bridgeworks that provides below-market rent and support to entrepreneurs starting new companies that make things. The 64,000-square-foot building houses about one dozen early-stage companies that make products from beer and spirits to plastics and refrigeration technologies. The intent of the incubator, the only one of its kind in the Lehigh Valley, is to help manufacturing companies grow and graduate to their own space with more revenue and employees. It’s like the farm system of growing a Made in the U.S.A. economy in the Lehigh Valley.
AEDC already has crushed major home runs in adding manufacturers and businesses to Allentown and the Lehigh Valley. On the other side of 10th Street, Eastern Exterior Wall Systems Inc., is finishing its renovation of the long-vacant Allentown Metal Works into a modern manufacturer of building materials to be called Allentown Panel Shop. The 17.5-acre site that once contained 260,000 square feet of buildings was purchased by AEDC in 2013. The small organization used its expertise to get the funding and support necessary to attract a new manufacturing use, which is scheduled to open this spring and will employ up to 100 union workers within two years.
The old is becoming new across the river in Allentown’s downtown, where the former skyscraper home of PPL is planned for renovation into apartments and retail and commercial space, according to its new owner, Wilkes-Barre-based developer D&D Realty Group. This will add to the recently opened Archer Music Hall and Moxy Downtown hotel by Marriott located west on Hamilton Street.
The walk in Fairview Cemetery was my first but I’m no stranger to Allentown, having worked downtown for a dozen years. During that time, my favorite lunch spot was Sewards Steak Shop at 17th and Union streets. It’s a neighborhood joint owned by Mike Seward for the last 45 years. It’s filled with photos of Allen High School sports teams from long gone eras.
After not being there for at least five years, I popped in after the cemetery hike. As I strolled to the counter, Mike said, “Do you want the corned beef?”
I couldn’t believe he remembered.
Unfortunately, it’s likely to be my last at Sewards. Mike plans to retire and has the building up for sale. Sewards will soon be gone, but as things go in Allentown, a new generation should soon have its own place to eat at 17th and Union.