Bethlehem Audio Tours

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was founded on Christmas Eve, 1741, by Moravian bishop Nicolaus Zinzendorf. He named it after the biblical birthplace of Christ, and the settlement developed as a tightly organized Moravian religious community along the Monocacy and Lehigh rivers. In 1747 it became the first American city to display a decorated Christmas tree. The town earned its nickname Christmas City USA in 1937, and it has kept the theme even as everything around the faith changed.

What changed most dramatically was steel.

Bethlehem Steel, founded in 1857, became the second-largest steel producer in the United States and the manufacturer of more than 1,100 warships during World War II. At peak operation it employed 30,000 workers and pioneered the I-beam structural design used in skyscrapers from the Chrysler Building to the Golden Gate Bridge. The corporation stopped production in 1995 and closed entirely in 2003. The Steel Stacks arts campus now occupies the old blast furnaces, five of them preserved and lit at night against the Lehigh sky.