Growing Up On 4th Street In Allentown
By Wally Ely
I was only a few years old in 1941 when my Mom and Dad moved to
105 South Fourth Street in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The family had lived
in a little cottage just west of the city on Cedarbrook Road, near Wescosville
after relocating to the Lehigh Valley from Reading, where I was born. Our
first Allentown apartment was on the third floor of the 105 address.
My Mom really coveted the first floor apartment, and arranged with
the realtor managing the property to have first crack should the first floor
apartment ever become vacant. It wasn’t long until her wish came true, and
the Tom Ely’s relocated to the first floor of 105 South 4th Street. I was still a
toddler.
Eventually, my Dad’s job reverted back to the railroad side of the
Reading Transportation Company. He had worked during much of the
1930’s as a long-haul bus driver. His routes took him between Allentown,
Reading, Harrisburg, and New York. He told me he even drove the team
bus for the Reading minor league baseball club for a season. The Reading
Railroad was part of all this, and Tom Ely ended up back on the trains filling
a need during the war. He was a conductor, both passenger and freight. He
served in this capacity until he retired with 45 years with the Reading
Company.
This reassignment to the trains changed our living style greatly. My
Dad located an apartment in Harrisburg, and ended up staying there most of
the time. My Mom and I lived together in our Fourth Street apartment,
mostly without him.
From time to time my Dad would drive to Allentown on his day off,
spend a few hours catching up on the news, and head back to Harrisburg.
Somehow, his job was more important than his family. I didn’t understand
this then – and I don’t understand it now. I can remember his Packard
Roadster parked in front of our Fourth Street apartment.
Our home was one in a row of Victorian residences – obviously a
lovely neighborhood for the well-to-do in their day. By the 1940’s, many of
these stately old homes had been turned into apartments; most of them
became the first slum neighborhood in Allentown. The turf changed rapidly
within a few hundred feet along South Fourth Street. On three corners of
Fourth and Walnut Streets were true mansions. Starting in my block on the
corner the Edgar Maury family still retained its high-income aura.
Everything about the property exuded luxury. Old Mr. Maury and his wife
lived on the first floor, with their daughter Emma Raab and her husband on
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the floors above. Their property was well manicured, and always very well
maintained. It sported a beautiful wrought iron fence along the sidewalk.
A wire fence separated that 101 South Fourth Street address from our
#105. The property we lived in was nothing like the Maury’s mansion. But
it, too, was always maintained well, if not up to those impossible standards
of next door.
It was all “downhill” from there. Starting directly next door to the
South at #107 was a true slum. I mean right next door! Well down the
block lived old Joseph Riepensel and his family. Joe was an immigrant from
Germany who made good in real estate investments here in Allentown and
was the landlord who owned the entire rest of the block – all the way down
to Hickory Street. Riepensel was a tough landlord, constantly chasing the
kids and hollering at his tenants (in a mixture of German and English.) The
old Victorian properties Riepensel now owned had been converted into overcrowded multi-apartment houses. There would be two or more families of at
least five people on each floor as the rooms were broken down into as many
apartments as could possibly fit onto each floor. Most families had
numerous children. These were Allentown’s poorest families. Starting at
107 South Fourth, things grew progressively worse as you toured the
neighborhood toward Hickory Street and Union Street further south.
Most of the families survived on welfare, such as there was in those
days, disability, or unemployment checks. Few adults were gainfully
employed. Some worked in short spurts in low paying jobs. Most of the
women had their hands full, staying home and caring for substantial broods
of kids.
On the positive side, two of the neighborhood women worked at the
Superior Restaurant at 828 Hamilton Street, where my mother, Helen, also
went to work. All were waitresses. Pretty good ones, at that.
Ada Muth lived in the rear apartment of 107 South 4th with her
husband and family. Godfrey Muth was an accomplished musician. He
could play a piano better than anyone else in town. Medical difficulties kept
his employment at a minimum. Everyone who knew Godfrey acknowledged
his talent and exclaimed over his abilities. The Muth kids were Godfrey
Junior, Nancy, Robert, and Carl (Butch). Bobby was about my age and we
were close friends. Ada carried the family financially thanks to her job at
the Superior.
My other neighborhood friend was another Bobby, Robert
Bartholomew, for some reason known as “Cowboy.” He lived at 109 South
Fourth Street with his mother, Hilda, a single mom, and her children Sonia
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and Charlotte. Hilda was one of the Superior waitresses, supporting her kids
on the waitress income plus tips. I don’t know how she did it!
Another guy we shared time with was Gene Dieter. I don’t know
much about Eugene Dieter’s family. Deiter lived almost a block away in the
unit block of South Fourth Street, but frequently showed up to play with the
Cowboy, Bobby and Wally trio. From the same neighborhood a block away
was Donny Ritter with whom I had a lot in common.
All of us went to elementary school at Garber-Horne School on South
Penn Street, between Hamilton and Walnut Street less than a block away
from our homes. This building is now the Administration Building for the
Allentown School District. All of the others I have named here went to
Garber-Horner from first through sixth grades. Fate played it differently for
me.
When I was in third grade, my mother was approached by the School
District for permission to transfer me to “Opportunity School” at the
Franklin Building between Franklin Street and Fourteenth Street, between
Turner and Chew Streets (the building is no longer there – but the Franklin
playground serves the neighborhood in place of it.) The shift to Opportunity
School was offered to superior students who met certain standards for
potential and had appropriate IQ’s. My Mom had serious doubts about the
process of disrupting my elementary school routine, but eventually it was
agreed that I should accept the offer for the advanced schooling, and I left
my friends at G-H for Franklin School for 4th, 5th and 6th grades. To get to
school, I rode the public bus from Fifth and Walnut Streets to Franklin and
Turner Streets. Every morning I walked to the bus stop, and then was
dropped off there at the end of the school day.
Back to the Fourth Street environment: One block south of 4th and
Walnut at Union Street, an old Armory was converted to the Allentown
Boys Club. George Hamilton was the executive director of the club. All the
kids in the neighborhood joined and spent a lot of time there. Mostly it was
basketball and billiards. The Boys Club was a place with plenty of
supervision that kept energetic young boys off the streets, giving them a
positive environment in which to play sports or other activities. I remember
an appearance of a pool-playing champion – I believe it was Willie Hoppe who gave a billiards demonstration right there in our Boys Club.
My interest in the club centered more on photography than sports.
There was darkroom set up in the basement of the Boys Club building, and
an instructor taught boys the fine points of the craft of taking, developing
and printing pictures. I spent a lot of time in that photography program. Just
as with the basketball boys, I was involved in something productive and time
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consuming, keeping me occupied and off the streets. My Mom was pleased
when she knew I was spending my time at the Boys Club.
Next to the Boys Club there was a baseball field. By my junior high
school days, I could be found most summer mornings with a friend playing
“Strike-out,” a ball and bat game using a tennis ball. It could be played with
as few as two players, and usually was.
Recently I was reminded that I had for a time in my teen years a
Lionel train layout in the basement of 105 South 4th Street. It was a dim,
dismal, musty basement location - but this enabled me to use my train
collection year round -- not just at Christmas, as had been the case most of
my life. Our neighbor on the second floor John Temperley actually made
the platform for me, and I installed my tracks and trains. Speaking of Mr.
Temperley, in the early 1950’s this generous neighbor guided me in building
a soapbox derby racer. Maybe you could say he even did more of the work
on it than I did, but by the rules, I personally had to build the car. It was
Temperley’s know-how, tools and equipment that gave the impetus to the
construction project. Therefore, thanks to Mr. Temperley, I was able to
build a race car, enter the Soap Box Derby race, and even win one heat!
Speaking of junior high school, those days were among the best in my
young life. All of us who lived in the neighborhood attended HarrisonMorton Junior High School. My mother heard the reputation of what a
rough place Harrison-Morton was, and as my seventh grade year
approached, she schemed to have me redirected to Raub Junior High School
in the west end – where all the “rich kids” went. But things didn’t work out,
and I ended up at HM.
Actually, the Harrison Morton years were really good to me, and I
loved the school and grew up a lot going there. I was in the “College Prep”
course in seventh, eighth and ninth grades, surviving among all the brightest
kids in the school. However, in a misguided decision I still regret, I
switched to “shop” in 10th grade, choosing “drafting.” This move put me in
classes with the lower element of the school population, and I was constantly
in competition with only one other young man, David Gensenlighter, for top
of the class honors. This shop course arrangement didn’t work out; I wasn’t
meant to be a draftsman. The drafting plan was abandoned, and I ended up
in the “General” course at high school, instead of “College-Prep.” I was a
graduate in the class of 1954. I then went on to Muhlenberg College on a
scholarship and was graduated in 1958.
During my years at Harrison-Morton I assembled a new bunch of
“best friends.” Charlie Berman was in my class from the first day at H-M in
Seventh Grade. Our 7-1 homeroom teacher was Irene B. Peter. Charlie and
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I hit it off and remained really close through our school years (drifting apart
somewhat only after each of us got married.) Charlie’s neighbor was a
young man one year older than us, Bill Hanson. The Bermans and the
Hansons lived on Ridge Avenue between Chew and Gordon streets. Hanson
had another buddy, Marvin Miller, who lived on Second Street. The new
clique became Marvin, Bill, Charlie and Wally. We played games together,
biked together, played ball together, and watched TV together. We were
inseparable. Our diverse religious backgrounds made us all the more
amazing. Charlie and Marvin were Jewish – Bill and I were Lutheran.
These different beliefs did not interfere with our friendships in any way, and
we all learned to respect the religions of others more as a result of the
experience.
Speaking of religion, my residence on Fourth Street was located just
one block from St. John’s Lutheran Church on South Fifth Street. Anna and
Wilson Litzenberger, our neighbors in Wescosville, saw to it that I attended
nursery and Sunday School with them at St. John’s even before I moved into
center city. Eventually, I did everything there was to do at St. John’s.
Consider this list: Acolyte, choir, usher, vestry member, office volunteer,
Bible School volunteer, and Sunday School teacher. As congregation
treasurer, secretary, vice president, and president, I became the only person
in the history of the congregation to ever hold all four of these positions at
one time or another! I also chaired fund raising drives and was on every
committee there is, chairman many times. I was confirmed at St. John’s, and
married at St. John’s. All three of my children were baptized and confirmed
at St. John’s and two of them were married at the church as well.
All of us kids in the Fourth Street neighborhood walked to junior high
school at Harrison-Morton, which was a good distance, but we survived.
Today if a kid lives that far from a school, they put him on a bus to get there.
In those days, we walked, and it was uphill both ways! (Just Kidding!)
I didn’t realize it then, but we lived in truly historic surroundings.
Our homes were across the street from Allen Park, which featured Trout
Hall, the summer home of the founder of the city, William Allen, from the
Revolutionary War days. Allen was a British sympathizer, a Tory, and
history tells us, he reluctantly sat on the porch of Trout Hall watching the
Revolutionary War supply caravans pass just south of his property on what
is now Union Street – then called King’s Highway, I believe. He was under
a sort-of house arrest and required to keep his nose out of the war
proceedings.
Trout Hall remains preserved as a museum to this day, to me a
reminder of my boyhood. The rest of the neighborhood on the east side of
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Fourth Street was destroyed during the days when “redevelopment” was in
vogue and communities were convinced to tear down old Victorian
neighborhoods and replace them with new. All the old homes including 105
South Fourth Street are gone – replaced by luxury apartments and town
houses.
There was and is substantial amounts of grass and plentiful trees in
Allen Park. Occasionally, a community festival would be held in the park. I
remember well attending my first band concerts, sitting on the grass at Allen
Park. The Allentown Band would usually perform at those concerts. That’s
how I grew an appreciation for band music and realized how beautiful the
1812 Overture was and what it meant.
There was a city playground at Allen Park. I usually showed up the
first couple of days of organized park activities when school was out each
summer and registered for the summer events. Eventually, I became
disinterested in lanyard making and practicing for Romper Day and went my
own way for the rest of the summer.
“My own way” in the summer usually meant swimming at Fountain
Park, or sometimes Jordan Park. The kids from Fourth Street either walked
there, or biked if we had wheels. To get to Fountain Park, we walked to
Union Street, then Lehigh Street, past the old wire mill, to Lawrence Street
(now Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway), and on to the pool. This area, too,
was made up of extremely poor families, about the same as South 4th Street.
Other “my own way” options included heading to Ridge Avenue to
hang out with Charlie Berman and/or Bill Hanson in their home territory.
We played ball, battled through countless card games, and sometimes just
watched television. Bill’s Mom was beloved by us all for supplying the
home made cookies for our gatherings. My mom was comfortable knowing
that if I wasn’t at my home, I was with Charlie or Bill!
Fountain Park had the best hot dogs! The way they made them on
their steaming, greasy grille was the best – only the hot dogs at Dorney Park
compared (Bob Ott explained to me that they were grilled the same way!) It
was worth the trip to Fountain Park just to look forward to those hot dogs for
lunch.
Before I was old enough to have a bicycle, I started bugging my
parents for a bike. Finally, the summer before I started fourth grade my Dad
took me to Harrisburg on the train to shop for my bike. Why shop in
Harrisburg? I was too young to know or understand that my Dad knew
Harrisburg better than he did Allentown and felt more comfortable making a
major decision like buying a new bicycle there. He bought me the most
beautiful, red and white Roadmaster bike, with a light and a bell, and a
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basket on the front! It was brand new, and both the bike and I rode in the
baggage car of the train all the way home from Harrisburg to Allentown.
What a long trip, waiting for that train to arrive in Allentown so I could get
on that new bike and ride it home from the station!
Living on Fourth Street gave me an appreciation for minorities.
Starting a few doors south of our apartment lived families that were not
white Anglo-Saxons like us. In fact, within one block at Union Street was
an all-black neighborhood. That meant that many of the kids we went to
school with, played on the playground with, biked with, visited the Boys
Club with, and watched the band concerts with - were black. We didn’t
know what a Hispanic was. In fact, except for hearing adults mention it
from time to time, we kids didn’t think much of the differences in skin color,
and hardly noticed it.
Most of the properties south of us were pretty sterile – no trees or
flowers, or even grass. (And many had no paint!) Our apartment at 105 had
a back yard with grass. My Mom and I cut it with a hand push mower. We
even had a patch of grass in front of the house. We usually had lilac trees
blooming in the back yard, and morning glories beautifying the fence
between the Maury home and us. During some of these years our second
floor neighbors were John and Dorothy Temperley, and Mr. Temperley,
mentioned earlier about the basement train layout and the soapbox derby
racer, usually planted a substantial vegetable garden. I helped him – but not
too much – just enough to learn what hard work it is to have a successful
garden. Even my Mom planted and nurtured some flowers each summer.
My cousin Joanne (Filanowski) Valentine, a couple of years younger
than I am, from rural Schuylkill County, tells me how highly regarded our
apartment was in the “Big City” of Allentown. The Victorian apartment
looked like a mansion to her (as a kid from the Coal Regions) and the
decorative cast-iron gate that accessed the rear apartment next door was just
an unbelievable sight to her. Little did I know that our simple surroundings
were so impressive!
Truth to be told, living alone in Allentown with my Mother, while my
Dad spent his time working out of Harrisburg, we didn’t have much money.
Whatever there was certainly was well above whatever income came second
in our neighborhood (except for the Maurys) – all thanks to my mother and
her job as a waitress. This job was great for cash flow, because on any given
day Mom would bring home a pocketful of change and bills. I was the kid
on the block with the new bike, the portable radio, and decent and clean
clothes. My Mom managed the charge accounts like a pro. She dealt at
Hess’s, Leh’s, and Zollingers, and had an account at Kay’s Jewelry store.
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That’s where my radios and wristwatches came from. Gifts for friends and
relatives usually rolled through that account, too.
My Mom always had enough cash on hand for Wally to go to the
movies, or buy a magazine. If Bobby, Cowboy, or Dieter could go along,
there was enough money for a movie ticket to take them along, too. And
some extra change for a candy bar or a soda. The movies were a regular
Saturday event – frequently the Colonial Theater. We usually watched
double features at the Midway or Cinema. Lots of Gene Autry and Roy
Rogers with Superman never-ending serials.
At another time, I have written in detail of how my Mom bought our
first television set from Hess’s on a charge arrangement that included a cash
coin box attached to the set power cord that required quarters to turn the TV
power on. A store representative collected the coins periodically, and that’s
how the TV became ours.
I was an incurable Phillies fan. What made it worse was that I always
had a portable radio to carry around for listening to Phillies baseball games.
It was great being up to date with the Phillies – pal Charlie Berman was a
Brooklyn Dodger fan and we were always at odds over the fortunes of our
teams. In fact, I listened to a LOT of radio. I guess I was a “radio junky.” I
knew all the local stations, and the announcers. This background served me
well when I became employed in radio at WKAP during college and after
graduating from Muhlenberg College in 1958.
Bobby Muth inherited the musical talents of his Dad, but never
became a professional musician. He plays the piano beautifully. Cowboy’s
claim to fame was his appearance as a weight lifter representing the United
States in the Olympic games in Mexico City in the 1990’s. Donny Ritter
became an expert ballroom dancer, and teaches this activity to this day.
Charlie Berman is retired from a pharmaceutical company and lives
part time in West Palm Beach, Florida and the rest of the year in New
Jersey. Bill Hanson lives in Schnecksville. Marvin Miller also resides in
New Jersey. Periodically, the Bermans, the Hansons, the Millers and the
Elys get together with our wives for a grand reunion. It is truly and exciting
and emotional event for me! These reunions don’t come around often
enough to suit me.
My family didn’t have all the luxuries that many others in Allentown
enjoyed, but I muddled through and have these many fond memories of
growing up on Fourth Street!
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Wally Ely is retired from a career in bank marketing, starting with Merchants
Bank of Allentown, and ending with Meridian/CoreStates. In retirement he works as a
feature segment producer of the Connections program for RCN-TV in the Lehigh Valley
and Philadelphia markets. He collaborated with Bob Ott to write the history of Dorney
Park for Arcadia Publishing Company. Wally and his wife Suzanne have three children
and four grandsons.
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