Wishing Upon a Star

Abstract

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a steel town north of Philadelphia, declared itself “Christmas City, U.S.A.” in 1937 as part of an effort to unite the city’s North and South sides and draw visitors to downtown retailers. Postwar, the Christmas City branding increasingly focused on Bethlehem’s eighteenth-century Moravian history. These efforts to diversify the city’s steel economy through heritage tourism reflect an early convergence of urban renewal and historic preservation that local leaders termed historic renewal. With the closure of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s headquarter plant in 1998, the city’s tourism potential gained new relevance as efforts recommenced to shape Bethlehem’s identity apart from manufacturing. Exploring the ways a small city merged redevelopment efforts and heritage attractions years before the proliferation of festival marketplaces adds local variation and new insight to studies of urban renewal that often focus on big-city clearance projects.