How Bethlehem became home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site

August 4th, 2024 | In The News

By Lindsay Weber | liweber@mcall.com | The Morning Call

Twenty-two years, four international conferences, one 400-page document and a visit from a princess: That’s just part of what it took to land Bethlehem a UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Site.

And the moment the World Heritage Committee officially inscribed Bethlehem into the esteemed World Heritage list, which came last week, is one Charlene Mowers Donchez will always remember.

Mowers Donchez, who for years led Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites, set an alarm for midnight Friday so that she could tune in to the World Heritage Committee meeting in New Delhi, India, where members officially inscripted Bethlehem’s sites. The designation affirms that the United Nations recognizes “outstanding universal value” in the 10-acre site of Moravian structures and ruins in downtown Bethlehem. City officials expect it to be a boon for international tourism.

“We stayed up and watched the proceedings until 2:30 in the morning, and the gavel came down, Moravian Church settlements inscribed, and it was just so exciting,” said Donchez, who was a driving force behind the city receiving the recognition.

How did Bethlehem receive this recognition — and why did it take as long as it did?

It was not a straightforward process, Mowers Donchez can attest.

Early efforts began in 2002, when Bethlehem hosted representatives from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and other monument and history advocates who visited and evaluated Bethlehem’s Moravian settlement buildings.

The Bethlehem site spans 10 acres near downtown north Bethlehem and includes nine structures, four ruins and God’s Acre cemetery. It is already designated as the Historic Moravian Bethlehem National Historic Landmark District.

Bethlehem’s Moravian sites are historically significant for several reasons — the Gemeinhaus, which is today the home of the Moravian Museum of Bethlehem, is the largest 18th-century log structure in continuous use in the United States. The 1762 waterworks, in the Moravian Colonial Industrial quarter, operated until the 1830s and is the first municipal water pump system in the United States.

Those two buildings as well as several others are still remarkably well-preserved, which Mowers Donchez said is thanks to the fact that Moravian descendants have owned and kept up the buildings since their construction in the 1700 and 1800s. The Moravians, fleeing religious intolerance in Europe, arrived in Bethlehem in 1741.

“The Bethlehem-area Moravians own almost all those buildings,” Mowers Donchez said, adding that some are private residences or owned by Moravian University.

That 2002 visit kicked off a series of International Moravian Heritage Network conferences — the first of which was in Christiansfeld, Denmark, and the second in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem joins similar Moravian sites in Christiansfeld; Gracehill, Northern Ireland; and Herrnut, Germany, as one transnational UNESCO Moravian World Heritage Site. The city is the 26th U.S. World Heritage Site and the 13th cultural U.S. site.

A 2004 conference brought Danish royals Princess Alexandra and Count Jefferson to Bethlehem — according to a Morning Call article from the time, Princess Alexandra addressed a crowd outside of the Moravian museum, discussing her role as “protector” of the Christiansfeld Moravian Heritage initiative.

It wasn’t until 2008 that Bethlehem was listed as “pending” on the United States’ “tentative” list to be nominated to the World Heritage Site. It would take another six years to be officially nominated.

It took as long as it did because the United States only accepts submissions to the tentative list on an infrequent and sporadic basis, and can only officially nominate one site per year from the tentative list.

“I’ve had many challenging opportunities over the years, legal and business, none quite like this one,” said Curtis “Hank” Barnette, former chair of Bethlehem Steel Corp. and vice chair of the Bethlehem World Heritage Commission. “We had the four countries, four different sites, international organizations, it’s been quite a dynamic ongoing process, which has had a very successful conclusion.”

Timeline of Bethlehem’s UNESCO World Heritage Site inscription, 1741 – 2024

While waiting for the World Heritage nod, Mowers Donchez and other advocates got to work on achieving a National Landmark status for Bethlehem’s Moravian settlements.

Mowers Donchez said the national landmark status, bestowed by the National Park Service, was an important stepping stone toward World Heritage recognition, because national landmarks indicate that a site is nationally — not just regionally — significant.

The sites were granted landmark status in 2012 — Donchez traveled to Washington and gave a presentation to presidential advisers to make the case for recognition — which boosted Bethlehem’s World Heritage efforts.

But the efforts really kicked into high gear when Bethlehem was named to the “tentative” nomination list in 2016.

The following year, former Bethlehem Mayor Bob Donchez — no relation to Mower Donchez — established a World Heritage council and commission, and representatives of the four sites established a transnational working group that held monthly online meetings.

Those working group meetings culminated in a 400-page “dossier” application that, in painstaking detail, reviewed the four Moravian sites, their attributes and why they deserved World Heritage status.

The application was officially submitted to the World Heritage Committee in 2023.

Current Mayor J. William Reynolds attended the New Delhi meeting accompanied by Moravian University President Bryon Grigsby, Moravian Bishop Chris Giesler and Sheila Clennon, widow of former Moravian senior pastor Hopeton Clennon, who died in January.

“I was at the U.S. table with representatives from the state department, and you are surrounded by the world,” Reynolds said of the World Heritage Committee meeting. “You are surrounded by representatives of almost every country in the world. Your nomination is next to so many unbelievable nominations from throughout the world. It was an amazing process, an amazing day, certainly something everybody who was there would remember for the rest of their lives.”

The next step? Getting the word out.

Bethlehem city officials will hold a news conference Wednesday, following a church service at Central Moravian to commemorate the designation. That will provide details of the city’s PR and marketing efforts to draw greater national and international attention to the newly minted World Heritage site.

“It’s been an incredible both professional and personal honor for me to have been part of this journey — oh my goodness, it’s incredible,” Mowers Donchez said. “Because it has taken so long, there have been people involved that are no longer living, no longer on this earth. It’s a happy, sad thing.”

Read the article on the Morning Call website.

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