Birthplace of Industry Walking Tour

Birthplace of Industry Walking Tour

Well before the Industrial Revolution, the early Moravians built a thriving community in Bethlehem near the confluence of the Monocacy Creek and Lehigh River. Completely self-sufficient, these industrious settlers quickly established the largest concentration of pre-Industrial Revolution technology in the nation, with approximately 50 crafts, trades and industries in operation by the mid-1750s.

When Founding Father and later president John Adams visited Bethlehem in 1777, he wrote to his wife, Abigail, that the Moravians had “carried the mechanical arts to greater perfection here than any place which I have seen.”

On Birthplace of Industry, sparks will fly as a certified Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites guide dressed in 18th century Moravian attire leads you through what is widely regarded as the nation’s first industrial center, the Colonial Industrial Quarter.

Visit the 1750/1761 Smithy, where you’ll see blacksmiths hard at work pounding the anvil as they craft many of the same items that Moravian blacksmiths produced more than two centuries ago.

Go inside the 1762 Waterworks, the first pumped municipal water system in the nation, and see the 18-foot-in-diameter undershot waterwheel that turned a mechanism that pumped water from the spring uphill to a tower in the heart of the early Moravian settlement.

Did You Know?

A National Historic Landmark, Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and part of the Moravian Church Settlements–Bethlehem World Heritage Site, the two-story stone Waterworks building at one time pumped water from the Monocacy Creek 94 feet uphill to a collection tower where Central Moravian Church now stands. From there, gravity fed five cisterns in the town.

See the 1761 Tannery, an essential site for leathermaking for more than 100 years, and the archeological remains of the Butchery, Dye House & Pottery, all part of Moravian Church Settlements–Bethlehem.

Stop by the 1869 Luckenbach Mill and newly restored 1782/1834 Grist Miller’s House, where you’ll learn about the milling of grain, the first industry to be established in Bethlehem in 1743.

Bring the family and friends, explore Bethlehem’s Colonial Industrial Quarter and discover the Birthplace of Industry in America!