This week Jane Borbe, president of the Palmerton Area Historical Society, announced that the U.S. Department of the Interior had approved Palmerton’s application for official recognition on the National Register of Historic Places.
Palmerton was a company town, and the economic gradations of an early 20th century company town are still visible. The New Jersey Zinc Company built worker houses along Mauch Chunk Avenue, West Princeton and West Edgemont, Avenues A and B, and Lehigh Street. The distinctive small one-story houses, built assembly-line style, were for blue collar workers, many of them immigrants from Eastern Europe.
When you move slightly up in elevation to Franklin, Lafayette, and Columbia Streets, you are in middle management territory. These two-story houses are more substantial and definitely middle class.
Higher up in elevation and income, you reach Residence Park, partially separated from the town by a stone wall. This neighborhood, with its curved streets and upscale homes with actual yards, was home to the Zinc Company executives.
Very few company towns show the economic gradations this clearly. Palmerton deserves its designation on the National Register, and I am pleased to be a member of the Palmerton Area Historical Society which went through a long precess to win the official recognition.
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