Old Maps of Bethlehem, PA - Part 2: What Used To Be (Northampton Heights)

Following my post about Clearfield Village, I heard a lot about another former neighborhood: Northampton Heights. 

Formerly located along E 4th Street (Southside Bethlehem), Northampton Heights was originally part of Lower Saucon Township. It was incorporated as a borough in 1901 (population 650) [1], and then incorporated into the city of Bethlehem in 1920 (population 4000) [2]. 

Since the neighborhood was demolished by the Bethlehem Steel Company in the mid 1960s, there is nothing left of Northampton Heights. There were two schools, a number of businesses, several churches, and many homes: gone. Fortunately for us, we can re-create some of the neighborhood using historic maps and Google Earth. 

The 1912 Sanborn fire insurance maps [3] proved to be a good starting place. Sheets 55 and 56 show the neighborhood in detail. This helped me understand the street layout, east to west: Emery, Diamond, Carbon, Bessemer, Anthracite.

As with Clearfield Village, I used the USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer. In particular, I used the Hellertown 1965 and 1972 maps, showing the neighborhood just before and after the demolition.

These maps helped me pinpoint a few things: 

• Emery Street still exists and the historic map aligns to modern roads best at the northern end of the street. 
• Anthracite Street aligns north/south with today's Redfield St, albeit on the opposite side of E 4th Street in South Terrace.
  
• The Lynn Avenue bridge (south of E 4th St) is between Bessemer and Carbon, but slightly closer to Bessemer. 

From there I estimated the locations of the other north-south streets based on the nearest aligned street in South Terrace. I estimated the locations of 1st through 6th Streets by drawing a straight line from their current existence (hence the long lines in the map you're about to see).

Here is the resulting neighborhood, recreated:

I also took the 1912 Sanborn map images and overlaid them in Google Earth. This confirmed street locations and allowed me to begin plotting points of interest, businesses, churches, etc. The file is huge so I can't post it here; contact me if you'd like a copy of the file. I plotted additional places on the map based on information from articles, Facebook posts, books, etc. Using many sources I was able to create a fairly complete view of the former Northampton Heights neighborhood.

 

Pictures of Northampton Heights:

My map gives you an idea of where things were, and I embedded some pictures I found along the way. Here are some additional pictures to give you a better sense of the neighborhood. 

  The original St Josaphat's Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church  

Scroll down a bit to see the Saucona Hotel 

(scroll down in the frame to see)

There's a bit more information about the hotel, including details on the architect, Albert Wolfring Leh, here: https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/pj_display.cfm/106440 

 

McIlvain Fire Co, which was also used as the Borough Hall
before Northampton Heights was incorporated into Bethlehem.

There is a longer article on that same page if you click through.

Example of rowhomes in Northampton Heights in 1964

This photo was used to claim that the neighborhood was 'in too much disrepair to save'. The City, HUD, and Bethlehem Steel worked together on an "Urban Renewal" project to demolish the neighborhood so the Steel could build the BOF.

 

Demolition in progress, 1967

 

 

"A trolley crosses Fourth Street at Anthracite Street in 1950" 

(scroll down in the frame to see)

 

Louis Polack & Sons Brickote Company 

1604 E 2nd St

Louis Polack's family home being demolished in October 1968

Today

Northampton Heights was demolished by the Bethlehem Steel Company in the mid-1960s to build the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF), the latest in steelmaking technology at the time. Since then of course, Bethlehem Steel went bankrupt and the BOF was also demolished in 1998 [4]. The site sat vacant for a number of years but has since been redeveloped into an Industrial Park, which includes some office buildings, a hotel, and several giant warehouses. 

More information

Bethlehem has a strong presence of its past. Here, traditions of many immigrant groups are still alive in the form of festivals, bazaars, and church groups. While Northampton Heights may be gone, there is still a lot of information being preserved about the area. To learn more about the history of Northampton Heights, here are some resources:

• "Preserving a piece of Bethlehem's Black history: 'These oracles are a vital, accessible but aging population'" in The Morning Call, 03 Feb 2019. https://www.mcall.com/news/local/bethlehem/mc-nws-bethlehem-black-experience-oral-history-20190103-story.html
• "Can anything good come from Northampton Heights?" http://southbethhistsoc.org/can-any-good-thing-come-from-northampton-heights/
• "How Bethlehem Steel Fought A War and Pestilence" https://venditta.blog/2020/04/19/1918-how-bethlehem-steel-fought-a-war-and-pestilence/ 
• "Read up on Three Lehigh Valley Legends" https://lehighvalleystyle.com/people/features/three-local-legends/
  

Facebook posts are also a wealth of information: 

• Baby Health Station: https://www.facebook.com/SouthBethlehem/posts/3845721458824571
• Mechanic Street in the Heights in 1961: https://www.facebook.com/SouthBethlehem/posts/3123220141074710
• Kids on overturned cars during the Strike of 1941: https://www.facebook.com/SouthBethlehem/posts/3251680041562052
• Various aerial views of the neighborhood:
• https://www.facebook.com/groups/1278836242479737/permalink/1344691332560894/
• https://www.facebook.com/SouthBethlehem/posts/2855150414548352
• https://www.facebook.com/SouthBethlehem/posts/3902527499810633
• https://www.facebook.com/SouthBethlehem/posts/2551667968229933
• https://www.facebook.com/SouthBethlehem/posts/2561599683903428

 Additional resources:

• "This Week in Bethlehem History: The Heights - Declaration of doom" in the Bethlehem Press, 05 Sept 2013.
  
• http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HreOTs0zskIJ:bethlehem.thelehighvalleypress.com/2013/09/05/week-bethlehm-history-heights-declaration-doom+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d (as of 2021 this link no longer works)
  
• St Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in The Heights 
• https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-lehigh-valley-historical-archive/st-marks-evangelical-church-northampton-heights/1305478092925499
• "Furnace Launched Steel Into Modern Age, Basic Oxygen Unit Replaced A Neighborhood" in The Morning Call, 16 Jan 1989. 
• https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1989-01-16-2681293-story.html
• "Heights Renewal Official" in The Morning Call, 22 Dec 1965. 
• https://www.newspapers.com/clip/58724221/northampton-heights-urban-renewal/ 
• Two photos from the Sigal Museum in Easton, PA:
• 1905 picture of students at Northampton Heights School: https://sigalmuseum.pastperfectonline.com/archive/14F1B1B4-6145-4356-BC99-528553319524
• Undated picture of students at Northampton Heights School: https://sigalmuseum.pastperfectonline.com/archive/7E799C0D-153F-40E4-BEC3-149980737824
  

Sources: 

1. "The Fifth Borough. Judge Scott issues a decree incorporating Northampton Heights" in The Allentown Leader, 18 Feb 1901. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/4537366/judge-issues-decree-incorporating/ 
2. "Bethlehem Swallows Northampton Heights" in The Morning Call, 04 Mar 1920. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/12904219/bethlehem-swallows-northampton-heights/
3. Sanborn 1912 Maps of Northampton Heights (Pg 55, 56, 77): https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/maps1/id/4178 
4. "Steel Demolition Continues" in The Morning Call, 22 Mar 1998. https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1998-03-22-3180927-story.html 

• 1929 map of Bethlehem, from the Bethlehem Area Public Library: https://bapl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1929-map.jpg
• See additional links/sources/photos in my Google Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1p8mvsw7i0QT1NExL6IE6C8A6XP2wrCYe&usp=sharing 
• Special thanks to local historians who have researched this neighborhood before me, especially Nancy Rutman and Karen Samuels whose work I found very helpful!
  

 

Crowdsourcing Rusyn places in the US

Rusyns may not be a well-known ethnic group, but we have quite a presence if you know where to look. This is especially evident in the Northeastern US, where many onion-domed churches were founded by Rusyn immigrants in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

I always look for Rusyn sites when I'm traveling, and have seen quite a few Facebook posts asking for Rusyn points of interest in Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA), for example. After a quick poll to gauge interest and participation, I started a collaborative Google Map that we could use to map Rusyn places in the US. In under a week, we already had an impressive collection of points on the map!


Data in this map is organized into several layers:

• Rusyn Places in the US - This is the layer most people will view and/or edit. 
• Blue points indicate a Rusyn place of interest
• Brown points indicate a Rusyn-style wooden church (more on that later)
• Former Rusyn Places in the US - This layer contains places that have a Rusyn history and have been repurposed, closed, or demolished.  
• Gray points indicate a place that is no longer used by Rusyns, but still has significance (architectural, cornerstone, etc.)
• Black points indicate a place that no longer has any Rusyn significance or has been demolished. These points still provide context for the extent of a former Rusyn community 
• Needs More Info - This layer includes places that are too vague to be useful or may be Rusyn but aren't confirmed (by sources or colloquial knowledge). 
• Red points were identified either during my review of newly added points or in my own research, and require additional digging. 
• Rusyn Places in Canada - This layer includes two Rusyn-style wooden churches in Canada because they were too interesting to leave off the map, and are very close to the Northeastern US.
• Russian Brotherhood Organization Lodges (-1959) - This layer includes towns that had a RBO lodge before 1959, as listed on the Rusyns of PA blog. This layer provides places for me to investigate for additional Rusyn communities and places that I may not have found otherwise.
• Green points are placed on the town, as these lodges often didn't have addresses of their own and met in churches or other businesses.
  

Findings

Not surprisingly, churches and cemeteries are most of the mark we've left on the US over the past 136 years*. I did find some fun things though:

• Monuments (a giant Campbell's Soup can signed by Andy Warhol, a statue of baseball player Stan Musial)
• Roads named for individuals or an entire group of people (Lemko Way, Olyphant, PA)
• A park (named for former Manville, NJ mayor George Papawick)

Of course, Rusyns need their pirogi, so I included a number of Eastern European restaurants in Rusyn areas, along with the famously Rusyn Baba's Pirogies in Brooklyn, and a future Rusyn restaurant in Johnstown, PA.

Take one look at the map and you'll notice that most of the Rusyn places in PA are in NEPA or near Pittsburgh. There are a significant amount of Rusyn places in NJ and OH as well. I also learned more about a number of Rusyn outposts in less likely places, like Hartshorne, OK and Brookside, AL. Rusyns migrated from the Northeastern US to Hartshorne and Brookside for job opportunities in the mines.

The most exciting find though, is a number of Rusyn-style wooden churches in the US and Ontario, Canada! Who knew?!? Here's the list, so far:

If you know of any that I missed, please comment below!

Idea for a Road Trip

I'm still stuck at home, trying to stay safe during a global pandemic. I'm not sure when I'll get to do this road trip, but I can dream... I used MapQuest's route planner again and came up with this route. I can visit all of the Rusyn-style wooden churches in the Northeast in 26 hours of driving!


I excluded the two in Ontario, Canada, since Canada is not letting Americans (or any other foreign nationals) in during the pandemic**. I also excluded the church in Georgia, because it is so far from the rest of the churches. I'll have to save that for another trip.

Sources

I cited my sources in each point on the map. If there's no comment in the map point, it was a suggestion by someone in the Facebook group, or was added by a user. For further reading, check out these links:

• Rusyns of Pennsylvania blog
• Kubek Project blog
• Carpatho-Rusyns Everywhere Facebook Group  
• Lemko Rusyns and Friends (Лемкы-Русины з приятелями) Facebook Group

* St Michael's in Shenandoah was the first Rusyn church in the US. It was built in 1884 and demolished in 2015. The congregation still exists, and has a newer church building that they've used for many years.
** I don't blame them. The US has some work to do, as infection numbers are skyrocketing again.

Road Trip: Every County in New Jersey

*** While we're all quarantined under Stay-At-Home orders in the northeast, I thought you might enjoy a virtual trip to every county in New Jersey. Boyfriend and I did this back in 2017, and I never got around to posting about it. I hope you enjoy! ***

Road Trip!

You know what state is pretty cool? New Jersey. It gets a bad name, but it's a cool place. There are mountains, beaches, cities, swamps, forests, trains, and other cool stuff. Like beer and live music!

But is New Jersey even truly one place? I’d argue it is not. There’s the North Jersey vs South Jersey debate; and don’t forget to throw Central Jersey (I can confirm that it does indeed exist – I lived there) into the mix. New York City vs Philadelphia. Hoagies vs Subs. Pinelands and Skylands. City and Shore. For a tiny state, it has a lot of variety… and only 21 counties!

You know what would be a fun road trip? Visiting every county in NJ in one day. And better yet, let's visit the County Seat of every county in one day!

The Plan

Google Maps isn't up for this sort of routing, so I used MapQuest. Though the site is pretty slow and full of ads, it's easy to use and has some great features. I typed in the name of every County Seat as a destination, told it to work its magic, and here is the result:

According to MapQuest’s routing trip planner, our mission should take just under 11 hours (10:25, but we also had 15-20 mins to/from home on the 1^st and last stops). We planned to do the following in each county:

• Take a selfie.
• Check in on FourSquare/Swarm, including the selfie. Cross-post to Facebook.
• Take a “real photo” of the town/surroundings.
• Nothing else... no time to waste!

As you’ll soon see, we had to stretch the meaning of “a single day”… But here’s the breakdown for each place!

1.      New Brunswick, Middlesex County

Arrival time: 11:45 AM

Starting our journey!

2.      Trenton, Mercer County

Arrival time: 12:42 PM

The state capital!

3.      Mount Holly, Burlington County

Arrival time: 1:15 PM

I didn’t know much about Mount Holly, other than the fact that my weather forecast comes from there. It looked like a nice town!

4.      Camden, Camden County

Arrival time: 2:02 PM

Camden’s picture is *of* Philly, but taken *in* Camden.

5.      Woodbury, Gloucester County

Arrival time: 2:45 PM

Another town that looked pretty interesting!

6.      Salem, Salem County

Arrival time: 3:40 PM

Salem gets two pics because I loooved their library!

7.      Bridgeton, Cumberland County

Arrival time: 4:15 PM

Bridgeton had a really cool mural in their downtown park. Here’s an excerpt from NJ.com:

“The mural here features the area’s agricultural history and ethnic diversity against landmarks like the courthouse. Lake Street’s “Seven Gables” home is pictured toward the top of the mural. Built in 1871, the building had been a boarding school for girls, a maternity hospital and is now John Moriarty’s house.” More info here: https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2011/10/bridgetons_downtown_mural_park.html

8.      Cape May Courthouse, Cape May County

Arrival time: 5:30 PM

The driving time from Bridgeton to Mays Landing was 41 minutes. Add Cape May Courthouse in there? 1hr 30mins. Cape May County is so far south!!

9.      Mays Landing, Atlantic County

Arrival time: 6:19 PM

So much driving.

10. Toms River, Ocean County

Arrival time: 7:45 PM

A quick stop in Toms River while some fierce storm clouds formed overhead…

11. Freehold, Monmouth County

Arrival time: 8:15 PM

I didn’t realize Freehold had a downtown. I’ve driven around the area before, but always in the township. I’ll have to go back and spend more time.

12. Elizabeth, Union County

Arrival time: 9:05 PM

Last county seat with any daylight. Blue hour is perfect for photos!

13. Newark, Essex County

Arrival time: 9:30 PM

Is there a better spot for a photo than Newark Penn Station? Probably not - trains are great!

14. Jersey City, Hudson County

Arrival time: 10:00 PM

Jersey City was really busy! My photo includes a line of taxis.

15. Hackensack, Bergen County

Arrival time: 10:30 PM

Another first! I’ve been in this area before, but never actually visited Hackensack. Thwarted by an unexpected one-way street, we ended up taking the photo in a park across from the county building.

16. Paterson, Passaic County

Arrival time: 10:59 PM

If it was daytime, we would’ve gone to Paterson Great Falls. But it was nighttime, and we weren’t sure if it would be open and/or well-lit enough for the selfie. I scouted potential locations while boyfriend drove, and came across the county building’s annex. WOW! It was built in 1899 as a US Post Office. The second picture is the current county building.

17. Morristown, Morris County

Arrival time: 11:50 PM

I’ve spent some time in Morristown, but couldn’t pick a spot for a photo. Ended up on the Green!

18. Newton, Sussex County

Arrival time: 12:45 AM

Poor photo quality because I was really tired.

O.M.G. is it bedtime yet? Ok, guys. This is where we called it. We still had 3 county seats (2.5+ hours of driving) and it was 1am. Just think of the blurry selfies. We drove home (an HOUR from Newton), slept for ~6 hours, and got back on the road with enough time to make it to the remaining 3 county seats in under 24 hours. Still “a single day” in my book.

19. Belvidere, Warren County

Arrival time: 9:48 AM

Back at it! Did you know that Belvidere is home of the “County Seaters”? The tiny downtown was pretty busy on Sunday morning! Fun fact: the guy who founded Scranton, PA was from Belvidere.

20. Flemington, Hunterdon County

Arrival time: 10:40 AM

Let’s be real. For #20 I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired, and we just took the photo where we ended up parking. As luck* would have it, we ended up parking across from the Union Hotel. This is a really cool building from the early 1800s that was recently slated for demolition (developers wanted to reuse the land), but the community pushed back. The result was a compromise: the developers will use the façade of the hotel in their new development.

*Because we targeted downtown areas in every county seat.

21. Somerville, Somerset County

Arrival time: 11:15 AM

Our last county seat, and it’s one of my favorites. We made it! To celebrate, we stopped for a real meal at Boulevard Seafood.

The Results

We did it! Every county in NJ within 24 hours. Total time: 16 hours** (13:30 + 2:30). Woohoo!

Lessons learned?

• MapQuest’s route planner/optimizer is great! As long as you can put up with ads.
• Do your math. We ended up spending ~15 minutes in each place (find parking and/or photo location, take photo, post photo, get directions to the next place, and get back on the road), plus we had a few (3?) bathroom/food/gas stops. As it turns out, spending 15 minutes at 21 places would add over 5 hours to our trip. Factoring that in, we made pretty good time. If we had calculated that in advance, we would’ve had a more realistic estimate (and maybe started earlier in the day… I’m not a morning person).
• Have a plan for the bigger cities. Showing up in Jersey City at 10 PM on a Saturday night without a plan of where we wanted to take a photo proved to be stressful. At that point, we were also nearing 12 hours in the car. I thought I wanted to do the photo in Journal Square, but I *really* wanted to do the photo in a square near Grove Street. Make a plan!
• Wawa and QuickChek are the. best. We stopped at numerous Wawas and QuickCheks for gas, reliably fast and decent food, and reliably clean bathrooms.

**This does not include the hour we drove home from Newton or the hour from home to Belvidere… the fact that we needed sleep was purely due to poor planning. If someone else were to attempt this trip, those 2 extra hours wouldn’t be necessary.

My full set of photos is available here: https://flickr.com/photos/robotbrainz/albums/72157702834191012. Most are included in this blog post, but there are a few extras there.

Old Maps of Bethlehem, PA - Part 1: What Used To Be (Clearfield Village)

Like many people in Bethlehem after WWII, several of my family members lived in Clearfield Village. Not much information about this former housing development can be found online, but its 250 single-story homes were built to house those returning from war and starting families¹.

Formerly located south of Pembroke Rd and east of Bethlehem Drive, Clearfield Village had 50 5-unit residential buildings and a community center. All buildings were constructed of cinderblock². The homes had coal stoves and furnaces and an icebox³ (No refrigerators?! Talk about ‘essentials only’!).

To get a sense of the neighborhood I overlayed the Sanborn map of the neighborhood in Google Earth, and then drew the streets and buildings as they used to be. The result provides a good overview of the neighborhood.

Hint: Click on the buildings for addresses. 
This is helpful if you're curious where your relatives 
lived, since the streets are gone!

It's interesting that the streets in "the Village" (as the locals call it -- and several other housing developments) didn't line up with the streets in Freemansburg. You can tell where the city/borough line is located by looking at the ends of Tolstoy, Karoly, Kossuth, and Monroe Streets (all in Freemansburg). But why not make them connect? Simply because Clearfield Village was intended to be temporary?

Timeline
Clearfield Village was created as temporary housing and was demolished after some time, though I can’t find much information about the demolition (or when it was built, for that matter). I turned to the USGS’ awesome historical map site for a timeline. The faint red crosshairs in each map denote the location of Clearfield Village.

The 1939 Allentown map shows vacant land (under Freemansburg):

1939 Nazareth Map - USGS

That hashed red line is the city/borough boundary. Remember that for later!
Side note: did you know that Pembroke Rd used to be Alternate US-22?

The 1959 Allentown map shows Clearfield Village’s major streets:

1959 Nazareth Map - USGS

The 1964 Nazareth map only shows a few remaining roads (Bristol Rd, part of Nelson Rd, Spencer Rd, and most of Salem Rd). Also note that Missouri Ave (today called Bethlehem Dr) is missing, but was missing in some earlier maps as well.

1964 Nazareth Map - USGS

Sorry for the weird way the historic map is truncated... 

the rest of these do the same thing.

The 1992 Nazareth map shows the same layout, but with more industrial buildings moving in to the west:

1992 Nazareth Map - USGS

And by the 1999 Nazareth map, the entire area had been redeveloped, with Win Dr cutting through where Clearfield Village used to be.

1999 Nazareth Map - USGS

In 2018, nothing remains to give any indication of the vibrant neighborhood that used be there. Do you have pictures or stories of Clearfield Village or the neighborhood reunions? Let me know!

Sources

1. Newspapers.com: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/280040098/
• “When veterans returned home after the war, he declared, Bethlehem faced another housing shortage, and Clearfield Village, a 250 unit project, was built.”
2. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map via Lehigh’s Beyond Steel project: http://gisweb2.cc.lehigh.edu/beyondsteel/
3. Klugh In America (genealogy report): http://www.klugh.com/pdf/butler-genealogy-report.pdf
• “During this time the family lived in low-cost G.I. housing ... that had coal stoves and furnaces, and an icebox in lieu of a refrigerator. Clearfield Village consisted of long concrete block single story row houses."

Additional Resources:

• Bethlehem Housing Authority – History Page: http://bha645.homestead.com/BHAhistory.html

Map Tour of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad (LVRR)

I love love love love love love love PDFs of old books on sites like Archive.org, Google Books, and the Library of Congress. A while back I found one called “Seen from the Train on the Picturesque Lehigh Valley Railroad”. Published in 1895, this book was intended to keep riders informed of their whereabouts as they took the train from NYC (well, Jersey City) to Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

I’ve spent most of my life living along this former railroad (in New Jersey and Pennsylvania), and I really enjoyed reading the 1895 description of several places I lived in/near. While this book is an interesting read, it just isn’t as fun without a train ride. (Soapbox: we need more passenger rail service!!!) But these trains don’t run anymore. And some (most?) of the rail segments are totally gone.

Someday I’d like to make a road trip out of this, and include a present-day photo of each stop. For now, I created a Google Map to act as a guide and provide some context. You can click on any point and read the that town’s description from the book. I hope you enjoy it!



Legend:

• Blue binoculars: Points of interest along or near the route
• Red train engine: Major transfers or junctions with other railroads
• Green circle with a square inside: The western route through the Finger Lakes
• Yellow circle with a diamond inside: The eastern route through the Finger Lakes

PS: If you happen to be a train nerd (I mean that affectionately) and I got something wrong, please let me know!

Map: Uzhgorod's Problem Spots

Uzhgorod.in recently shared a map of problem spots that have been identified within the city of Uzghorod.  I wanted to share it here because I think it's a great way to engage people in the community, and to have citizens and local government work together to make things better (in this case: poor lighting, potholes, drainage problems, etc).

Here's the map:


Google Chrome should automatically offer to translate the page if your language isn't set to Ukrainian.

If you are in Uzhgorod and would like to suggest an addition/edit to the map, the article on Uzhgorod.in contains a link to do so.

Bike Theft in Denver

Bike theft is on the rise in Denver.  As of 2008, Kryptonite listed Denver as the #7 Worst US City for Bike Theft.  This blog post digs into the bike crime data made available by the City and County of Denver.

Bike Theft By Neighborhood
Using the reporting tool on the Denver Crime Offenses Website, I downloaded data for each neighborhood in the city/county, from 3/27/11 through 9/25/11.

I compiled all of the bike theft data into this map, showing the best and worst neighborhoods in Denver for bike theft.

Click the image to view full size

So for the first part of 2011, the 10 worst neighborhoods for bike theft are:

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
CBD	129
Union Station	89
Five Points	76
Capitol Hill	72
Highland	41
North Capitol Hill	38
Speer	38
Auraria	34
Lincoln Park	27
Civic Center	24

And the 11 best, all with 0 bikes stolen are:

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
Chaffee Park	0
Cory - Merrill	0
Country Club	0
Globeville	0
Harvey Park	0
Kennedy	0
Mar Lee	0
Marston	0
Montclair	0
Valverde	0
Wellshire	0

The top 10 makes sense to me.  They're all neighborhoods with a lot of traffic (pedestrian, vehicle, bicycle, etc), and places where there is generally a lot going on.

I expected the areas around the University of Denver to be a bit worse than they were, especially since I've heard numerous stories of vehicle break-ins on university property.

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
University	18
Platt Park	16
Rosedale	3
University Park	12

Also note, there was 1 bike stolen from DIA.  I still think it's crazy to ride your bike to the airport; it's not a bike-friendly area at all.  It's possible that it was stolen off of a luggage carousel, I suppose.

Bike Theft Map of Denver
I geocoded the data from the Denver Crime Offenses Website using BatchGeo.  The map below will give you a slightly better idea of where bike theft is most common, as far as specific streets and attractions that may be targeted.  For example, the 16th St Mall.

 Click HERE to view in a new tab

I Want To Ride My Bicycle
I won't let bike thieves stop me from doing what I want... Riding my bike!

Electric Utility Outage Maps - Hurricane Irene Edition

I love utility maps.  You have been warned. 

A few days after Hurricane Irene took a swing at the east coast I looked at the outage maps for some of the electric utilities there.  I had heard reports of widespread power outages from news channels back east, but I'd also heard from friends that Irene just wasn't as bad as they had expected (they were in PA, which you'll see in a moment wasn't hit as hard as other areas).  These following outage maps show the huge impact the storm had on electric utilities.  The screenshots were taken on August 30th; about 2 days after Irene hit MD, NJ, PA, NY, etc.

Here's Hurricane Irene's path:

Ok!  Let's start in the southern part of the Northeast...


Delmarva Power (DELaware MARyland VirginiA, for those unfamiliar) had just under 2500 customers without power, as of 2 days after the storm. 

Atlantic City Electric, which covers a large portion of southern New Jersey, had over 4000 customers without power.

PSE&G had 40,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Jersey Central Power & Light had over 60,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Specifically, Monmouth County alone had over 57,000 people without power.

Let's head inland to check out the situation in Pennsylvania.
Met-Ed and PPL both look pretty decent, at least compared to NJ.

Highlighting the hardest hit part of PPL's territory

ConEdison had 33,000+ customers without power.

Here is a roll-over breakdown of where the most affected customers live:

Long Island Power Authority was hit pretty hard as well.

Connecticut Light & Power... This map really shows how hard CT was hit by the storm.  There were a few areas that had 100% of customers without power. 

National Grid

Central Maine Power's website is a bit different. Rather than having an interactive, fairly real-time map of outages, they had a series of images showing outages from 8/28 through 8/30 (when I downloaded information).  I strung their images together in an animation so you can see the change over time, and when the most people were without power.  I apologize for the jumpiness of the image... their maps were all different, and for a quick blog entry I wasn't about to spend hours adjusting each image.  Sorry!

You may need to click through to see the animated image.

If you're still with me, I hope you enjoyed the outage maps!  It was fun to see not only the heavily impacted areas, but also to check out the different types of outage maps electric utilities use on their websites.

What's Up With That Russian Exclave, Kaliningrad?!

Go get a map of Europe.  Find Lithuania.  Now find Poland.  See that little blob of Russia that's in between the two?  That's Kaliningrad!  Note: the city of Kaliningrad is in Kaliningrad Oblast. 

The fall of the Soviet Union has left Kaliningrad Oblast entirely separated from the rest of Russia.  In fact, it's now surrounded by members of the EU!  But I'm not a political blogger, I'm a cool-stuff-in-random-places blogger.  So here's what I find interesting about Kaliningrad:

• Amber
• "The Monster"
• City gates
• Seven bridges

Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin, and is popular in jewelery (among other uses).  Though I never really questioned where amber comes from, I stumbled across the answer while reading up on Kaliningrad: about 90% of the world's supply comes from Kaliningrad and the Baltic Sea.  Cool!  Unless you happen to be one of the many insects that gets trapped inside the amber...

"The Monster"
Where would the world be without Soviet architecture?  A happier place?  Maybe.  A more boring place?  Probably!

So waaay back in the day, Königsberg Castle was at the center of Kaliningrad (then Königsberg, Prussia/Germany).  It was lovely:

Königsberg Castle

Königsberg was bombed in World War II, and what was left became property of Russia.  The powers that be decided shortly thereafter that they didn't really want to be reminded of the area's German past, and ordered that the castle be demolished.  Bummer.  But FEAR NOT!  About 15 years later something new and ...interesting was built there (ish): The Monster.

 TA-DA!  The Monster.

It's actually called House of Soviets, and was intended to be the main administrative building for the oblast.  However, as with other would-be architectural feats commissioned by communist regimes, it didn't work out as planned.  After spending 20 years on its construction, funding was cut, and it was never finished.  So there it stood, in the middle of Kaliningrad, unfinished.  And locals started referring to it as 'The Monster'.  After 25 years of decaying, the exterior was finished for the 2005 visit of Vladimir Putin.  The interior is still unfinished.  

Do not enter!  But please admire from a distance.

As for the actual site of the former castle, it's an archaeological dig site.  They're hoping to find the rest of the Amber Room.

City Gates
I've been fascinated by Kaliningrad's gates since first reading about the city.  At first I just wanted to see where they were, but couldn't easily locate them on a map.  So I looked for a more detailed map.  Well, detailed maps seemed to be hard to find, at least with my very limited Russian capabilities.  Many hours and many maps later, I found them, and have put together a Google Map for your enjoyment!  Complete with photos, descriptions, and more!!




View Kaliningrad Gates in a larger map

If you'd like more information on the gates, Tourism Kaliningrad has some good information.  While I'm at it, here are the other maps I found during my quest.  They're all pretty interesting, and from different time periods!

A very awesome, very detailed map. Worth checking out in full-res!

Overview of Kaliningrad (top) and Riga (bottom) circa 1500s

For sale here (link includes a nice history)

Overview of the fortress 

(link includes photos, etc)

Detailed Tram Map!!

Seven Bridges
Also of note are Kaliningrad's 7 bridges (only 5 still exist today).  You see, the locals had a bit of a dilemma.  They wanted to cross each of the 7 bridges exactly once time during a walk around the city.  But they couldn't figure out how to do it.  So the called upon Euler.  Euler proceeded to do some crazy math things and decided that it couldn't be done. :(  However, his work on this problem led to the basis for graph theory, and now there is a Wikipedia article about it.  And that's all I'll say about this, because I'm no mathematician.

Links
Kaliningrad seems pretty awesome, and I definitely need to visit someday!  Until then, here are some links:

• "Kaliningrad caught in no-man's land" (2003)
• "Kaliningrad: from Russian relic to Baltic boom town" (2006)
• Planned Restoration Information (in English)
• And here are some historic maps you can buy me for my birthday! 
• Königsberg (Kaliningrad), city map, 1887
• Kaliningrad (Königsberg) city map, 1906
• Kaliningrad (Königsberg) city map, 1911