Fountain Hill’s Rich History

BAPL serves a wide and diverse area. Many don’t know that the library doesn’t just house historical records of the City of Bethlehem–the library also has a great array of resources, including those from the Borough of Fountain Hill.  And we figured what better way to highlight some of these artifacts than a short historical exploration?

Entering the Borough of Fountain Hill from “the Bethlehems” (a great phrase from the old local newspapers you can read in the Bethlehem Room) a person can’t help but notice a change in the atmosphere as imposing 19th century mansions, tall (19th century?) trees, and, of course, the hill itself, close in. From the famous Robert H. Sayre mansion and the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, which stand like sentinels at the entrance to the Hill, to the wooded ridge behind St. Luke’s Hospital and the old Weygandt farmhouse, Fountain Hill wears its history on its sleeve.

Most of the prominent families of industrial and philanthropic Bethlehem lived in Fountain Hill. The Wilbur mansion sits next to the Sayre. Up the hill a bit looms the Schwab pile, which was the original Linderman home. These great houses were built with canal, railroad, iron, and steel money, which then multiplied as the families intermarried and served on each other’s’ boards of directors and invested in the same handful of local banks.

Of course, a bona fide gentry requires a bona fide opera house. So in 1876, the Bethlehem Opera House opened to much fanfare (one of the rare times that word is used literally!). It was located at Fourth and Wyandotte, and, like so many theaters of the time, it burned to the ground (a motif, sadly). A few years later, banker E.P. Wilbur, Asa Packer’s nephew, built the Fountain Hill Opera House at the same location. It opened in 1888 and began a long career hosting traveling and local theater, concerts, vaudeville, and eventually films.

The Fountain Hill Opera House (renamed the Grand Opera House in 1900), became the theatrical and musical focus of the Bethlehems for several decades. John Philips Sousa’s band played there. The actor/director John Huston made his theatrical debut there. Temperance rallies were held there. It showed its first moving picture in 1912. And in 1983, John Grello, an escaped convict, hid out in the shuttered theater for two weeks while law enforcement combed the area.

Under new owners in the 1920s the name was changed to the Globe Theater, and during this time the theater, like most of the country, moved away from live performances and showed more movies. In 1930 A.R. Boyd Theaters of Philadelphia took over the Globe, eventually buying it in 1939. That company (a familiar name in the Lehigh Valley) remodeled some of the interior in Art Deco style and built the marquee that the building wore until the end of its days. It also installed state of the art projection and sound for modern movies: the Globe then became a movie theater for the next 30 years. It finally closed in 1961 due to an insufficient number of new movies coming out of Hollywood to fill all of the theaters in town, according to theater management at the time.

After a quiet couple of decades as a movie house and fifteen even quieter years as an empty building, things began to percolate for the Globe in the mid-1970s. Two groups, Lehigh Valley Stage and Friends of the Fountain Hill Opera House, began to organize and fund raise with the goal of reopening the Globe as a regional equity theater and a site for other events. Like the recent efforts to save the Boyd Theater on Broad Street, it was an uphill fight. In 1978 the State Department of General Services distributed a 1.5 million dollar grant to Bethlehem for the use of restoring the Luckenbach Mill and the Sun Inn, but refused to give any to the Globe. Continuing their efforts, the Friends of the Fountain Hill Opera House, with help from Lehigh Valley Stage and some Lehigh graduate students, got the Globe listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Lehigh University was tied to efforts to buy the Globe several times in the 1970s for use as the university’s theater department, but considerations of upkeep and the lack of parking, plus recently completed facilities on the campus itself, scuttled those plans.

And then, sadly, the end came suddenly in August 1983. An arsonist set fire to the theater, causing a massive blaze that destroyed the Globe, leading to its demolition and erasure from the community. By that time, of course, the Sayres, Wilburs, and Lindermans had given up their mansions, and the railroads and the Steel were in steep decline, as Bethlehem moved toward a new cultural life for itself.

Fountain Hill, even without the Globe’s historical and cultural significance, carried on as it always did. Situated where the original hydropathy spa (the Water Cure) that Henry Oppelt ran with such distinction from 1846 to 1871, St. Luke’s Hospital (begun by some of the same families that started the Opera House) has continued to thrive and expand throughout eastern Pennsylvania.The Lipps and Sutton Silk Mill was one of the first of its kind in the area, and it has been refurbished as municipal offices, a police station, and apartments. And the Sayre and Wilbur mansions, such iconic parts of the old borough, have become bustling destinations for fine dining, events, or just for taking in some grand architectural design and that warm feeling of history.

Sources Consulted

Bauman, Earl Joseph. The History of Fountain Hill. 1951.

Erdman, David M. “[unknown title].” Sunday Call Chronicle, 14 Aug 1983. A1-2.

Farrar, Carolyn. “1884 Fire Destroyed First Globe.” Bethlehem Globe-Times, 14 Aug 1983.  A8.

Grand Opera House Programs Collection, 1901-1902. Bethlehem Area Public Library.

Jones, Warren. “Globe Theater, Once Star-Studded, Will Never Reopen—Building For Sale.” Bethlehem Globe-Times, 25 Feb 1961. 13.

Lehren, Andy. “Arson Guts Globe Theater.” Bethlehem Globe-Times, 14 Aug 1983. A1.

Redding, Edward J. History of Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania. 1996.

June 15, 2023