December 22, 1907: Paving of East Philadelphia Avenue Appreciated

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

December 22, 1907: The paving of East Philadelphia Avenue is completed, and what a difference that improvement has made from the previous dusty or muddy dirt road, depending on the weather.

The merchants along the “main drag” are ecstatic and Editor Spatz reports that the street is “now clean as a new pin.” The housewives living on East Philadelphia Avenue are rivaling each other to see who has the cleanest sidewalks along the line. “The beauty of paved streets has now been made all the more apparent. Let us hope the notion to keep clean will prevail henceforth forever.”

Little did they know the tragedy that would result from the newly paved street a few weeks later.

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