Built From Here

Built From Here

Thank you for reading and I apologize for the delay in articles. We’ve had an extremely busy Summer at Ruggiero Landscaping. Taking a break from projects and working on maintenance, aeration and seeding this week.

As for the newsletter, I really appreciate everyone who reads and I’m going to do a better job staying consistent with them. Your feedback helps me shape the content so please let me know of any questions or topics you’d like me to discuss. I’ve been working on several articles you guys requested that’ll be putting out soon.

For this one I wanted to get back to something that really interests me, so we’re taking a look at the materials that still give Bethlehem its character and what that means for the landscapes we build moving forward. I’m using all photos that I took myself.

This is the first of hopefully many “Built From Here” articles that will look at the materials, water, craft, and ground that still give a place its character — and what that means for the landscapes we build next.

One of the things I appreciate more as I get older is how much materials give a place its identity.

Walk through old Bethlehem and you don’t need a sign telling you that you’re somewhere different.

There’s limestone. Heavy timber. Brick. Slate. Deep window openings. Wood doors. Buildings that look as though they grew out of the same ground the trees are growing in.

That wasn’t an aesthetic trend.

A Place Built From What Was Here

Bethlehem’s earliest Moravian settlers first built with timber because it was close at hand and shelter was needed quickly.

The Gemeinhaus — literally the community house — was begun in 1741 and built from white-oak timbers in the German Colonial tradition. It is believed to be the largest 18th-century log structure still in continuous use in the United States.

And “community house” was not just a name.

In Bethlehem’s earliest years, Moravian settlers lived there, ate there, slept there, worshipped there, held meetings there, worked there and welcomed visitors while the rest of the settlement was being built.

Today, the building is home to the Moravian Museum of Bethlehem and remains at the center of the historic district that grew around it.

Stone followed almost immediately.

The National Park Service notes that Bethlehem’s first stone choir house was completed in 1744 and that almost all the buildings constructed afterward were made from local stone.

The surviving Single Sisters’ House still shows that palette clearly: roughly coursed limestone walls, brick arches over the windows and herringbone-patterned wooden doors.

Down along the Monocacy, the same shift happened with the working buildings. Early log workshops were gradually replaced by larger limestone structures as pottery, tannery, smithing, milling and the rest of Bethlehem’s trades took root.

But early Bethlehem was not only decorated with the materials of this valley.

Its location and infrastructure were designed around the systems that were already here.

Water Was Infrastructure

The Moravians chose a site shaped by a limestone ridge, the Lehigh River, the Monocacy Creek and a substantial spring near the foot of the hill.

Those weren’t background scenery.

They influenced how the town was laid out.

Large residential buildings were positioned along the limestone bluff. Industrial buildings were placed along the Monocacy and Lehigh where flowing water could provide power.

By 1762, the Moravians had built a limestone pump house in what is now the Colonial Industrial Quarter. An 18-foot undershot waterwheel powered a mechanism that lifted water approximately 94 feet uphill to a collection tower. From there, gravity carried it to cisterns serving the settlement.

It is widely recognized as the first pumped municipal water system in America.

The technology is impressive.

But what interests me even more is the thinking behind it.

The town did not sit on the land and then get dressed up to look local.

The settlement itself was arranged around stone, timber, topography, water and the crafts people here already knew how to practice.

That is part of why Bethlehem still feels like Bethlehem.

The place feels coherent because earlier builders responded to what was already here instead of imposing an interchangeable aesthetic onto the site.

And I think there is a lesson in that for landscapes, too.

When Materials Become Part of the Landscape

Traditional design was not created by picking a style.

It grew from using the materials, plants, skills and conditions of a particular place.

That is part of why an old stone wall under mature trees can still feel completely right two hundred years later.

And that relationship between landscape and construction did not end with colonial Bethlehem.

A few miles upstream, you can still see another version of it at what was once Archibald Johnston’s Camel’s Hump Farm.

Johnston — a Bethlehem Steel executive and the first mayor of the newly consolidated City of Bethlehem — began assembling the property around 1919. He took an active hand in shaping grounds that eventually included roads and bridges, an orchard, a boathouse and a swimming-pool complex, all arranged along the same Monocacy that had helped power the earlier town.

What interests me today is not that everything survived perfectly.

It is almost the opposite.

Masonry is covered in moss.

Metal is rusting.

Trees have grown around old structures.

Creek banks have softened.

The line between what was built and what was already there has become harder to find.

Natural materials age differently. Done well, they do not simply get old. They become part of the place.

That is something I keep coming back to when I think about landscape design today.

Not Nostalgia. A Working Method.

A yard that could be dropped onto any street in any region will look current for a little while.

Then it starts to date.

A wall, a walk, a planting or a grade that responds to the stone, clay, water, slope and light already present on the property has a different life.

It has somewhere to go as it weathers.

That’s what I want my Built From Here articles to keep doing.

Bethlehem limestone.

Slate roofs.

Fieldstone walls.

Porches.

Garden walls.

Monocacy waterpower.

Old fruit trees.

Brick walks.

Timber framing.

Pennsylvania barns.

Dry-laid walls.

Local quarries.

Hedgerows.

Springhouses.

The ordinary things that still make this valley itself.

Not as nostalgia. As a working method.

If a place already has a grain — stone, water, slope, craft, a particular kind of tree — the job is not to override it.

The job is to build from it. That’s part of why an old stone wall under mature trees can still feel completely right after 200 years.

And that is something worth remembering when we design for the next 200 years.

I’ll be coming back to the Built From Here concept. Moving forward we will look at one local material, structure, landscape or working tradition at a time — and what it can still teach us about designing properties in the Lehigh Valley.

Thank you for reading!

— Mike Ruggiero
Ruggiero Sustainable Solutions
Bethlehem · Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania