The Moravian Museum in North Bethlehem

As we walked down the hill towards North Bethlehem, I was looking out trying to place where this museum could be located. I hadn’t been to North Bethlehem since first looking at Lehigh University junior year of high school, so I didn’t know if I should expect something similar to South Bethlehem – not the cleanest of places with some interesting people to go along with it – or to find a completely different world. I think I found the later.

Walking across the bridge, I noticed the cute, tree-lined street that welcomes you to North Bethlehem, and knew this was going to be a good day. While strolling towards the museum, I took in all of the old, historic buildings throughout the community, and how the air felt so much more like a town, as opposed to South Bethlehem, where everything seems kind of hectic to me.

When we finally got to the Moravian Museum, I couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. It looked like a house in a little town that was turned into a museum – which happens to be exactly what it is. The museum is what was formerly the “Gemeinhaus,” which means community house. For such a little museum, it sure packed in a lot of information. As we paid for our tickets to go in, the clerk mentioned how the credit card machine wasn’t working, and went on to mention how it really is like back in the “old days” when credit cards weren’t used – how quaint!

The Moravian community was organized on June 25, 1742. The oldest buildings are on West Church Street (where the museum is located). Those marked are: Gemeinhaus, Sisters’ House, Bell Brothers’ house, and the Old Chapel. Almost all of the structures in the Moravian community were made from logs – not stone, so it is easier to define them from other cultures. Most of the earliest residents of the Gemeinhaus came from Germany, and had originally tried to settle in Savannah, Georgia in 1735, but eventually the emigrants came to Pennsylvania. The first building they constructed in the 18^th century was the Gemeinhaus. In every Moravian community, the Gemeinhaus is situated on one side of the town square, and had two doors in front – one for men and one for women. The Gemeinhaus was a school, a place of worship, and a space to live and work.

Only members of the Moravian Church were allowed to live and work in Bethlehem before 1845, and until 1762, everything in the community was owned by the church. The residents received goods, clothing, education, childcare, and shelter in exchange for working at jobs that supported the community. For example, from 1742-1762, tradesmen were required to have permission from the church to work at their performed occupation. The social structure for this time is for the Moravian community is known as the choir system. Community members were divided into groups according to age, gender, and marital status. There were eight choirs: little girls, little boys, single sisters, single brothers, married sisters, married brothers, widowed sisters, and widowed brothers. Each choir lived, worked, and worshiped separately from the other choirs. Dress in that day was pretty plain. Many of the women wore a common style of clothing consisting of a plain petticoat or skirt, a bodice, and a Haube or cap, but the ribbons she used to tie her Haube and lace her bodice reflected the choir she belonged to. Little girls wore red ribbons, single sisters wore pink ribbons, married sisters wore blue ribbons, and widowed sisters wore white ribbons. Men’s clothing was pretty much the same as that of men who did not live in Moravian communities, though they usually chose conservative colors.

Since everyone lived together in this community, they all had the same schedule. When walking through the museum, there is one room that imitates the schoolroom, and has the daily schedule form April 28, 1780 posted. The students would rise around 5:30 in the morning, eat breakfast at 6:00am, prepare for class from 6:00-8:00am, have classes with a half-hour of chapel from 8:00-11:45am, have dinner at 11:45, and then resume classes from 1:00-4:00. I grew up in a world much different from the Moravians, so this schedule seems very unpleasant to me. Not only does waking up at five-thirty in the morning every day of the year sound more painful than nails screeching on a chalkboard, but the rest of the day doesn’t sound like too much fun either. Oh, how the times have changed.

After walking around the museum for a while, we decided to check out the local surroundings – see what the rest of North Bethlehem was like. We walked in about a ten-block radius of the museum, and it was nice to see all of the old buildings interspersed with the new shops and restaurants. Apparently we picked the right day to go downtown, because there was a Halloween parade, so the sidewalks were bustling with little children in their costumes, parents chatting, and all-around happiness. A stop inside the Chocolate Lab was the perfect way to end our day in North Bethlehem, getting delicious chocolate for a pretty reasonable price.

This excursion ended up being much more entertaining than I originally thought it would be, because it wasn't just a trip to a museum, it was exploring a place I'd never been before! Even the museum was more interesting than I expected, and it’s nice to know a little bit of the history about the place that I am calling my home for the next four years. I also got to explore North Bethlehem a little bit, which I probably wouldn’t have done had I not gone to the museum in the first place. Knowing that there are good restaurants and a movie theater makes North Bethlehem an enticing place to go for a break from the bubble known as Lehigh University.