BETHLEHEM, Pa. (WFMZ) — A Bethlehem organization dedicated to preserving the history of industry in our region, recently acquired a new property.<\/p>\n
For 11 years, the Industrial Archives and Library in Bethlehem has collected historic documents and has been running out of space to store them all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started out basically being a regional archives. That was our approach, however, things drastically started to changes to a nationwide approach,” said Steve Donches, president and CEO of IAL.<\/p>\n
Donches told 69 News, over the last decade they’ve gotten donations of historic artifacts from as far away as Hawaii and everywhere in between.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings started to grow a lot faster than you would expect,” Donches stated.<\/p>\n
Now, they have a new home base to store documents, grow their collection and educate others about industrial history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not only preserving historic records, we\u2019re going to great extent to preserve the land here and the property. It\u2019s a beautiful piece of property,” Donches said.<\/p>\n
Their new property consists of 62 acres on Santee Mill Road. Land, once owned by the first mayor of Bethlehem and former president of Bethlehem Steel Company, Archibald Johnston.<\/p>\n
Seven buildings currently sit on the site, including a 1927 Tudor-Style main house and a farmhouse dating back to 1775.<\/p>\n
Donches said the IAL will use all buildings and they have plans to build an 8th.<\/p>\n
The property will host oral histories, those who wish to conduct research and will provide them with a place to stay for the night.<\/p>\n
Corporate headquarters will be located at an adjacent building with a nearby barn to be used as storage. The 1775 farmhouse in the heart of all the structures will be where the caretaker will live on site.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re ecstatic. It\u2019s really been the, even as recent as the last week and a half, we\u2019ve had major contacts about really significant holdings by a couple of organizations,” Donches concluded.<\/p>\n
The IAL plans to be fully moved into the property next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. (WFMZ) — A Bethlehem organization dedicated to preserving the history of industry in our region, recently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":["post-155805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}