Historic Bethlehem Welcome Center — Attraction in Bethlehem

Bethlehem Pennsylvania is an amazing place that I would never thought to stop and visit. The visitor center itself is very helpful. They have a guide there to help you, lots of literature and a looping video about the history of Bethlehem, I’ve gone past it 1 million times living in Pennsylvania most of my life. It is a unique part of American history that played a vital role in the building of our country and winning world war one and two the center of town has many historic sites that we visited doing a scavenger hunt through the let’s Roam app. There are many fine restaurants pubs gift shops. The city is extremely walkable. There’s plenty of parking on Main Street and the side streets. We were there on Sunday, very relaxed atmosphere throughout the whole city, families and couples. We’re out and about each historic building that we visited either had a curator or a guide to help us, you are always within a few steps of a place to eat and restrooms are not an issue. After that we visited the steel mills at Bethlehem that were just simply amazing channel 39 of PBS is located just a few steps from the steel Mill and I understand they have concerts live events there and festivals throughout the year. The steel mill itself is truly a sight to see the blood sweat and tears so to speak that went into building our country can be seen right here. You can tour the Bethlehem steel stacks yourself. There is an enormous set of steel stairs with railings and good footing and a steel walkway that goes the entire length of the steel stacks along the way there are plaques with histories throughout the walkway. This is very friendly for physically challenge folks as there is an extra large elevator that can accommodate quite a few people and it’s in...

Very disappointed in Historic Bethlehem. First, I tried to resolve this by contacting them directly and did not receive a reply. Here is the issue: My family went on a "Rise and Fall of Bethlehem Steel" tour. The Historic Bethlehem website states that the tour is one hour. When the tour began we spent approximately the first 45 minutes listening to the tour guide talk and looking at pictures while sitting on a bench across the street. Then we ascended the stairs for the Hoover Mason Trestle. When we arrived at the top I asked if the tour would be over in 15 minutes (thinking that what we had experienced was not what was described on the website) because my party had another commitment and we needed to leave at 2:00 (again the tour was supposed to be one hour). The tour guide said the tour will go at least an hour and a half and maybe longer! As a result we had to leave at 2:00 and missed most of the tour, what we were most interested in, the walking part where we could see actual items, not just pictures. The info. given during the first 45 minutes was interesting, but not a walking tour. We are very disappointed that we missed probably the most interesting part of the tour and what we actually thought the tour would be. It's great that the tour guide had so much info. to give but the website needs to indicate the actual length of the tour. When asked for a refund or credit for a future tour, so I could allocate more time, no response from either Historic Bethlehem or Arts Quest (the...

Bethlehem is just magical this time of year so it’s hard to be critical as we had a wonderful experience. We did the night tour and the horse drawn carriage and we are glad that we did both. The night tour was conducted in a super comfortable large bus. The guide was a great story teller and well informed , however it was hard to see the sites being described outside because it was so dark. The horse ride gave us the opportunity to view those sites closer, afterwards but we didn’t go to all the same places unfortunately so we felt that we had missed out a bit. Perhaps starting the tour just before dark to show the historical sites and then finishing with a lights tour would have been a lot better. Overall all of it completely worth...