Introduce Me To Your Emmaus Home |
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For many, downtown Emmaus it the perfect place for a Sunday stroll
with it's morning Farmer's Market. I also look forward to
hopping into the car an driving to one of my client's homes to work
on a new project. I guess that is just the interior designer
in me.
History:
Emmaus, Pennsylvania is a quaint historic community of 11,500
nestled on the northern slope of South Mountain. It lies 50 miles
north of Philadelphia and 20 miles west of the Delaware River.
Formed in 1759 as a closed Moravian village on land owned by the
church, Emmaus became incorporated as a Pennsylvania borough a
hundred years later in 1859. Arrival of the railroad in the same
year expanded the town’s opportunity for manufacturing and other
business. Its initial industries included iron mining, iron
furnaces, a foundry and a machine company. In the late 1800’s
additional industries included silk manufacturing, cigar factories,
bottling companies and others.
In the first half of the 20th century, Emmaus significantly expanded
its borders through a series of annexations of land that was
previously part of Salisbury and Upper Milford Townships, which
broadened the opportunities for residential development. By the
1960’s the Borough reached its current size and completed
infrastructure improvements that modernized Emmaus into a full
service municipality with a comprehensive park system, municipal
water and sewer service, highway and police departments, and public
library.
Today, Emmaus is a vibrant community with a diverse mix of
residential, commercial, and light industrial uses. It is a hub of
productivity in southwestern Lehigh County that offers a variety of
housing opportunities in a true community atmosphere.
1803 or Ehrenhardt House

In 1803 Jacob Ehrenhardt, Jr. built this stone, Federal-style home
for his wife Susanna and their four daughters. He located it just
south of the Moravian Church, on a plot of land owned by his father;
outside of the confines of the "congregational village" of Emmaus,
but close to the heart of the settlement - the church. For us, the
story of Jacob and his house begins with his father.
On land originally granted to William Penn and his father by King
Charles II of England, German settlers began to settle into this
area (known by the Lenni Lenape as "maguntsche", or feeding place of
the bears) in the early 1700's. Moravians had established the
industrial settlement of Bethlehem in 1741, and local settlers Jacob
Ehrenhardt and Sebastian Knauss found themselves drawn to the
church. So much was their desire to have the Moravian church
establish a congregation in this area, that they donated a large
portion of their land warrants for the creation of a "gemein-ort";
this was a closed congregational village in which people of similar
spiritual needs could live and work together in harmony.
They also built a small log church in 1742 on what would become the
settlement's cemetery - God's Acre. In 1746 a schoolhouse was built,
and in 1747 the local Moravian congregation was founded. Eleven
years later the village was surveyed and a map drawn up. And in
April of 1761 the name Emmaus was given to the settlement by Bishop
Spangenberg, in a hymn he'd written recalling Christ's appearance to
two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus (in part: "Now here we
build a village small; toward it's completion we give all. Here,
too, our hearts within shall flame - Emmaus, then shall be it's
name!").
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Learn more about Bethlehem, PA |
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