Join Dave Beardsley, an organizer of the annual Delaware Avenue Housing Project summer reunion, and Liz Allen, Erie Times-News columnist and Preservation Erie Board member, for an inside look at the history of the neighborhoods and the businesses that developed near Lincoln Avenue starting in the early 1900s.
This is a walking tour.
We will meet at the Thomas Hoffman park-and-ride lot at Lincoln Avenue and the Bayfront Parkway at 6:30 p.m., then proceed south on Lincoln, crossing West 12 Street, where Dave will talk about the housing project where he (and former Pa. Gov. Tom Ridge) once lived, as well as the area of rowhouses near Lord Corp. where Dave now lives. The tour will also visit Victory Park.
Later, we will head north on Lincoln Ave., where Liz will talk about things she’s learned about the history of the neighborhood where she grew up and where she still resides. One stop will be outside Avanti’s, the inspiration for Pat Monahan’s song, “Lincoln Avenue.”
We will wind up at Bayview and Lincoln Avenue to watch an Erie sunset, a view captured in the poem “The Pilgrimage” by former Lincoln Avenue resident Beth Gylys, now a professor at Georgia State University.
Please bring your own stories and memories of these neighborhoods to add to the informal histories we have compiled.