Page 10 — SUSQUEHANNA BULLETIN April 30, 1975 Restoration lives on Front Street, Marietta Our area is full of old homes that have been fixed up and restored. With the Bicentennial underway, there is a new spirit in the air that values the past and sees in the restoration of old architec- ture and, if possible, of old values, the bringing back of something precious that we fear may be going out of our lives. Nowhere is this revaluing of the past stronger than in Marietta. And nowhere can the spirit of restoration be seen more clearly than along Front Street. Not many years ago Front Street in Marietta was a line of dipalidated and condemn- ed houses. It was a slum of which residents were asham- ed. Some loyal citizens of Marietta would have liked to see a bull-dozer go down Front Street bringing every- Front Street in the thing crumbling down be- fore it, . transforming the street into a park, or lining it with modern housing, There were only a few keen eyes in Marietta in the late 60’s that could see the beauty of line in that long row of crumbling buildings from Marietta’s lively past, when canal boats plied up and down the River. A handful of people, they founded Marietta’s Re- storation Associates. They dreamed of the unheard of, the unthinkable - Marietta, a beautiful restored town, very much as it was in the early 1800’s. A treasure house of old America. Now that “crazy” dream has become a reality. The spirit of restoration has crept up and down Front Street changing one house after another from an eye- sore into a simple beautiful reminder of what America once was.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers