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.