BETHLEHEM, Pa. — A new educational exhibit space going up in the Colonial Industrial Quarter will pay tribute to a city trailblazer in historic preservation.
The glass-and-steel Overlook on History will feature the Ralph Schwarz Center for Colonial Industries.
It will showcase the area’s historic trades through exhibitions, promote local artisan works and offer educational programs in a space large enough for two busloads of schoolchildren.
“We’re very excited about honoring Ralph's legacy, because he was a visionary.”LoriAnn Wukitsch, president of Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites
“We’re very excited about honoring Ralph’s legacy because he was a visionary,” said LoriAnn Wukitsch, president of Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites.
The nonprofit preserves many of the city’s most treasured Moravian landmarks.
“And back in the '50s, when the Colonial Industrial Quarter was an auto salvage yard … he saw a vision of restoring it back to the original use of the properties," Wukitsch said.
"And also a vision for updating Church Street to what it is now, which is several properties on Church [that] contribute to the World Heritage inscription.”
By the mid-1750s, Bethlehem and its Moravians were specializing in 50 crafts, trades and industries, 35 of which took place at the Colonial Industrial Quarter.
Paying tribute
Schwarz has been described as “a driving force” by HBMS because of his work preserving Moravian landmarks across the city’s historic areas.
And just in time for the 60th anniversary of preservation at the Colonial Industrial Quarter, and a year since World Heritage Site approval for Moravian Church Settlements-Bethlehem, crews now are reinforcing the Overlook’s supporting walls at Ohio and Water streets.
The 1782/1834 Grist Miller’s House will be connected with the 1869 Luckenbach Mill just like the old days once the Overlook, a “360-degree classroom” as Wukitsch described it, is finished in 2026.
Crews will begin laying steel for the project in early October, she said, with some material from the Grist Miller’s House’s interim shoring even being repurposed for the project.
HBMS's Taking the World Stage campaign to raise more than $7 million is most of the way there at $6.2 million.
Wukitsch said the funds will go to finish the Overlook and opening accessibility from Main Street to the Grist Miller’s House.
Not made to mimic
Like the buildings he's worked to preserve, David Scott Parker has a history in Bethlehem.
The renowned architect, now based in Southport, Connecticut, was Schwarz’s protégé. In the mid-1980s, the two worked together on a tourism master plan for Bethlehem that led to the formation of HBMS.
Parker completed historic structure reports for the Moravian Bell House and Single Sisters’ House complex, reconstruction of the 1750 Smithy, restoration at Burnside Plantation and architecture for the National Museum of Industrial History, among others.
Beyond Bethlehem, his firm’s work can be seen at the U.S. Treasury building in Washington D.C., and in Connecticut at Greenwich Historical Society and Mark Twain’s House in Hartford.
Facing a “nexus of grades on site” for the Overlook project, Parker said his team also had to consider the Overlook gallery would stand over an area unknown, one never dug by an archaeologist, he said — the old Antes flour mill site.
After the Antes Mill succumbed to fire, the Luckenbach Mill was built partly on its foundations.
“What the Overlook gallery attempts to do is to re-establish the connection but to make it not a pseudo-reproduction when we don’t have a lot of information on [the old Antes Mill], but rather to make it of our time," Parker said.
'What would Ralph do?'
The almost $2 million “structure of our own time” — facing design approval by the National Park Service and sporting Italian-made glass panels with special UV filtering — will not serve to just mimic the buildings it connects, Parker said.
“Historic buildings need to have a useful purpose that supports their ongoing life."Overlook on History architect David Scott Parker
“The idea, actually, came up with connecting them, and then what we said was, ‘What would Ralph do?’” Parker said.
“Historic buildings need to have a useful purpose that supports their ongoing life,” he said.
“We were trying to achieve a lot of things with a simple gesture, both functionally but also symbolically.”
Overlook on History also will feature a small terrace, outdoor exhibits in the area below the space to showcase the old Antes Mill and adjustable lighting for special events.
Christine Ussler, of South Bethlehem-based Artefact Inc., serves as the project’s local architect.
The Grist Miller’s House restoration received the 2025 Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Award from Preservation Pennsylvania, a nonprofit recognizing more than a dozen other projects around the state.
