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logo "Yellow Brick Road"
photo taken by closed bridge off Old Delaware Avenue, Normansville
 

Yellow Brick Road

Delaware Avenue began in 1905 as the Albany and Delaware Turnpike. It once crossed the Normanskill Creek not on the present high bridge but on a lower bridge through Normansville. Old Delaware Avenue connects the two parts of this settlement on the Albany and Bethlehem sides of the creek to the present Delaware Avenue. Old Delaware Avenue is popularly called the "Yellow Brick Road" for the yellow paving bricks on the roadbed. Some of the yellow bricks were removed and placed in a walkway on a traffic island at the Four Corners intersection of Delaware and Kenwood avenues.

The power of the falls at Normansville or the upper hollow in the creek once brought industry there. Several mills, Pappalau's icehouse, a hotel and bathing beach gave way to the quaint and quiet residence it is now.

Normansville

Normansville, showing Yellow Brick Road.

Source of photo: Archives of the Bethlehem Town Clerk.

 

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