A rural country road, first known as “Latwerg strass”, winds in and out of Bethlehem and Lower Saucon Township near the base of Green Hill. This road, now known as Applebutter Road, branches off the old wagon road petitioned by the Moravians in 1743. There are a string of sixteen old stone farmhouses and barns that line the road. No one knows when the road was created but the farms were situated there to take advantage of the mills in Shimersville. Every farm along the road had an apple orchard. The farmers cooked the apples to produce large amounts of apple butter to sell to customers in Bethlehem, South Bethlehem, Hellertown and Easton.
Mayme (Vance) Lerch wrote to Lower Saucon Township Historian Ethel Helms in 1973 about her memories of growing up on Applebutter Road. She was 86 years old at the time. She clearly recalled living on the William Henn farm and attending the Lutz-Franklin one-room schoolhouse. Mrs. Lerch drew a map indicating the names of the families who lived in the homes along Applebutter Road in 1900. These same homes would be included in the Applebutter Road Historic District, determined to be eligible for listing in the National Registry of Historic Places by the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission, in 2001. By pure luck, the majority of these structures are still standing today.
Mrs. Lerch remembered the Rinker family who lived at the sharp bend of Applebutter Road, in the late 1800s. William Addison Rinker and his wife, Elemina (Laubach) lived there with their three daughters, Sallie, Edna and Carrie. W. Addison was the third generation of Rinkers to live on the farm. Around 1840, his grandfather, Samuel Rinker, purchased an 1820 farmhouse located there on 94 acres. He added an addition and improved the farm land. The east end of the Saucon Creek flows through the property.
The house is a two and a half story stone farmhouse with a gable end roof. The rafters and cross ties are pegged not nailed. The inside wooden doors have six and five panels. The center staircase is original to the 1840 addition. The house still retains the summer kitchen, large stone fireplace and smokehouse. In the kitchen is a brick hearth and stone bake oven. There is a root cellar in the basement and a separate stone “cool cellar” built on the east side of the house.
Samuel’s son, Franklin,was listed as the owner in the 1870 tax records. He was taxed for his four horses, two cows and a pleasure carriage. Soon after W. Addison’s death in 1900, Bethlehem Steel purchased the farm from his widow. The majority of the farm’s land lay south of Applebutter Road.
In the 1920s, the Charles Szy family rented the farmhouse from Bethlehem Steel until they purchase the house and 6.57 acres, on the north side of the road, in 1927. Bethlehem Steel retained the 80 some acres, south of the road. It was such a scenic spot that for many years Bethlehem Steel President Eugene Grace organized company picnics in the orchard there. The house was sold to Jean and Heckman D. Harrison in 1985. Eric Ortwein purchased the house and 6.57 acres in 2004 and the house is currently owned jointly by Jay S. Pichel and Ortwein.
Pichel and Ortwein submitted a development plan this year to Bethlehem Planning Commission that calls for the demolition of the Rinker farmhouse. Their proposed “Applebutter Village” plan indicates that sixty-six single wide mobile homes will be located on the property. Each mobile home will be 14 by 48 feet with ten feet of spacing between the units. The Bethlehem Planning Commission, as a good neighbor, sent the plan to Lower Saucon Council to review. Jack Cahalan, Lower Saucon Township Manager, sent a letter to Darlene Heller, Director of Planning for Bethlehem, dated September 7, 2010 with a summary of Lower Saucon Council’s opinion of the plan. Their response included, “The Township would be greatly concerned if this historic structure was razed for the construction of a mobile home park” and “The Township is concerned that the addition of 60+ cars exiting this proposed development at the peak morning commuter period onto Applebutter Road, which is already clogged with school buses and landfill traffic, will cause intolerable traffic conditions.”
Bethlehem has two historic review boards, the Historical Architectural Review Board and the South Bethlehem Historic Conservation Commission. These boards only cover specific areas of Bethlehem. They may not be given the opportunity to examine the proposed plan before it is approved by the Bethlehem Planning Commission.Applebutter Road study
