PA & NY 2023: Bradford, Punxsutawney PA

As we were heading towards Kane, Pennsylvania for our 2-night stay, we passed by the city of Bradford, Pennsylvania and were impressed by the architecture that we could glimpse from the highway.  Based on that alone, we had made the mental note that we would like to visit there if we had the time.  Then after visiting the Kinzua Bridge State Park and finding out that Bradford was home to the Zippo Lighter Factory and museum, this firmed up our decision to add a visit to our agenda.

Back in the late 19th Century, Bradford was a booming oil town.  Today, many beautiful buildings remain from that time.  At the centre of the main drag is the quaintly named “Main Street Mercantile”, a cooperative retail venture with over 80 vendors selling antiques and décor. Next to the mercantile is the “Tin Ceiling Gift Shoppe” which presumably features a tin ceiling, as did the “Moments to Remember” gift shop where we stopped in and bought several souvenirs.  On the sides of some of the buildings are the faint traces of “ghost signs”, which are old hand-painted advertising signs from days gone by.  There are also signs of patriotism everywhere including the huge American flag painted on the side of the building that includes the Army Career Centre (or recruiting office) as one of its tenants.  The doorway of another storefront has a sign posted that reads “To All the Bradford men and women who have served and are serving to help keep America independent and free .. Thank You!!”.  Humorously, and probably unintentionally, written in marker before the thank you is “Please Use the Other Door”, as if this was addressed to all the service men and women. One building on Main Street that is anachronous relative to the others around it is the PNC Bank building which seems to be a Mid-Century Modern building from the 1970s with its low footprint and abundance of glass.

The streets of downtown Bradford are full of history, and it is too bad that we did not stumble across a self-guided walking tour pamphlet until we got home.  Most of the other ornate buildings in the area are from the late 1800s to early 1930s and some of them still have the names of the original occupants emblazoned on them.  The C.L.Bradburn Building (1890) is a 3-story 7-Bay brick building with a cast iron façade  and Corinthian columns separating bay windows on the second floor that was occupied by Bradburn’s wallpaper store.  The upper story included lodge rooms and a dining room used by the Knights of Pythias, the Bradford branch of a benevolent and secret society which believed in a Supreme Being and performed charitable acts including aiding victims of National disasters and providing support for youth and the aged.  Members of the Knights of Pythias included Bradford himself, as well as jazz musician Louis Armstrong, President Franklin D, Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller.  The Neo-Classical building that houses Graham Florist was initially designed as a bank by builder Clinton W. Kinsella (1911) whose name is engraved in one of the concrete slabs of the façade.  A yellow “ghost sign” from when the shop first opened in 1927 has been restored and brightly advertises “Out of Town Orders Filled Promptly By Me”.  The former Hotel Holley, a historic hotel built in 1901 by Frank P. Holley has been taken over by new owners and is now the OYO Hotel with some of the historic elements still in place.  An old-fashioned elevator and reception desk are still in use and Joe’s Main Street Steakhouse as well as the Holley Express eatery are still open within the building.  An old commercial building with an elaborate façade has the name A.A. Caterina carved in stone at the top and is currently housing United Way offices.

The red-brick, Colonial Revival-styled Bay State Hotel was built in 1897.  The 36-room hotel was known for its fine-dining restaurant and had a room rate of $2/day.  Today, a clothing shop and Chinese restaurant are the occupants of the ground floor of the building.  The gorgeous Art Deco-styled Hooker-Fuller Building is the tallest building in this historic district of Bradford.  It was built in 1931 to house offices and the Main Street Movie Theatre which still seems to be running today.  Miss America attended the theatre’s opening in 1935.  The Old City Hall is a Romanesque Revival building built between 1897 and 1901.  It has intricate stonework in its main entrance and a 100-foot tower that houses a 4-dial clock created by Seth Thomas Company, America’s oldest clock maker.  The white glazed layers of recessed brick used in the 1930 Art Deco-styled Kubiak building stands out from the other red bricked buildings in the area.  It has ribbed corbeling and stylized corner blocks around the doorway flanked by sleek vertical lines on both sides.

A beautiful four-story, buff brick building called Option House (1903) has three columns of bay windows with a balcony above the first story, intricate stone carvings demarking the second and third stories, a row of lions' heads along the top cornice, foliated limestone trim and other decorations along the sides.  The Option House Hotel was equipped with an elevator, spacious dining room and a pub.  In 1935, a 62-foot-long oak bar and second floor night club called The Peacock Parlour was added.  Today the Mediterranean restaurant Kabob’s At Option House occupies the ground floor and apartments are found on top.

Veteran’s Square was first created as a public square by the early settlers of Bradford back in 1837.  It was a community gathering place with a gazebo bandstand, park benches and flowers.  Starting with the Spanish American War, memorials were added along the walkways to honour Bradford’s fallen soldiers and the area was officially renamed Veteran’s Square in 1954.  Overlooking the square is a tall Art Deco building once known as the Seneca Building.  It is now the home of the Marilyn Horne Museum, celebrating one of Bradford’s most celebrated citizens, the world-famous opera singer Marilyn Horne.

The Marilyn Horne Museum was open in 2017 to honour Marilyn Horne for her accomplishments as a Mezzo-Soprano opera singer and is free to visit.  The museum displays describe Horne’s life, childhood in Bradford, career, and exhibits that teach visitors about music, singing techniques and opera.  Early on in her career, in 1954 she landed the gig to be the singing voice for actress Dorothy Dandridge in the musical Carmen Jones, a modern spin on the iconic opera Carmen.  Later on, she also sang in the movie musicals “Flower Drum Song” and “The King and I”.   As an opera singer, she performed with many opera companies around the world and performed in the actual opera “Carmen” with the Met in 1972.   Her voice is heard throughout the museum as you can put on headphones to hear her singing at various stages of her career.  Outside the museum is a bronze bust of Horne with the inscription “Internationally Famous Opera and Concert Singer”.

The highlight of the exhibits was seeing the colourful and wonderfully resplendent replica costumes from Marilyn Horne’s various roles including “The Barber of Seville”, “Aida”, “Orfeo ed Euridice”, and “Carmen”.

In addition to the interesting architecture of the commercial buildings in the historic district, we found some gorgeous houses as well with multiple turrets, decorative pediments, uniquely shaped balconies and even a crenellated tower attached to one house that was being renovated.

One of the main reasons for our adding Bradford, PA to our itinerary was so that we could visit the Zippo Lighter Museum.  The Zippo lighter is a small rectangular, reusable meta lighter with a spring-levered hinged top, wick, windscreen chimney, flint wheel and flint that uses petroleum lighter fluid as the fuel.  American inventor George Blaisdell invented the Zippo lighter and founded the Zippo Manufacturing Company in Bradford, PA in 1932.  Thousands of different styles and designs have been created over the decades and in 2012, the company produced its 500-millionth unit.  The 15,000 square-foot museum and store opened in July 1997.  It tells the history of the Zippo lighter and displays a large collection of lighters that were created through the years.  Parked in front of the museum is the Zippo Car, a 1947 Chrysler Saratoga that was transformed to feature a giant replica of the Zippo lighter with its lid open, complete with flames.  The car would tour around the continent, appear in parades and generally promote the company in a fun and spectacular manner.

One of the first exhibits encountered in the museum is the large American flag that is 7 feet high and 11 feet wide.  On closer inspection, you can see that the flag is created with almost 3400 red, white and blue lighters.  The piece is titled “Old Glow’ry” or “Zips and Clicks Forever”.   An entire wall is dedicated to the history of the Zippo lighter relative to other historical occurrences that happened around the same time as each milestone.  The Zippo lighter differentiated itself from disposable lighters not only with its sturdy construction, refillable fuel cavity and vast choices of designs, but specifically by its unique feature of being a “windproof” lighter that will not extinguish if blown horizontally by wind or any other source of air current.  Zippo’s marketing gimmicks to highlight this feature include the “Fan Test” where a portable fan blows at the flame, people blowing at the flame, and flapping their arms.  The museum has “fan test” devices that demonstrate the lighter’s windproof capabilities by allowing people to hold their lit lighters in front of a blowing fan.  The lighter can be operated with one hand and the proper way to extinguish the flame is to snap the cap of the lighter over it.

During World War II, Zippo manufactured special lighters out of steel as opposed to the usual brass material that was required to manufacture arms and ammunition for the war effort.  The steel lighters were covered with black paint and a baked crackled finish to prevent premature rusting.  Working with war correspondent Ernie Pyle who lived in the trenches with the soldiers during the war, George Blaisdell donated many free zippo lighters to be distributed to among the service men and women.  When Pyle was killed in 1945, a special lighter with his name engraved on it was distributed to the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Cabot where Pyle had spent 3 weeks with the crew.  Zippo lighters and especially the Pyle memorial lighters were prized possessions of the military personnel and become a symbol of the war experience.

Zippo lighters were produced in Canada from 1949  through 2002 and had “Niagara Falls, Canada” stamped at the bottom.  About 500,000 units were produced per year, compared to 16.8 million annually in the United States.  Many of the Canadian lighters featured Canadian specific images like the Mountie, Canadian Flag, Loonie and iconic attractions from cities including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Windsor.   Zippo’s policy is that their lighters are guaranteed for life and will be repaired/replaced for any reason.  A fascinating exhibit in the museum shows a series of mangled, crushed, chewed up or otherwise damaged lighters with the most hilarious causes including “garbage disposal”, “power lawn mower”, “ice crusher” and “6000 ton press”.  The one that appeared in the most separate pieces was the encounter with a “box trim shredder”.  In addition to the iconic lighters, Zippo also ventured into other products with varying success including the golf ball warmer that was supposed to make golf balls travel farther.  In 1993, Zippo merged with W.R.Case & Sons Cutlery Company so the museum also features displays of Case products.

One of the distinct features of Zippo lighters is the vast variety of designs that can be featured on a lighter.  There seems to be something for everyone including images related to politics, pop culture, historically significant events and news, music, movies and more.  A special exhibit related to movies shows images and videos of scenes from iconic movies such Die Hard where the character uses a Zippo Lighter either incidentally or as a plot device.  Lighters were made in a variety of materials including brass, chrome and the steel versions produced during WWII.  A few speciality lighters are decorated with texture print that give it a tactile feel while others may glow in the dark.  The permutations were innumerable.

In the nationality section of the museum are examples of lighters representing countries and cities from around the world.  Even in the gift shop, there were so many different designs to choose from that Rich had a difficult time picking one to bring home as a souvenir.  Some of the finalists included a Roy Lichenstein-esque cartoon bubble with ZIPPO written on it, the vintage image of the wind-test blowing woman, 60’s psychedelic flower power and old 45 records.  In the end, he selected an orange Art Deco-styled lighter and bought some lighter fluid to go with it.   We had so much fun spending an afternoon touring the Zippo Museum in Bradford.

After  two days touring around the vicinity of Kane, PA, we started our trek south for several days of visiting Frank Lloyd Wright designed or inspired houses including an overnight stay at one in Polymath Park.  En route, we made stop in Punxsutawney, PA to visit Phil, the famous groundhog who would predict whether or not we would get an early spring.  Phil is on display behind a glassed enclosure at the corner of the public library.  As it turns out, there are two groundhogs on display, Phil and his wife Phyliss although it was difficult to differentiate between them from behind the glass.  Tongue-in-cheek “facts” about Phil are posted around town and online, including Phil being the only true weather predictor (all others are imposters), that Phil is 100% correct in his predictions and that there is only one Phil who has been making predictions since 1886 when this tradition first started.

Punxsutawney Phil is obviously the main attraction of the small borough as his image is everywhere, from bronze statues to murals to painted gophers on crosswalks to everything imaginable in the Tourist bureau/souvenir shop/Chamber of Commerce building.  Here we found stuffed animals, t-shirts, toques, paper plates and napkins, soda pops, coasters, puzzles and more, all emblazoned with the iconic representation of Phil.  As a souvenir, Rich purchased a package of Groundhog Day napkins, so now we have to wait for February 2 to roll around over multiple years before we can use these up!

The main reason for our visiting the Tourist centre was to get the map that would show us where all the giant Phil sculptures could be found, all around the few streets surrounding the main drag.  Each sculpture has a different name and design, often reflecting the business or organization who sponsored it.  In front of the Tourist centre, we found “Tourist Phil” wearing a toque and a shirt displaying a map of downtown Punxsutawney, as well as some of the other attractions to be found here.  It was a bit of a scavenger hunt following the map to find more Phils.  The Police Department, Fire Department and Post Office each had their own appropriately clad Phil sculptures, named “Officer Phil & Fury”, “Phil The Flames” and the punny “Philatelic Phil” respectively, with Fury being Policeman Phil’s canine partner.

We found “Freedom Phil” dressed as the Statue of Liberty in the main square.  Many local shops had sculptures reflecting their businesses including “Breakfast Sounds Good” Phil wearing a chef’s hat and holding eggs, bacon and toast as sponsored by Gimmicks restaurant.  The Phil in front of the florist shop was covered with flowers while the one by Wendy’s was dressed like the iconic red-headed girl on the fast food chain’s logo.  “There’s Work to be Done” Phil in front of Ragley’s True Value Hardware wore safety googles, overalls, a tool belt and headphones while holding a rake.  Scottish bagpiper “Presby MacPhil” stood in front of the Presbyterian Church of Punxsutawney in honor and recognition of the Scottish heritage of the Presbyterian Church.  We saw countless more wonderfully quirky sculptures, but there were so many Phils and so little time that we sadly were unable to get to them all.

While searching for the Phil sculptures, we passed by some beautiful old mansions with Doric and Ionic columns, multiple levels of verandas and balconies, turrets of varying shapes and lovely decorative features.  Some of them were a bit run down but you could see that there used to be money in this area.

We also saw some interesting churches including the First Baptist Church and the tiny Christ Episcopal Church whose façade was covered with field stones and seemed more like a house than a church.  These two churches did not seem to be open to the public, but the Journey Church was, so we wandered in to get a look at the giant stained glass windows from the inside.

Punxsutawney was a fun stop enroute to Polymath Park where we would start our two day immersion into the world of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.