At the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware rivers is the city of Easton, Pennsylvania. Mostly known for being home to Lafayette College and Crayola Factory. However, these two important locations are not what solely characterizes the city. Although the smallest city in the Lehigh Valley, the greater Easton area is also famous for its dominant culinary scene and vibrant cultural festivities such as the BaconFest and Garlic festival. The city thrives with tourism from both people from the inside of the Lehigh Valley and the outside.
Even though it might not be apparent at a first glance, the city of Easton boasts an exceedingly rich history. It was founded in 1752 (Heller, 1920) and seen as an important military center during the revolutionary war, from when the city is also known by historians as being one of the first three cities where the declaration of independence was first read publicly (Heller, 1920). Just after the war, the Lehigh Valley became an important industrial hub in Pennsylvania, and for longer than a century, the region has profited from producing mainly steel and Portland cement. Easton specifically hosted a number of industrial enterprises along its history, such as an important silk mill, coal processing center and numerous railroads along its territory.
Unfortunately, Easton’s rich industrial history seems to have faded away. The decline of the steel and cement industries in the 20th century led the region to look for other sources of income and forgo its industrial drive. Many of its once booming industrial factories, historic buildings, railroads and railroad trestles have been left unattended and thus decayed over time. The city’s past governments did little to preserve its industrial heritage and most of it was lost with time.
Lafayette College, located on the steps of Easton’s downtown, is one of the few places in the region where historical buildings have been kept in excellent condition. But the college’s relationship to the city of Easton has been eroded a long ago. A strong town-gown relationship, a relevant term which implies the active connections between educational institutions and the greater area they are inserted in, is critical to maintain Lafayette’s reputation in good shape among the members of the community. The city of Easton also has much to gain from a healthy town-gown relationship, as increased student movement within the city would boost revenue in local stores and raise the link between the two communities. Yet, lately, neither Lafayette’s administration or Easton’s local government have actively pursued improvements in this important community aspect. The neglect from both involved parties has deeply eroded their relationship and is evident in recent movements from both students and residents to stop Lafayette from expanding further into the surrounding neighborhoods.
But even with an eroded town-gown relationship, Lafayette college is still a renowned institution. It is recognized nationally for its strong liberal arts education and distinct engineering program. Lafayette advertises its deep inter-connected programs and makes an evident effort to have students from different majors working together to tackle bigger problems. It heavily incentivizes professors with interdisciplinary interests and offers students numerous different interdisciplinary activities, majors and minors, to the point where students can design their own academic majors with faculty guidance (Interdisciplinary Studies, 2018).
Although the engineering program has been heavily targeted for an array of interdisciplinary projects, not much has been done between the Lafayette’s engineering and art departments. Both of these programs have striking similarities, such as incentivizing creative thinking and demanding extensive problem-solving, yet they have been historically separated for too long. Several other learning institutions across the United States have since explored the connection between these two majors with interdisciplinary programs. But Lafayette is still far from achieving a clear and concise interdisciplinary program between the two majors.
This capstone project proposes a single solution addressing the three problems delineated above: the forgotten rich industrial history of Easton, Lafayette’s eroded town-gown relationship with the city and Lafayette’s non-existent link between engineering and art majors. The solution to all of these problems comes in the form of an interdisciplinary course designed to host both engineering and arts students. Working together, students from the two areas will research possible art projects that renovate Easton’s historical heritage, design solutions, build and implement them with the help of several key community members. The coursework we propose can easily be implemented in existing classes as well, such as the Engineering Studies class EGRS 480 Sustainable Solutions, which already has students researching and proposing key community projects.
In addition to proposing this course, we also propose a portfolio of two projects, which best achieve the goals we delineate in this document, that can be sought after by the students working in the proposed course. The first is to paint murals expressing Easton’s industrial heritage around the city itself, the campus of Lafayette and the Silk Mill complex. This specific project will have students working alongside the Easton Mural Project, an initiative by Chaz Hampton and others, which already painted a few murals along Easton’s downtown. For this project, engineering students would analyze and adapt the structure in which the mural is to be painted on and help selecting what will be depicted in the mural, while Art students work on how to better depict it and do the artistic work to paint the murals.
The second proposed project is to have students renovate an old railroad trestle in the Karl Stirner Arts Trail. This forgotten railroad trestle dates from Easton’s industrial boom, and is totally unusable as of right now, since its deck is completely broken. Studies completed previously by civil engineering students at Lafayette have analyzed the trestle and devised a plan to bring it back in working condition. In this proposal, engineering and art students would work alongside to completely renovate the trestle and build a new deck commemorating Easton’s industrial heritage.
The portfolio of projects we propose deeply increase the connections between the art and engineering majors by having its students work together with a shared goal. They celebrate Easton’s industrial heritage, which is currently not evident, but has the potential to increase Easton’s tourism in the following years. The two of them also have students building concrete solutions on territories outside of the college hill, which will positively impact the town-gown relationship between Lafayette and Easton.
The two proposed projects and the proposed course curriculum also come with numerous challenges that must be addressed by the future students working on them. First of all, since these solutions are to be carried in an interdisciplinary course, a reputable professor from either department must adopt these ideas and carry them forward. In order to achieve all the goals we delineate in this project, the course that houses these ideas must be sustainable, in that it does not simply happen for a single semester, but grows steadily along the years into something bigger and more palpable. As we go in more detail further in this report, the mural project would need constant contact with community members that are invaluable to its success, such as Chaz Hampton. Without the help of the Easton Mural Project, this enterprise would be a lot longer and more difficult. For the bridge trestle, expert help for technical problems might be necessary, as its project proposes the trestle to be renovated to be usable again. This specific project will also need to closely work with the local government to ensure every piece is up to the building codes and the trestle is safe for pedestrian use.
To achieve what we propose in this capstone project, more work needs to be completed. At the course of this semester, we have deeply analyzed the problems that afflict Easton, Lafayette, and its students. Once we decided the direction we were going, we analyzed all possible facets of the problem and have gone through several different possible solutions, narrowing them down by working with a number of key contacts both at Lafayette and in the Easton community. By writing this report, our hope is that whoever is carrying this project forward has the most complete and accurate information about the subject as possible. We have exposed each critical context, social, economic, political, and technical, with the firm belief that by following our directions and recommendations, all three of the problems expressed in this report can be mitigated and solved, and that a sustainable solution can be created.
Next: Social Context