Roadside America and the Engine(s) of Progress
At a Glance
Section titled âAt a Glanceâ| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2015-10-01 |
| Journal | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |
| Authors | Samantha J. Boardman |
Abstract
Section titled âAbstractâHIDDEN GEMS 2015 363 1 Peter George, âRoadside America: An Institution along Route 78,â Village Chronicle, n.d., 56, clipping courtesy of Dolores Heinsohn personal archive. Though the current location of Roadside America in Shartlesville dates to 1953, the model has long been a regional sensation, being publicly exhibited in one form or another since 1935. 2 Don Ambrose Agius, The Story of Laurence T. Gieringer and His Roadside America (Kutztown, PA, 1961), 18-19. 3 Laurence Gieringer, âA Gas Station,â Model Builder, Sept. 1946, 17-19. Roadside America and the Engine(s) of Progress Along the rolling, bucolic stretch of I-78 between Allentown and Harrisburg, billboards entice travelers to exit at Shartlesville for âRoadside America: The Worldâs Greatest Indoor Miniature Village.â A local institution since 1953, this attraction features remarkably detailed, handcrafted, miniature scenes of American history, industry, and progress, arranged in a sweeping, eight-thousand-square-foot tabletop tableau.1 The lifeâs work of creator Laurence T. Gieringer, Roadside America, with its emphasis on models of regional landmarks and locales, serves as a multifaceted material-culture âtextâ through which to explore key relationships between energy sources and Pennsylvaniaâs lived history. Gieringer, a native of Reading, was born in 1893, the first son of Anna and Charles H. Gieringer. Charles, a harness maker by trade, had the distinction of owning the first automobile in the area, a three-wheeled vehicle he drove from Connecticut to Reading in an overland trip that took just over twenty-two days.2 Years later, Laurence would relate the indelible impression left on him by his fatherâs journey and the dawn of automobile travel in a how-to article on building model gas stations.3 This intersection of model making and energy, especially as it relates to transportation, was established early in Gieringerâs life and fully realized in the vivid and kinetic model landscape he created. Inspired by a boyhood ambition to re-create local landmarks in miniature form, the attraction is designed so that the visitor encounters discrete periods of Pennsylvanian and national history on a single plane, creating a patchwork quilt of Americana past and present. Guests walk around the model, their tours guided by the complimentary brochure that draws attention to scenes of note from the dawn of the republic to the âmodernâ (circa 1960) era. Signs ringing the model invite visitors to push buttons activating vignettes within the scenes: two frontiersmen saw a log, circus performers parade in their camp, a hot-air balloon soars high over a HIDDEN GEMS 364 October 4 Agius, Story of Laurence T. Gieringer, 77. 5 Roadside America, Inc., Pennsylvaniaâs Roadside America Incorporated: The Worldâs Greatest Indoor Miniature Village, n.d. baseball diamond as crowds cheer in the bleachers. This vibrant tapestry is interwoven with tableaux illustrating numerous uses and sources of energy in the development of American industry, travel, and communications technologies. While scenes of early frontier settlements show the use of water-, horse-, and manpower, it is in the richly detailed depictions of the coal, petroleum, and electricity industries that Roadside America shinesâliterally. Particularly striking is the scale model,âsponsoredâ by the Reading Iron Works, of the Philadelphia and Reading Anthracite Colliery.4 This marvelous miniature features a cross section of the mineâs tunnels as well as a replica of the Locust Point coal breaker, which was, at the time of the modelâs construction, the largest of its kind in the world. The rail yard abutting the coal works emphasizes the interconnectedness of the coal industry in Pennsylvania with the country at large, as tiny cars wait to be filled with the extracted anthracite and race across tracks spanning the length and breadth of the model. Likewise, the oil refinery model harks back to the dawn of the American petroleum industry at the Drake Well in Titusville.The miniature Esso filling station with automobiles lining up at its pumps, located in the downtown section of the village of âFairfield,â illustrates the connection between the fuel and its uses. In Roadside America, electricity is presented as a marker of modernity and progress. The miniature power plant, touted in the tour brochure as havingâŚ