Illustration by Rich Hauck.
On a recent Saturday, I wandered into Midtown Scholar Bookstore just as local historian Erik Fasick was queuing up his slideshow chronicling the most devastating event to hit Harrisburg—the flood from Tropical Storm Agnes.
The 1972 disaster put the nail in the coffin for a city already staggering from deindustrialization and suburbanization. After that, it was basically game over so that, 45 years later, Harrisburg continues its slow return as a place people want to be, as opposed to escape as fast as possible after another tedious day at the office.
Fasick’s presentation showed Harrisburg at a point of collapse, and you could almost hear its heart break as the floodwaters rushed down from Wildwood and rose up from the Susquehanna River.
Fascinating as the talk was, I already knew most of the story. But what had escaped me was how Agnes permanently changed the city’s geography, how the flood wiped entire neighborhoods off the map.
Before Agnes, there was a small neighborhood (with a school) at Paxton and Cameron streets, now a vast surface parking lot. Before Agnes, there was “the real Shipoke,” as Fasick called it, a gritty, insular neighborhood of narrow streets where Pennsy Supply now stores its heavy equipment. Before Agnes, rowhouses lined portions of N. 2nd and Penn streets near Maclay, now, respectively, asphalt lots and grassy fields.
These places were drowned, condemned and bulldozed. Some caught fire.
They weren’t the city’s first losses. The “old 8th” ward, a dense, working-class neighborhood of winding alleys and small, clapboard houses, got taken out when the Capitol Complex expanded to the east. A few decades later, another Capitol expansion—and the related widening of Forster Street—removed most of the rest of the primarily African-American neighborhood. Meanwhile, Agnes was just the final blow to Shipoke, which already had been cut to ribbons by the expansion of I-83, so that, today, only the rump of this once-sprawling neighborhood remains.
Uptown, the breakdown was slower but just as complete. Over decades, the loss of people, the decline of industry and the neglect by property owners turned vibrant streets of houses, businesses, hotels and nightclubs into block after block of nothing.
And what happened to such grand downtown buildings as the Penn-Harris Hotel, the Senate Theater and Keystone Hall? All fell to the wrecking ball.
So, Mother Nature wasn’t only to blame for Harrisburg’s downfall. That’s shared by the changing economy and politicians and by just regular people.
As I write this column, it’s a gorgeous, sunny summer day, so unlike the relentless rains of 45 years earlier. Bells ring from one of the many churches that line State Street. Streams of people walk past, returning to work, going to lunch, stopping for coffee. Tourists take pictures of the vista bookended by the state Capitol, the dome set off by deep blue skies and puffy white clouds.
With the city so busy and beautiful, I can’t help but be optimistic.
Harrisburg will never get back what it lost. The “real Shipoke” and the old 8th ward and Senate Theater are gone forever. They live on only in images—and in the memories of a dwindling number of people.
But we can fill in the blanks. The renewal of Harrisburg has begun, but there’s so much more to do, with empty lots and fields abundant in almost every neighborhood. With so much of this once-dense city still underbuilt and under–populated, Agnes can continue to claim victory.
As I watch people walk up from the riverfront, I think about the first settlers here, who came ashore not far from where I sit. They and their followers built Harrisburg from the ground up. It’s now up to us to take on their good work, marginalized by men and washed away by the waters.
Lawrance Binda is editor-in-chief of TheBurg.
