In the fall of 1970, my senior year at Lehigh, I heard about a waterfalls near an S-bend in the Lehigh river, so of course my Psi U brothers & I drove up to what we later learned was Glen Onoko. As we passed thru Jim Thorpe, we saw the sign to the Asa Packer Mansion, of which in 4 years at Lehigh we’d never heard, so of course we had to check it out;-)
And right next to Asa’s cast-iron farmhouse we discovered the Harry Packer Mansion. We had no idea who Harry was (I didn’t get to tour the Asa mansion until much later) but the architecture just spoke to me: Asa made the money, Harry blew it…which isn’t too far off the mark;-) Later, I visited the Harry mansion while it was being worked on, and on the 3rd floor found a box of Lionel toy train tracks…and I imagined Harry growing up overlooking his father’s domain, controlling his toy trains below;-)
Those mansions and the scenes on the road to Mauch Chunk inspired me to make a film about Lehigh’s origins & the contradictions of 19th century capitalism & late 20th century decay: Railroad Gothic.