File:1915 - Allentown Corner Tavern.jpg

English: Throughout the Old Allentown area of the city, from Front to 12th Street, Union to about Whitehall Street, corner taverns were a common sight during the 19th and most of the 20th Century. The majority of these buildings still exist, mostly at street corners. They can be identified by the door at the corner of the building, or a large center door with two large windows on each side. These were social centers to the local residents, and in the 1950s, was where one could find the first television sets to watch primarily sports broadcasts on channels 3, 6 and 10 from Philadelphia.

This photograph from about 1915 shows a tavern from somewhere in the Old Allentown area, the bar with the bartender in the white shirt, perhaps a waiter and a customer standing in front. A Neuweiler's Purity Beer sign hangs on the back bar. On the right is a feature that would be not be found in other parts of the country, a cloth poster showing the words and gestures of the Schnitzelbank song, a popular sing-along in the Pennsylvania Dutch (German) dialect.

They went out of fashion in the 1970s/80s, although a few still exist serving local residents.