I booked a motel on the edge of State College. Coming in on U.S. 322 Business, a heavily trafficked four-lane road, there is the typical jumble of shopping centers and fast food restaurants, before one hits the city limits.
It was late and I was hungry, but I was determined to get to the main part of town. College and Beaver Avenues are the one-way pair through town, marked as East and West although they seem to travel more North and South. Meters being free on Sunday (hint to Morgantown Parking Authority) I was able to find a spot to park on Beaver. I found a Turkish restaurant called "Penn Pide" and thought I would go for exotic. "Pide,", probably similar to "pita," is a kind of flatbread, in this case with cheese and chicken. They made it on the spot, which took some time, and it was enough for three people to eat. I finished it off.
I found a free weekly newspaper, and was delighted to find that last week, three liberal Democrats were elected to the borough (Pennsylvanian for "town") council. Their interests include diversity and inclusion, competing with the nearby suburbs for commercial growth and the difficulty of annexing more land to the borough. In Pennsylvania, there is no unincorporated, everything is part of a borough or township.
The weather was cooler than in Morgantown by a few degrees. I had a sweater and a coat, and I put the coat on to walk around Penn State's campus. It's big, but contiguous, lots of trees, all labeled by species, and some when they were planted. They have a dairy farm, and a building called The Creamery, where they sell their own ice cream.
I avoided going Saturday to Sunday because there was a football game, and they have a larger stadium than WVU. It was also cold Saturday; Sunday was warmer. There were still crowds of people. I didn't figure that it would homecoming weekend, but it was. At the Creamery, people were lined up in 38 F. weather to get ice cream, and although it was close to three and sunset was 4:59 (eight minutes earlier than Morgantown) and I was stuffed with Turkish food, I waited to get a cup of Alumni Swirl, vanilla ice cream with blueberry swirl and mocha chips, a huge portion for $3.95, and delicious.
I walked around campus and through College Heights, a pretty historic neighborhood. People were out raking and bagging leaves. In my youth in suburban Baltimore, people burned piles of leaves, but that has been stopped in most places for air quality reasons. I used to like the smell of burning leaves.
I didn't find all six National Register places in State College, but I found four, plus a Reform synagogue and a pretty mid-century modern house. I was back at the motel before five, and crashed for over an hour.
I wasn't hungry- I'd had two days of calories, salt, sugar and fat for lunch, but I thought I should eat something. I looked online for a place to eat and found there is a Wegman's just outside of town, not far from my hotel. I went there and ate some greens, tomatoes, a bit of salmon, a garlic roll and some cut-up fruit, mostly pineapple. It didn't seem like much, but it was enough. I noted that most of the big stores are outside the borough limits, surrounded by acres of parking and impossible to walk to. Wegman's was in a development called "Colonnade" which had office buildings that looked like oversized Renaissance Italian palazzos with columns. My heart sank. This was the real commercial hub of Centre County.
For Monday morning, I planned to go to Bellefonte, a smaller borough than State College and the county seat.I found Philipsburg on a map, an even smaller, isolated town on a river, with a historic district. I started the morning there. It has a real downtown, but like so many places in this part of the world, not much is going on there. There is a movie theater, which has one showing in the evenings. I drove from Philipsburg through Black Moshannon State Park and State Forest, finding the town of Unionville on my way to Bellefonte. There is a park on a river in the center of Bellefonte, and the main street rises to a war monument and the classical-style county courthouse. I walked around, snapped a few photos and visited the library, in a little mid-century building off the main square downtown. The librarian told me it had been a grocery store at one time, and they wanted more space. I bought a Hanif Kureishi novel for Joe for $1.00 at the library book sale. It was already after noon, so I looked for a place to eat, finding a Chinese buffet place a half-block from the courthouse. I tried not to overeat. By 1 P.M. I was back at the car ready to drive home.
According to Google Maps, it is 180 miles from Morgantown to State College, 189 from Morgantown to Bellefonte, about 10 miles between Bellefonte and State College. Philipsburg is 23 miles from State College and 29 from Bellefonte, the way I went on a back road.
Centre County has one and a half times the population of Mon County, but in three times the area. Morgantown has three-quarters the population of State College in twice the area. Here's the 2010 Census breakout, rounded from Wikipedia:
Centre County: 154,000
Monongalia County: 96,000
State College: 42,000
Morgantown: 31,000
Bellefonte: 6,000
Philipsburg: 3,000
Centre County is certainly scenic, and looks to be more upscale and urban than Monongalia, although much of the county is agricultural, park land or mountains. I was happy to see more retail options, but sorry that they are located out of the main cities and lost in a jumble of signs and parking lots.
Here are the pics, which came out in a different order than I took them. My error, I guess. Also, some of my pics disappeared from my phone. I have no idea why.
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| Brockerhoff Hotel, built 1866, remodeled in the 1880s, Bellefonte |
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| Black Moshannon Park |
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| High Street, Bellefonte |
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| Centre County Courthouse, War Memorial, and statue of Andrew Curtin, the governor, from Bellefonte, who served during the Civil War |
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| Bellefonte Historic District |
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| Union Church, 1820, remodeled 1842, now a museum, Philipsburg |
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| rental bike stand at Penn State |
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| College Heights Historic District, mostly early 20th century, State College |
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| An interesting house, next door to Camelot, in State College |
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| One of the buildings in the "Ag Hill" area of Penn State, from the original land grant era in the 19th century |
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| "Camelot," 1922, State College. A window is boarded up, but someone may be living there. |
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| Holmes-Foster-Highlands Historic District, much of the area southeast of Penn State. Highlands ia a more élite area than this |
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| Old Main, 1930, Penn State campus |
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