One Of The Largest Cities In Central Pennsylvania, Altoona, Has A Unique History

Unlike most cities, Altoona was not built around a waterway and was one of the first cities to be built around something that could not be considered its own canal system. As a result, for many decades, Altoona was one of the most forward-thinking cities in the nation. Rather than the main part of town being built around the city's river, the two halves of the downtown were built around the railroads, with many of the older apartment buildings and houses from those early times still standing today. Altoona's history, however, began in 1848, when the growing Pennsylvania Railroad wanted a place along the Main Line to stop and repair their shops. That spot grew into the Altoona shops and eventually grew into what was once the fourth largest city in the state.

The rail shops of Altoona continued to be very busy with a flurry of activity among workers from the city's origins up until recent times. As recent as 1980 the rail shops were responsible for close to a quarter of the city's work force, but with a decline that began decades before, it was only a matter of time before the railroad industry became something that was a part of the past. Although the rail shops in Juniata continue to employ a few hundred workers, they do not enjoy the level of importance in Altoona that they had for much of the city's history. In this day and age, there is less focus on building the rail cars while much of what remains of our railroad industry is the building and repair of train engines, still providing a very important function for the world. However, despite the interstate highways and the aviation industries replacing many of the functions of the railroads, a system that allows a larger amount of freight to be transported than can be transported by air or by truck prevents the train from becoming obsolete. As a result, Altoona has no reason to ever fear that it will become a ghost town. As long as the railroads still exist, so will Altoona.

The railroads of Altoona quickly sprung up a city with a downtown of buildings that were, at the time, some of the tallest in Pennsylvania. Although the five and six story buildings around Altoona today are not that tall by today's standards, at one time, they matched Altoona's image of a forward thinking and progressive city. Built in an old-fashioned style, the downtown buildings are much taller than more modern buildings with the same amount of floors. For example, there is a three story building on 8th Avenue that is slightly taller than a modern, 8 floor apartment building that is located a few blocks away, on the other side of the railroad tracks. As a result of the railroads, the city continued to grow until the 1950s, when the interstate highway system slowly replaced the railroads as a preferred method of transport and the airplane replaced the train as a method of travel. Altoona's downtown took a little longer to show effects of the decline, due to the fact that the railroads continued to remain important, and Altoona's high status among railroad cities allowed them to remain important for a much longer time, still being vibrant and alive until the 1980s, and to some extent, until the mid-1990s, with some efforts today towards revitalization of Altoona's downtown being put in place. The thoughts behind the downtown revitalization are to fix up the downtown while it is still somewhat important, rather than waiting until it becomes so dead that you could roll a bowling ball down 11th Avenue and not hit anyone, which requires a lot more work. While it may not seem as urgent to repair the downtown, the idea is to keep it from becoming urgent.

Although the downtown of the city is seeing hard times and is the focus of many revitalization projects, the outskirts of the city are being built up at a rapid rate. On Business Route 220, in a portion of Altoona that is mostly near the edge of the city itself, there are a great many shopping centers, hotels, and other commercial centers including the Blair County Convention Center and the Logan Valley Mall.