Allen­town in Lehigh Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia —  part of the Lehigh Val­ley, a region of the Appalachi­an Great Val­ley — is the third largest city in the state and the two-hun­dred and thir­ty-third largest city in the Unit­ed States. With a pop­u­la­tion of 121,000 as of the last cen­sus and is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered the fastest grow­ing city in the state. The largest of the region’s three cities — which also include Beth­le­hem and Eas­t­on — it makes up rough­ly fif­teen per­cent of the Lehigh Val­ley met­ro­pol­i­tan area’s 822,000 cit­i­zens. 60 miles north-north­west of Philadel­phia, 75 miles west of New York, as well as 60 miles south-south­west of Scran­ton and 80 miles east of Har­ris­burg, Allen­town and the sur­round­ing region are cen­tral­ly sit­u­at­ed as what was once called the “Elbow of the North­east,” with near­ly 30 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with­in a 100 miles.

Despite the sheer num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing with­in a stone’s throw, as part of the Bos-Wash Cor­ri­dor mega­lopo­lis, Allen­town itself is a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed 18 square mile island with­in a sea of both con­ven­tion­al sub­urbs and exten­sive for­est and farm­land, mak­ing it and the region that rarest of places — one which has all the advan­tages and plea­sures of the city, on the one hand, and with­in only min­utes dis­solves into bucol­ic coun­try­side, on the other.

The region is an excit­ing cen­ter for artis­tic and cul­tur­al expres­sion, host­ing the Allen­town Arts Muse­um, the Alter­na­tive Gallery and Arts­Fest, the Baum School of Art, the Allen­town Sym­pho­ny at Miller Sym­pho­ny Hall, the Munic­i­pal Opera Com­pa­ny, Art­sQuest, Civic The­ater, the Bal­let Guild of the Lehigh Val­ley, Com­mu­ni­ty Music School, two cham­ber orches­tras and sev­er­al fine choirs, includ­ing the Bach Choir of Beth­le­hem, and six con­cert bands, includ­ing the Allen­town Band, estab­lished in 1829. The Allen­town Library, with an annu­al cir­cu­la­tion of over a mil­lion books, is one of the largest in the state.

Allen­town boasts a park sys­tem rat­ed as one of the best in the nation. 2,000 acres
of pub­lic land have been devel­oped into an impres­sive park sys­tem with twen­ty parks, four park­ways, eight swim­ming pools, and two restrict­ed use, or “pas­sive,” parks. West Park, a few blocks from the House of Bond in Allentown’s Old West End, hosts reg­u­lar band con­certs dur­ing the sum­mer. A near­by, nation­al­ly award-win­ning rose gar­den fea­tures over 100 vari­eties. And the Union Ter­race Park fea­tures an earth­en and stonework amphithe­ater built by the Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion in the 1930s.

Estab­lished with­in the ter­ri­to­ry of the indige­nous Lenni Lenape tribe, Allen­town was ini­tial­ly set­tled by Ger­mans with lat­er waves of immi­grants from south­ern and cen­tral Europe, the British Isles, and more recent­ly Latin Amer­i­ca, Asia, and the Mid­dle East. Latin Amer­i­cans make up the fastest grow­ing seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, with a major­i­ty of Puer­to Rican and Domini­can ances­try, fol­lowed by Colom­bians and Ecuado­ri­ans. The third largest pop­u­la­tion of Syr­i­an Amer­i­cans in the Unit­ed States live in Allen­town, a com­mu­ni­ty dat­ing back 130 years to the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

As of 2020, the total minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tion of the city was report­ed to be 65%, with 52% His­pan­ic, 10% Black, and 2.5% Asian.