[2] Nicknamed "Main Street Mayor", Mowrer is credited with the preservation of Bethlehem's historic downtown business district, which has now become a major tourist attraction for the city.
[1] Mowrer enrolled at Dickinson College, but dropped out after a series of poor grades, which he attributed to too much time at fraternity parties.
[1] In 1960, Mowrer met his future wife, the former Mary Thaeler, a grad student and daughter of missionaries of the Moravian Church, on a blind date.
[1] Mayor Gordon Mowrer has been credited with the preservation of Bethlehem's historic downtown shopping district and its buildings.
During his tenure, Mowrer reversed a prevailing urban renewal trend in which older buildings were demolished and replaced with modern, 1970s era structures.
Downtown Bethlehem has grown into a major tourist and visitors attraction, a development which had been widely credited to Mowrer's efforts to preserve the neighborhood during the 1970s.
He worked as a part-time chaplain at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem for 28 years and held Young Life meeting, a nondenominational Christian ministry, at his home.
(Future Bethlehem Mayor John B. Callahan met his wife, Mafalda, at Mowrer's Young Life gatherings).
"[1] Gordon Mowrer died on July 19, 2016, of complications of Parkinson's disease at the Moravian Village nursing home in Bethlehem at the age of 80.