File:1961 - Weaver Coal Company Matchbook Allentown Pa.jpg

English: Weaver Coal Company Matchbook 1008 Sumner Ave Allentown Pa

Well into the 1960s, Allentown was heated by coal, and much of it came from the Weaver Coal Company on Sumner Avenue. Along Sumner Avenue was a spur line of the Lehigh Valley Railroad called the West End Branch. The railroad would run coal cars up to the Weaver offices and dump the coal into various bins made of concrete. From these concrete coal bins, the coal would be loaded into coal trucks that went to the homes and businesses of the city, and dump usually a half-ton or a ton of coal though a basement window that had a home coal pile. People would then shovel the coal from their home pile into their coal furnaces in the basements several times a day.

By the early 1970's, most of the buildings and homes of Allentown had converted from Coal to other energy sources, such as natural gas or home heating oil which Weaver branched into, and remains in bushiness to this day delivering home fuel oil. The concrete coal bins remain, a relic of the past at the Weaver yard on Sumner Avenue today.