When Bruce Haines ’67 was living in Pittsburgh and working for the U.S. Steel Corporation, he returned regularly to Bethlehem to visit family, friends, and his alma mater. Whenever he and his wife, Jo Ann, came back, they made sure to stay at the Hotel Bethlehem.
Over time, those visits transformed the hotel into something more than a place to stay.
Checking In, Coming Home
“The hotel was like our second home,” Haines says. “We loved it, and we knew that someday we wanted to retire around here.”
For years, that was their routine: working in Pittsburgh, returning to Bethlehem when they could, staying at the hotel, and enjoying the vibrant shops and restaurants that lined Main Street.
Then, in 1998, the future of the Hotel Bethlehem was thrown into doubt. After the Decker family, the hotel’s longtime owners, declared bankruptcy, plans developed to convert the building’s upper floors into senior living facilities and the lower floors into dormitories for women attending Moravian College.
Knowing Haines’ connection to the property, Robert Decker gave him a call to explain what was happening. Haines was devastated.
To him, the Hotel Bethlehem was more than a historic building. It was a gathering place, a refuge, and a vital part of downtown Bethlehem.
If the hotel was lost, he believed that downtown would lose something important, too.
A Hail Mary at Goodman
So he got to work.
The best place to rally a team? A Lehigh football game, of course.
“We talked things over in the stands of a game,” Haines says. “I knew I couldn’t do it myself, so we started figuring out how many people we’d need to put forth the money to make this work.”
Together with his friend Bill Trotter ’67, Haines assembled a group of 13 Lehigh and Lafayette alumni who purchased the property under Christmas City Hotel LLC in 1999.
Their goal was to preserve the hotel’s character while ensuring its future. After extensive renovations, the Hotel Bethlehem reopened a year later, blending modern improvements with the charm and legacy that had made it a local landmark.
For Haines, the building holds decades of memories.
He can still point to the spot where, as a Lehigh sophomore, he sat with his parents and told them he was thinking about changing majors from engineering to business like many of his fraternity brothers.
But, as Haines says, “My parents reminded me that they didn’t raise a quitter.”
Keeper of the Keys
That perseverance would prove valuable years later when the hotel faced another challenge: the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many hospitality businesses, the Hotel Bethlehem endured a difficult period, but Haines and his team worked tirelessly to keep it thriving.
Their efforts have paid off. Last year, the Hotel Bethlehem earned its fifth consecutive designation as the nation’s Best Historic Hotel/Resort in USA Today’s Readers’ Choice Awards.
That recognition carries special meaning for Haines.
“I don’t have any children, so my staff are my family,” Haines says. “My wife runs The Shoppe here since she was a fashion buyer for Gimbel's when we met — this is our community. I’m proud when I can promote a young person and see them grow.”
More than two decades after helping save the hotel, Haines remains committed to the place that once felt like a second home.
And fittingly, he says, its most important customer is still the institution that first connected him to Bethlehem — Lehigh.
