High above Reading on the Mount Penn ridgeline, the William Penn Memorial Fire Tower mixes postcard views with moonlit lore. The 120-foot stone-and-concrete sentinel opened on October 28, 1939 as a Works Progress Administration project, replacing an earlier lookout near the Gravity Railroad [...]
At 11th and Greenwich Streets in Reading, Pennsylvania, there’s a brick building most people today recognize as an apartment house. If you didn’t know its past, you might walk by without a second thought. The façade still has that late 19th-century civic look [...]
“Stoneman Willie,” a local legend and resident of the Theo C. Auman Funeral Home in Reading, PA since 1895 will finally be laid to rest following a service and burial. His mummified body has lain in the Theo C. Auman Funeral Home, 247 [...]
After glancing at the old Post Office at the Southeast corner of 5th and Washington Streets you may realize the building was the only one of its type and style in this city. Daniel Ermentrout was congressman for this district, when a federal [...]
Kershner's Ice Cream Parlor was the favorite stopping off place for Reading's old timers for the better part of 50 years. The business was started initially about 1895 by the late Jonas Sharman. He sold it about eight years later to Andrew Kershner. [...]
A unique event to occur in Berks County during prohibition was the day "heaven-sent" beer rained down on South 9th Street. The Reading Brewing Company had placed a $50,000 bond with the U.S. Treasury Department in order to store the beer that it [...]
