If you grew up in Berks County, you’ve probably heard it your whole life: Reading is the Pretzel Capital of the World. It’s on souvenir buttons, it’s in old Chamber of Commerce brochures, it’s in the way people from out of town talk [...]
When I was about eleven, my brother and I roamed our northeast Reading neighborhood collecting newspapers for recycling. We rigged our wooden wagon with tall side boards so we could heap it until it wobbled by day's end. Back home, we stacked the [...]
The site that would eventually become Berkshire Mall spent much of its existence as productive farmland, woven into the agricultural fabric of Berks County. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the area consisted of working farms where families cultivated the rolling Pennsylvania [...]
When the Berkshire Mall opened on February 10, 1970, it debuted a multi-level anchor lineup—Sears, Lit Brothers, and John Wanamaker—and a design that subtly played with height and sightlines. In its original plan, the mall incorporated an upstairs corridor that overlooked the central [...]
Berkshire Mall in Wyomissing sits at an inflection point after a turbulent 2024–2025. By late 2024 the borough, responding to recurring sinkholes in travel lanes, secured a court-backed agreement that fenced off unstable sections of the parking fields and restricted traffic to prevent [...]
There are certain places that, though gone, remain etched in memory—not for their architecture or their menus alone, but for the way they captured the spirit of a community. Mary’s Dog House, which stood proudly at the northwest corner of St. Lawrence Avenue [...]
Few retail promotions have ever captured the public imagination like Boscov’s famous April tradition: “Did You Boscov Today?” What began as a tongue-in-cheek idea from Albert R. Boscov in 1970 grew into a shopping phenomenon that packed stores, flooded parking lots, inspired slogans, [...]
On February 10, 2017, Albert Boscov left this world as he had lived in it—sharing love. His final words to his wife, Eunice, were “Eunie, I love you,” capping nearly six decades of partnership. For many, this tender farewell summed up the character [...]
Pizza Italia at 1528 North 14th Street has anchored its block for more than half a century, the kind of neighborhood place where Albright students, nearby families, and Little League teams all learned the rhythm of a hot pizza pie sliding from the [...]
In the late 1930s, a little tin shack tucked by the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks at Front & Court Streets became one of Reading’s most beloved seasonal landmarks: the Orange Car. It was introduced to Reading by the Austin family—Florida citrus growers who, hit [...]
