Until 1964 the most familiar structure in West Reading was the West Reading Hotel on the north side of the Penn Ave. between 5th and 6th. Below: West Reading Hotel, northeast corner of Sixth and Penn Ave. The three-story structure had [...]
Film of City Park, Penn's Common, 1929 showing old bandstand and prison. Water-Works, Prison, and Fairgrounds Reading City Park at the head of Penn Street was set apart as early as 1749 by John and Richard Penn as public commons that [...]
Michael Brecht, (1732-1814), the third son of an emigrant, came to Reading in January 1752, the year Berks County was established, and built a simple dwelling on lot No. 391 as stipulated in the land patent of July 16, 1752. The lot, 60 [...]
Around 1939 the white facade Post Office at the Southeast corner of 5th and Washington Streets was constructed. The present post office replaced another post office located at the same corner. Erected in 1889, the turreted brick and limestone edifice was constructed [...]
Where the Reading, Perkiomen and Philadelphia Turnpike (now Perkiomen Avenue) intersects Penn Street, there once stood a wall with a Stone Heart in the south face of the stone wall. The wall was about forty feet east of North Eleventh Street. Below: [...]
The word "Schuylkill" is of Dutch origin. History has it that the first European to voyage up the Schuylkill was a man named Arendt Corssen of the Dutch East Indies Company. The river itself wasn't easy to find, for the bulrushes were in [...]
A farm belonging to Michael Haak once encompassed about 229 acres in East Reading beginning at a point what is now Thirteenth and Chestnut streets on the west and going as far east as Nineteenth street. On the north the farm was bounded [...]
Ground was broken for the former Berkshire Hotel, Northwest corner of Fifth and Washington Streets, Reading, PA, on the 16th day of December, 1913. Construction work began the next day. Two months were lost, however, due to extreme cold weather, which means that [...]
One of the first business places in Reading was the store of Conrad Weiser at a little crossroads we now know as Fifth and Penn streets in Reading. Weiser moved to the Tulpehocken area in Pennsylvania in 1729, erecting a house upon a [...]
The Madison building was erected between 1926 and 1927 as the Metropolitan Edison building. The Metropolitan Edison Co. (MECO) began acquiring dwellings on the south side of Washington Street between Madison Avenue and Fourth streets in 1923. Construction of the building began in [...]
