Stand on the Penn Avenue bridge where the Borough of West Reading meets the City of Reading, and you straddle one of the starkest divides in American urban life. To the west lies a walkable, thriving Main Street district — boutique shops, farm-to-table [...]
How Reading, Pennsylvania Became a Testing Ground for Every Federal Urban Policy—and Paid the Price In 1934, a Reading clothier named Ferruccio Iacone did something that would have been nearly impossible just a year earlier: he walked into a bank and secured a [...]
In the early 1970s, the city of Reading embarked on a transformational journey to modernize its traffic patterns as part of its broader urban renewal initiative. This effort, backed by years of planning and discussion, sought to align the city's traffic flow with [...]
Penn Street for many years was a vibrant thoroughfare where people enjoyed shopping. Theaters, various types of commercial establishments, and public events attracted thousands to the occasionally crowded Penn Square. In addition to experiencing foot pain, consumers endured the nearly imperceptible ascent from Third [...]
During the 1970s, there was an uncommon level of consensus in Reading politics; almost everyone agreed that downtown Reading was once the best location on Earth. Obviously, by that point, the downtown area had been transformed into parking lots as building after building had [...]
