The Victor Emmanuel II Beneficial Society was founded in 1915 by twenty-one men of Italian heritage who joined together for the purpose of aiding members in need due to sickness or death, and to participate in the moral and social improvement of the [...]
In the early 1900s, when hosiery mogul Jacob Nolde acquired the land on which Nolde Forest Environmental Education Center now stands, there was only one white pine tree growing among the grassy meadow. He hired an Austrian forester to create an entire forest [...]
The Goshenhoppen registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths are the sacramental records of the Catholic mission at Goshenhoppen, now Bally, in Washington Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Beginning in 1741, the year the mission was founded, and extending, with some gaps, to 1819, these [...]
As a number of immigrants from Eastern Europe continued to migrate to the shores of the United States in the early pan of the twentieth century, a group of people of Polish descent sought to establish a second Polish parish in Reading on [...]
Solomon Boscov was born the son of Molshe and Vassa Boscov, he left his native Russia and immigrated to the United States in 1911 with only about $12 in his pocket. His first endeavor was peddling lemonade on the streets of Washington, D. [...]
The Reading Foundry, at 7th & Chestnut Streets, once housed the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad heavy duty shops prior to 1904. Below: The Reading Foundry, at 7th & Chestnut Streets. The construction of the railway in 1836 immediately stimulated enterprises of various kinds, [...]
On Decembers, 1928, Catherine Burns opened The Rosedale Variety Shop at 1505 Elizabeth Avenue. The business was quite successful, in no small measure due to Catherine's outgoing nature and well-chosen stock. In 1950, the old store was razed and replaced by one three [...]
After Reading was sketched out by Thomas Penn in 1748, most of the development centered around Market Square (present day Penn Street) and west in almost a straight line to the Schuylkill River. For the next 100 years, development stayed mostly in that [...]
When Thomas Penn laid out the town in 1748, he chose the site of an old Indian ford on the Schuylkill River. The ford served an old Indian trail which had become one of the major routes north and west from Philadelphia. Penn’s [...]
Roadside America, known as the “world’s greatest indoor miniature village,” announced November 21, 2020 that it is permanently closing after 85 years in business. Roadside America Corporate was unable to disclose the buyer or the buyer’s plans for the property but said that [...]
