Category: Aerial

  • Lamm / Speicher Farm

    This is another installment in the “Before Blue Marsh” series, where I explore the remains of various properties that were razed in the 1970s to make way for the Blue Marsh Lake Project. See more here. My ongoing Blue Marsh mapping project led me to the remains of the Speicher farm which sat off of…

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  • Staudt’s Justa Road Farm

    This is another installment in the “Before Blue Marsh” series, where I explore the remains of various properties that were razed in the 1970s to make way for the Blue Marsh Lake Project. See more here. At the end of Justa Road in Lower Heidelberg Township stood a farm that surprisingly stayed in one family for…

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  • Reading Airport’s Original 1939 Hangar

    Berks County’s desire for an airport began in the wake of World War I. By the late 1920s pioneering pilots like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart thrust aviation into the spotlight. Capitalizing on this popularity, small airfields like Whander Field in Ontelaunee Township popped up in 1927 and Madeira Field in Muhlenberg Township in 1929.…

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  • How the Fairgrounds almost ended up in West Wyomissing

    The earliest years of the Reading Fair were held at City Park and then a plot on North 11th street. During the early 1910s the Berks County Agricultural Society was tired of leasing the land at North 11th Street and wanted a more permanent location they could call their own. On April 3rd, 1914 it…

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  • Centre Park Historic District

    Spring has sprung, everything is coming back to life and in my opinion it is the most wonderful time of year. I went to visit Centre Park Historic District to capture some of what I find to be the most beautiful residential architecture within the city limits.  Some of the most prominent mansions on Centre…

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  • Charles Evans Cemetery

    In 1846 Charles Evans donated the first 25 acres that became the cemetery. His goal was to create a nonsecular place of rest for Reading’s citizens that was removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. The site sits one mile north of Reading’s city center, which was in the mid-19th century safely rural…

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  • Warren Street Bypass | 1959 and Today

    Before the Reading Motor Inn, or Berkshire Mall, there was sprawling farmland and a highway system that was still being integrated into the rural roads of Spring Township. On this day in 1959 the Warren Street Bypass reopened after the construction depicted below closed the roadway for an extended period. The bridge branching off from…

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  • Introducing the Nostalgia Map

    I have created a map of all the places and events I have written about on this site for your visual perusal. This map can be found anytime in the main navigation under “Nostalgia Map”.

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  • Grand Blvd – Wyomissing’s Casualty of the Bypass

    I had previously written a post about the effect the construction of the bypass had on West Wyomissing. The stories about house-moving intrigued me due to the fact that my mother and her family lived on Girard Avenue at that time and got to witness the spectacle firsthand in the early 70s. Yet there was…

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  • Haunted Fairgrounds Square Mall

    The Fairgrounds Square Mall has itself become a ghost. It was just demolished over what will inevitably go down as the infamous Summer of 2020. The mall was on its last leg for years, and it only seemed fitting that it would meet its end in such a year as this one has been. However,…

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Berks Nostalgia