Category: Culture
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Chef’s Inn – Sinking Spring | Monday Mystery
Read more: Chef’s Inn – Sinking Spring | Monday MysteryUPDATE: This building sat on the lot that the now abandoned bank building sits on next to McDonalds. In the 40s/50s it changed names to the “Blue Lantern Inn” and finally the “Piccadilly Restaurant“. It was demolished to make way for the construction of the People’s Trust City Bank in 1961. Does anyone remember this…
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The Trexler Mansion / Reading Elks Lodge 115
Read more: The Trexler Mansion / Reading Elks Lodge 115The mansion that sits at 5th and Franklin streets was built in 1869 by a man named Horatio Trexler. He used the home as a private residence for his family until his death on March 19, 1900 at 87 years of age. After his passing his two surviving children, daughters Mary Ann Eckert and Emma…
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Fatal Plane Crash at Reading Airport – On this Day, June 5th 1969
Read more: Fatal Plane Crash at Reading Airport – On this Day, June 5th 1969On Wednesday, June 5th, 1969 the Reading Air Show was at the Reading Municipal Airport. Shortly after 6:30 pm, Capt. Richard Schram was performing a routine he had done for 23 years involving him pretending to be a professor who high-jacks a plane without knowing how to fly it. A few minutes into the routine…
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The Luden Family & the Ghost of Bon Air
Read more: The Luden Family & the Ghost of Bon AirLast summer I wrote an extensive article on Central Catholic High School as a part of a greater “Defunct Schools of Berks” series. It has been a decade since the merger of Central Catholic and Holy Name into Berks Catholic. So it is time to dive into some tangible research to answer a few of…
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Happy Mothers Day
Read more: Happy Mothers DayHappy Mothers Day to all the Moms, Grandmoms and Great-Grandmoms out there. I have been blessed to come from a long maternal line of strong women who filled those aforementioned roles for me. This Mothers day is the first without one making it bittersweet. Its been nearly 4 months since my Grandmother died unexpectedly. There…
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May Day Tradition
Read more: May Day TraditionMay Day was a spring celebration tradition amongst public school kids and teenagers during the mid-20th century in Berks. The day would be marked by outside activities, singing, dancing and the crowning of a May Day Queen and court, similar to homecoming today. It seems like May Day peaked as a tradition in the 1940s…
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Reading Brewing Co Closes – On this day 1976
Read more: Reading Brewing Co Closes – On this day 1976On this day in 1976 the Reading Brewing Co. shuttered permanently. Employee’s cited miss-management for the bankruptcy of the company. Management blamed industry giants killed the small-guy brewers like Reading. Maybe a little bit of both are true. All local breweries that were once popular met their demise around this time due to heat from…
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Farview School Fire
Read more: Farview School FireOn February 23rd 1949 Farview Elementary school in Kenhorst was heavily damaged by fire. It was built in the 1930s. The school had a student population of 485 and was part of the greater Cumru Township School system. Aid was offered by neighboring Shillington and Reading school districts. Classes were held in Oakbrook and Millmont…
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New Restaurant Debuts on Penn Square – On this Day
Read more: New Restaurant Debuts on Penn Square – On this DayOn this day in 1969 Reading’s very own space needle restaurant debuts in the center of Penn Square. The restaurant’s tenure was short-lived however, as by April 2nd it disconnected completely and took off for outer space. In 1968 – Redevelopment of downtown Reading returns the city to its, uh, roots.
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Grand Blvd – Wyomissing’s Casualty of the Bypass
Read more: Grand Blvd – Wyomissing’s Casualty of the BypassI 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…
