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Nov 28, 2022 · Between 1840 and 1945, Reading became an industrial town. Steam powered the railways and new factories emerged, turning out huge numbers of machine-made goods. Reading’s appearance was transformed through the arrival of factories, ornate public buildings (including the Town Hall and Museum), and new homes for workers, all made from the distinctive local red brick.
Sep 23, 2021 · A sizeable portion of the immigrant population at this time was Irish, refugees of the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1850. Both Germany and Italy waged long wars of unification during the 1860’s. By 1870, 11.4% of Reading’s total population had been born outside the United States and over two thirds of these had been born in Germany.
Sep 24, 2021 · The building associations built most of the houses of the 1870’s, 1880’s and 1890’s. Due to their financial programs, more people owned their homes in Reading than anywhere else and the City gained the distinction of being one of the best places in the United States for a working-class family to live.
Summary. Between 1880 and 1929, industrialization and urbanization expanded in the United States faster than ever before. Industrialization, meaning manufacturing in factory settings using machines plus a labor force with unique, divided tasks to increase production, stimulated urbanization, meaning the growth of cities in both population and physical size.
- Reading History
- Bootleggers
- Racketeers
- Reading Timeline
From colonization to revitalization, from the American Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, from a hotbed of bootleggers to a capital of organized crime, the history of Reading has always been colorful. Reading riflemen were a great asset to George Washington during the Revolutionary War, after which Reading was a trading and manufacturing cent...
In 1922, Reading bootlegger Abe Minker set in motion a series of events that led to a hijacking, a re-hijacking and his own conviction for perjury. His first mistake was paying to have a delivery truck carrying barrels of alcohol hijacked before it reached Reading so he wouldn’t have to pay full price for the delivery. His second mistake was underp...
Abe Minker’s control of Reading’s rackets began in earnest with the 1955 election of Mayor Daniel F. McDevitt, a city councilman who owned a North Sixth Street bar next to Minker’s slot machine store. When he took office, McDevitt declared the machines illegal and ordered them out of bars. One operator of a gambling machine business reported that m...
1733:The Finney family builds the area’s first house near present-day Third and Franklin streets. The log cabin known as Widow Finney’s at Fourth and Cherry streets was built decades later. 1748:The town of Reading is laid out. 1750:Conrad Weiser establishes Reading’s first store near Fifth and Penn streets. 1762:31 licenses are issued to taverns i...
He never came back to Reading, but no citizen of Reading can think without a quickening pulse of appreciation of the shy, kindly man, toiling in his cabinet at Westminster over the voluminous directions for the town whose interest tugged so closely at his heart strings. This article appeared in The Historical Review of Berks County, October 1944.
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1888 - a terrible calamity. the floor of a newly built church gives way. over one hundred people injured, some fatally. the wildest excitement prevails and five thousand people become panic stricken but cooler heads finally rescue the unfortunate men, woman and children from the wreck - the cause of the accident - list of injured.
