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Reading Public Library

1763 establishments in PennsylvaniaBuildings and structures in Reading, PennsylvaniaCarnegie libraries in PennsylvaniaLibrary buildings completed in 1913Public libraries in Pennsylvania
Reading Public Library Main001
Reading Public Library Main001

The Reading Public Library (RPL) is the main public library of the City of Reading, Pennsylvania and the district library center (DLC) of Berks County. RPL's services and collections serve the City of Reading, its suburbs, greater Berks County, and beyond.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Reading Public Library (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Reading Public Library
Franklin Street, Reading

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N 40.333472222222 ° E -75.928333333333 °
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Reading Public Library

Franklin Street
19602 Reading
Pennsylvania, United States
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Reading Public Library Main001
Reading Public Library Main001
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Hotel Abraham Lincoln
Hotel Abraham Lincoln

The Hotel Abraham Lincoln is a historic building and former hotel in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania. Opened on May 23, 1930, the Lincoln was one of Reading's original nine grand hotels. The hotel was the last of the grand hotels to cease operations, doing so on November 1, 2016.The plans for the hotel were devised by the Reading Hotel Corporation in September 1928. William A. Sharp, vice president of the organization, was placed in charge of building the new hotel. New York architect William Lee Stoddart was hired to design the building, and the Honkin-Conkey Construction Company of Cleveland won the contract to build the hotel. Approximately $2 million was spent on the hotel prior to opening, with roughly half the cost going towards the construction of the building.A public contest was held to determine the name of the building, and the name of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, was selected. Part of the reasoning behind naming the building after the former president was due to the Lincoln family's connections to the Reading area, with Lincoln's grandfather, Captain Abraham Lincoln, having been born in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania pioneer Conrad Weiser was runner-up for the hotel's name.The Abraham Lincoln hotel was opened to the public with a weekend of activities that began on Friday, May 23, 1930. According to the Reading Times, the opening events were notably devoid of speeches, instead being opened "with fox trots and clapping of hands and murmurs of delight" that were characteristic of ceremonies from the Roaring Twenties, despite the hotel opening seven months after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. Upon opening, the hotel contained 300 rooms across 16 stories, making it one of the tallest buildings in the city. Guests could stay at the hotel for as low as $2.50 a night.The hotel is known for being the place where famous American composer and conductor John Philip Sousa died after suffering from heart failure in his hotel room on March 6, 1932. He had conducted a rehearsal of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" the previous day with the Reading's Ringgold Band as its guest conductor. The hotel was also the site of a visit from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who spoke from a balcony in the Lincoln's lobby. The Lincoln hotel is also the site that The Fabulous Moolah wrote in her autobiography that Andre the Giant drank 127 beers in a Reading, Pennsylvania, hotel bar and later passed out in the lobby. The staff could not move him and had to leave him there until he awoke. After facing financial difficulties in the 1980s, the hotel was closed for nearly a decade. When the building went under new ownership, it was renovated to "recapture the look the Lincoln had when it first opened" and was reopened in 1997. Around this time, several floors of the building were converted into apartments, with only 104 hotel rooms remaining. The hotel operated under the Wyndham Hotel Group until 2013.The Hotel Abraham Lincoln was briefly the city of Reading's only major hotel until the opening of the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Reading nearby. Within a year of the new DoubleTree opening, the Hotel Abraham Lincoln ceased operations on November 1, 2016, citing competition from the DoubleTree. The remaining 104 rooms were converted into around 50 apartments.The building was renovated in 2018 and is now used to house the Lincoln Tower Apartments, containing 97 luxury one and two bedroom apartments. Abe's Restaurant, along with a catering and wedding venue, remained on the lower levels.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 21, 2017.

Berks County Trust Company building
Berks County Trust Company building

The Berks County Trust Company is a historic building in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania. Originally constructed in 1909, the six-story building was home to a bank known as the Berks County Trust Company and was the second largest bank branch in Berks County. The building still contains the original 1909 bank vault from the York Safe and Lock Company used by the building's eponymous bank. The building had additions built onto it in 1923, 1964 and 1984.The building was later used to house the Meridian Bancorp Inc., which controlled 36 percent of the Berks County banking market and $11.8 billion in assets across the region at the start of the 1990s. However, leading into the turn of the century, the local economy of Reading began to decline and Meridian Bancorp began adding millions of dollars into its bad-debt reserves, in addition to selling its credit card, indirect auto-loan and title-insurance businesses. The building was vacated in the early 2010s, likely due to a greater amount of financial difficulties stemming from the Great Recession which greatly impacted the already economically declining city.The building was purchased in 2018 by the Shuman Development Group with approval from the Reading City Council. The organization began a major renovation and restoration project that was overseen by the National Park Service. In 2021, the restoration project received a $250,000 tax credit allocation and $11,000,000 in estimated construction expenditures from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. The restoration project seeks to convert the building into an office building with a food court in the main banking hall.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 27, 2019.

Santander Arena
Santander Arena

The Santander Arena (formerly known as the Sovereign Center) is a 7,160-seat multi-purpose arena, in Reading, Pennsylvania. It was built in 2001. The arena sits on the former site of the Astor Theater; one of several grand movie and theater palaces built in Reading in the early 20th century. Closed in 1975, the theater sat vacant for over two decades. In 1998, the Astor was demolished to make room for the Santander Arena. Early in construction, steps were taken to retain mementos of the Astor, including its ornate Art Deco chandelier and gates. These are on display and in use inside the arena corridors, allowing insight into the ambience of the former movie house. The Santander Arena is owned by the Berks County Convention Center Authority and managed by ASM Global. In 2000, the Rajah Shrine Theater was purchased, and after a thorough restoration and updating of the facilities was renamed the Sovereign Performing Arts Center. The Reading Eagle Theater is part of the complex. On October 13, 2013, the building's name was changed from Sovereign Center to Santander Arena.The arena is home to the Reading Royals ice hockey team in the ECHL as well as the Alvernia University Golden Wolves ice hockey team of the NCAA DIII. It was formerly home to the Reading Railers basketball team, the New York Majesty Lingerie Football League team, the Reading Rockets box lacrosse team, and the Reading Express indoor football team. The arena has hosted Jehovah's Witnesses District Conventions from 2005 to 2013 and will host the renamed Regional Conventions of Jehovah's Witnesses beginning in 2015.