Lost and Found

Written by in the Lost and Found category and the Winter 1995 issue Topics in this article: Italy, Japanese, John Dempwolf, Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsylvania German), Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Reading, York
Lost and Found features brief profiles of historic landmarks and structures, one lost and one saved.

Lost

Completed in 1878 and opened for business the following year, York’s City Market House was designed by the city’s preeminent architec­tural firm of J. A. Dempwolf. The sprawling structure’s edi­fice was constructed of pat­terned bricks and trimmed with decorative stone; its tower was designed to recall the dis­tinctive tower of the Palazzo Vecho in Florence, Italy. In 1913, the tower – which origi­nally soared ninety-five feet into the air – was struck by lightning, and the upper por­tion was removed. Through the years business dwindled and the City Market House share­ holders decided in September 1963 to sell the historic build­ing. It was demolished the fol­lowing month to make way for an automobile service station.

 

Found

The Pagoda atop Mount Penn, which overlooks the City of Reading, is truly an unusual landmark for a pre­dominantly Pennsylvania German community. Patterned after a main tower of a seven­teenth century Japanese battle castle (rather than on a pago­da), it was built by William Abbott Witman Sr., to camou­flage a scar that his quarrying operation had caused. The Pagoda was begun in 1905 and completed three years later at a cost of fifty thousand dollars. Owned since 1911 by the City of Reading, it was part of a picturesque mountain top resort, most of which was destroyed by fire in 1923. The rehabilitation of the building won a historic preservation award from the PHMC in 1994.