This glowing red pagoda above Reading, PA started as a cover-up and became a county icon

Reading’s Japanese landmark rewrites the rulebook

You’re driving through southeastern Pennsylvania, rolling past farmland and brick row houses, and then you look up. On top of a mountain, lit red against the night sky, sits a seven-story Japanese pagoda.

It has been there since 1908. It started as a cover-up for a quarry scar, nearly became a luxury resort, and ended up the most recognized symbol in Berks County.

The story of how it got there is almost as strange as the building itself.

A 72-foot Japanese castle on a Pennsylvania cliff

Mount Penn rises 886 feet above sea level, and the Pagoda stands right at the edge of it, about 620 feet above the city of Reading below. The seven-story structure runs 72 feet tall, 50 feet long, and 28 feet wide.

At the base, the stone walls are five feet thick, tapering to two feet by the second story.

From the upper levels, you can see roughly 30 miles in every direction, across rooftops, farmland, and the rolling ridgelines of Berks County.

One man’s quarry mess became Reading’s crown jewel

Around the turn of the 20th century, William Abbott Witman Sr. bought 10 acres on Mount Penn to quarry stone. The work tore up the mountainside, and the people living below were not happy about it.

So Witman commissioned a Japanese-style pagoda to cover the damage, with the design pulled from the Pagoda of Nagoya Castle in Japan.

Father-and-son contractors James and Charles Matz built it using stone from the quarry itself. The building was done in 1908, three years before Witman’s resort plans collapsed entirely.

How a failed resort became city property

Witman had plans for more than just the Pagoda. He wanted a full luxury resort on the mountaintop, with a hotel and restaurant to go along with the building. None of it came together.

In 1911, businessman Jonathan Mould and his wife Julia stepped in, donated the Pagoda and the land around it to the City of Reading, and that was that. The city has owned it ever since.

The National Register of Historic Places added it in 1972, and the Foundation for the Reading Pagoda says it remains the only structure of its kind in the United States.

The 1739 Japanese bell that crossed the Suez Canal

At the top of the Pagoda hangs a bronze bell cast in 1739 in Obata, Mie Prefecture, Japan.

Witman bought it in 1907 through a New York import agency, and it arrived in Reading on May 5 of that year after traveling through the Suez Canal. The bell originally belonged to a Buddhist temple.

Inscribed on it in old Japanese characters are the names of 48 donors and, according to the Berks History Center, a verse described as a prophecy about the end of time.

In the 1990s, a Japanese exchange student at nearby Albright College traced the bell back to the city of Hanno, Japan. Visitors from Hanno later came to Reading and saw it for themselves.

Sunset from the edge of Mount Penn

The Pagoda sits on the southern end of Mount Penn, right at the rim of the cliff.

On a clear day, you can see the Schuylkill River valley threading through the landscape, with farmland spreading out beyond it and ridge after ridge fading into the distance. The grounds are open and free, with parking at the top.

Come in fall and the hillsides around you run red, orange, and gold. Stay until dusk and you’ll watch the city lights come on 620 feet below.

The winding road up has its own reward

Getting to the Pagoda is part of the trip. The road up Mount Penn twists through tight curves and tree-lined stretches, climbing steadily from the streets of Reading.

At the top, Skyline Drive runs the length of the ridge, connecting the Pagoda to overlooks and picnic spots along the way.

The stone wall that lines the road went up in 1939, built by workers in the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

There’s no fee to drive it, and several pullouts give you places to stop and take in the valley.

The 120-foot fire tower with 60-mile views

About a mile from the Pagoda along Skyline Drive, the William Penn Memorial Fire Tower rises 120 feet in stone and concrete.

Built in 1939, it served as both a tourist draw and a working fire observation post, staffed by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry until 1988.

Climb to the top on a clear day and you can see Blue Mountain, the Delaware Water Gap, and Valley Forge, all from one spot. The tower keeps limited hours, so check with Pagoda-Skyline Inc. before you make the drive up.

40 miles of trails through the mountain forest

The Mount Penn Preserve wraps around the Pagoda and covers more than 1,000 acres of forested land. Inside it, more than 40 miles of trails run through the trees, ranging from paved loops to rocky singletrack.

Hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders all share the network.

A popular route climbs from Antietam Lake up through the woods to the summit, passing the Fire Tower and the Pagoda along the way.

You’ll also come across the ruins of Kuechler’s Roost, an 1882 wine cellar, and the foundations of old resort buildings from the mountain’s earlier days. No entrance fee.

Blue Marsh Lake sits six miles from downtown

Six miles northwest of Reading, Blue Marsh Lake covers 1,147 acres of water with about 5,000 acres of land surrounding it. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built it for flood control, and it opened in 1979.

You can swim at the Dry Brooks Day Use Area beach, fish for bass, walleye, and trout, or put a canoe or kayak in at one of three boat ramps.

The 30-mile Blue Marsh Lake Trail circles the entire lake through fields, woodlands, and overlooks, and draws birders every fall during hawk migration. The whole thing is free.

Watch glassblowers work in a former goggle factory

Downtown Reading has a different kind of landmark.

The GoggleWorks Center for the Arts took over the old Willson Goggle Factory, which once turned out safety goggles in the early 20th century.

Now the building holds teaching studios in ceramics, hot glass, metalsmithing, photography, printmaking, woodworking, and more.

Walk in and you might catch a live glassblowing demonstration, or wander through one of the exhibition galleries.

The center runs community events through the year, including its Pumpkin Fest, where artisans blow glass pumpkins by hand. Admission and parking are both free.

The red light on the hill that tells Reading it’s Christmas

After dark, the Pagoda glows red against the sky above Reading, a sight that has anchored the city’s skyline for decades.

The tradition goes back to the 1940s: every Christmas Eve, the lights flash to signal that Santa Claus is on his way.

Long before that, before radio, weather and news reports went out from the top of the Pagoda in coded flashes from a signal lantern. The recent restoration put in new LED lighting built to match the traditional look.

The glow you see now is the same one Reading has looked up at for more than a century, and it shows up on the badge of the city’s police department, in the logo of the local minor league baseball team, and across the branding of civic organizations throughout Berks County.

Some landmarks mark a place on a map. This one marks a whole community.

Visit the Reading Pagoda in Pennsylvania

To see the Pagoda for yourself, head to 98 Duryea Drive, Reading, atop Mount Penn, about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia via US Route 222 and Interstate 76.

The grounds are free to visit, and security gates on the access roads open at 7 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. daily.

The Pagoda was expected to reopen for interior visits in spring 2026 after its $4.8 million restoration, but check the official website for current hours and status before you go.

The William Penn Memorial Fire Tower sits about a mile away on Skyline Drive.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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