Identifier: guidebookofcentr00harp (find matches)
Title: Guide-book of the Central railroad of New Jersey, and its connections through the coal-fields of Pennsylvania
Year: 1864 (1860s)
Authors: Harper, firm, publishers, New York. (1864. Harper & brothers) (from old catalog)
Subjects: Central Railroad of New Jersey
Publisher: New York : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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nn, proprietaries of the province, and is thereforeone of the oldest towns in the state. It was settledchiefly by Germans, and it has continued mainly Germanto the present day. The population in 1850 was 15,748,but is now, doubtless, more than 30,000. The streets are very regularly laid out. The court-house in the central square is 200 feet long by 220 deep,and has a splendid portico, with six columns of red sand-stone: its cost was $59,000. There are three public li-braries in the town, and thirteen churches. The position of Reading makes it an active commer-cial and manufacturing centre. This is in great measuredue to its facilities of communication with the interiorof the anthracite coal region on the one hand, and withthe principal markets along the sea-board on the other.The Schuylkill Navigation Canal, extending from PortCarbon, above Pottsville, to Philadelphia, passes throughReading, and from Reading starts the Union Canal toMiddletown, on the Susquehanna. The town lies within
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CENTRAL RAILROAD OF NEW JERSEY. 85 fifty-eight miles of Philadelphia vid the Philadelphia andReading Railroad (extending northward to Pottsville),and it is only 127 miles from New York, a half daysride. Thus in every direction it communicates with per-fect ease. There are various large manufactories in Reading.One anthracite blast furnace has an annual capacity of3500 tons; two. charcoal furnaces have each over 1000tons capacity; there is a forge, also, of 600 tons, threecharcoal forges, two rolling-mills, and, in the days whencotton was king, there was a cotton-mill producing its8000 yards daily. There are also large flouring-mills,a nail factory, breweries, tanneries, a pottery, lumber-yards, and nearly every species of manufacturing known.White wines are manufactured here, and the manufac-ture of hats for the Southern and Western markets hasbeen in past years a large business. The Schuylkill is spanned at Reading by two coveredbridges 600 feet long, at a cost of $60,000. A spring o

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