Red Men Hall

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

Red Men Hall is a four-and-a-half-story brick building at 831-833 Walnut St. in Reading, Berks County. It was built around 1909 in the Renaissance Revival style with Craftsman details; Muhlenberg Bros. was its architect.

Why it's listed

Red Men Hall was listed in the National Register in 2000 under criterion C, with local significance in architecture. Its significance runs from 1909 to 1910, when it was dedicated.

Physical character

The brick building sits on a limestone foundation with Indiana limestone trim and rises to a pilastered parapet, under an asphalt roof. Large ground-floor arches with cut-stone keystones sit below a continuous three-story bay window, and a wrapping stair with steel pipe handrails rises through a brick stairwell. Mosaic tile work with Native American motifs, including Mercer Tiles from the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works Company, decorates the interior.

Historical context

O.M. Landis Co. built the hall, and the Improved Order of the Red Men, a fraternal order founded in Baltimore in the 1830s, used it as a meeting hall and for retail trade from 1910 to 1938. The Grand Army of the Republic bought the property in 1949, when the cornerstone was also replaced with one bearing a G.A.R. inscription; the building was vacant when listed.