Reading weighs changes to historic preservation ordinance<\/a><\/p>\nEarlier this year, council approved temporary measures allowing the city\u2019s historic preservation officer or zoning administrator to approve certificates of appropriateness. However, the historic preservation officer is currently on leave, and the zoning administrator position is vacant. Community Development Director David Barr therefore referred the matter to council.<\/p>\n
The proposal involves a one-story rear addition at 42 S. Fifth St., a contributing building in the Callowhill Historic District. The property is being converted from office use into a bed-and-breakfast tied to Shuman\u2019s redevelopment of the adjacent building into an event venue.<\/p>\n
Formerly an Elks Club, the neighboring building at 40 S. Fifth St. is also known as the Trexler Mansion.<\/p>\n
A rear porch original to planned guest house was removed decades ago when the one-story addition was built, Shuman said, noting his intent to remove the addition and rebuild the porch.<\/p>\n
But instead of an open air porch, as it was in the 1880s, Shuman said, he plans to build an enclosed porch.<\/p>\n
The new sun porch would incorporate stained glass windows removed from the church building at 125 N. Sixth St., he said, noting the windows are in poor condition and need restoration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like to restore those and have a wall of stained-glass windows,\u201d Shuman said.<\/p>\n
The porch would have limited visibility from public streets, he said, an important consideration since the city\u2019s historic preservation ordinance only regulates changes visible from the public right of way.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot see it at all from Fifth Street,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot see it at all from Franklin Street.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilman O. Christopher Miller questioned whether the stained-glass windows should be permanently installed since they were not original to the property and might be better preserved as a decorative feature, protected by modern, energy-efficient windows.<\/p>\n
Shuman said he plans to protect the antique windows with exterior clear glass.<\/p>\n
Lisa Charlanza of the city\u2019s historic preservation office told council that previous conceptual discussions with the former HARB generally supported reconstructing the porch but raised concerns about the amount of stained glass visible from the street.<\/p>\n
Charlanza said board members thought just one or two of the art windows, used as feature windows, would be appropriate.<\/p>\n
Barr said his denial of the application was procedural and intended only to move the matter before council.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do support it,\u201d Barr said. \u201cI think it\u2019ll be a nice feature for the B&B.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council President Donna Reed praised Shuman\u2019s historic preservation work in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a comment to show my appreciation of Alan and all he\u2019s doing to showcase and save our history here in the city of Reading,\u201d Reed said. \u201cA lot of other folks let it go by, you\u2019ve been treasuring it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council is expected to vote on the application at either its May 26 or June 8 regular meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Council held a public hearing on a proposal by developer Alan Shuman involving two historic properties he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,857,182,139,28,736,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-202435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-essential-reading","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}