If you drove through Schwenksville last Tuesday, you may have noticed a question on the borough’s digital sign:

“Ever wonder what’s the story behind that place?”

It was a little self-promotion for yours truly, but the question itself seemed particularly fitting. After all, history has a way of making us look twice at the places we think we know. And most of us have a place like that. We pass it so often that we stop wondering about it. Then someone tells us what used to be there, and the familiar becomes interesting again.

The resort days of my beloved Schwenksville are gone now. The hotels, the visitors and the business that once made the Perkiomen Valley a destination belong to another time. Today, Schwenksville is a bedroom community. But its history still lives in the hearts of those who remember it—and in those who keep looking for what remains. And there are plenty of those stories.

So let’s leave the Perkiomen Valley for a moment and head toward Reading.

Look up as you approach the city and you’ll find Neversink Mountain. Now, the mountain is covered in woods and crossed by hiking trails. But in the late nineteenth century, it was a destination of its own, with hotels, pavilions, railroads and other attractions. And then, almost as if someone had simply turned the page, that world was gone. Little evidence remains—but not none.

Follow the mountain’s trails far enough and you begin to find pieces of what was once here. Foundations and old stonework still hide among the trees. An old stone trestle bridge survives in the woods, and a pond associated with the former Centennial Springs Hotel is another reminder that this was once a very different landscape.

But one survivor is considerably easier to spot. A small stone pavilion with a steep, pointed roof appears among the trees. From the right angle, it looks remarkably like a witch’s hat. And today, that is exactly what many people call it. 

But the Witches Hat is not really the story.

It is what is left of the story.

To understand what this little stone building is doing here, we have to walk backwards, past the nickname, the woods and trails, and the remains of a vanished resort world. We have to go all the way back to the summer of 1892, when Neversink Mountain was becoming a fashionable escape and the pavilion was brand new.

Getting there was part of the experience. The Neversink Mountain Railroad began carrying passengers in 1890, running from Ninth and Penn streets around the mountain to Klapperthal. The line stretched for roughly eight miles, and contemporary histories say it carried tens of thousands of passengers during the summer season.

There was even a more dramatic way to reach one of Neversink’s resorts. The Highland House had Ganser’s Incline, an inclined railway that climbed the mountain from 13th Street. It was an impressive piece of engineering—and apparently an unnerving ride for some passengers.

But the journey up the mountain was only the beginning. Once visitors arrived, they had several resorts to choose from, including the Centennial Springs Hotel and the Glen Hotel. But the centerpiece of Neversink’s resort world was about to become something considerably larger. 

Plans for the enormous Neversink Mountain Hotel were announced in the Reading Times in January 1892. The project brought together several of Reading’s prominent businessmen: George F. Baer, a lawyer and railroad executive; Peter Barbey, founder of Barbey’s Brewery; Henry A. Muhlenberg, a lawyer and business director; and Morton McIlvain, whose family was established in the iron industry. The Klapperthal Land Company, which was involved in developing the mountain property, was also among the project’s participants.

Morton McIlvain was more than just another name among the investors. His family’s roots in the Reading area stretched back decades, beginning with his father, William McIlvain.

William came to Berks County from Delaware County in 1834 and entered the iron business. In 1856, he established what became William McIlvain & Sons, a successful boiler-plate mill. William was also a longtime president of the Second National Bank and was involved in charitable work, making the McIlvain name familiar to area residents.

William McIlvain married Sarah Crosby Morton in 1834. Sarah was a descendant of John Morton, the Pennsylvania signer of the Declaration of Independence, adding another prominent Pennsylvania family to the McIlvain history.

Construction began that spring, and the enormous frame hotel rose quickly. By early summer, it was ready for guests. Five stories high and roughly 360 feet long, the building contained 166 bedrooms. A grand assembly hall, dining room, barber shop, billiard room and bar were among its amenities. The rooms had new furniture, white linens, wire-spring beds and hair mattresses, while electric lights, steam heat and hot and cold baths made it clear this was no rustic mountain camp.

Outside, the grounds included walking paths, tennis, croquet and a children’s playground. The hotel’s fourteen-foot-wide piazza wrapped around the building for nearly 800 feet, giving guests plenty of room to sit, stroll or simply take in the view. There was also a half-mile bicycle track, a swimming pool and an orchestra kept in “constant” attendance. In other words, once a guest arrived, there was little reason to leave.

The hotel quickly became more than a place for summer guests. It became a place where Reading’s business, professional and social worlds could gather. On September 29, 1892, the Reading Board of Trade brought 130 people up the mountain for a banquet. Among those gathered was Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg, the former Civil War cavalry commander who was then serving as Pennsylvania’s Auditor General. 

The following month, the mountain hotel welcomed the American Institute of Mining Engineers. One of the meeting’s presentations detailed the Brown Segmental Wire Gun, a high-powered breech-loading rifle being constructed at the Pennsylvania Diamond Drill & Manufacturing Company. The gun used an unusual design: its barrel was made from steel segments wrapped with a continuous coil of steel wire under tension, distributing the pressure created when it fired. The five-inch rifle, under construction in Birdsboro, measured 19 feet long.

But the story of the Neversink Mountain Hotel wasn’t all banquets, beautiful views and ambitious engineering. In 1893, seventeen-year-old bellboy Oscar Coppin was accidentally shot and killed inside the hotel. Coppin and another bellboy, 19-year-old Archie Lemon, were fooling around with a gun. When Lemon touched it, it discharged. Four other boys reportedly witnessed the accident.

And the hotel’s troubles weren’t limited to tragedy. By September 1894, only its third season, the dining-room waiters went on strike because their wages had not been paid. The dispute reportedly forced the hotel to close early that season.

The problem, it seems, was bigger than one unpaid payroll. Despite its size and impressive setting, the Neversink Mountain Hotel never became the financial success its investors had envisioned. The hotel’s enormous operating costs were difficult to sustain on the revenue a short summer season could provide. Some seasons produced profits, but those gains were needed to cover losses from earlier years. According to local historical accounts, no dividend was ever paid to the stockholders. The grand experiment lasted thirteen seasons.

By 1903, the hotel had been sold in foreclosure. Heber Y. Yost, acting as trustee for a majority of the bondholders, purchased it for $21,000.

Yet the hotel continued to stand, and for several more seasons the mountain still offered visitors the experience it had promised from the beginning. And at the edge of all that grandeur stood something considerably smaller: the West End Pavilion, built in 1892 as a memorial to William McIlvain, who had died two years earlier. The stone structure stood at the end of the hotel’s oval drive and promenade, a modest monument beside a resort built on an entirely different scale.

Local accounts remember William McIlvain as a man who hiked the mountain and talked with visitors and local residents. It was a fitting place to remember a man whose connection to the mountain apparently extended beyond its business potential.

By the hotel’s final season, the dream was deeply in debt. Then, on September 29, 1905, the hotel that had once seemed to promise a new future for Neversink Mountain went up in flames. At about 8:30 that evening, hotel watchman Isaac Bowman was making his rounds on the first floor when he discovered flames coming from the basement. The fire spread astonishingly fast, and reports say the entire hotel was engulfed within about ten minutes.

Bowman later said he believed the fire had been deliberately set. Three strangers were seen walking through the woods when the flames first appeared. The hotel’s veranda was reportedly saturated with coal oil. But suspicion is not proof, and the cause of the fire was never definitively established as arson.

Newspaper accounts said the flames could be seen from miles away. The Neversink Mountain Railway put all its cars into service, carrying about 1,500 people up the mountain to watch the hotel burn. The crowd grew so large at the outer railroad station that there were concerns about the safety of the swinging bridge.

By morning, there was very little left of the hotel itself. The building was insured for $31,250, with the policy divided among 26 insurance companies. The enormous timber structure, representing an investment of roughly $160,000 once completed and furnished, was gone. Only portions of its masonry survived: the stone walls of the basement, part of the north brick wall and the tall brick chimney that had stood at the center of the hotel.

Then there was one more strange twist. Around the time of the fire, Monsignor George Bornemann, rector of St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church, had purchased the property for $20,000. Historical accounts differ on his intended use for the hotel, but his purchase marked an unexpected new chapter for the property.

The Neversink Mountain Hotel was gone, but the mountain remained. So did the little stone pavilion at the far end of the old hotel grounds. Eventually, that pavilion acquired a new name: the Witches Hat. It is the most recognizable survivor of the resort era.

Step inside the pavilion today and look to the right. Mount Penn rises in the distance, with the Reading Pagoda perched along its slope. Built in 1908, the Pagoda has become one of Reading’s most recognizable landmarks. From Neversink Mountain, though, the view takes on a different meaning. The grand hotel is gone. The resort that once drew visitors to the mountain has disappeared. Yet the pavilion remains, framing a view that has outlasted the world built around it.

Perhaps that was always the point.

Yesterday, FOX 29’s Bob Kelly visited the newly renovated Reading Pagoda with Alexa Freyman, president of the Foundation for the Reading Pagoda. Take a look inside the Pagoda.