Reading developer says he answered Facebook challenge in buying 1869 mansion

For three decades, developer Alan Shuman drove by the former Horatio Trexler Mansion at Fifth and Franklin streets.He wondered what was going to become of the deteriorating 19th century building at 46 S. Fifth St. that housed an Elks lodge for several decades.”I had been driving by it for 30 years and I hoped someone would do something with it,” Shuman said Friday in an interview. “All of a sudden we could.”Shuman Development Group announced that it had purchased the building on Tuesday. Shuman said the company paid Our City Reading $125,000 for the 27,000-square-foot structure along with some fixtures.The building, which was built in 1869, was purchased by Reading Elks Lodge in 1904 and renovated and expanded in 1908. The Elks sold the mansion privately in 1978 and it was bought by Our City Reading in 2006 for $262,302 and the organization replaced the roof.Since then, Our City Reading had been trying to find a new owner.Shuman said he was motivated by a social media post from GoReadingBerks, a website devoted to Berks County history. The post challenged Shuman Development to revitalize it.”I got a whole lot of motivation from the Facebook posts,” Shuman said.When the building is fixed…
Read More