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Beyond these glorious stone pillars, there are true stories, wooden gates, and a lot of community history.
I grew up in Wyomissing Hills, and my dad still lives in the home he bought nearly 50 years ago. Just a block up the street, my 95 year old aunt lives in the home she bought more than 60 years ago. My roots in this community run deep, and that’s why I am happy to be able to share the above picture from the Keiser family collection…from 1916. The photo was given to me by Dick Keiser. Dick is the only living grandson of David H. Keiser, one of the founding members of the Reading Real Estate Company in 1896.
David H. Keiser bought land from a 200-acre parcel owned by Henry A. Weldy in 1908; the Weldy tract was originally owned by Spring Township but when Keiser purchased it, he named it Wyomissing Hills. This was before the rest was sold to Thun and Janssen of Berkshire Industries to form Wyomissing. Shown in this aerial photo from the early 1900s are the first homes in the Hills. You can see there is no bypass yet, no cat-walk, and only a few homes at the entrance of where the Pillars were built. That is Fountain Park pictured in the middle.
This next picture shows the pillar that carries a “W” and an “H” which is the monogram of Wyomissing Hills, Inc. engraved in stone right into the Pillar. The monogram is actually a ligature from the turn of the century marking the official logo for Wyomissing Hills, Inc. Can you help but wonder if that is why the school district’s W-A mark in Wyomissing Area is also a ligature?
In this next picture you see the stone pillars of Wyomissing Hills, one shows the old rusty pin that was used to support the gate when David H. Keiser closed the wooden gates between the Pillars to keep out the Ku Klux Clan in the 1920s. The story goes, there was a group who attempted to burn a cross at the top of Grandview Blvd. Keiser fought them back to protect the community. There were not many houses built on Grandview at this point in time.
The other founders of Wyomissing Hills were: Thomas R. Merritt, Albert Thalheimer, Matthias Mengel, and Levi Mengel. In January, 1916, William T. Pitkin of Rochester, NY was engaged to draw plans for the community. According to George Meiser’s account of an interview with Lila Lerch for his Echos of Scholla publication (copyright 1976), the houses were to be constructed in a way that did not block the view and followed the topography for the sake of beauty. The actual borough of Wyomissing Hills did not officially from until 1927, when a group of citizens applied to the State of Pennsylvania for a charter.
In 2001, voters in both the borough of Wyomissing and the borough of neighboring Wyomissing Hills approved a referendum to combine the two municipalities. In January of 2002, Wyomissing Hills officially merged into the Borough of Wyomissing.
In this photo from Dick Keiser’s collection, his grandfather’s antique car is pictured along Wyomissing Hills Blvd., outside the family home which still stands today at One Wyomissing Hills Blvd.
The Story of the Beginning of Wyomissing Hills, and Wyomissing
Ask most people how Wyomissing came to be, and they’ll point to the great industrial house built by Ferdinand Thun and Henry K. Janssen, the mills and offices that gave the borough its reputation for enterprise. It is a reasonable assumption. It also happens to be incomplete.
The truer beginning, as recorded in the Reading Times on October 2, 1926, took shape not in a boardroom but above a carpet shop on Penn Street in Reading.
At the center of it was Levi Mengel, a young chemistry graduate of the University of Pennsylvania who spent his early working years at his father’s grist mill in Cumru Township. His daily route by horse and buggy took him past the meadows that fell gently toward the Wyomissing Creek, and over time he came to see in that land something more than scenery — the makings of a town, thoughtfully placed.
He shared the idea with two men close to him: his father, the attorney Matthias Mengel, and his father-in-law, David Keiser, whose carpet business near Seventh and Penn was as familiar to Reading households as any name in the city. Keiser’s shop was more than a place of commerce. It had become something of a gathering spot, where the city’s more established residents would drop in on the pretext of admiring new patterns, when really they’d come to talk with Keiser himself.
It was there, on an evening in 1896, that lumber businessman Thomas P. Merritt (that lumberyard was in the City of Reading…where Goggleworks now stands) and the well-to-do Albert Thalheimer happened to call while the two Mengels were present. From that unplanned exchange came a new venture — the Reading Suburban Real Estate Company — a firm that, ever after, owed its origins to a conversation over carpet samples rather than capital.
At a time when most American towns had little interest in regulating how they grew, the founders of both Wyomissing Hills and Wyomissing wrote themselves a strict code for the original homes, many of them having been built in the early 1900s and are still standing today. These now historic homes were set back thirty feet from the street. And the list of what could never be built was just as deliberate — no factories run by steam, electricity, or water power, no livery stables or blacksmith shops, no slaughterhouses or pig pens, no manufacturers of gunpowder, soap, candles, starch, or glue, no bone-boiling works, and no establishments of ill repute.
The earliest lots sold modestly by comparison — priced between $60 and $440.
Another interesting part of the history was in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan tried to invade the community. According to Dick Keiser, his grandfather kept them out by closing the wooden gates at these incredible stone pillars. In essence, he saved the community. There is more about that story in George Meiser’s recap from the 1976 publication of Echos of Scholla which anyone can find in the Berks History Center in Centre Park.
The Stone Pillars at the Entrance of Wyomissing Hills
This past weekend, on Saturday September 5, 2026, a car crashed into one of the stone Pillars. I myself would like to see the beauty and history of our community preserved, so I sent a note to the president of the Wyomissing Borough Council, expressing my hope that they rebuild the pillar instead of clearing it. After I also posted the same call-to-action to restore and preserve the pillar on Facebook, Berks County Channel 69 News reached out to me. Here is what the corner looks like as of today (Monday, Sept. 7, 2026). She thoughtfully responded right away and had made the maintenance crews aware of the historical significance. I definitely appreciate her consideration, it shows how much the borough really cares about the community.
Want an inside peak at the beautiful historic home that is One Wyo Hills Blvd? Here is a short video tour I made earlier this year when One Wyomissing Hills Boulevard was for sale (early 2026):