Reading Company

The Reading Company (pronounced " Redding " ) was an American industrial group, which was mainly known through his involvement in the railway business. It was established in 1871 as a railway and industrial holding company in 1971 and went bankrupt. Then there was the company continues as a real estate company until the merger to Reading International 2001. During the 1870s the Reading Company was the world's largest companies.

The origins of Reading go back to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. This railway company was founded on April 3, 1833, to transport coal from the mines in eastern Pennsylvania to New Jersey and Delaware. The great economic importance of coal helped the company to big gains, they soon invested in other lines of business, particularly in the fields of mining, steel, shipbuilding and real estate. The company rose as in the 1870s on the then-largest company in the world.

In response to antitrust restrictions was established as a holding company, the Reading Company, which henceforth led the railways and heavy industry as separate subsidiaries. This remained for some decades, until the Supreme Court ordered the destruction of the group. By January 1924, the industries have been submitted, and the Reading Company focused henceforth on the real estate and transportation business. This constellation is that at which the Reading Company is placed still primarily in connection. It is therefore often referred to as the Reading Railroad.

The railway network stretched from Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Williamsport and Scranton; there were routes to New York City and Wilmington.

Started as well as for several other railway companies in the Eastern U.S. for Reading after the Second World War, the decline. The importance of coal as an energy source declined, heavy industry migrated, and competition in the transport business was exacerbated by the construction of Interstate highways. 1971 finally had to declare bankruptcy, the Reading.

Since bankruptcy proceedings ran in the Reading tantamount to abandon only the transport business. The routes and the equipment is delivered to the Conrail in 1976. The real estate business continued under the name of Reading received and has been increasingly expanded during the 1980s to cinemas in the United States, the Caribbean and Oceania. The railroad property were gradually sold; as a last resort the old Reading Terminal in downtown Philadelphia in 1993.

In 2001 it merged with two other companies in this industry, the Craig Corporation and Citadel to Reading International Inc.