Category:Penn Hotel

The location at 103 North Seventh Street has been a hotel since 1810 when George Rhoads opened a wooden building which offered rooms for rent. It was used as a hotel until 1871 when it became a grocery store. It was reopened as a hotel in 1879. Yeager enlarged the tavern and called it the Pennsylvania Hotel. But it was not until 1903, under the ownership of Daniel Bittner and Joseph Hartman, that the hotel was totally rebuilt as a brick building as the Penn Hotel. It was used primarily by the traveling public who would stay there while doing business in the city. Rooms could be rented by the day or week, and the hotel's stable, the 19th century version of a parking garage, had room for 150 horses.

The Penn Hotel was sold in 1922 to the Dime Bank, who turned the first floor into a teller room, vault and various banking offices. In July 1925, when the back moved to the northwest corner of Center Square, it sold the building and again in 1925 to an investor from New York City who returned it back to being a hotel. It was sold again in May, 1930, however the Great Depression of the 1930s hit the Penn Hotel hard. It never really recovered. In 1935 it was again sold and renamed the Milner Hotel, which offered rooms by the week and month. In 1959 it was renamed the Reid Hotel, an in July 1962 the hotel was purchased by Park & Shop, along with other properties between North 7th Street and Church Street. Park & Shop cleared the buildings off to make a parking lot behind the hotel, but kept the Reid hotel name and continued to operate it as a low-rent rooming house. The hotel closed in 1973 and became vacant.

In 1979, the building was taken over by the Allentown Housing Authority then renovated and modernized by the city into 22 one-bedroom apartments in 1982-1983. Today the building is used as low-income housing for senior citizens, and known as the "1895 Hotel".