{"nrhp_refnum":"96001195","name":"Livingood House-Stryker Hospital","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"417--419 Walnut St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Reading","county":"Berks County","state":"PA","lat":40.33740325600007,"lon":-75.92876746699994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1996-11-07","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Health/Medicine","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A three-story brick Italianate town house at 417-19 Walnut Street in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania, erected in 1866-1871 and later converted into a private hospital.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the building is significant for its role as a small private hospital operated by Dr. H. Denton Stryker from 1908 to 1933, an alternative to large charity hospitals. It also argues the house is a rare local example of the five-bay center-hall town house in Reading's Italianate style.","narrative":"Built as a brick town house at 419 Walnut Street in Reading between 1866 and 1871, this three-story Italianate dwelling sits close to the sidewalk in a dense downtown block. Francis B. Shalters, a dry goods merchant, had the house built, and it later passed to the family of lawyer Jacob S. Livingood. In 1907 Dr. H. Denton Stryker bought the property and within a few months opened a private hospital there, which he ran from 1908 until 1920. He added a west wing around 1921, and the hospital operated until 1933. The building is regarded as an example of a substantial five-bay center-hall house in Reading, a type rare locally. Its hospital use reflects the growth of paying-patient hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when middle-class residents began accepting hospital care. The nomination treats it as a surviving record of that short-lived private model.","period_of_significance":"C. 1866 1933","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Italianate","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Converted to apartments after the hospital closed in 1933; later owned by ADAPPT, Inc., which uses it as a residential treatment facility.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:37.241889-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/96001195.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/96001195/166b9653fe-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/96001195/166b9653fe-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Livingood_House_Reading.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Smallbones</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Livingood_House_Reading.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71997938","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livingood_House-Stryker_Hospital","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6659613"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/berks-county/livingood-house-stryker-hospital-96001195/"}