GoggleWorks Center for the Arts

GoggleWorks is a converted industrial building in downtown Reading, now operating as an arts centre with studios, galleries, a cinema, a theatre, and working spaces for artists in glass, ceramics, printmaking, and other disciplines. The building retains much of its industrial character — high ceilings, exposed brick, broad factory floors — adapted to gallery and studio use.

The centre hosts rotating exhibitions of local and regional artists, and the working studios are often open for visitors to watch artists at work. The glass studio, in particular, offers public demonstrations and courses in glassblowing. For a city with Reading's economic profile, GoggleWorks is a genuine cultural asset and an indication that there is more here than the outlet malls.

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A story
The building was the former American Optical Company factory, which manufactured safety goggles on an industrial scale. Reading was a manufacturing city — knitting mills, hardware, iron — and the goggle factory was one of dozens of industrial plants that made it prosperous. When manufacturing left, buildings like this became liabilities. The conversion of the goggle factory into an arts centre in 2005 was one of the earliest examples in Pennsylvania of an industrial building being turned into a cultural anchor, and it has held together better than most such projects.

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