Temple, PA

Temple occupies a pocket of Muhlenberg Township just north of Reading, a place whose name comes from Solomon's Temple, a local inn that became the Temple Hotel in 1853. The community sits in a township shaped by roads, rail lines, farms, and the Schuylkill River; the river forms the township's western boundary, while Reading's growth pushed the surrounding countryside toward neighborhoods and commercial corridors.

The old inn was not a throwaway detail. Temple had a post office by 1857, and the Temple Iron Company opened along the railroad in Temple Laurel Run in 1867, employing local residents until the operation closed in 1924. A nearby ferry bridge once crossed the Schuylkill, and the community spent much of the twentieth century as a borough before being folded back into the township in 1999. Today Temple is part of Muhlenberg School District and the township's northern cluster of communities. It has more of a regional edge than its population count suggests: roads bring it into Reading, old industrial sites give the local history a clear shape, and the name still points back to the roadside hotel that gave Temple its character.