1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Middletown (New York)

MIDDLETOWN, a city of Orange county, New York, U.S.A., on the Wallkill river, 67 m. N.N.W. of New York City. Pop. (1890) 11,977; (1900) 14,522, including 1700 foreign-born and 480 negroes; (1905, state census) 14,516; (1910) 15,313. It is served by the Erie, the New York, Susquehanna & Western, and the New York, Ontario & Western railways, and is connected by an electric line with Goshen (pop. in 1910, 3081), the county-seat. It is situated in an attractive dairy and agricultural country; and in the city and vicinity there are many summer residences. Here are the state homoeopathic hospital for the insane, a state armoury, Thrall hospital, and Thrall library. Middletown is primarily a manufacturing city, and has the car shops of the New York, Ontario & Western railway. The value of its factory products increased from $2,154,742 in 1900 to $3,356,330 in 1905, or 55·8 %. The municipality owns and operates its Waterworks. Middletown was settled about 1796 and owed its early commercial importance to its being a “half-way house” (whence its name) for travellers on the Minisink Road to western New York, and it was for a time a terminus of the Erie railroad. It was incorporated as a village in 1848, and first chartered as a city in 1888.