Middletown, DE

[xzmattzx]

Middletown is a town in southern New Castle County, below the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. Middletown was named because it was the halfway point of a trail between Appoquinimink Creek in Odessa, Delaware, and Bohemia Landing on the Bohemia River in Maryland. This trail was the quickest way to get goods from Delaware Bay to Chesapeake Bay before the C & D Canal was built.

Middletown is Delaware's fastest growing town. The current population of the town is around 10,000; Middletown's population in 2000 was just over 6,000, and the population in 1990 was around 2,800. The growth in Middletown in the last 15 years has made it the 4th biggest city in Delaware, bypassing Milford and Seaford, which were ahead of Middletown in 2000.


The Everrett Theatre, on Main Street. The movie house was built in 1922.



The old Middletown High School, before the school outgrew the building and moved to a new facility. The building now houses the Everett Meredith Middle School.



A house on Broad Street at Redding Street.



A stately house on Broad Street.



Another stately house on Broad Street.



An old house on Broad Street.



Looking at Cochran Square, at the intersection of Broad & Main Streets.



A commercial building at the intersection of Broad & Main Streets.



Rowhouses on Main Street.



Houses on Main Street.



Houses on Main Street.



More houses on Main Street.



An old Italianate house on Main Street.



Businesses on Main Street.



Houses on Main Street.



Houses on Hoffecker Street.



Houses on Cass Street at Redding Street.



The old St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church and a house on Cochran Street.



The new St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church is being built on Main Street outside of the central core of the town. The church will be built in a gothic style and will incorporate many of the features of the old church on Cochran Street, like the old stained glass windows and other artifacts



On land newly annexed by Middletown, townhouses like these in a neighborhood on the northwest side of town are being built, and are the main factors in Middletown's huge population growth.



Houses on Cummings Drive.



Townhouses on Cole Boulevard.



Looking at townhouses on Bonnybrook Road.

[Robert Pence]

Neat! It's sort of a microcosm of central and southern Delaware. The historic places and buildings are quaint and charming and delightful, and most things built after WWII are incredibly bland and devoid of character. The land is flat and the soil is sandy, and where there aren't trees, it's pretty featureless.

I remember that in summer around Dover, days with 75% humidity were considered dry, and at 95 degrees even the breeze wasn't cooling -- more like a blast from a furnace. I spent as much time as possible at the beaches in summer.