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Street) on March 2, 1844, the trustees voted to build a new school on the site of the old, but reversed that decision a week later. It was agreed at that time (3-9-1844) to purchase from Josiah W. Stage and wife a lot on Orchard Street for $325.00. This is now (1988) the site of Thrall Library. It was also agreed to sell the North Street site to the Middletown Bank for $900, to rent a room to hold class in, and to "erect a school House on the new site according to some of the plans presented to the meeting the cost of which shall not exceed the sum of $800."
The Orchard Street School was completed during the summer of 1844, and the annual meeting held there January 1, 1845. At that time, it was agreed to build an outhouse, put up a fence, and dig a well. At the annual meeting of January 1, 1850, it was agreed "to take into consideration the propriety of enlarging the...school house." Memories of the Orchard Street School were recorded in a letter:
"There were two large rooms and two smaller ones which were used for recitations. It was thought to be very nice and convenient at that time. In the rear was a playground, and a well was also dug to supply the school with water. "In 1850, Mr. Waterbury... came as principal of the school... While she was [...here the school building proved to be too small quarters for the pupils; and so it was enlarged one-third. This took much of the playground and also covered the well. Mr. Wood, the Presbyterian minister; living close by in the parsonage (built 1838; was located about opposite Grace Church), offered the school the privilege of using his well if the district would furnish the buckets."
During August of 1870, Monhagen Hose Co. had to vacate their old fire house on the Congregational Church property on East Main Street. Temporary quarters were found in the closed down Orchard Street School. The school did not open in September of that year, but did open for the 1871 school year.
Early in 1874, the new 4th Ward School ( Beattie Hill School on Ridge Street) was near completion. The Board of Education on January 5, 1874, approved a notion to sell the Orchard Street School after the new building was opened. Orchard Street was closed at noon on Friday, February 6, 1874. A Middletown paper comunented at the time, "The 'old Orchard Street school house' which has served as a seat of learning for the youth of Middletown for about thirty years, and for many of which it was the only public school building in the place, will be closed for good... As poor an apology as it was for a school house, this 'rookery' in its present dilapidated condition, is a palace to the barracks which answered the saine purpose until destroyed by fire thirty-one [sic] years ago..."