Elmira
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city and county-seat of Chemung co., N. Y., on both sides of the Chemung river, and on the Lackawanna, the Lehigh Valley, the Northern Central, and the Erie railroads, and the Chemung canal; 46 miles S. W. of Ithaca. It is the largest city in that part of the State; is beautifully laid out; has a fine water supply; is lighted by gas and electricity; and besides its river and railroad facilities has a valuable commercial outlet in the Chemung canal, which connects it with Seneca lake. The chief industries are the large shops of the Erie and the Northern Central railroads, rolling-mills and blast furnace, boot and shoe factories, iron foundries, the manufacturing and repairing shops of the Pullman Car Company, woolen mills, a steam fire engine manufactory, tanneries, flour mills, and carriage factories. The proximity of the iron and coal fields of Pennsylvania to Elmira, with its numerous facilities for manufactures, gives the city a prominent position among the industrial centers of the country. There are large coal mines 20 miles S. of Elmira, and the Blossburg soft coal field about the same distance S. W. Just beyond the city limits are several quarries of excellent stone. Elmira is the seat of the State Reformatory, Elmira College, Elmira Industrial School, the Arnot-Ogden Hospital, and Elmira Free Academy. It has a public high school, the Steele Memorial Library, several parks, electric lights and street railways, daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals, 2 National and several savings banks. Pop. (1910) 37,176; (1920) 45,305.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 described a booming industrial city of 45,305 people, with railroad shops, rolling mills and blast furnaces "among the industrial centers of the country." Elmira's population peaked near 50,000 around 1950 and has since fallen to about 26,500 in the 2020 census, as the Erie and Pennsylvania railroad shops, foundries and textile mills closed. In June 1972 the Chemung River, swollen by the remnants of Hurricane Agnes, flooded downtown Elmira in one of the worst disasters in the city's history. Elmira College survives (coeducational since the late 1960s), as does the state prison the account calls the State Reformatory, now the Elmira Correctional Facility; the Chemung Canal, still listed here as a commercial outlet, had in fact been abandoned decades before 1921.
Written for this edition, 2026.