History of the Middletown Paperboard Building from MidPointe Archives

A pall remained over historic downtown Middletown, Ohio, this morning following a massive New Year’s Day blaze that destroyed the remnants of an abandoned paper mill. 

The fire at the former “Middletown Paperboard Building” at 300 South Verity Parkway caused no injuries but produced intense heat and smoke that was “visible from miles away,” the “Journal-News” reported. 

The devastation prompted us to look to our MidPointe Library Digital Archives and local history books to recall businesses that occupied the site through the decades. 

According to “Middletown - The Steel City” by Middletown Historians Roger L. Miller and the late George C. Crout, the Middletown Paperboard Company started making boxboard from recycled paper at a “very old mill site” on Vanderveer Street that dated back to 1827. In 1873 “C.H. Wardlow and J.K. Thomas built a new paper mill on the site, producing manila and bag paper,” they wrote.  

In time the location was expanded to “an area of about three acres,” recalled Historian Harry Simms in “Middletown In Black and White” (See above illustration). It consisted of “a series of substantially constructed brick mills, warehouses, etc., the mechanical equipment embracing all the latest improved machinery and appliances known to the trade, and power being obtained from a water privilege and an auxiliary steam engine...”  

Authors Miller and Crout recalled that throughout the years the site also served as headquarters for Corson Packaging, which “started as the Interstate Folding Box Company at 300 South Verity Parkway in the early 1900s... In 1981 it was acquired by American Packaging, and in 1993, by Corson Packaging. [The company] was known for its folding paperboard cartons. Corson closed the plant during the summer of 2000.” 

Throughout the decades, the names “Corson” and “Folding Box” remained on the buildings’ outer walls and were visible in Journal-News photos depicting the fire’s vast damage.  

 

Sources: 

“Journal-News” online edition, January 2, 2020. “Large Fire causes ‘catastrophic’ damage to vacant Middletown building: What we know today” by Ed Richter, Staff Writer. (Copies of the Journal-News are available for reading at MidPointe Library). 

“Middletown-The Steel City,” by Roger L. Miller and the late George C. Crout, is available for checkout and can be found in the “Local History and Genealogy Gallery” at MidPointe Library-Middletown. The above photo of Corson Packaging appears in “Middletown - The Steel City.”

“Middletown In Black and White” provided the black-and-white illustration of the Wardlow-Thomas Paper Mills shown above. The book, written by Harry Simms, is not available for checkout, but may be enjoyed on library premises. It is located in the Ohio Room at MidPointe Library-Middletown, just steps away from the Local History and Genealogy Gallery.

The photos of the Interstate Folding Box Company (at top) and the Middletown Paperboard Corporation-Newark Group (below) can be found in the MidPointe Library Digital Archives (www.midpointelibrary.org > eLibrary > Digital Archives).