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Ossining

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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a village of Westchester county, New York, U.S.A., 30 m. N. of New York city, on the E. bank of the Hudson river. Pop. (1900) 7939, of whom 1642 were foreign-born; (1910, U.S. census) 11,480. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River railway, and by river steamboats. It is finely situated overlooking the Tappan Zee, an expansion of the Hudson river, and has excellent facilities for boating, sailing and yachting. The village is the seat of Mount Pleasant Academy (1814), Holbrook School (1866) and St John's School (1843), all for boys, and has a fine public library. The Croton Aqueduct is here carried over a stone arch with an eighty-foot span. At Ossining, near the river front, is the Sing Sing Prison, the best-known penitentiary in the United States. In 1906 a law was enacted providing for a new prison in the eastern part of the state in place of Sing Sing. The site of Ossining, originally a part of the Phillipse Manor, was first settled about 1700, taking the name of Sing Sing from the Sin Sinck Indians. The village was incorporated in 1813, and was reincorporated, with enlarged boundaries and a considerably increased population, in 1906, the name being changed from Sing Sing to Ossining in 1901.