Prison Afterlife
Electric lights hardly alleviate the gloom in this cavern of rugged and irregular rock that once served as a prison. Sixty or so feet underground with water dripping from the ceiling, darkness seems to absorb any illumination. I’m standing in a dead end passage where inmates were once chained to the floor. There’s still a rusting eye bolt embedded in the rock. When I speak to my companion there’s not only an echo, but a deep, eerie vibration that hums in the walls for a few moments. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the moist, cool, 52 degree underground temperature. Despite the presence of tourists in sneakers pointing cameras and the exclamations of children, Old New-Gate Prison in East Granby is creepy.
With their heavy masonry walls, barred windows and unusual interior layouts, prisons and jails are not easily adaptable once their life as penal institutions are over. Macabre stories of mayhem, death and heinous behavior leave these buildings with a psychological pall. As a result, innumerable such structures have been demolished and their memory confined to images and stories. Those that survive remain indelible curiosities. They invite new uses that range from restaurants to museums, retail to housing.
New-Gate
Starting as a copper mine in 1705, Old New-Gate may be the ultimate changeling. It served as Connecticut’s state prison from 1773 until 1827. Afterward, there were renewed mining attempts and a period as a private residence. In the 1920s and 1930s the former brick guardhouse was converted into a dance hall. During that incarnation there were a variety of attractions on the grounds including a caged bear and cub, antique cars, and a World War I tank. Purchased by the state in the 1960s and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973, it’s now a museum, tourist attraction, and state archaeological preserve.
With its thick twelve-foot-high brownstone walls enclosing about an acre of mostly ruined brick and stone buildings, the place has all the feel of an ancient fortress. Thirty-five concrete steps lead visitors into the cavern’s chill damp air where prisoners once lived in stinking, unsanitary darkness amid vermin. The passages are slippery, tight, uneven, and wander without logic. The excavation slants downward and I had slight vertigo, a feeling that the earth beneath me was tilting. Occasional verdigris stains on the dark rock are evidence of copper veins.
During over a half century as a prison, New-Gate housed over 800 inmates including murderers, counterfeiters, burglars, debtors, and thieves. Tories were confined during the Revolution. Conditions were cruel and punishments barbarous. Escapes were not uncommon, including the first prisoner, John Hinson, who escaped eighteen days after being incarcerated. The site was not only the first copper mine in North America, it is the nation’s oldest surviving state prison. It was closed due to cost, lack of security, and its cruel and filthy conditions. Prisons have been tagged as “houses of darkness.” At New-Gate this was true in every way.
It’s mind-bending to think that a place once used to extract mineral wealth could become a site of ruthless cruelty, then a venue for lighthearted music and dance, and later a serious museum luring curious tourists from near and far. Will there be a next act for New-Gate?
Jail as Museum
The fact that a relatively small percentage of the population has ever had occasion to set foot inside a jail or prison makes them good choices for museums in their afterlife. They can be both curiosities and teaching tools. Once called the “Hollyhock Hotel” for the flowers that grew outside, the Old Tolland County Jail and Museum in Tolland fronts a sleepy green with handsome nineteenth century public buildings and private residences. The face of the jail is a Victorian house that served as the jailer’s home. A long, narrow cellblock of brick and heavy stone was built in the mid and late 1800s and extends behind the house. Rather than strictly depict the life of the jailer, the ten room house seems to serve primarily as the town’s “attic of old stuff” with obligatory Indian arrowheads, farm and kitchen implements, and children’s toys that are fascinating in themselves and held my attention.
Inside, a large kitchen where the jailer’s wife prepared meals forms the connection between the house and the jail. The cellblock is a long, narrow space with two tiers of “cages” to one side and tall barred windows on the other. The bars were supposedly added after an escape. Painted gray, it has an austere, but haunting quality. Most of the prisoners did farm work on the adjacent property. Although the last inmate left the premises in 1968, I sensed a discomfiting presence of confined spirits. It’s humbling to stand inside one of the small, Spartan cells and contemplate a claustrophobic existence.
Jail as Retail
Not every former place of incarceration can be a museum and the old Litchfield County Jail, built in 1812 and expanded in 1846 and 1900, had become a mix of retail, offices and apartments. Situated across from the historic Litchfield Green, it’s a stately three story brick building with a fan window in the gable, cornice returns, decorative dentils, and a porch with ionic columns. It might have been the only jail in history to share a wall with a bank, which still stands next door and has an elegant two story portico and colonnade. The state closed the jail in 1993, put it up for sale in 2010, and a few years later it was purchased by investors interested exploring new uses for the building.
The building now hosts small businesses, offices, and upscale apartments. The Marketplace Tavern opened earlier this year and has a lively bar with a dramatic high ceiling. More to the point, some of the windows with bars remain in place, so that the building hasn’t been renovated without vestiges of historical memory. The walls are of heavy stone and brick, the dining area intimate. The menu offers a host of delicacies that will keep me coming back, from fish-and-chips to pasta to burgers.
On a recent visit my wife Mary and I also stopped into Luna Boutique, a clothing shop with a unique flair that houses an unrestored jail cell in a corner. The building is also home to a bakery, financial services office, and hair salon.
With the recent closure of Middletown’s aptly named Bread and Water, the Marketplace Tavern is now the go-to destination for a jail meal. The restaurant closed after a devastating fire disrupted business for the better part of a year. It offered fine dining in what remains of the historic Pameacha Jail on Warwick Street. The restaurant was within a handsome brick house with a porch of elaborate Victorian stick-work. It was once the jailer’s residence. Twelve cells of heavy brownstone used to extend beyond the back of the house, but were carted away for various construction projects when the jail closed around the turn of the twentieth century. Two impressive brownstone walls that belonged to the cell adjacent to the house remained as part of a rear dining room.
The name Bread and Water might evoke a prisoner’s rations, but no incarcerated criminal ever had it so good. When Mary and I dined in the elegant white-tablecloth atmosphere we had a meal of chicken Milanese and gnocchi saltimbocca that we savored with every bite. The restaurant hardly needed the cachet of an old jail to be worth a visit. Still, even just a little piece of the original cellblock gave the place singular renown. This great eatery will be missed. I await the next incarnation of the old jail.
The Future of the Past
Repurposing an old jail does not always meet with applause and isn’t always easy. The Middlesex County Jail in Haddam was closed in 1969 and is the nation’s oldest county jail. It’s composed two buildings of heavy blue-gray stone block—a simple gable end Greek revival cellblock dating to 1845 , and a Second Empire style addition with a mansard roof built in 1874. It’s a substantial structure with architectural merit, but has been vacant for over a decade. The grounds were never enclosed and by the turn of the twentieth century prisoners were employed at the institution’s dairy and farm. Mostly housing those convicted of minor offenses, it got a “country club” reputation and often hosted vagabonds needing a meal and place to sleep. But sometimes inmates committed more serious crimes, like the notorious Emil Schutte convicted in 1922 of killing his French Canadian neighbors and burning down their house. The Haddam jail may no longer have prisoners, but the building is still tenanted with stories.
The town has owned the building for years and debates over what to do about it have raged for as long. Cost of rehabilitation, including lead paint abatement, operating expenses, and the proper use for the structure remain questions. A recent string of Facebook posts illustrates wide differences of opinion. A museum, a café, and offices, or a combination of all three are among the suggestions. Some see it as a good spot for a brewery, a B&B, or a restaurant. Others think it could be a police facility or even have a reprise as a jail. There have been calls for demolition.
Recovering Memory
Demolition is the most common fate of old prisons, and that’s what happened to the Wethersfield State Prison which replaced New-Gate and operated from 1827 to 1963. Although the main building was a Greek revival architectural gem of heavy brownstone with four limestone columns, it was not spared. But sometimes the wrecking ball does not take everything nor does it erase memory. A few years ago I joined a local historical society sponsored walk around the site with Frank Winiarski, who grew up across the street. The site is now a park and, ironically, a Department of Motor Vehicles office whose long waits in line sometimes feel like imprisonment.
Dressed in a 1930s vintage guard uniform, Winiarski moved briskly around the eighteen acre site. He’s an artesian font of fascinating information about wardens, prisoners and guards, and described the walled fortress and its broad lawn so well I could see it in front of me. His tales of murders and executions, in-house industries, and cellblock riots were equally vivid. Remnants of prison days include the 1774 Solomon Welles House, which served as the warden’s home from 1900 to 1963, a nautical style flagpole, a cemetery, some entry columns along the driveway, and brick and concrete buildings behind the DMV facility that were once a cannery, pump house, and garages. With a wry look on his face Winiarski notes that sometimes a sink hole or erosion reveals subterranean remains of the long gone facility.
Most of Connecticut’s prison population now occupies facilities located in Somers and Enfield, including on 1,400 acres owned by a community of Shakers from 1792 to 1917. How strange it is that land once belonging to the devout, honest, and pacifistic religious order is now an armed facility housing some of the most violent and unscrupulous people. Along Shaker Road is the community’s cemetery marked by a single large monument. But don’t plan on spending any time paying your respects. Department of Correction security concerns prohibit even stopping to look. To some extent, the old burial ground is in solitary confinement.
