The Tombs
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The Tombs was the central prison in New York City, built in 1839, and designed by John Haviland after an engraving by John A. Stevens of an Egyptian mausoleum. It occupied the block in Lower Manhattan surrounded by Centre, Franklin, Elm, and Leonard Streets, and accommodated about 300 prisoners. As it housed the city's courts, police and detention facilities, its more formal title was the New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention. Haviland's building was regarded as a notable example of the style of Egyptian Revival architecture.
The prison was well known for its corruption and went through numerous scandals and successful prison escapes throughout its early history and, by 1850, many were calling for its destruction.
By the early 1900s, reforms began to be made as the first prison school for younger inmates in an American adult correction facility was established by the Public Schools Association in 1900.
The original building was replaced in 1902, connected by a "Bridge of Sighs" with the Criminal Courts Building on the Franklin Street side. That building was replaced in 1941 by one at 125 White Street, officially named the Manhattan House of Detention, though still popularly referred to as "The Tombs."
The Tombs was eventually closed in 1974 due to security and health reasons. Shortly thereafter, it too was pulled down and replaced with another building. The current Tombs prison was briefly named The Bernard B. Kerik Complex between 2001 and Kerik's 2006 plea bargain admitting to two misdemeanor ethics violations dating from his tenure as a city employee.
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[edit] In popular culture
- The Tombs is the setting for the endings of two works by Herman Melville: Pierre: or, The Ambiguities and Bartleby the Scrivener. Bartleby, apparently through willful starvation, dies on the grassy ground of an open yard in the prison, prompting his former employer to famously exclaim, "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!".
- The Tombs also provides the setting in the 1937 pulp fiction story "Dictator of the Damned." The Spider stages a daring raid to help clear an innocent man.
- Jim Carroll mentions in his song "People Who Died" that a friend of his committed suicide by hanging in the Tombs.
- TV drama Law and Order regularly makes references to The Tombs.
- Harlan Ellison penned an autobiographical short-story concerning his brief incarceration in The Tombs for his arrest stemming from the possession of a real fire arm that he had used as a prop while lecturing.
[edit] Further reading
- DeFord, Miriam Allen. Stone Walls;Prisons from Fetters to Furloughs. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1962.
- Johnson, James A. Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture. Urbana: University of Southern Illinois Press, 2000.
- Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Prisons. New York: Facts on File, 2003.
[edit] References
- Timothy J. Gilfoyle's article in Journal of Urban History 29:5 (2003), pp. 525-554.
- Roth, Mitchel P. Prisons and Prison Systems: A Global Encyclopedia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. ISBN 0-313-32856-0
