Charles Street Jail

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Suffolk County Jail
U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Location:	Boston, Massachusetts
Coordinates:	42°21′43″N 71°4′13″W / 42.36194, -71.07028Coordinates: 42°21′43″N 71°4′13″W / 42.36194, -71.07028
Built/Founded:	1851
Architect:	Bryant,Gridley J.F.
Architectural style(s):	Other
Added to NRHP:	April 23, 1980
NRHP Reference#:	80000670 ^[1]
Governing body:	Local

The Charles Street Jail (or "Suffolk County Jail") is a historic jail located at 215 Charles Street, Boston, Massachusetts. It is listed in the state and national Registers of Historic Places.

The jail was proposed by Mayor Martin Brimmer in his 1843 inaugural address as a replacement for the Leverett Street Jail which was built in 1822. The city of Boston assumed functions not normally performed by a city or town but at the county level, which allowed Mayor Brimmer to be a key player in the jail's planning and development.

The jail was constructed between 1848-1851 to plans by architect Gridley James Fox Bryant with prison reformer Rev. Louis Dwight, who designed it according to the humanitarian scheme of the 1790s Auburn Plan pioneered in England. The original jail was built in a cross with four wings of Quincy granite extending from a central, octagonal rotunda with 90-foot atrium. The wings allowed segregation of prisoners by sex and category of offense, and thirty arched windows, each 33 feet high, provided ventilation and natural light. The original jail contained 220 granite cells, each 8 by 10 feet.

Over the years, the jail has housed a number of famous inmates including James Michael Curley, Sacco and Vanzetti, suffragists imprisoned for protests when President Woodrow Wilson visited Boston in 1919, and World War II prisoners from the German submarine Unterseeboot 234.

Aerial view of Suffolk County jail

In 1973, the US District Court ruled that the jail violated the constitutional rights of the prisoners housed there, though the prison did not officially close until 1990. On Memorial Day of that year, prisoners were moved to the new Suffolk County Jail built on Nashua Street.

The building is now owned by the Massachusetts General Hospital. The building has since been redesigned by Cambridge Seven Associates [1]and Ann Beha Architects, and reopened in the summer of 2007 as a 300-room luxury hotel, operated by MTM Luxury Lodging. The Liberty Hotel, as it is now known, has retained much of the historic structure, including the famed rotunda.

[edit] References

George M Cushing, Great Buildings of Boston a Photographic Guide, Courier Dover Publications, 1982, page 42. ISBN 0486242196.
Massachusetts General Hospital history

^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).

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