LITMIR.BIZ

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      COLUMBUS, OHIO

      Here were all ranks and ages, from the man of high life to the meanest pickpocket, from the gray-haired man of 80 down to the boy of 14.

       —James Finley, 1850

      The Ohio Penitentiary was “most unsuitably situated in the midst of the city of Columbus, a few blocks from the main street.”

      —Handbook of American Prisons and Reformatories (1933)

      Anyone approaching the Ohio Penitentiary (also known as the Ohio State Penitentiary) in Columbus from “a distance” and a “southern standpoint” at the end of the nineteenth century, particularly those who were “unacquainted with the character of the vast edifice that looms up against the sky, might envy the residents of a structure of such palatial dimensions.” But as one approached closer to the prison structure, its details came more into focus—“the massive walls, armed sentries, battlemented gables, grated windows and towering turrets, resembling the feudal castles of romance and barbarism.” Getting even closer to the looming structure, “the real character and purpose of the institution would be apparent to any intelligent mind; and perhaps would fill the place of [misplaced] envy for its unfortunate inmates.”¹

      Columbus, like a handful of other American cities—Huntsville, Texas, Clinton and Ossining, New York, and others—became synonymous with its famous prison, contrary to the expectations of the local chamber of commerce. The Ohio Penitentiary maintained a commanding presence on West Spring Street from 1834 to 1998, and even before that building was constructed, being “sent to Columbus” meant hard time for Ohio convicts. The prison became “a local landmark as easily identifiable with Ohio’s capital city as the statehouse.”²