Design for a prison, calculated to hold about 500 prisoners in separate rooms besides providing for all the requisite offices, refectories, hospital [graphic] / Robt. Mills, Eng. & Archt., City Washington.

Format:

Image

Author/Creator:

Mills, Robert, 1781-1855.

Contributor:

Visual Materials Collection (Athenaeum of Philadelphia)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prisons--District of Columbia--Washington.

Washington (D.C.).

Washington Jail (Washington, D.C.).

Local Subjects:

Washington (D.C.).

Washington Jail (Washington, D.C.).

Physical Description:

1 drawing : ink & watercolor wash on paper ; 41 x 55 cm.

Contained In:

Walter, Thomas Ustick. Architectural drawings collection.

Place of Publication:

1831.

Notes:

Shown is a plan of a semicircular structure with an inner court, and the cells along the outer wall, so that each cell appears to have a window, either from the exterior, or from the interior court. The keepers room and inspectors room are shown at the main entrance, with central stairs leading to a floor above.

Gallagher (1935), p.43, lists among Mills constructed work a prisoner in Washington, D.C. in 1839, but give no other information.

Alexander in the Macmillan encyclopedia of architects (1982) v, 3 p.206, describes the Washington Jail as "a three-story block, its seven-bay front marked by buttresses rising above the eaves into battlements." The prison plan given here may have been an earlier design for the Washington structure, or a design for another unidentified building.

Forms part of: Walter, Thomas Ustick. Architectural drawings collection.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Gift of Isabel Becker,

Cited in:

Laverty, v.1, p.151, MLS*002/001