1896 Cell House

By the spring of 1896, overcrowding had become critical as a prison with a cell capacity of 182 held 150 additional prisoners in a single log building without cells, a structure the State Board of Prison Commissioners judged insecure, unsafe, and liable to destruction by fire. On April 27, 1896, the Board authorized construction of a new cell house, and under the supervision of superintendent of construction James MacCalman, inmate labor completed it in less than one year. Inmate crews quarried stone for the foundation, quarried and cut granite, quarried and fired lime, dug sand for mortar, manufactured and fired some 1,200,463 bricks, laid the brick and stone, and cut lumber used in the building. The finished structure had four tiers of thirty-two cells each in the men's quarters, with a capacity of 256 prisoners, and two tiers of eight cells each in the youths' quarters, with a capacity of 32 prisoners. All cells were six feet wide, eight feet long, and seven feet four inches high, and none had plumbing. The building was demolished after suffering structural damage in an earthquake in 1959.

Deer Lodge, Montana · United States