Central State Farm began in the late 1870s on a 5235-acre sugar plantation worked by convict labor. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, public sentiment largely favored a self-sustaining prison system that received no state funds for facilities or operations. Beginning in 1878, Edward H. Cunningham and Littleberry A. Ellis leased prison labor from the state and housed prisoners here on a sugarcane plantation. Ellis' land, known as Sartartia, developed with the construction of the onsite Imperial Mill. Despite harsh living conditions at farm camps around Texas, the leasing program continued until the 1910s. The plantation and mill here were bought in 1907 by the Imperial Sugar Company, and the state bought the plantation in 1908 and renamed it Imperial State Prison Farm. In the late 1920s, the Texas Legislature approved economic reforms that began prison industrial operations, led to convict classification based on rehabilitative theory, and improved convict living conditions. Construction of the Central State Prison Farm facilities began here in 1930. The Austin firm of Gieseke and Harris designed the new buildings, and Bertram Gieseke's father, architecture professor F.E. Gieseke, served as a consultant on materials and techniques centered on poured, reinforced concrete technology. The main building, containing administrative offices and dormitories, was completed in 1932 as the first modernized structure in the Texas prison system. Its Art Moderne design includes stepped pilasters, chamfered corners, a square tower with a pyramidal roof, and metal casement windows, and it endures as a reminder of 20th-century prison reforms.