AUGUST 2000 V.64, N. 8 

The downtown area of Moundsville is sleepy and rain soaked as photographer Steve Shaluta and I drive through on our way to the former West Virginia Penitentiary. During the ride from Charleston, Steve has regaled me with stories of his past visits to the prison, including one 10 years ago when the great stone walls still echoed with an unsettling din created by the voices and rustlings of inmates and guards. With the departure of inmates several years ago, I know that I, unlike Steve, will not be taunted by voices behind bars, nor instructed to stay a safe distance beyond the North Hall cells lest insults – or worse things – are hurled in my direction. As we pass shops and offices, my imagination in full gear, the massive stone towers of the former penitentiary appear suddenly, like a mirage, amid gray clouds. Topped with tall battlements, they loom over the town, including a nearby elementary school and the historic Grave Creek Mound.

As the imposing, 10-acre fortress comes into full view, it stands in immense contrast to its neighbors. Well-kept homes with trimmed green lawns and gardens line the surrounding streets. Its size and location prove to be but the first in a series of striking contrasts that a tour of the former penitentiary reveals.

The West Virginia Penitentiary was built with convict labor from 1867-1876 at a cost of $363,061. Modeled after the Northern Illinois Penitentiary at Joliet, the prison's Gothic architecture reflects the predominant prison architectural style in England and America at the time. The Board of Directors of West Virginia's new penitentiary also adopted the Joliet facility's prisoner reform philosophy. Based upon the Auburn, New York or "silent" system, prisoners were allowed to work and dine together under a rule of silence. The Auburn system allowed institutions to make money because inmates could work together in shops. Many also considered this system a more humane method of reform than the Pennsylvania or "solitary" system, which was also popular at the time. Under that system, prisoners lived, worked, and slept confined to their cells, except for one hour each day when they exercised alone.

Nearly 120 years later, in 1982, Judge Arthur Recht ruled that the Moundsville facility was in violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. He also ruled that the prison violated an inmate's right to rehabilitation. In 1986, after the worst riot in the prison's history, the West Virginia Supreme Court ordered the penitentiary to be closed. This process took until 1995, when the state's oldest and largest prison finally shut its doors.

The following year, in an effort to preserve this historic landmark and to stem the town's economic loss due to its closing, the Moundsville Economic Development Council opened the prison to the public, offering guided tours. Since that time, visitors have flocked by the thousands to the facility, which is now included on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1996, U.S. News and World Report named the former West Virginia Penitentiary one of the best 500 places to visit in the United States. Last year, more than 20,000 visitors from 49 states and 17 countries toured the prison, resulting in $120,000 in tourism dollars. The prison's haunted house event, held for 12 days in October, drew 10,000 people last year.

"People are fascinated by the penitentiary," says Rachel Miller, executive director of the Moundsville Economic Development Council. "It's not often that you get to see the inside of a prison. People want to see what it's really like. The penitentiary is also the second oldest building built by the state of West Virginia. A lot of people come for the history."

Indeed, the 133-year-old former penitentiary boasts a remarkable history both grand and grim. Behind the impressive walls, with their castle-like turrets and battlements, was once the elegant apartment of the prison superintendent, with its high ceilings, marble floors, and stately ballroom. In bygone years, the citizens of Moundsville not only socialized in the ballroom but came to the well-appointed prison theater to see performances. (Note: The superintendent's apartment is not open to the public and the theater no longer exists.)

In the early years, it cost just 16 cents per day to house an inmate at Moundsville. (Compare that to today's annual cost to the state per inmate of $22,850.) Inmate labor sustained the prison's blacksmith, tailor, and carpentry shops; farm; coal mine; mattress factory; and various other industries. By the 1940s and '50s, baseball teams were popular among inmates who regularly played church and other local teams.

Throughout the years, many inmates with privileges, or "trusties," also held jobs in the community. Some became the lifeblood of area non-profit organizations, lending theirs skills to a variety of projects.

The local people embraced the penitentiary and were sorry to see it close, says Miller, who grew up in Moundsville and whose great-grandfathers were both corrections officers.

Yet, over the years, as the prison outwardly seemed to thrive, its great walls often concealed poor conditions, overcrowding, bloody riots, murder, and mayhem. Originally built to house up to 840 male and 32 female inmates, in the 1930s the penitentiary held more than 2,700 prisoners, with three or more sharing the same five-by-seven-foot cell.

In 1979, convicted murderer Ron Williams and 14 other inmates escaped, killing an off-duty state police officer just outside the prison entrance before being apprehended. Then, on New Year's Day 1986, the worst riot in the prison's history broke out. On that day, due to economic cutbacks, there was no guard on duty in the gun cage overlooking the main dining hall. Inmates took 16 corrections officers and one food service worker hostage, demanding relief from intolerable conditions, including lack of air conditioning and the presence of rats and roaches. When a negotiating team, which included Governor Arch Moore, ended the riot 52 hours later, three inmates who were considered to be informers were dead, killed at the hands of other inmates.

Visitors are not spared the grisly details of these and other sordid chapters in the penitentiary's history. Rather, newspaper accounts with photographs of riots staged in 1973 and 1986 are displayed prominently in the former prison law library, along with accounts of the executions of several convicted murderers.

A display case mounted on the wall in this room holds a numbing array of confiscated shanks, or weapons, crafted by prisoners from, among other things, a piece of metal from a bunk, a fork, a toothbrush, and a spatula handle. Sharpened to a frightening degree by hours of scraping against cell doors, the shanks sport handles made from a scrap of wood, wrapped duct tape, and even a dried corn cob.

Even more incredible is the list of documented items used by visitors to smuggle drugs to inmates. Just a few of these include a lipstick tube, diaper, cast, false caps on teeth, false buttons, sticks of gum, and love beads. Drugs were hidden in various body cavities or taped behind visitors' ears. In at least one case, a glass eye was used to conceal drugs.

Visitors can view grim artifacts from the days when West Virginia exercised capital punishment – the black mask used to cover the faces of prisoners sentenced to death, and the heavy, wooden electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky." Nine inmates convicted of the worst crimes against humanity died by electrocution before the state abolished capital punishment in 1965. Deemed a more humane method of execution, electrocution replaced death by hanging, whereby 84 prisoners from the penitentiary died between 1899 and 1949. For many years, hangings at the prison were public events. This practice ended in 1931 after a particularly gruesome hanging, the details of which are discussed on the tour.

For our tour, we join a large group of students from Parkersburg South High School who are studying various aspects of tourism operations. Shuffling and murmuring, with eyes darting in all directions, we follow tour guide Dee Baldwin for an hour and a half, first to the "contact visitation room" with it's striking Adena Indian sculpture and colorful paintings of cartoon characters, all created by inmates.

Next, our steps echo through cold, bare hallways as we reach the $5.2 million, air-conditioned dining hall, built in 1987 in response to demands made by inmates in the 1986 riot. Students peer inside the officers' station and some cannot resist tapping on its tall, bullet-proof glass panes, complete with gun portals.

In the dining hall we find further testimony to inmate talent. The walls are adorned with idyllic, fantasy-like scenes of flying eagles, majestic mountains, and flowing rivers. They seem at once to reflect both a longing for freedom and the power of creativity to emerge under even the most adverse circumstances. We are told that this artwork was the cooperative effort of two inmates: one, who was colorblind, painted, while the other mixed the colors.

On a walk through the prison, evidence of misguided and lost talent is everywhere. Hanging near the "non-contact visitation area," with its round seats and viewing windows, are two large paintings. One, which depicts the New River Gorge Bridge, was painted by one of the leaders of the 1986 riot who was later killed by a fellow inmate. The other is unmistakably Blackwater Falls, with it's foamy, darkwater tumbling down large rocks. The creator of this work was killed after his release from the penitentiary.

Outside in the prison yards, our guide points to the former rose garden, where older inmates tended flowers and sat together telling stories. We hear stories of family picnics and even an occasional wedding in the prison chapel. Within view is the "bull pen," a small, fenced area topped with curls of razor wire and the only area in which North Hall inmates were allowed to exercise. We learn about the famous greenhouse escape, when, over an undetermined amount of time, three inmates dug a tunnel from the greenhouse, under the wall, and out to the street.

To prevent mass escapes, the front entrance of the prison was equipped with a massive, cage-like, steel revolving door, which was operated by air pressure. An interesting point on the tour, the door is one of only two of its kind in existence; the other being in Manchester, England.

But unquestionably among the most unnerving stops on our visit are the cellblocks. Entering North Hall is like walking into an oversized cage. We are surrounded by fencing, even above our heads. Here 240 of the state's most dangerous criminals were housed, four levels high, in solitary confinement, for 22 hours a day. We see the poles where inmates were handcuffed while they awaited showers. To retaliate for poor behavior, our guide tells us, officers might administer hot or cold showers, or perhaps just a trickle of water.

A slim aisle separates the cells from the fenced "gun runner" area, where armed officers covered unarmed officers serving food or otherwise interacting with prisoners. Music from a boom box plays eerily from one of the cells, as it might have when it was occupied. Graffiti covers the cell walls. A shade fashioned from a plastic bottle covers an otherwise bare light bulb. Rust on the heavy, barred doors and meager bunk platforms has increased from dampness and lack of heat since the prison closed. Paint curls away from walls and ceilings.

In the New Wall cellblock, where inmates considered less dangerous could leave their cells during the day to work or attend classes and other activities, we hear of the brutal torture and murder of a "snitch" which occurred during the 1986 riot.

"The inmates had their own justice system," our guide tells us. The students are quiet and attentive and then full of questions.

Parkersburg South senior Cody Travis sums up his impression of the penitentiary in one word – "creepy" – and agrees that seeing the facility would make anyone think twice before breaking the law.

"I thought the tour would be kind of boring," he says, "but it's not at all."

As our tour concludes, I am suddenly aware that I have been wearing both a jacket and a raincoat. Feeling chilled, and not just in body, I drift amid post-riot photographs, the case of homemade weapons, and the tall electrical unit that pumped lethal charges into Old Sparky. I imagine inmates working together, painting, playing ball, and chatting by the rose garden.

On our way out, I peruse the souvenir T-shirts, postcards, and foam aluminum can holders but pass them by, deciding my vivid history lesson is enough to bring home.

Writer Sheila McEntee intends to remain a law-abiding citizen of Charleston, where she has lived for 11 years with her husband, Bob Dunlavey, and their children, Megan and Patrick. With this issue Sheila joins the Wonderful West Virginia staff as associate editor.

For more information about the former West Virginia Penitentiary, including a fascinating history by Michael E. Workman, Ph.D. of West Virginia University's Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archeology, visit the penitentiary