This tentative plan was developed by Mr. Alfred Hopkins, Architect, along lines suggested by Superintendent Frank Moore, of the New Jersey State Reformatory at Rahway. It provides for three general classifications: An Administration and Custodial Group, an Agricultural Group and an Industrial Group; the various departments of the institution being connected by a covered passageway. Mr. Hopkins remarks: “While this plan is only in the nature of a preliminary sketch, it is interesting in showing that a practical prison man is quite willing to get away from the old idea of supervision which established the radiating plan and the long type of cell block.”
Westchester County Penitentiary and Workhouse, White Plains, N. Y.
[Illustration: WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N. Y., PENITENTIARY--GENERAL VIEW FROM APPROACH
The Westchester County Penitentiary is a simple form of the type of a plan whose various parts are brought together by the use of the connecting corridor to provide indoor circulation throughout the group. This system of design is well known in connection with other types of building, but seems to be new to prison architecture. Indeed, such an arrangement would have only been tolerated in the present attitude toward the offender. Modern penology demands, first of all, adequate possibilities for segregation and classification. These are of vital importance in the administration of the modern penal institution, and cannot be properly had in the huge cell block. To achieve this classification and segregation, the connecting corridor offers the greatest possibilities.
Westchester County had purchased at East View, at a very reasonable price, a fine estate of some four hundred acres of exceptionally tillable land. On this property it was proposed to build a Poor House for about 700 and a penitentiary and workhouse for about 350, all short-term prisoners, the maximum sentence being thirteen months. Most of the men were to be employed on the farm, but in an institution of this size there are always men who will do better in shops so that the two kinds of work ought to be available. The plan was to build the institution by contract and the shops by prison labor.
The general scheme is set forth clearly in the plan, and it may be said that at the very beginning it was determined the men should be housed in smaller units than was usual. There are four cell blocks of three tiers each, all with outside cells, there being 27 men on a floor and 81 to a cell block. The connecting corridor 16 feet wide runs approximately east and west, and to this are joined the four cell blocks on the south, and on the north the reception building, the refectory, and school building. Between the two central cell blocks is placed the administration building, connected to them by an open passage.