Boston’s once notorious Charles Street Jail was transformed by a five-year, $150 million renovation into one of the city’s most expensive hotels. Where prisoners once rioted and planned their escape, rooms go from $319 to $5,500 per night.
Where Inmates Once Tried to Escape, Travelers Are Paying Top Dollar To Get In
By JEREMY HUBBARD and JAKE WHITMAN
Boston, May 6, 2009
CLICK HERE to watch Jeremy's report on the Liberty Hotel
When you first walk in Boston’s Liberty Hotel it looks like any fancy four-star hotel. But not far past the welcoming doorman are the old iron bars and narrow catwalks-- not so subtle reminders that this place has a criminal past.
Welcome to what was once Boston’s dreaded Charles Street Jail. A nasty, run-down slammer where some of the city’s hardened, most violent criminals served time.
For over 130 years, some were willing to risk death just to get out of this place. Now after a $150 million restoration, celebrities, tourists and business travelers are willing to spend hundreds, even thousands to get in.
Famous guests lists, then and now
Over the years it housed some of Boston’s most notorious criminals: Mayor James Michael Curley, convicted in 1904 for taking a civil service test for a friend; suffragettes arrested for protesting President Woodrow Wilson in 1919; Frank Abangale, the counterfeiter whose story inspired the movie “Catch Me If You Can”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Even confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo is said to have passed through.
Now as the Liberty Hotel, the guest list has included the likes of Mick Jagger, Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes and Annette Bening.
It may be part of a trend: hotel guests willing to spend big bucks to live like an inmate, or at least where an inmate once did. The Four Seasons in Istanbul used to be a lock-up. There’s even been some talk of turning part of Alcatraz into a hotel, to cash in on the curiosity of what it would be like to stay at “the rock.”
From international model to inhumane conditions
When the Charles Street Jail opened in 1851, it was touted as an international model for how prisons should be built. The massive granite building had a 90-foot central rotunda, large windows for plenty of light and four wings of cells forming a cross. It was the first prison in America to give inmates their own cell, and at 8 by 11 feet in size, the lodgings were considered “roomy” back then.
Over the years, that reputation changed when the jail became overcrowded, prone to riots and filthy beyond description. In the early 1970’s the inmates filed a lawsuit claiming cruel and unusual punishment. When a federal judge secretly stayed the night to see for himself in 1973, he ordered the place shut down. It would be another 17 years though, in 1990, when the last inmates were transferred out.
Unlocking the prison’s past
For ten years the prison sat empty, home only to pigeons that left two tons of droppings in the rafters.
"The walls were thick with lead paint, there were birds everywhere. It was a pretty scary place," says developer Dick Freeman.
Architects spent five years turning the Charles Street jail into the Liberty Hotel. They were careful to preserve many of the prison’s features, including the heavy iron cell doors and original brick walls.
"This has gotta be this great moment in Boston history, when this old building which was full of so much sorrow, can turn into something with so much joy,” said architect Gary Johnson.
The Liberty Hotel has also embraced its shady past with a sense of humor. One of its restaurants is called “Scampo,” Italian for escape. The hotel’s cocktail bar is called “Clink.” And a nightclub is located in the basement, in what was once the prison’s “drunk tank,” the place where the intoxicated were once kept overnight. Now it’s one of the city’s hottest night clubs, it is appropriately named “Alibi.”
Some of the inmates who did hard time, and the prison employees who kept watch over them, have actually come back to visit.
"We had a gentleman who applied for the director of security job, he said ‘I know the building cold, I was a security guard there.’"
No comments:
Post a Comment