OLD STONE JAIL, WAYNE COUNTY

The Old Stone Jail has occupied an unobtrusive site along the banks of the Lackawaxen River at the eastern end of 10th Street. Built in 1859 at a cost of $16,000, this venerable stone building was not the first structure to house Wayne County’s lawbreakers. Wayne County’s first jail was built in 1801 in Bethany, then the county seat. The Old Stone Jail was ready for occupancy in August 1859. Stepping across the threshold of this somber stone edifice, one is inclined to share the attitude of that newspaper correspondent. Upon entering the building, the descriptive word that immediately comes to mind is “dungeon”. The squat, one story structure is constructed almost completely of rough stone. The interior walls are rough stone as is the floor. The ten foot arched ceiling is brick. A trap door in the ceiling leads through a crawl space to a latticed cupola on the roof. This cupola seems an oddly esthetic touch to an otherwise bleak structure. The heavy iron door opens to a very narrow corridor with another iron door at its opposite end. Five cells, each measuring about twelve feet by nine or ten feet with arched ceilings, flank the corridor on each side. The entrance to each cell is considerably lower than a normal doorway, making it necessary for even a man of medium stature to stoop to gain entry. Each cell has a long narrow vertical slit for a window resembling an aperture one might see in a fortress. Once the solid metal cell door was closed this aperture would be the prisoner’s only source of light. A cell on either side of the front entrance served as a room for the guard and a trustee. The walls of the corridor still retain the marks of what evidently had been a gate that separated these first two cells and the front entrance from the rest of the jail. The last cell on the right may have been where the jailer’s wife prepared the meals for the prisoners. A thick stone slab in one corner of the cell might well have been the location of a wood or coal stove. ***The jail is rumored to be haunted!