Sunday, January 06, 2002
By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer EBENSBURG, Pa. -- In October 1884, the day before he was to be hanged for
killing a Johnstown man, Michael "Smitty" Smith pretty much evaporated
from the Cambria County Jail.
His cell was a locked cage of iron bars inside a concrete
room two sizes up from a clothespress.
The stone walls separating the jail yard outside from
freedom were 22 feet high.
Small matter. On his mattress, Smith left a farewell note
to the warden. Then he vanished for good. In case you're still out there on the run, Smitty, two
words of advice: Lay low. They're starting to talk about you
again around the old jailhouse. They're poking around your
old cell.
Of course, a lot of people poked around there during the
125 years when this fortress of a jail squeezed in prisoners
and hanged nine of them from its courtyard gallows. Four years ago, though, the last of them was bused two
miles to a new county lockup with a lot more room and a lot
less steely personality. The old jailhouse was empty.
The Cambria County Jail was built in 1872 and housed
prisoners until 1997. It became the Cambria County records
depository in January 1999. Since then, a museum
has
been added by the Cambria CountyHistorical Society.
(V.W.H.
Campbell Jr, Post-Gazette) But like Smith, it wouldn't die.
Nineteen days ago, a stretch that holds 28 cells,
including Smith's last known address, was resurrected as the
Old Cambria County Jail, a museum recounting Smith,
hangings, hard time and the days when correctional
institutions were hoosegows.
"An old building like that has an important story to
tell," said Susan Whisler, Ebensburg's former Main
Street manager and head of a committee that weighed ideas
for reincarnating the building. "These old jail buildings have such impact, such
presence in a town," said Patrick Foltz, executive
director of Preservation Pennsylvania, a nonprofit advocate
for historic sites. "They built them to be imposing, a
reminder that no bad deed goes unpunished."
And they built this one -- a "Welsh castle,"
critics in nearby Johnstown scoffed, swiping at Ebensburg's
Welsh roots -- as a severe-looking sandstone citadel
sprawling across a half block. It was muscled up with bars
and walls, decorated with turrets and had a stone-encased
tower looking down 70 feet onto a main street a block from
the center of town.
An exhibit of the jail cell of Michael
Smith, "Smitty," who vanished the
night before he was to die on the
gallows in October 1884.
The place was designed by Edward
Haviland, both son of the designer of
Philadelphia's landmark Eastern
Penitentiary and a Philadelphia
architect whose curriculum vitae
included schools, churches and jails in
Clearfield, Potter, Berks, Lycoming and
Carbon counties. And his Cambria County project
probably was overbuilt more than a
little for "a staggering
$73,000," the county historical
society reported.
Little Ebensburg, it seems, was
thumbing its nose at detractors 17 miles
away in metropolitan Johnstown, home to
a failed, decades-long crusade to wrest
away the title of county seat.
"That still grates on
Johnstown," said Richard Burkert,
executive director of the Johnstown Area
Heritage Association. Not that a prison wasn't warranted.
It replaced another lockup that was
only a scant improvement over a
predecessor that placed a courtroom
above a cellblock. In that original
jail, then-Judge Robert Johnson
recounted, one inmate "in his daily
devotion, sang the psalms so loudly
while confined in jail, that the Court,
in the room above, had to adjourn
because of the noise."
The newly renovated prison started
life in 1872 with 34 cells.
In 1911, it got an addition and
another 52 cells.
Almost from the start, though, it was
overbooked. And in 1997, when inmates
were shuttled out to new quarters and
the old prison was locked down for the
last time, the county faced a dilemma.
How do you recycle a used jailhouse?
That's not a new quandary for small
counties with outmoded prisons, Foltz
said. For one thing, old prisons don't
go gentle into oblivion.
"There's hundreds of thousands
of tons of stone and steel," he
said. "Prisons can be incredibly
tough ... incredibly expensive to tear
down."
Even if they scrape together the
cash, counties have trouble mustering
the will. Leveling a century-old edifice
is like wheeling Aunt Matilda's heirloom
baby grand out with the trash.
Franklin County,
for instance, opted
for turning its old
jail into a museum
and genealogical
center rather than
see it flattened
into a parking lot.
Three months ago,
after a failed try
at letting artisans
sell wares from its
empty jail in
Williamsport,
Lycoming County saw
the lockup dance
back to life as a
night spot dubbed
The Cellblock.
In 1999, Cambria
County went the way
many counties go
with abandoned
prisons. First, it
did a $266,700 roof
repair for which the
Pennsylvania
Historical and
Museum Commission
kicked in $80,000.
Then it moved a
burgeoning store of
county records --
boxes and filing
cabinets -- into the
four-level cage of
cells in the jail's
1911 addition. What with the
access and a new
climate-control
system, "You
couldn't ask for a
better place to put
papers," said
Frances Borlie, a
keeper of the
archive. At one point,
there had been talk
of a shopping mall,
but it seemed too
hoity-toity for a
place that was once
home to guys like
Jacob Hauser, hanged
95 years ago for
using a machete to
dispatch his wife
and mother-in-law. So along came the
idea of a jail
museum, open
weekdays from 9 a.m.
to 4 p.m., to fill
part of the space
that the county
archives don't.
The last time the
county jail drew
more than captive
audiences was at
hangings when, for
instance, at least
400 people got
tickets for a double
feature involving
Hauser and another
killer.
This time, the
draw is
storytelling, done
in the
100-by-18-foot
hallway of the
original cellblock,
a place left painted
drab, flat brown and
yellow.
There are three
levels of walkways
here, reaching 60
feet toward a
skylight obscured by
plastic. The place
is lined by tiny
cells with tiny
doorways and heavy,
barred doors. And on
a winter day, the
temperature dips to
the high 50s, making
this piece of
jailhouse a bona
fide cooler.
The attraction is
the jailhouse
culture on display.
A main draw is a
7-by-7-foot glass
box built by inmates
and containing
artifacts ranging
from huge jailhouse
ledgers to weapons
fashioned by
prisoners to the
nooses used in
hangings.
The display was
transplanted from
the lobby of the
county's new prison,
said David Huber, a
Cambria County
Historical Society
board member and
coordinator for the
museum project; it
tended to unnerve
the populace there. Much of the
glimpse of jail life
that visitors get is
culled from copious
records kept by
Warden Knee, a
52-year career man
at the prison before
retiring in 1947. He
had such a gift for
detail that, on
demand, he correctly
jotted down the
names and
backgrounds of 28
recently convicted
inmates, The
Johnstown Weekly
Tribune reported in
1911.
In all of Knee's
detail, there is no
suggestion that
inmates were treated
anything but
humanely. But the jail
wasn't much of a bet
to win a Holiday Inn
franchise, either. "There have
been as high as 16
hoboes confined to
one cell at a
time," a 1904
Johnstown Tribune
reported.
In the dark below
the cellblock is a
room dubbed the
dungeon, a lockup
reserved for what
the prison
classified as
"delirious and
unruly
inmates," most
likely
out-of-control,
mentally ill
prisoners, Huber
guessed.
"In today's
terms," he
said, "I guess
you'd call it a
time-out room."
Nor was what was
meted out at the
prison necessarily
justice.
When he was
convicted of killing
another man during a
fight at a Johnstown
home, 20-year-old
Charles Carter, who
was black, told of
being ushered into
his 1889 murder
trial without so
much as a lawyer. "I was
absolutely ignorant
of what was required
of me," he told
a local newspaper.
A legal
bagatelle,
apparently.
Three months
later, Carter was
led to the scaffold.
Not that Cambria
County incarceration
was repugnant to
all.
David Huber, executive board member of
the historical society, is framed by the noose
that was made for the execution of
Michael Smith. The noose never was used.
This and other nooses that were used in
executions are on display at the former
prison. Nooses were never reused. A new
one was made for each execution. At the forerunner
to the 1872 prison,
the Ebensburg Sky
reported in 1834,
the cells had been
emptied of all but
one inmate who
seemed to take a
shine to the place.
So the jailer
coaxed the inmate
outside, the Sky
reported.
Then the jailer
"immediately
locked the door and
refused him
admittance."
Jail in 2002
