ALISON STEWART, host:
After a five-year, $150-million renovation, the Charles Street Jail in Boston, Mass., in now called the Liberty Hotel.
A recent review on TripAdvisor, somebody said there - first week in August, said, lock me up and throw away the key. Loved, loved the theme. The hotel was gorgeous. Staff went above and beyond. Breakfast is excellent. Our view was the best in the city. Definitely sending family and friends to stay. Sending local friends to check out the bar.
Okay. The name of the bar in this hotel is called the Alibi, built in the jail's former drunk-tank. The restaurant is called the Clink. It can cost about $300 to $5,000 to stay at the new Liberty Hotel. But a lot of people stayed for free at this site.
And here to tell us about some of the old-school guests and the history of the jailhouse hotel is Albert Rex, historian and director of the northeast office for MacRostie Historic Advisors.
Nice to speak with you.
Mr. ALBERT REX (Director, MacRostie Historic Advisors Northeast Office): Hi. Nice to be on.
STEWART: So tell me about some of the more famous prisoners who stayed at the Charles Street Jail.
Mr. REX: Well, it's funny because the jail really ended up where it did because of politics. And there are actually several political prisoners that ended up in the jail. Probably the most famous being Mayor James Michael Curley, who, apart of being mayor, he was the alderman here in Boston. And he, in 1904, was thrown in jail for taking the civil service test for, I think, it was during the post office for one of his moored bosses. The funny thing is that he was actually in federal prison in 1954 for doing something else illegal but it was not the Charles Street Jail.
STEWART: So tell me a little bit about this as to how recently was it a jail.
Mr. REX: The jail closed in 1979. It was opened in 1851. It was designed by an architect named Gridley J.F. Bryant. And it's an incredible building. Bryant built many buildings out of the granite Boston can notice. Boston Granite Style in 1850s, '60s, '70s and '80s. He had 150 buildings in Boston that were lost in that great fire so the lavished work is unknown, but the buildings are pretty impressive.
STEWART: And it was originally an attempt to reform the prison system, right?
Mr. REX: It was. The jail - Gridley Bryant joined with the Reverend Dwight - Louis Dwight to create a prison that was supposed to be something a little more humane. It was called a prison within a prison. It first started in upstate New York in the early 1800s. And they were trying to perfect this idea of creating a prison where prisoners had individual cells. They had running water. They had heat. They can enjoy light.
And the idea was said that they would be confined at night in individual cells to kind of pay penance and think about what they had done. And then during the day, they would come together for certain communal pieces. But it was really an opportunity for them to supposedly kind of feel themselves at night and then go work collectively during the day.
STEWART: So was there anybody infamous in this jail?
Mr. REX: Well, it depends. I mean. And what you call for those infamous? There's many infamous people. I guess one of them would have been Trigger Burke, who, in 1954, was arrested to - after he tried to assassinate one of the members of the Brinks gang. Unfortunately, Trigger did not do his job real well.
(Soundbite of laughter)
STEWART: Did not live up to his name, I guess.
Mr. REX: Yeah, he didn't live up to his name. Unfortunately, the guy survived and fingered him for it. He ended up (unintelligible).
BURBANK: It's unfortunate for Trigger but not for the guy who didn't die.
Mr. REX: Yeah, well (unintelligible).
BURBANK: Highly fortunate for him.
Mr. REX: Yeah. He was very fortunate that Trigger was not as good as they thought he would be.
STEWART: Did anyone ever…
Mr. REX: So he ended up in the jail in 1954 and actually escaped for - he was out for a couple of years after that. There are a number of escapes from the jail. They had some design flaws at one point that they had to correct it. Built a wall around the jail, a very large six-foot high wall that had this - well, it's known as core of a brick, and you could actually pretty much climb up over it. So once you got out of the main building, you can get out of the jail. (Unintelligible).
STEWART: Albert, I'm going to ask you to actually hold on the line because we have on the phone as well, Gary Johnson who's one of the architects who helped to design this new Liberty Hotel, which is once the Charles Street Jail.
So Gary, what was the biggest challenge for you as an architect to turn a jail into a hotel?
Mr. GARY JOHNSON (Architect, Cambridge Seven Associates; Liberty Hotel): Well, I think that the biggest challenge for us was when we first walked into the building, it was a mess. It was - had been derelict and abandoned for about 10 years. And it was full of pigeons and it was quite a sight to see. And I think the first thing that came to all of our minds was, oh, my, goodness. How are we going to actually turn this from a decrepital building into a place that's fun and lively and entertaining? And that was probably the biggest first challenge that we had to face.
STEWART: Now, you also, though, incorporated - from what I've read, I haven't been there yet - some of the elements of the original jail into the current hospitality of the place.
Mr. JOHNSON: That's actually right. We - right from the very beginning, we were - we struggled a little bit in the very beginning about how much of the jail or as the National Park Service came to call it the jailness of the building should be preserved and should be seen and experienced by the hotel guests.
And as we worked on the project over a number of years, it became obvious to us that even though this was a jail, the bones of this building and the building itself were quite majestic and quite magnificent. And as we worked on it further and further with the owners, we discovered that we actually weren't afraid anymore of the fact that it was a jail.
In the beginning, I think, there was a little fear on all over parts that do you really want to stay as a hotel guest in a jail. But as we worked on it and we understood the history better with Albert's help and others, it became more and more clear to us that letting some of that jailness poke through was actually just fine. And was very honest and very forthright about what the building was. And we've taken the some advantage of that.
STEWART: So Albert, as a historian, what part of the jailness do you think works particularly well?
Mr. REX: I mean, the exterior of the building is amazing with the Boston Granite Style, this large, heavy stone blocks and the windows. But I think the thing that Gary and Cambridge Seven accomplished the most is when you come in to the interior of the jail and the center arch as the jail was built in a cruciform, you know, a T-shaped. And as you come in middle of the jail, you come in the center space that must sort of close to 70 feet, you just get this experience this aha-moment when you can't believe this was actually a jail at some point.
STEWART: And Gary, before I let you guys go, what are you most proud of architecturally in terms of this hotel?
Mr. JOHNSON: Well, for me, it's a couple of things.
One, in the restoration business, there's a lot of terminology around adaptive reuse. And I've been trying to actually change that a little bit and say that this is really a transformative reuse because we took a building that quite frankly, lots of people couldn't quite figure out what to do with. Yet, it was a magnificent monument, beautiful piece of architecture in the 1850s. And we said to ourselves, okay, what can we do for this.
So I'm very proud of the fact that our team and our developer, Carpenter & Company, and all of Cambridge Seven and the folks here, were able to see well beyond the jail and turned that into a magnificent hotel.
But secondly, and maybe even more importantly, is the fact that we took a section of Boston that had this magnificent building in it but had been surrounded by an 18-foot high brick wall for - since 1851. And we removed that wall, and all of the sudden, this building became part of the urban fabric of downtown Boston.
STEWART: It just opened everything up.
Gary Johnson, Cambridge Seven Associates' principal architect on the Liberty Hotel project. Congratulations to you. And to Albert Rex, thank you so much, historian and director for the northeast office of MacRostie Historical Advisors.
Thanks for your time, gentlemen.
Mr. JOHNSON: Thank you.
Mr. REX: Thank you.
Copyright © 2007 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.