XIII. THE TOMBS.
Turn out of Printing House Square, leaving the City Hall on your left, and pass up Centre street for about a quarter of a mile, and you will come to a massive granite edifice in the Egyptian style of architecture. It occupies an entire square, and is bounded by Centre and Elm, and Leonard and Franklin streets. The main entrance is on Centre street, and is approached by a broad flight of granite steps, which lead to a portico supported by massive Egyptian columns. The proper name of the edifice is The Halls of Justice, but it is popularly known all over the Union as The Tombs, which name was given to it in consequence of its gloomy appearance. It occupies the site of the old Collect Pond which once supplied the citizens of New York with drinking water, was begun in 1835 and completed in 1838.
The outer building occupies four sides of a hollow square, and is 253 by 200 feet in size. It was built at a time when New York contained scarcely half its present population, and has long since ceased to be equal to the necessities of the city. The site is low and damp, and the building is badly ventilated. The warden does all in his power to counteract these evils, and keeps the place remarkably neat, but it is still a terribly sickly and dreary abode. It was designed to accommodate about 200 prisoners, but for some years past the number of prisoners confined here at one time has averaged 400, and has sometimes exceeded that average. The Grand Jury of the County have recently condemned the place as a nuisance, and it is believed that the city will ere long possess a larger, cleaner, and more suitable prison.
When the prison was built the Five Points, on the western verge of which it lies, was a much worse section than it is now. It is bad enough at present, but then the Tombs constituted a solitary island in a sea of crime and suffering. A terrible island it was, too.
Entering through the gloomy portal upon which the sunlight never falls, the visitor is chilled with the dampness which greets him as soon as he passes into the shadow of the heavy columns. Upon reaching the inner side of the enclosure, he finds that the portion of the prison seen from the street encloses a large courtyard, in the centre of which stands a second prison, 142 feet long by 45 feet deep, and containing 148 cells. This is the male prison, and is connected with the outer building by a bridge known as the Bridge of Sighs, since it is by means of it that condemned criminals pass from their cells to the scaffold at the time of their execution.
The gallows is taken down and kept in the prison until there is need for it. Then it is set up in the courtyard near the Bridge of Sighs. All executions are conducted here in private, that is, they are witnessed only by such persons as the officers of the law may see fit to admit. But on such days the neighboring buildings are black with people, seeking to look down
over the prison walls and witness the death agonies of the poor wretch who is paying the penalty of the law.
