The site is a good one, being easy of access from all parts of the city, and convenient to the court house and penitentiary. There is ample space on all sides for a free circulation of air. The lot has a gentle ascent to the north and east, and a dry self-draining gravel sub-soil. Its proximity to Jones’ Falls, and its elevation above the water level, affords the best means of drainage.
In designing this prison and working out the various details of the plan, we endeavored to carry out the following general principles, viz:
1. Confinement of prisoners in separate cells, so far as deemed desirable.
2. Separation into classes.
3. The cells so arranged that their doors and windows may have open gratings, and yet so as that a prisoner cannot from his cell see into any other cells or into any other part of the building except the corridor opposite his own cell.
4. The corridors so arranged and located that prisoners can, with convenience and safety, be allowed privileges in them.
5. Pleasant and convenient yet perfectly secure rooms, for the confinement of witnesses, entirely separate from the other parts of the prison.
6. No apartment for the confinement of a prisoner to be below the surface of the ground.
7. An unobstructed view of the corridors, galleries and stairs from the guard room.
8. Central location for the kitchen, the chapel and all other offices.