By Lewis F. Pilcher, New York State Architect
(Reprinted by permission from the American Architect of January 28, 1920)
The more advanced of the modern penologists are rapidly discarding the old theory that a certain humanity and kindliness should be eliminated from society’s dealings with its less responsible citizens. They are substituting in its place the idea that the majority of criminals are not inherently bad, but, lacking the idealistic principles of good citizenship which result from environment and education, are only wayward.
If we accept this new theory, and make negligible the assumption that most criminals have inherited a tendency toward wrong-doing, it becomes necessary for us to revise many of our ideas concerning the government, discipline and housing of prisoners, and to acquire an impressionable quality of mind susceptible to new theories and experiments which concern the welfare and advancement of our less fortunate fellow men.
With all these things in mind, and with the desire to do our part in ameliorating prison government, the Commission on New Prisons has endeavored, in the building of the Wingdale Prison, to achieve a good architectural result combined with these essential reforms. In order that these aims may be fully understood, I shall attempt to explain both the architectural plan of this new prison and the reasons for selecting a sloping rather than a level topographical site.
Architectural Precedents
If one surveys the history of civilization and investigates the growth and final results of the structural plan of either religious or civil communities, it is at once apparent that the final housing scheme of any given settlement is determined by the topography of the region of its location.
For example, the study of the settlements of antiquity shows that the higher locations were universally chosen as the sites of palaces and temples, and that where the configuration of land did not permit of such natural elevation, mounds or raised crepidomas were constructed, in order that by means of the terraced elevations a distinction might be made between the different degrees of religious prominence.
That the Egyptians who inhabited the level areas of the alluvial Nile appreciated the psychological effect of such terraced elevation is shown by the architectural arrangement of their temples. To emphasize the hieratic mysteries, the worshiper was led from a pyloned gateway into an atrium with a pavement slightly graded above the level of the dromos. This atrium, open as it was to the effects of the brilliant Egyptian atmosphere, offered a subtle psychic preparation for that elation of soul which stimulated the novitiate when, after ascending the steps on the far side of the atrium, he entered the sombre shadow of the hypostyle hall. This elation increased in many cases to a religious ecstasy when the novitiate ascended into the upper region where the esoteric mysteries were performed.
A simpler expression of this religious constructive arrangement may be seen in the Temple of Kohn. Here the priestcraft developed a form of temple construction which crystallized all the associative imagery of man and reflected in its different stages of elevation of the various sections the relevant distinctions of class and the progress of humanity toward its idealistic goal.