TYPICAL CELL FLOOR PLAN
The prevailing type of building in Chicago for offices, for light manufacturing, for residences, is the skyscraper. Its adaptability for public purposes is exemplified in the City Hall and Court House Building. In New York City this type of building is being used successfully in the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, 10 stories high, closely resembling an ordinary office building. A roof garden, reached by elevators, provides playgrounds which are used by the pupils in sections at different hours. The possibility is suggested of adapting this plan of building to the Criminal Court and County Jail.
Let the Criminal Court Building be 400 feet square, with interior lighting courts, or in the form of a cross, with a frontage of 200 feet on each of the four sides. Let the Court House contain as many stories as may be needed: four, five, or six, as the case may be.
Let the County Jail start from the roof of the Court House in the form of a cross, of which the arms will be 90 by 40 feet, with a central rotunda on each floor about 60 feet square.
Assuming that the Criminal Court Building will be four stories high (in the drawing a typical building of one story is given in order to indicate the relations of the court building and the jail), the jail proper, will begin on the fifth floor. On this floor will be the jailer’s offices and residence, the kitchen, officers’ dining room, officers’ lodging rooms, etc. The street elevators and the street stairways will terminate on the fifth floor and will be connected by a grated and guarded passageway with the jail elevator and stairway, which will start from the fifth floor, in order to prevent escapes. If prisoners were to “hold up” the prison elevator, they could get no further than the fifth floor.
The “typical floor plan” indicates the arrangement of the cells. Each floor will be separate and distinct and will contain 100 cells, each 7 by 10 feet and 10 feet high, to accommodate one prisoner. The cells will be placed on the outside wall, with windows 4 by 4 feet, providing abundant light and air. There will be four distinct sections on each floor, containing 25 cells each. There will be as many floors as may be necessary to provide for the highest estimated number of prisoners. The drawings contemplate six cell floors which would accommodate 600 prisoners, with additional accommodation for 56 prisoners in the hospital.
The building will be planned with a view to erecting additional stories whenever required, without change of the administrative departments.
The arrangement of the building will be such that the cell windows will be about 350 feet distant from the windows of the buildings on the street opposite. These cell windows can be set at any desired distance from the floor and the lower sash may be fixed in place and supplied with ribbed glass.