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The History Project – Episode 149
It’s the Daily 304’s presentation of famous people, places, and events that shaped West Virginia. Welcome to The History Project. Today, we take a look at…
The West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville – The Mountain State’s First Prison. Though often called The Moundsville Prison, Its formal name is The West Virginia Penitentiary, and its history is long, perhaps too long.
After West Virginia gained statehood in 1863, it took Governor Arthur Boreman three years to convince the legislature to build a prison for the state. The location was selected in Moundsville, along the Ohio River, 12 miles south of Wheeling, the state capital at the time.Architect Joseph S. Fairfax’s prison design imitated the newly completed prison in Joliet, Illinois, using Gothic Revival architecture with castle-like turrets and a crenellated façade. The structure, built by prison labor, used the Auburn Plan, with barred cells stacked on top of each other.
The first completed portion contained cells for 840 men and 32 women, while the rest of the facility remained under construction. Prisoners were put to work making brooms, soap, clothing, license plates and even working in a nearby coal mine.
Despite this industriousness, prisons are dark places with tragic histories. The darkest aspect of this prison was the exercise of the death penalty where 94 men were executed at the prison, first by hanging and later by electrocution, between 1899 and 1959. This ended when West Virginia became the 6th state to eliminate capital punishment in 1965.
Though women were moved to a new prison, overcrowding at Moundsville was a constant problem. There were deadly riots in 1973, ‘79, and in 1986, the same year the state Supreme Court ruled that a 5’ X 7’ prison cell was excessive punishment. Inmates were moved to new facilities by 1995, and the City of Moundsville uses the prison for police training and offers tours. Along with its use in movies starring the likes of Robert Mitchum, Jimmy Stewart, and Christian Bale, the prison is infamous as a haunted location and is popular with ghost hunters, reflecting its brutal 120-year history, where antiquated 19th-century ideals of incarceration overstayed their welcome.
