USA/OH: Ohio State Reformatory
Ohio State Reformatory was a historic prison/correctional facility, made famous by the movie Shawshank Redemption which was entirely shot here. It’s a massive prison, that seized operations in 1990 (not to worry another prison is not just across the road). Amazingly, you can tour the entire facility (and with COVID the tours are self-guided) – see the warden rooms, electrocution chamber, prison sells, prison shower, prison library, and so on. It was build between 1886 and 1910 in a grand mixture of Romanesque and Gothic style “to help encourage inmates to become reborn back into their spiritual lives”. It holds the record for the tallest steel cell block in the world and seeing it is quite impressive. The prison was closed in 1990 by the federal order after the inmates’ class action suit about in humane conditions and overcrowding.
