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Life and after life at the West Virginia Penitentiary
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West Virginia Penitentiary west wall
Sweating bodies toil in the hot summer sun hammering stone into blocks to be lifted one by one hand by hand into place. It is 1866 and the civil war has just come to its end. The men swinging the ten pound hammers are the trustees of the newly formed state of West Virginia. The hardened criminals doing hard time on the banks of the Ohio River are building their own penitentiary. A Gothic-style fortress of native limestone takes form rising slowly with convict labor. The building is a ten acre structure capped with turrets, look-outs and razor wire now rusted. The stone black with age, black with the history of some of the most ruthless men ever convicted in West Virginia, black with the blood of some of the most violent men in United States history. If these walls could talk is often heard said of great halls, houses and buildings. But here in Moundsville, West Virginia these walls do talk. A decade and a half after this infamous prison was closed by the Supreme Court as cruel and unusual punishment even for the worst characters of our society the walls carry the markings of its incarcerated. Indeed, even the sounds, smells and shadows of those condemned to this hell hole can be heard in the echoes of the empty halls and cells.
Housed in this cold stone of cruel history is the art and messages of its past inhabitants. Some of the art is beautiful and touching. Other forms of prison art are just wild rants of pain and distrust. "The reaper is watching you!" and "Ain't life so f***** sweet!?" is printed in a steady hand in one cell. The cells of this ancient penitentiary are cramped five foot by seven foot boxes of steel. Each cell is home to two men one bunk above the other and a stainless steel toilet without benefit of lid or seat and an integrated sink. Each cell is lit by a single incandescent bulb near the ceiling on the back wall. The room height is maybe only seven feet high and like the walls is of riveted steel plates. The cell door only two and a half feet wide is of welded half inch steel bars four inches apart. For the more violent the doors are then covered with diamond patterned steel screening that a cigarette would not pass through. Cells are stacked four levels high twenty or more cells per tier in the center of the rectangular room. Chain-link fence encloses the tiers like a birdcage inside the exterior stone walls whose windows are well beyond hand reach from the floor and stretch nearly to the ceiling. Between the exterior wall and the cage fence the guards once walked on patrol and high above a guard box where a sharp shooter kept watch on the four tier block. Air conditioning was none existent even in the 1990's so the heat and humidity of summer would bring the temperature inside many days to over one hundred degrees. Can you smell the sweet and odor of the population on an August day? Can you feel the oppression of cold steel that does not cool the stench of a summer's night on the block? Here men are regularly stabbed, slashed, rapped, and murdered and yet walls through out the prison are carefully and creatively painted with images of mountain lions, eagles, elk, and ducks. Paintings of cabins and waterwheel mills in pastoral and peaceful country settings adorn the walls. It is beautiful art from tortured souls for tortured souls of those condemned to life in prison and perhaps the noose or the electric chair.
Inside the walls of the penitentiary 998 documented deaths have occurred. Ninety-four were by execution. Eighty-five were executed by hanging and nine were executed by electrocution in the electric chair nick named "Old Sparky". But the speculation is that hundreds more of undocumented deaths would have occurred behind these walls since 1866.
At the West Virginia Penitentiary you can walk the halls sit in the cells and hear the ring than clank of the locking doors. The penitentiary tour is more then a tour it is an experience that you will not soon forget. Tours are conducted April through November Tuesday though Sunday for $10 per adult and $5 per child and free for children under five but I would not recommend the tour for children under five. The penitentiary is located 12 miles south of Wheeling, West Virginia in the historic town of Moundsville on the Ohio River.
Moundsville is a great weekend trip from Dayton. Across the street from the prison is the Mound Museum and one of the ancient mounds to explore. Near by are the Fostoria Glass Museum and the Marx Toy Museum. And in Wheeling is the Wheeling Island Racetrack and Gaming Center. Have a great weekend!
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