End of an era for “Prison City”

My hometown could have had a reputation for its limestone, from which buildings around the country were constructed; or the nation’s first junior college; or big names like George Mikan and Mercedes McCambridge. But Joliet became best known for the Joliet and Stateville Correctional Centers long before John Belushi’s fictional “Joliet Jake” was released from the former.

The Joliet Correctional Center — better known as the Old Joliet Prison — closed in 2002. Now the state has proposed demolishing maximum-security Stateville, which is actually in next-door Crest Hill, with a facility focusing on rehabilitation and reentry, and moving downstate Logan’s women’s prison alongside it.

If the changes happen, it will be the end of an era for “Prison City,” where the most violent criminals were locked up.

I may have had more contact with the penitentiaries than the average Jolietan. As teenagers, a friend and I watched movies in the prisons’ projection booths, where her father worked. I jogged in Stateville’s 10K race alongside prisoners nearing release and got inside the prison for a private tour during my second stint as a Joliet Herald-News reporter. 

Tossing out at parties “I watched movies with convicts” or “I jogged alongside prisoners” was sure to start a conversation and get laughs. After the tour I stopped treating the prisons as a joking matter. The direct stares, the catcalls, and the rattling of the cages were scary. 

The old Joliet Correctional Center, sans inmates, is now a ticketed tourist attraction operated by the Joliet Area Historical Museum. Reportedly not every member of the museum board favored opening the Old Prison for tours because it might reinforce Joliet’s reputation as Prison City. 

I’m not sure its current reputation for casino gambling is better, but the city promotes the casinos, which, in the words of a New York Times headline, “recast prison town as a boom city.” Joliet was the state’s third largest city in the 2020 federal census, its population doubled since my childhood to nearly 150,000. 

With my parents gone, I don’t have much reason to go to Joliet anymore. But every now and then I think of returning as a tourist. I didn’t get into architecture until moving to Chicago, and now I’d like to pay more attention to Joliet’s historic buildings and districts — and to take a tour of the Old Prison. 

Opened in 1858, the Old Prison was constructed from Joliet limestone that was quarried on site by convicts who then built the prison they moved into. One of the few Civil War–era penitentiaries remaining and a rare US example of the Castellated Gothic style, it is a resource for both historians and architecture buffs. 

The city of Joliet took over the property from the state in 2017 and launched a public-private effort to shore up the decaying Old Prison. Extensive renovation was necessary to make the buildings safe to visit, but they are not being beautified. The grim facilities give visitors an accurate idea of what being inside was really like. 

The community has raised millions of dollars and donated thousands of volunteer hours in the restoration effort, which continues to open more areas of the complex. The Prison City reputation, once a sore point with locals, is being recognized as a linchpin of Joliet history.