Great Meadow

In its 89-year history, Great Meadow has fulfilled several roles in the state correctional system. It opened in 1911 as an "honor prison" for first offenders. Later, a wall was built around the institution as it was converted to a standard prison. Then, in 1954, it was designated as an intermediate reformatory" for troublemakers from the reformatory programs at Coxsackie and Elmira. Today, Great Meadow is a clean and orderly maximum-security institution with almost 1,700 inmates participating in counseling, academic and vocational education and two industrial training and production programs.

In 1905, New York state purchased a 1,000-acre homestead from the family of railroad magnate Isaac V. Baker. The tract, east of Lake George in the village of Comstock, included tillable lands, pasture and woodlands. By all accounts, the family got the better deal. The state overpaid for the land, much of which could never be cultivated; within a few years of the prison's opening, it was forced to lease 250 nearby acres of arable land to feed the inmates.

For nearly two miles, the grounds fronted the Barge Canal, with the main line of the Delaware & Hudson Railway but a quarter-mile away. Water would be supplied from a mountain lake two miles from and 228 feet higher than the prison.

The state intended to build an insane asylum on the site, but the project never began. Instead, in 1909, the Legislature appropriated $350,000 for a prison. The new institution would expand the capacity of the evolving system of adult penal institutions, then consisting of three prisons (Auburn, Sing Sing, and Clinton), two men's reformatories (Elmira and Eastern), two women's reformatories (Albion and Bedford) and the asylums for insane criminals at Matteawan and Dannemora.

Of the four prisons, Great Meadow would be the only one to which prisoners were not sent directly by the courts. "Young and promising background first offenders" would be transferred there at the discretion of the superintendent of state prisons (the equivalent of today's commissioner), usually as a reward for good behavior. The "honor prison" would also differ from the established prisons in being set up as an educational institution, with a "School of Agriculture" and industrial training as well as academic instruction for illiterates (chiefly the foreign-born).

The name, too, was a break with tradition. Until then, New York was content with place-names. We don't know whether "Great Meadow" was a name used by the Bakers or if it was christened by a state official, but it was certainly inspired by the nearly level 300-acre field on which the prison would be built.

Construction began in 1909. Despite allegations of overcharging by architects and indictments of contractors, the building proceeded rapidly. The principal architectural feature was the single cellblock, 1,010 feet long, containing 1,168 in side cells with plumbing and electricity, arranged back-to-back on four tiers. Huge windows provided "unexcelled light and ventilation" to the barred cells.

At the center of the massive cellblock was the rotunda, with its 85-foot high domed ceiling, which served as the main entrance. Off the rotunda's upper tiers were offices and staff living quarters. Reaching back from the rotunda perpendicular to the cellblock was a 382-foot corridor ending at the mess hall. On either side of and connected to the corridor were the administration building, the hospital, and the shops where inmates worked at various trades. The magnificent 1865 Baker mansion was used until the early 1970's as the warden's residence (it is now used for offices).

On February 11, 1911, 23 inmates from Sing Sing arrived at the partially completed prison and were housed in the north wing of the cellblock. Great Meadow did not officially open however, until June 8, 1911, when Walter N. Thayer became the first warden. (Thayer, formerly warden at Clinton, was the father of Dr. Walter N. Thayer, Jr., who was New York's commissioner of correction from 1931 to 1936.) Thayer resigned a month into the job and was replaced by William J. Homer, who stayed until his death in 1919.

A head teacher oversaw a crew of inmate teachers who instructed in the evenings. All men worked during the day. A primary task in the early years was completion of the south wing, the messhall and kitchen, the laundry and bathhouse and the power plant. Inmates were also engaged in grading the grounds, quarrying, rock crushing and building roads about the institution. Soon they were assigned to outside roadwork under the supervision of the state Highway Department. Others manned the farm. Still others, in a program looking 50 years ahead to the conservation youth camps, cultivated trees for the State Conservation Commission's reforesting program. All the inmate were officially listed as "idle," since they generated no income to the state. It was not until 1919 that the mat shop was classified as an industrial program, allowing inmates to be compensated for their work.

Three evenings a week, the prison band played in the rotunda while the population listened from the adjoining galleries. On Friday nights in winter, moving pictures were projected onto a screen strung at the end of one of the galleries; Officers and their families often attended the showings. In summertime, on Saturday and holiday afternoons, men played or watched baseball games on the field in front of the cellblock.

The south wing of the cellblock was completed in 1915. On Easter Sunday of that year, inmates ate their first meal in the new mess hall. Called "the best in the state," Great Meadow's mess hall was an innovation. While other prison mess halls were still furnished with long, narrow tables and backless stools all facing the same way, so as to hinder conversation, Great Meadow's inmates sat facing each other across small wooden tables.

Assignment to the Great Meadow honor prison presumed trustworthiness. In 1912, after what was said to be the first marriage ever performed in a New York state prison, the groom was permitted an unofficial leave of absence - almost 60 years before the temporary release law was passed.

A more dramatic example occurred after the Armistice was signed ending World War I. Warden Homer blew the escape whistle and threw open the gates. The inmates streamed out to join the townspeople in celebration, parading through the village singing "Over There" and "Tipperary" to the accompaniment of the prison band.

Construction of a 3,000-foot-long wall

The prison's inmates were first offenders - most of them minor offenders nearing parole, though there were some lifers and some who might be termed dangerous and desperate characters." But first offenders were hard to find, even back then when identification systems could not reliably spot repeat criminals. Great Meadow was seldom filled above half its capacity. Meanwhile, Auburn and Clinton were improvising dormitories with cots in corridors; at Sing Sing, inmates were doubled up in cells that had been built in 1825.

By 1916, second offenders were being sent to Great Meadow, and soon after third offenders as well. Still, because Great Meadow had no wall, many inmates could not safely be sent there. Hundreds of good, modern cells stood empty, in contempt of overcrowding elsewhere.

To achieve full utilization, construction of a 3,000-foot wall was begun in 1924. It took the inmates four years - mixing concrete and pouring it into "great forms" or molds - to wall themselves in. As the cellblock itself constituted very nearly the entirety of the long front side of the wall, Great Meadow retained its original appearance, with the rotunda continuing to serve as the entrance to the prison.

With full occupancy as well as conversion to what would now be called maximum security, other construction activity commenced.

A new powerhouse was built and the old p1 ant (now inside the wall) was converted into shops. A 1,150-seat combination chapel/auditorium was built. A 30-cell segregation unit with two small exercise yards was placed against the northwest corner of the wall. To accommodate more industrial programming (the onset of the Great Depression put an end to road building and forestry work), three new shop buildings were placed off the corridor behind the cell-block. New industries included manufacture of wooden chairs and - how times have changed! -processing of tobacco for consumption by prison and hospital inmates.

In 1932, a new two-story administration building and entry-way was erected in front of the institution. An extension of the corridor connected it to the rotunda. The original administration building was remodeled as a hospital and school building.

The educational program was strengthened, offering regents and high school equivalency courses alter 1945. A recreation program (softball, volleyball, horseshoes, handball, bocce and miniature golf) was directed by the custodial force in the Big Yard that took up nearly a quarter of the grounds inside the wall.

Great Meadow Correctional Institution

A post-World War II concern with juvenile delinquency took Great Meadow in a new direction. In his 1953 message to the Legislature, Governor Thomas F. Dewey announced that, "One of the most pressing needs at the present time is an institution for young offenders in need of rigid discipline." He meant disruptive troublemakers who, it was felt, compromised the effectiveness of the reformatory programs at Elmira and Coxsackie.

Effective April 1,1954 - allowing a full year to attrition older inmates out and make renovations for the new program (Great Meadow would be renamed a "correctional institution," a strange designation (also given to Eastern and Woodbourne) meant as a way around the inconvenient distinction between prisons and reformatories. The correctional institution would receive 16-25 year-olds with "poor prognoses and long sentences, strong psychopathic tendencies, and little amenability to formalized education and vocational training."

More than $675,000 was appropriated to ready the new "intermediate reformatory." In addition to hiring teachers and instructors, a service (guidance) unit was created. A gymnasium was built, and industrial production shops were converted to classrooms and vocational training shops. (The tobacco shop went to Auburn.) Industries were reintroduced on a smaller scale in 1963 with a soap factory in the original powerhouse. A tubular metal furniture shop opened the following year.

As the state inmate census continued its post-war rise, a new 352-bed cellblock was authorized in 1958 and completed in 1963. Access to E-Block, located outside the secure perimeter, was by a corridor connecting to the rotunda.

From May, 1968, to July, 1971, Great Meadow provided custody and programming for 500 inmates sentenced to terms with the Narcotic Addiction Control Commission (NACC).

Disruptions lead to security enhancements

Not long into Great Meadow's new role, it experienced the first serious disturbance in its history. On August 17, 1955, 175 convicts, armed with bats and clubs, refused to move out of the yard. When Commissioner Thomas J. McHugh arrived, he gave the inmates five minutes to disperse, then ordered Officers and state police to use force to drive them into the cells. One theory suggested that the inmates were testing the resolve of the new commissioner, appointed six months earlier. Others blamed the action on older inmates upset by the arrival of the new youthful population. McHugh himself blamed it on "the concentration of the more reckless, irresponsible young offenders in one institution." Nonetheless, he did not reverse the policies of his predecessor.

Things were relatively quiet for several years. Then, on September 19, 1963, a major disturbance erupted. Some 450 inmates battled each other and the staff. Five Officers and 18 inmates were injured. Inmates on an A-Block upper tier dangled an Officer over the railing until Warden Joseph P. Conboy, wielding a Thompson's .45-caliber machine gun, told them that if the Officer fell, so would they.

When control was regained, Great Meadow embarked on a series of security enhancements.

Railings on upper tiers were replaced by bars running up to the ceilings. Additional guard towers were installed in strategic places. Electric gates partitioned the rotunda from the north and south wings of the main cellblock, and barriers were placed at the midpoints of each wing, creating four separate blocks. The floor areas outside the upper-tier cells were extended to the walls, with barred walkways against the windows for Officers to patrol in safety. Also, a mess hall tower with a gas booth was added.

After the 1970 and '71 riots at Auburn and Attica, respectively, hundreds of older inmates many of them agitators - were sent to Great Meadow.

Then, about 1975, as the Rockefeller drug laws began to drive a population boom, 272 cells in D-Block were taken over as a "transit unit." The unit was designed to temporarily house inmates from the reception centers while they waited for openings at their intended facilities. Confined for months to the cellblock, the idle transit inmates tended to be restive and demanded a great deal of staff attention.

F-Block's 30 SHU cells were by now inadequate, and entire galleries of general population cells were set aside for the overflow. Other cells were reserved for protective custody inmates, and special exercise yards were created for these groups. The former intermediate reformatory's specialization in difficult inmates was breaking down into an unstable mixture of even more difficult subpopulations. (The institution's name was changed to the generic "correctional facility" in 1971.)

In May, 1976, following a series of minor incidents, a melee erupted among 150 inmates. Twenty Officers and 15 inmates were injured as shots and tear gas were employed to break up the altercation. The State Commission of Correction declared then that Great Meadow was "the most volatile among several potentially explosive institutions."

In 1977, Officers and inmates were injured in a fracas in the mess hall. The next year, 15-20 inmates injured eight Officers who were attempting to remove an intoxicated inmate from the mess hall. In 1978 there were strikes by mess hall workers and transit unit inmates. In June of 1979, Officers attempting to break up a fight in the yard were assaulted with rocks and belts by a group of about 50 inmates. More staff and inmates were injured later in 1979, 1980 and 1981 in disturbances in the messhall, the yard and the housing blocks.

In 1981, SHU overflow inmates staged a fight while en route from the exercise yard back to their cells, and then assaulted Officers who tried to break them apart. After the assault, inmates barricaded themselves in a cell; tear gas was used to remove them. Twenty-two Officers and six inmates suffered injuries.

The violent pattern continued for another couple of years, earning Great Meadow a reputation as a "gladiator school." Then, authorities seemed to gain the upper hand. The last serious disturbance at the institution occurred in 1988, when there was an apparently planned attack on Officers in the mess hall. Shortly afterward, the mess hall was partitioned down the middle and an additional gas tower installed.

A new wall and a new spirit

Those major incidents are now in the past. Great Meadow has changed a great deal in the last decade.

A two-story mental health building opened in 1992. The mental health unit has a 38-bed inpatient Intermediate Care Program and a Residential Crises Treatment Unit (formerly called the satellite unit) with 10 dormitory beds and six observation cells for inmates undergoing evaluation. The unit also treats general population inmates on an out-patient basis. Clinical staff is provided by the state Office of Mental Health, while security staff is provided by DOCS.

Arranged symmetrically to E-Block, which is northwest of the rotunda, the mental health unit was placed southwest of the rotunda and connected to it, as is E-Block, by its own corridor. Both were outside the secure perimeter formed by the wall and main cellblock and presented security risks. To bring them to maximum-security standards, a new wall was completed in November, 1998. The new wall encloses nine acres and he administration building as well as E-Block and the mental health unit. Entry to the prison is now through a new main gate and visitor processing room at the midpoint of the wall.

Stark white and 24-feet high, the new wall is a startling visual departure from the past. But on the inside, the institution would be immediately recognized by a time-traveler from the 1930's. Great Meadow's distinctive configuration a huge cellblock with a central rotunda intersected by a corridor running the width of the institution - is unchanged. It is still possible for inmates and staff to go for days without stepping outdoors. The Big Yard, now paved, still occupies nearly a quarter of the grounds - 4.3 acres. Most of the original buildings remain, though many have been put to new uses.

The good order of earlier times has returned. The transit unit closed in 1990, as capacity expansion finally began to catch up to the population growth. More recently, the creation of disciplinary housing in S-Blocks and Upstate freed up many of Great Meadow's keeplock cells. These changes, along with the population's 1998 decision to give up packages in exchange for the privilege of personally owned TV's in their cells, have contributed to improved discipline. In the five-year period 1995-1999, inmate-on-inmate assaults at Great Meadow declined by 55 percent and inmate-on-staff assaults dropped 53 percent.

The improved morale at Great Meadow was evident in the reaction to the tragic loss of three CO's in 1999. Officers John Daby and Harold Dunster died at home of cancer. Officer Frank Mydlarz died in the line of duty, suffering a fatal heart attack August 1, 1999. Aggrieved colleagues paid tribute and donated generously to the families of the deceased. The inmates paid their respects, sending flowers. For Officer Daby's widow, who was carrying a child at the time of her husband's death, inmates sent cash from their meager savings.

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