Hudson

The sweet smell of clover suggested the name Claverack (Clover Reach) to the first settlers, but it would later be called Hudson. Commercial development began shortly after the Revolutionary War, when merchants from New Bedford and Nantucket purchased land and laid out streets. In 1785, Hudson became the third city to be incorporated in the state of New York.

Once a flourishing whaling port and shipbuilding center, later known for brick manufacture, Hudson's economy now depends on antique shops, tourism, agriculture and a penal institution which employs about 270 people. Located within the city limits about a mile above the river, it is just a stone's throw from the old, gray stone St. Mary's Church, the majestic Columbia County Courthouse and newer one-story industrial buildings where some of the prison's work release inmates are employed.

But Hudson is no monolithic urban prison, overwhelming the community like a Clinton or an Auburn. Rather, it presents itself almost as a park. Most of the facility's 162 acres are lush green with groves and meadows, with the institution buildings confined to the center of the property. From the inside out, the city and the river are practically invisible, while city residents would likewise have to peer hard to detect the prison in their midst.

The prison grounds slope gently toward the river, from the1950's cottages in the Upper Yard down to the Old Chapel, constructed in the 1890's. Its tower has long been one of the area's distinguishing landmarks. The facility presents a campus-like appearance, with tree-lined walkways and colorful flower beds. White-trimmed two- and three-story brick structures are grouped around lawn areas, where inmates of old marched in military formation.

Like its home city, the prison has had a long and varied history.

Hudson opened in 1887 as a "house of refuge," or reformatory, for young women serving time for petty misdemeanors. From 1904 to 1975, it was part of the juvenile justice system, housing girls aged 12-15. Then, in 1976, the Hudson institution experienced its last and most radical change: from female to male inmates, from youths to adults of all ages, and from minor to felony offenders.

The Era of Reform

Reform was in the air in sentimental 19th Century America.

Here in New York, slavery was eliminated by the late 1820's. New York's first try at a caring, benevolent approach to the problem of juvenile delinquency was the establishment in 1824 of a privately-funded "house of refuge" on Randall's Island in the East River. In the same year, the Legislature required each county to erect and operate a poorhouse for paupers and other dependents. In the 1840's, Dorothea Dix shamed legislatures in state after state into improving conditions for the care of the insane. This was generally accomplished through erecting state asylums, which were a great advance over the poorhouses, jails and locked attics in which they were previously confined. New York established its first insane asylum in Utica in 1843.

The new humanitarian attitude even extended to adults in prisons. News reached America in the 1850's of interesting experiments in Ireland and Australia, where prisoners earned "marks" for good behavior. That led to extra privileges, reduced restraints and early release.

Inspired by reports of success abroad, progressive American prison administrators convened in Cincinnati in 1870 at the first Congress of Correction. Hosted by Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, the Congress resulted in the adoption of a liberal Declaration of Principles. The credo embraced reformation as the goal of imprisonment, classification of offenders for individualized treatment, the indefinite or indeterminate sentence whose duration would be measured not by mere time but by reformation, and parole.

In 1869, New York -- anticipating an increase in the prison census as soldiers returned from the Civil War -- authorized the construction of a fourth state prison (joining Auburn, Sing Sing and Clinton). The new institution, however, would be reserved for younger offenders aged 16 to 30 and would be called a "reformatory," not a prison. Opening in 1876, the Elmira Reformatory would be administered not by prison authorities but by a board of managers reporting to the state Board of Charities. Elmira's first superintendent -- not warden -- was Zebulon Brockway, a renowned prison administrator and one of the drafters of the Cincinnati Principles.

House of Refuge for Women

With the rapidly spreading fame of Elmira, a clamor arose for the creation of a similarly enlightened institution for female offenders. A the time, in the 1880's, New York operated no institution whatsoever for state-sentenced women. These female offenders were instead "farmed out" at per annum rates to county jails where their welfare and reformation were generally ignored. Simultaneously, a panic was overtaking otherwise rational reformers. They had become possessed by the notion that hereditary "feeblemindedness" was the cause of almost every social ill.

The future of the nation was at stake: something had to be done to lock up feebleminded women and stop them from breeding more criminals, paupers and beggars, lunatics and bolsheviks.

The movement - progressive in its aim to provide women with the opportunity for reform in a humane environment, and retrogressive in its fixation with ridding the state of a supposedly hereditary underclass was spearheaded by Josephine Shaw Lowell. In 1881, Lowell - the first woman commissioner of the New York State Board of Charities - persuaded Governor Alonzo B. Cornell to call for a women's reformatory. The Legislature appropriated $100,000 for a "house of refuge" (the name was borrowed from the juvenile sphere), but nothing else happened and the appropriation disappeared. In 1884, another bill resulted in the purchase of 40 acres on a bluff overlooking the city of Hudson and the Hudson River.

In May, 1887, 11 years after the opening of Elmira, the House of Refuge for Women at Hudson received its first 49 inmates by transfer from the Randall's Island house of Refuge. They were aged, like Elmira's inmates, from 15 to 30 and were sentenced to five-year indeterminate terms (shortened in 1899 to three years).

Unlike Elmira, however, Hudson received no felons. Young women were sent to Hudson with convictions for petit larceny, "habitual drunkenness," of being "common prostitutes," and frequenting "disorderly houses." They were sentenced from all parts of the state except New York and Kings counties.

The grounds of the House of Refuge were enclosed by a high board fence. The largest building - frankly called the “prison building" - contained 96 cells and was used for reception (usually two months) and punishment. There were also four "cottages," each with 26 individual rooms, a kitchen and dining area. The cottages were "fitted up as nearly as possible like an average family home, for the purpose of teaching the inmates all manner of domestic work." The "main building" contained officers' rooms, work and school rooms and 25 rooms for inmates in the last stages of preparation for parole. There was also a wooden hospital building (all other construction was brick) with 24 individual rooms. Total capacity was 249.

In addition to domestic duties in the cottages, the House of Refuge offered “industrial classes" in sewing, cooking and laundry. All girls attended academic classes. "Physical culture" classes were conducted daily, and singing classes three days a week.

Matrons were expected to set an example of proper and ladylike deportment for their charges. Suitable role models were not always easy to find. Complaining in 1900 that the candidates on the civil service lists "are not of a satisfactory class," the board of managers questioned whether "the kind of woman that we wish to secure" would see the notices in the post office, the usual place where examination notices were posted. They asked the Department of Civil Service to consider advertising in the country papers or in the religious weeklies.'' To respectable women, apparently, the post office was to be shunned.

It was necessary to impose discipline from without. Good behavior marks -- which could earn better cottage assignments and parole -- were forfeited for misbehavior ranging from escape and fighting to pouting, loud talking and "failure to comply with the spirit of the rules."

Harsher measures were also available. From Hudson's opening, the dark cell, restricted diet and handcuffs were “in vogue" (in the startlingly flip phrase of the first superintendent). By the1890's, inmates were indulging in the practice of “smashing out" trashing their rooms and cells and screaming all night long. To counter this “license amounting to liberty," officials confined inmates in attics, in a storeroom and in dungeon basement cells. Solid iron plates covered the windows, and inmates were often uncomfortably cuffed to the wall or door. Inmates were also subject to the strap and the cold shower bath.

New York State Training School for Girls

In 1904, Hudson passed out of the adult correctional system. Not for lack of inmates: despite the opening of women's reformatories in Albion (1893) and Bedford Hills (1901), the Hudson institution was usually overcrowded. The state had determined, however, that a higher priority was an institution for female juvenile delinquents, until then confined with boys in either Randall's Island or the State Industrial School in Rochester. The House of Refuge for Women was renamed the State Training School for Girls and placed under the auspices of the state Department of Social Services. Thirty-one years later, it was transferred to the state Education Department and then, in 1971, to the Division for Youth (DFY).

Gradually, the Training School's population increased, reaching a high of about 500 girls aged 11 to 15. Additional property was acquired and additional cottages were constructed. Many of the original small cottages were demolished and replaced with larger buildings in the 1920's and '30's. The board fence also was torn down.

Many of the girls were received for the same offenses as their predecessors from the House of Refuge days petty theft, prostitution and drunkenness. To these were added "status offenses" - acts that were criminal only by virtue of the girl's status as a minor. These included "wilful disobedience to parents," "frequenting the company of thieves," "being in concert saloons, dance-houses, theatres or places where liquor sold or served," and "collecting cigar stumps, bones or refuse for market and peddling."

After conversion to a juvenile institution, education was given greater emphasis. Over the years, the former work programs disguised as “industrial classes" were supplemented with vocational courses in typing and shorthand, home nursing, waitressing and beauty culture. For many years, an incentive to good behavior was “going to the dance" with boys from local public and private institutions.

In 1973, two years after assuming control of the Training School, DFY announced that the physical plant was falling apart and there was no money to rebuild. They also argued that the girls would receive better care in smaller, more modern facilities. Fearing loss of jobs, local citizens waged a prolonged and vociferous campaign to keep the DFY facility open. But it closed in 1975.

Hudson Correctional Facility

The jobs were not gone long. On October 14, 1976, the facility reopened, now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correctional Services, the state's adult correctional system. At first, only three cottages (as they are still called) were usable, and the minimum-security Hudson Correctional Facility had a capacity of 120 inmates. The state immediately began refurbishing other buildings. Three more cottages were ready in December, 1978, providing beds for another 60 inmates. Further renovations added 60 more beds in 1981, doubling the capacity to 240.

Later in 1981, the Old Chapel was readied for occupancy. The chapel, built in the 1890's, is the oldest usable building on the grounds. Located just outside the fence, 60 work release inmates are housed in the chapel -- still with stained glass windows, massive beams and arches, ornate radiator covers, ancient chandeliers and slanting, creaking floors. Preparation of still more housing areas continued -- in cottages, basements and in the former hospital building.

Inmates are issued keys to their rooms, some of which are single and some mini-dorms with up to 10 beds. Current capacity is now 515 medium-security beds inside the fence plus the 60 minimum- security beds in the old chapel, for a total of 575. (About 50 more inmates are on Hudson's count but are never at the institution. These inmates are either day reporters or participants in the Altamont House Residential Treatment Program.)

Nearly all the buildings were constructed between 1908 and 1952. An addition to the current administration building was built in 1956 and contains offices, classrooms and the libraries. The new multi-faith chapel, built by inmates with donated materials, was dedicated in 1989. Ground was broken this year for a new work release building with offices as well as an inmate housing area.

There are several structures on the grounds which are not usable. They include the Plumb-Bronson house, built around 1810 and remodeled in 1839 by the renowned architect Alexander Jackson Davis. The Plumb-Bronson house, with a beautiful spiral staircase winding up to the third floor, was used as the superintendent's residence until 1972, but has been crumbling in disuse ever since. Citizen groups are currently seeking funding to restore and preserve the house as a valuable example of the Hudson Valley's architectural riches.

Hudson's inmates spend their days much as other medium-security inmates around the state. They perform necessary work such as maintenance of the institution and food preparation and service. There are academic classes leading to high school equivalency and vocational courses in small engine repair, horticulture, barber and beauty culture, and janitorial services. There is an ASAT (Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment) program and a Veterans Substance Abuse Treatment Program administered in conjunction with the Albany Veterans Administration office. There are also volunteer-led programs, a cognitive self-change program, prerelease programs and organized recreation programs.

Outside-cleared inmates, housed in F and G cottages, work regularly under Correction Officer supervision at the State Office Campus and at the cafeteria of the Department's Training Academy in Albany. They are also assigned to the Rockefeller Plaza, the huge state office complex in downtown Albany, where they report after the state employees have gone home for the day to clean state offices and process the complex's recyclables. Inmates also travel at least twice a week to a regional food bank in Albany, where they sort and package donated food for distribution to the needy throughout upstate New York.

As called upon, Hudson also makes its inmates available to the city and surrounding communities for disaster assistance and special clean-up and repair services.

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