Rotary jail

The rotary jail was initially designed by architect William H. Brown, and built by the Haugh, Ketcham & Co. iron foundry in the Indianapolis, Indiana neighborhood of Haughville.

Their July 1881 patent[1][2] had the following description: The object of our inventions is to produce a jail in which prisoners can be controlled without the necessity of personal contact between them and the jailer or guard ... it consists, first, of a circular cell structure of considerable size (inside the usual prison building) divided into several cells capable of being rotated, surrounded by a grating in close proximity thereto, which has only such number of openings (usually one) as is necessary for the convenient handling of prisoners.The pie-shaped cells rotated around a core having a sanitary plumbing system, which was considered an unusual luxury at that time.

As per the original design, the jail could handle 16 prisoners and the third floor contained three cells for ill inmates to keep them separate from the remainder of the population.

Following its closure in 1973, the Montgomery County Cultural Foundation rescued the facility two years later and established the Old Jail Museum.

[5] Following a generous bequest from one of its founders in 1985, the foundation undertook extensive renovations, although restoration of the rotary cell block was not completed until 1996.