From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
Great Meadow Prison, Comstock, N.Y. 906
View of a huge building complex with mountains in the distance. The Great Meadow Prison was built by the State of New York between 1909 and 1915 as the fourth prison for adult males in the state. It is located near the mid-Vermont border. The image shows the complex partly completed. The central section is finished and one of the extensive cell blocks still under construction. The architecture of the massive, 5 or 6-story blocks follows the imposing Neo-Romanesque style applied to many institutional and commercial structures of the time. This is one of a series of images made in upstate New York state by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to New England or New York State. The glass plates would be sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street.
