From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
Great Meadow Prison, Comstock, N.Y. 420
View of a massive building seen across a vast field, 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 architecture of the blocks follows the imposing, Neo-Romanesque style applied to many institutional and commercial structures of the time. This view emphasizes the unrelenting and impersonal character of the repeating bays comprising the massive cell blocks. This is one of a series of images made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to New England or upstate New York. The glass plates would be sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street.
