Eastern Montana Penitentiary

Details

DescriptionThe Eastern Montana State Prison, established by the State Legislature in 1893, was never completed and eventually became a private project of Austin North by 1904. The story and a sketch of the prison, as it was to appear, is in the 1894 Billings Gazette special edition, 'Billings and Yellowstone County Illustrated', Billings Gazette, 1894. It was located above and just to the northeast of North Park at the head of 16th Street North. The Prison was being built by 1895 - See 'Visit Two Pens; Legislators Inspect the Prisons at Billings and Deer Lodge', Helena Weekly Independent, February 14, 1895. Austin North took over the property soon after construction of the prison had ceased and in 1931 the government bought back the land. The remaining building, which North had proposed for a country club, burned and the stones were used for the wall of the tennis courts at Pioneer park and for edging along the road up on the rimrocks, as part of WPA work in the mid-1930s. - See 'Fire Ended White Elephant Constructed Near Rims Through Political Logrolling', Billings Gazette, April 17, 1949 and 'Billings Penitentiary becomes A Legend As City Seeks To Salvage Stone For Airport', Billings Gazette, September 1, 1935. I wonder if the sandstone blocks around the Hart statue at the Airport (mid-1930s) also come from the prison walls?TypeImageCreatorUnknownGenrephotographsDate1910SubjectPrisons--1890-1910Automobiles--1900-1920Architecture--1890-1900Contributing InstitutionBillings Public LibraryGeographic CoverageBillings, MontanaDigital CollectionBillings - Images of PlacesDigital Formatimage/jpgDigitization SpecificationEpson 1640 XL scanner. 8 x 10 image at 300 dpi, 8 bit greyscale. Master Image size - 18,000 kb.Date Digitized2015copyrightNoC-US

CollectionBillings - Images of Places

OCR Text Transcription Edit Edit +-Close

Save Cancel + Row + Column

MONTANA HISTORY PORTAL

Menu

Eastern Montana Penitentiary

Contact Us

Follow Us

Our Partners