Get a look inside
PLEASE NOTE: Experience Jackson has learned that the Historic Jackson Prison Tours opportunity is no longer available. However, the story of prison history and how it built the Jackson community is still worth telling. Learn more about the history you can discover in Jackson County at experiencejackson.com
“I’m usually wearing a shirt with a Prison Tours logo, and if you walk around Jackson with a shirt like that, somebody’s going to come up to you and say, ‘You know, way back when, Jackson had its choice between the University of Michigan and the prison, and they took the prison!’
But here’s the thing: Ann Arbor wanted this prison too. Back then, everybody wanted the prison. Marshall, Napoleon, Spring Arbor, Ann Arbor… *everyone* wanted the prison. The University was really just a small little college back then with 17 people. But the prison was based on The Auburn system, from New York—factories inside prison walls where entrepreneurs brought in machines, the state got paid, prisoners got nothing until the Civil War forced them to pay a nickel a day. The prison had the potential of creating a factory and a workforce all in one while spurring on growth in industry and manufacturing, and those were things that Jackson was betting its future on.
And it worked. The prison helped Jackson boom. The first railroad came in 1841, a couple years after we became the prison town. By 1900, we had eight or nine railroads and 24 automobiles built here. When I graduated high school in 1970, you could get a good job at any factory in town. My dad raised a family on factory work. And to a certain extent, it’s still working today. The prison is one of the top employers in town. Stuff like that matters. The prison is just part of our fabric. People should know what shaped their community.
This big room we’re standing in is Michigan’s first permanent cell block, built in the early 1840s with 328 tiny, unheated, unventilated cells. The conditions here were awful. No electricity or plumbing. Prisoners had buckets for toilets. Disease was rampant. You were here to be punished. They had canaries to detect gas buildup. When they died, it was time to clear the place out. By the time it closed in 1934, guards couldn’t last an eight-hour shift. At its largest, this place held over 2,000 inmates. After it closed, it became a National Guard armory until 2007. Now its apartments; 42 in one block, 20 lofts in another.
The first time I stepped foot in the building was in 1972 when the legal drinking age was 18. My buddy said, ‘We’re going to the armory.’ It was a place to hang out and listen to live music. Bob Seger played here. Tommy Dorsey too, years before.
I joined the prison tours in 2012. I was still a firefighter then. Somebody in the building had set his supper on fire and the alarms went off. I was the ladder truck driver at the time. We drove over to put out the fire. We were setting up fans to get the smoke out of the building, when I saw Judy Krasnow standing outside. I knew her, since I’d introduced her at a banquet a couple years before.
I walked over, full turnout gear, looked down, and said, ‘Judy, I understand you’re doing these prison tours. I’m going to retire next year, and I think that would be something I’d like to do.’
She started teaching me the history. I give her a lot of credit—she researched it all. I learned a lot from her… and have been doing tours ever since. Doing these tours has changed the way I think. I don’t think we’ll ever do away with prisons, but we’ve got to figure out better who belongs there and how to do a better job helping them when they get out.
I love interacting with people. I like to teach. This work enlightens people, myself included, and if people are interested in a tour, they should reach out.”
—Steve Rudolph, Historic Prison Tours
www.historicprisontours.com
PLEASE NOTE: Experience Jackson has learned that the Historic Jackson Prison Tours opportunity is no longer available. However, the story of prison history and how it built the Jackson community is still worth telling. Learn more about the history you can discover in Jackson County at experiencejackson.com
