Old Joliet Prison: When Convicts Wore Stripes

In 1857, convicts began breaking rock to build the walls of the Illinois State penitentiary at Joliet, the prison that would later confine them. For a century and a half, thousands of men and women were sentenced to do time in this historic, castle—like fortress on Collins Street. Its bakery fed victims of the Great Chicago Fire, and its locks frustrated pickpockets from the world’s fair. Even newspaper—selling sensations like the Lambeth Poisoner, the Haymarket Anarchists, the Marcus Train...