Historic Structure Report: Alcatraz Cell House

Farneth, Stephen; Sugaya, Hisashi; Wessel, David; White, Gordon; Heili, John

This historic structure report concerns the Cell House on Alcatraz Island, part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. For over eighty years Alcatraz Island has been dominated by the imposing reinforced concrete Prison at its summit. Together, the island and Prison continue to be one of the most prominent landmarks of the San Francisco Bay Area. The conspicuous location of the facility in one of the country's most visited cities has served to increase the nation's awareness of its existence, and thereby focus attention on the American system of penology. Originally constructed by the U.S. military and completed in 1912, the Main Prison Building passed from the U.S. military to the Bureau of Prisons in 1933. In 1963 the Bureau of Prisons abandoned both the island and Prison and the General Services Administration assumed stewardship of the facility. The island was occupied by American Indians between November of 1969 and June of 1971. The "Indians of All Tribes" held that they had both a legal and moral right to ownership of the site. The Main Prison Building was one of several building used by the Indians during their occupancy. In 1972 the island and Prison became a part of the new Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service. This Historic Structures Report has concentrated on documentation and conservation of the reinforced concrete Prison ) structure as well as code issues related to interpretation of the site by the National Park Service. Due to its notoriety as a maximum security minimum privilege penitentiary, several works have already been written on the facility including Thompson's Historic Resource Study. Since there is already ample information on the more sensational events connected with the Prison, this report has made reference to these incidents only as they have affected the design of the structure or precipitated a physical change. Due to extreme safety hazards and the general difficulty of accessibility, interpretation of the remains of the Citadel is not feasible. Future stabilization of the Prison foundation will require the addition of structural members, and thus further limit access to this area. Abundant historic information about the Citadel is included in Erwin Thompson's Historic Resource Study mentioned above.

Historic Structure Report: Alcatraz Cell House

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