The con men, counterfeiters and cat burglars are long gone, yet traces remain from this Boston building’s first incarnation. Built in 1851, the old Charles Street Jail had a discordant history that ended in ruin—but it seems this Beantown slammer has gotten a reprieve.
Door hangers on guest rooms read “solitary,” and Alibi, the first-floor bar, enjoys a location inside the former “drunk tank” of restored cell blocks with their original iron-bar doors and blue stone flooring. CLINK, the restaurant and bar where waitstaff sport uniforms hand-stenciled with prison numbers, serves guests the finest gourmet. And the sally port, where guards once escorted prisoners into the jail, is now known as Scampo (Italian for escape), a fine dining restaurant. Catwalks—the vantage points from which guards used to stand watch over inmates—still ring the 90-foot-high centerpiece rotunda that anchors the building.
Following its five-year, $150 million transformation, the 300-room luxury hostelry presently known as the Liberty Hotel now occupies these old walls. This lush mahogany and stainless steel enclave offers spacious guest rooms with luxurious bedding, floor-to-ceiling windows and plenty of tech amenities.
Inside its central Boston location—at the foot of historic Beacon Hill overlooking the Charles River–there’s also 6,000 square feet of function space, including a ballroom for up to 350. Indeed, other historic American jails such as Alcatraz, Boise’s Old Idaho Penitentiary and Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary host groups, but hardly in the same style.
Once upon its heyday, the old Boston jail was a landmark prisoner rehab project created by architect Gridley James Fox Bryant and Rev. Louis Dwight, a prominent Yale-educated penologist whose travels abroad shaped his interest in prison reform. Dwight’s vision for prison construction included lots of light and air. It was designed in the shape of a cross, with four wings of granite extending from the central rotunda.
Old residents included Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, who served time in 1904 for taking a civil service exam for a friend; Frank Abagnale Jr., a 1960s con artist played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can; and a group of thieves who pulled off Boston’s 1950 Great Brinks Robbery.
Nowadays, Charles Street Jail—aka Liberty Hotel—has 28 brick-walled guest rooms in the historic building and a new 16-story tower across the courtyard garden (the former exercise yard) that contains 280 guest rooms.
Those who venture inside find plenty of 21st century sophistication and a quality former inmates could only dream about—a means of escape.
