Passaic County Jail

The first half of the ninteenth century was quite an interesting time for New Jersey. Boundry lines were being redrawn, as townships and counties were being carved out of established ones. In 1837 two new counties were establisted on opposite ends of the state, Atlantic County and Passaic County. This article is focusing on the latter, and more specifically their jail building. 

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Construction began for the original Passaic County Jail in 1837, the same year as the original Essex County Jail which still stands in Newark. The basic design included a single cell block as well as a house for the warden. The original building was enlarged in 1854 to accommodate more criminals as the county experienced rapid population growth. 

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In 1937 the buildings were thoroughly documented by a photographer named R. Merrit Lacey. Other citizens measured out and redrew the building's floor plans as Lacey took his pictures. These efforts were submitted to the Historic American Buildings Survey, and are hosted online in high resolution by the Library of Congress. 

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Unfortunately, despite being so thoughtfully documented just two decades prior, the building was entirely demolished and a new jail was built on the site in 1957. The new building was a simple mid century design without much detail or embellishment. It was designed to hold 230 prisoners at maximum capacity. 

It wasn't long before the brand new building was already facing an overcrowding issue. Neighboring Essex County had given up on expanding their Newark Jail nearly 100 years prior. Instead, they developed a huge jail annex complex on land they owned far outside the city, where they could spread out as far as they pleased. Instead of taking that tact, Passaic County just continued to pack bodies in wherever they could inside the Marshall Street building. 

When the jail ran out of cramped cells to fill, beds were packed into the common areas. At times, the building was holding upwards of 1500 people inside its walls, more than six times the population it was designed for.

According to the Star Ledger, the state Office of Inmate Advocacy examined every county jail in New Jersey in 1977. The Passaic County Jail was deemed to be the worst in the state. Not only was it severely overcrowded, it was also overrun with rodents and bugs. Sheriff Edwin J. Englehardt was in charge of managing the jail at the time. Instead of doing some honest self reflection and brainstorming ways to improve the facility like a decent person, Englehardt hung a banner outside the building that said "Welcome to the Passaic Country Jail. This is not a country club. All rules will be followed." As far as my research indicates, there was no effort made to remedy the inhumane conditions. 

A new addition was built in the mid 1980s at the corner of Grand and Marshall. This allowed space inside the cell blocks to be further retrofitted to accommodate more bodies. The recreation facilities were moved into cages that were built on the roof. 

In 1987 the county sought to establish a detention center specifically for youth offenders outside the confines of the Marshall Ave site. They decided to retrofit in a vacant nurses building at the old Valley View Sanitorium which straddled the Wayne/Haledon border. 

Unfortunately the jail was still severely overcrowded. To make things worse, the facility was still making headlines for being filthy and overrun with pests. Officials mulled replacing the rapidly aging building, but the talks never led anywhere. 

Instead in 2001 the new leader of the jail, Jerry Speziale, began taking inmates from other counties as a way to pad the budget. Speziale took over from Englehardt, who fled his position amid investigations into corruption within the county. 

Passaic County continued to subject the inmates at their jail to these same inhumane conditions for decades. It wasn't until 2017 when New Jersey finally answered the cries of activists and passed common sense bail reform. For those unfamiliar, one of the major differences between a "jail" and a "prison" is that the latter is where you go after you've been sentenced, typically for stints longer than 30 days. Jail is where you end up after you've been accused of a crime, but before the "speedy" trial you're entitled to. If you have enough cash or property to give to the County as an incentive to ensure you'll show up at further court dates, you can be released. Your guilt or innocence isn't taken into account, because that hasn't been determined by a judge yet. 

That system is obviously flawed, as a guilty person with money gets to go home while an innocent poor person has to stay locked up. Thankfully we don't do that anymore here. Someone's bail status in New Jersey now depends on an assessment of their likelihood to be violent or to reoffend. The system isn't perfect, as opponents say it still leaves open the possibility for unchecked racial bias. Most advocates agree though, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Five years after the bail reform laws passed in the state, the county worked out an agreement to allow their prisoners to be sent to the sprawling Bergen County Jail in nearby Hackensack. This move allowed Passaic County to finally move to close their Marshall Street Jail. 

The county sheriffs office continued to operate out of their offices within the compound, but by 2024 the jail building was officially closed. It was immediately announced that the building would be demolished and a new county government building would take its place. Before any work was done, the building was used for the filming of the movie"Motor City". Machines moved in shortly after filming wrapped up. 

Crews started by ripping into the walls of the main cellblock, which stretched between Marshall and Main. The plan was essentially to work from the courtyard outwards, allowing the crew to work uninterrupted without affecting traffic around the building. It wasn't long before the iconic, notorious structure was entirely reduced to rubble. I won't be shedding any tears for this compound. Hopefully whatever comes next is much more beneficial than this old eyesore.

Burlington County Corrections and Work Release Center

The property along Pemberton-Browns Mills road that housed the Burlington County Corrections and Work Release Center has been owned by the county for over a century. It was once home to an almshouse, and later the Burlington County Hospital for the Insane. It would only be fitting that a prison would open up on the property as well.

The Burlington Center opened in the 1970s on 12 acres directly adjacent to the Burlington County Hospital for the Insane.

The new prison building consisted of two main cellblock areas, a gymnasium, and an infirmary wing.

At some point the old psych hospital was demolished and new DOT buildings went up on the site.

In 2015 it was announced that the center would be closed rather than repaired. Prisoners would be booked and held at Mt Holly until they can be moved to Atlantic county facility. This restructuring was poised to save the county roughly 2 million dollars a year. This estimate didn't include the millions of dollars in upgrades the facility needed.

Three years after being shuttered we decided to stop by and see what was going on with the building. It was in fairly good shape, despite all the water that had worked it's way inside. Despite that demolition started a few month after our visit, and the building was leveled by the fall of 2018.

The Passaic County Youth Detention Center

The history of the Passaic County Youth Detention Center goes back to 1928, when the building was built as a nurses residence for the Valley View Sanatorium. The hospital served as Passaic County's tuberculosis sanatorium during the outbreak of the 1920's. 

Around 1987, the nurses residence was renovated into the Passaic County Youth Detention Center. It wouldnt see any real change for another decade. Over time the attic space of the building was renovated into a third cellblock.

In the 1990's, Passaic county made a deal with the owners of a nearby quarry, Braen Stone, to sell nearly 9 acres of property directly behind the detention center. This caused a lot of uproar around town, as residents already thought the quarry was too close to their homes. The citizens caused enough of an outrage to make Passaic County fail to renew the contract.

Although blasting from the quarry occasionally damaged the building, a large addition was added to the rear of the structure. This brought the total capacity of the facility to 86. The new section of the building was a modern octagonal edifice similar to a warehouse. Girls were segregated to one half of the building, and boys in the other. The new addition included school rooms, a basketball court, and cafeterias on each floor.

Despite much resistence from the family members of those housed in the detention center, the Wayne facility was closed in 2010. Even though they had just spent millions a few decades earlier to build the large new addition, they felt it would be more cost effective to send the 60 juveniles living in the  building to Essex County. The projected savings were $128 million by the year 2019. This figure is so high because the closure eliminated 153 jobs for corrections officers in the county. Though Essex County promised to try and hire some of the staff back, they certainly didn't need everyone.

The building was vacated, but kept full of records throughout the first floor. The power was still on, and occasionally police officers used the first floor as a break room. However, the building was eventually sold to the quarry operated by Braen Stone. Braen was the same company who, just two decades earlier, was in a lawsuit with the county for taking the agitated neighbors complaints to heart and not renewing the contract they drafted for use of the land. This time, the neighbors would feel the same outrage they did 20 years prior. Only this time, nobody was going to listen.

While securing the proper permits to demolish the structure, they chewed up the land behind the building until they were almost underneath it. This ensured that this building would never see new life again. By the fall of 2015, the owners of the building finally got their permits, and before long the facility was completely leveled. Not many people ever took the time to visit the building. The complex it was a part of was obscured by the quarry, steep graded hills, and long driveways adorned with "No Trespassing" signs. Though the buildings may soon be forgotten by the residents of Wayne and Haledon, they will never be forgotten by my friends and I.

The old Essex County Jail

John Haviland, architect of the famous Eastern State Penitentiary, was hired to design the new Essex County Jail in 1837. 

The old prison had succumbed to a fire a few years earlier, and the county decided to go a different way as far as the feel of the prison. The old prison was a nice building, and the prisoners were encouraged to spend their free time productively. The new building was an emotionless stone box.

 The building was small, holding roughly 100 cells. Soon the space in Newark wasn't enough, and a large new annex building was built in North Caldwell.

With the rise in crime and prosecution, both of the prisons expanded. This expansion included a large new cellblock built at the Newark Jail in 1890. The building could now house over 300 prisoners.

The walkways on the different tiers in the cellblocks were made of glass, so the officers could see through them in the event of a commotion. 

While the annex would grow to house thousands of prisoners, this building would go on to stay at 300 cells until it was closed in 1970. It was used up until 1989 by the Essex County Narcotics Bureau, who were the last group to occupy the structure.

 In 1991 it was added to the national register of historic places, and subsequently used in the filming of the movie Malcolm X, but the jail would remain abandoned and neglected until eventually catching fire in 2001. 

The fire gutted part of the structure, and ever since then the building has been totally falling apart.

Despite living within 15 minutes of the building, I have only ever visited the building twice. Once in 2011, and once again just recently. It is basically a ruin, and the future doesn't look very promising for the building. Just another example of how Essex County lets it's history demolish itself.

The Essex County Jail Annex

The original building of the Essex County Jail Annex was a huge brownstone designed by local architect Paul Botticer, who also designed the Newark Boys Home which stood on the land that is now Verona High School.

It was built in 1873, to deal with the overcrowding at the county jail in Newark. The brownstone underwent a number of additions over the years, including an auditorium/cafeteria in 1882 and a hospital section in the 1890's.

Since then, many more buildings were built on the property. During the time the hospital section was added to the brownstone, a powerhouse was built with a connecting tunnel. A groundskeepers house was also built around this time. 

All of the additions were built with a mixture of trap rock and brownstone, as opposed to the large brownstone blocks used to build the original building.

Not even two decades had passed before the prison was overcrowded. Around 1918 construction started on a new women's building, complete with its own medical facility. 

The county was quite pleased with their complex now, but the crime spike of the 1920's was met with a need for a higher capacity prison. In the 1930's the county built at the time was the largest building on campus.

The "new cell block" as they called it was a towering concrete edifice added to the auditorium of the brownstone. It was around this time that the old brownstone underwent extensive renovations, which essentially stripped the brownstone to its bones and started anew.

A number of other structures appeared on the property, mostly garages and a wardens house built in a Spanish style with a beautiful clay tile roof.

Despite the new building, overcrowding was a constant issue. At some point the county put trailers behind the brownstone for overflow inmates. 

However, it wasn't long before the county decided the buildings were too outdated, and needed to be replaced rather than added too.

All inmates were transferred out of the old 1873 cell block sometime in the 1970's, and the building was used just for reception and administrative purposes. Over the years, prisoners were moved into newer buildings on campus. 

The cell blocks didn't see use again until rapper Nas used the older cells in the brownstone to film a music video for his song "One Love". 

The Sorpanos would later go on to use one of these more modern buildings as the filming location for the prison hospital in Season 6 episode 14.

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Even though they had built entirely new buildings only a few decades earlier, Essex county decided to build a brand new jail building down in Newark. The inmates were transferred to the new facility on Doremus Ave. in Newark, and the large complex was now just left to rust. 

Over the years it became a place for local teens to trash, and there was even a fire there on 5/22/11.

That pretty was pretty much the last straw and the property owners decided to finalize their plans to turn the property into condo's. One by one the huge, historic buildings were demolished, starting with the small garages, the warden's house, and the power plant.

They didn't touch the larger buildings for a while but on December 30th, 2011, the building that held the female prisoners was demolished. It happened to be my birthday, and I had just gotten my drivers license. I had also just gotten a new camera, and I was eager to test it out. 

After that was gone, they started to demolish the 1930's cell block...

...and then it was just the original Brownstone. 

I was lucky enough to get permission to visit the structure before it, too, was razed. It was odd, looking at the building the way it was way back in the late 1800's, before even the powerhouse was built. 

I worked with a local historian to document the building as they demolished it, checking every nook and cranny of the building for items that may have slipped through the cracks. Unfortunately, the salvage company did a pretty good job of scrapping the place.

They took a lot of the building materials to be sold and re-used in future projects, mostly the wood from the roof.

We did uncover a few interesting features though. There were a number of beams and other pieces of wood with graffiti on them from when the prisoners were working on various things. These beams were tagged to be cut out and donated to the town of North Caldwell.

That wasn't the most interesting discovery we made though. When the county remodeled the brownstone in the 1930's, they pretty much completely rebuilt it, saving only two structural beams. Or so we assumed...

We uncovered this old stencil, which was unique to the town of North Caldwell. It had been painted over in the 1930's, and this was the first time since then it was seen. It didn't last long however, as the demolition crews began to take down the rest of the brownstone.

We made a number of trips up to the old brownstone during different stages of demolition. The nearly 150 year old hand- chiseled brownstone was ground up and trucked to a landfill. There were negotiations to save the administration section of the brownstone, to make into offices for the condo's. Unfortunately the plans weren't feasible and were scratched. This amazing landmark of Essex County now only lives on through photographs, and the stories told about it by those lucky enough to grace its halls. I'm grateful to have enjoyed the place for the time it was around, and it will always have a special place in my heart as one of my favorite places that is no more.