The Wall
When Great Meadow first opened it was home to mostly first time offenders, and therefore it did not need a wall for many years. But as inmate population grew Great Meadows Correctional Facility started receiving second- and third-time offenders from other New York prisons such as Sing Sing and Clinton. Still, without a good wall, many inmates could not be sent to Great Meadow Correctional Facility. In 1924 construction of a 3,000-foot (910 m) wall began. Four years later, the inmates had successfully finished walling themselves in. The wall encloses just over twenty-one acres. With the completion of building this wall Great Meadow became a maximum-security facility.
Read more about this topic: Great Meadow Correctional Facility
Famous quotes containing the word wall:
“We shall renew the battle in the plain
Tomorrow—red with blood will Xanthus be;
Hector and Ajax will be there again,
Helen will come upon the wall to see.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“... the Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)