Origin
During the late 19th century the population in the Upper Peninsula quickly grew as did the number of criminal convictions. Lower Michigan prisons (Ionia and Jackson) were becoming overpopulated and the cost of moving prisoners from the Upper Peninsula to the Lower Peninsula prisons was becoming expensive. Talk of building a prison in the Upper Peninsula began. The Business Men’s Association of Marquette, Michigan argued that Marquette provided a “centrally located community with excellent transportation and water facilities as well as the natural resources required to build the prison.” The Michigan legislature appropriated $150,000 to fund the proposed prison. The prison board of commissioners approved the site for the Marquette Branch Prison. A total of ten companies submitted bids for the prison. The lowest bid ($135,817.00) belonged to Wahlman and Grip of Ishpheming and they were given the contract. The first buildings included an administration building, east and west cell block wings connected by a rotunda, a dining hall, a hospital, and a power house. Construction began with the rotunda and west wing in July 1886 and all buildings were completed by June 22, 1889.
Read more about this topic: Marquette Branch Prison
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)