Heading to Indiana today – the last state on this very entertaining journey. Who knew that there would be so many places to stop? Colonial Princeton! Valley Forge! Gettysburg! The (US) football Hall of Fame! And yesterday…the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield!
Uh, wait a minute, why stop to visit a closed penitentiary in rural Ohio? Because it is where the Shawshank Redemption was filmed – one of my all time favorite movies. (It was also the Russian jail in Air Force One.) What an eery and haunting place. The exterior of the building is in good shape but inside it is in a state of arrested decay. Quite unlike anything I have ever visited before. In one of the shots you see the view from the top of the East Cell Block – said to be the largest free standing steel cell block in the world at six tiers high. The factoids I collect on this trip…there’s another shot here of the actual parole board room where Red sat for his parole board interviews. In a couple of the cells they put some bedding and furnishings in for the tour but otherwise the cells are all empty now…except for the terrible memories they may hold. (The toilet would have been in the right corner – you can see the outline on the wall of where it was). It was closed under a federal court order in 1990 following a prisoners’ class action suit citing overcrowding and inhumane conditions. Shawshank Redemption was filmed there in 1994.
Unlike Andy Dufresne, I walked out the front door when I felt it was time to leave…I am glad I made the stop but it was very unsettling, to say the least.
On to Indiana and deeper into the heartland.
