Sing Sing museum: New view of the 'big house'
It was at Sing Sing that 'Old Sparky,' the first electric chair, was used; where Babe Ruth supposedly blasted his longest home run during an exhibition game against a team of inmates.
OSSINING – A proposed Sing Sing prison museum has a long, colorful past to mine.
It was here that “Old Sparky," the first electric chair, was used. It was here where baseball great Babe Ruth supposedly blasted his longest home run during an exhibition game against a team of inmates.
And it was here that some of the most notorious criminals arrived, from sadistic serial killer and cannibal Albert Fish, known as America's boogeyman and executed there in 1936, to the "Son of Sam," David Berkowitz, who terrorized New York City in 1976-77 and transited through Sing Sing on his way to an upstate prison.
But planners also want the museum to have an education center that stirs discussion about present-day issues of incarceration, said Jerry Faiella, executive director of Historic Hudson River Towns, the agency leading the museum proposal at the state's maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
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“Talk about the rehabilitation and the issues of re-entry” of inmates into society, how do they become productive, for instance, Faiella said. The museum wouldn't take a position on issues, he added, but present points of view as part of an educational component and let visitors draw their own conclusions.
The plan is to put the museum in the 1936 light-colored brick "Power House" that served as a prison power plant. The building’s 75-foot-high southern portion could hold as many as three or four stories, Faiella said. The ground floor is about 15,000 square feet but, if they were to use multiple floors, there could be almost double the exhibition space.
Also proposed is restoring the original cell block, located on another part of the prison property. In 1825, prisoners arriving from upstate New York carved stone from a quarry near the current prison. The quarry stone became their quarters: the first cells at what would become known as Sing Sing, a name derived from American Indian words that mean “stone upon stone,” said Norm MacDonald, curator and past president of the Ossining Historical Society Museum.
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Today, supporters hope a museum becomes one of the cornerstones of economic revitalization.
"We see it as something else that is going to help us propel the village economically," said Village Manager Abraham Zambrano, noting the proposal has called for a downtown visitors center for the museum.
The prison sits near the Ossining train station, along the Hudson River, west of Route 9. Part of what comes next is charting a business plan that gauges how many tens of thousands of visitors would be expected.Faiella said a visitors center location has not been decided. Whether visitors would arrive at a center on Main Street and be bused to the museum, or there would be a different arrangement, such as coming by train, is part of what will be worked out.
Historic Hudson River Towns recently announced it hired three museum consulting firms. One of them, Lord Cultural Resources, whose projects included the National September 11th Memorial and Museum, is working on a plan for what kind of exhibits and activities could be offered at Sing Sing. Lord has done some 2,200 museum-planning efforts in 56 countries, according to Historic Hudson River Towns.
Jan Hird Pokorny Associates, another of the firms, will assess the condition and structural needs of the power house and the original cell block. The architectural firm has done preservation projects, including Locust Grove in Poughkeepsie and the Brooklyn Historical Society.
And historian Brent D. Glass, Smithsonian National Museum of American History director emeritus, is a consulting adviser to the museum effort.
The quest for a Sing Sing museum has been around for years. In the 2000s, Westchester County took the lead on trying to develop a museum, but then the recession hit, Faiella said. The nonprofit Historic Hudson River Towns, a consortium of Hudson River communities that seeks to help with downtown and waterfront revitalization and tourism, took over.
The Journal News/lohud.com reported in 2014 the project cost had been estimated at around $25 million, with U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y, expressing support for the project.
But Faiella said Tuesday that the project's cost has not been determined. The museum effort has received some $1.35 million in state grants. His group hopes to seek bidders come September for preservation work, he said.
It could be a few years before a museum is in place, Faiella said, depending on financing, design work and the permitting process.
The original cell block is six stories high and some 470 feet long.
"Really impressive," Faiella said. "You do get goosebumps when you walk in there. You get the sense of the history that you are walking into."
The history of the prison and surrounding community are well linked.
MacDonald, from the Ossining museum, said that, in 1901, residents who became concerned about confusion over goods made by prisoners versus those by village businesses changed the community's name from Sing Sing to Ossining. The Bay State Shoe Co., for instance, established a manufacturing location at the prison.
For Ossining, the prison was also a source of jobs.
Over time, Sing Sing become one of the most well known prisons in the country, not only because of its role with the electric chair — executions included those in the 1950s of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of espionage conspiracy for giving atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union — but through its mention in Hollywood films and other popular lore.
"There is a feeling," MacDonald said, "that we have a tremendous amount of history in that prison."
And there's been a bit of fiction too.
"There was also a myth that, when they had an execution, the lights in Ossining would go dim," MacDonald said, "And that never happened."
