By Mildred Dunn
The Arkansaw Traveler at Conway on September7, 1876, published an important notice for the building of a jail for Faulkner County.
For some undetermined reason, the notice uses the word "house" in its specifications for the new jail. The following plan and specification was adopted by the court, according to a report discovered by Mildred Dunn, a Log Cabin columnist, during her research about the history of jails in the county:
Notice: In the Matter of Building a Jail for Faulkner County
The court orders and directs the house to be built at a point to be designated by the court, at Conway. The following plan and specification for said house is adopted by the court:
To be fifteen (15) feet by eighteen (18) feet, nine (9) feet from floor to ceiling. To be built of hewn or sawed timbers, six (6) inches square, securely covered with a good shingle roof; gable ends weather-boarded up with one- (1) by six- (6) inch plank; said house to leave a door two and a half (2 1/2) feet wide by five (5) high, with two (2) windows on each side nine (9) inches wide by two (2) feet long; said windows to be securely fastened with iron bars one (1) inch thick by two (2) inches apart, with iron rods one (1) inch in diameter running through said bars two (2) inches apart, both bars and rods to be securely fastened four (4) inches deep in the center of the walls of said windows; the door to be made of oak planks, one (I) inch by six (6) inches, and the same to be made four (4) inches thick fastened together with iron rivets every square inch the surface of said door.
The entire surface of said house to be floored and ceiled with oak lumber one (I) inch by six (6) inches; into which floor and ceiling there shall be driven every square inch, a twelve (12) penny nail as spike; the corners of said house to be dovetailed together and pinned with one- (1) inch pins; said door to be securely hung with substantial wrought iron hinges; lock and hinges to be selected by the commissioner hereafter mentioned. It is ordered and directed that the party who takes the contract for building said house shall place the iron cage of Faulkner County in said house, and shall be responsible for all damage done to the same, and shall repair all damages that may be done to the house in which said cage is now situated, in moving it from the same, that said jailhouse shall be done in a workmanlike manner and completed by the 25th day of December next, and for the purpose of letting out and superintending the erection of said house, J. J. Frazier is appointed commissioner, who shall let the building of said house out, at the door of the clerk's office in Conway, on the 15th day of September 1876, at about the hour of noon of said day, to the lowest bidder. It shall be the duty of said commissioner to take good and sufficient bond from said bidder, with approved security, payable to Faulkner County for the amount of said bid. Conditioned that the building shall be erected within the time specified, and in accordance with the plans and specifications mentioned in this order.
On April 12, 1877, the newspaper wrote: "The jail recently built at this place is a magnificent structure. The walls are of pure wood. The wind hasn't blown it down yet, but the wind hasn't blown very hard lately."
It would be used only 20 years and except for the references to a "cage," there is no record of the jail structure in any accounts of early county history.
At any rate, it is known that the plucky fellow who agreed to build the one-room log jail was admonished to make certain that the place included the iron cage, which apparently was a peculiar contraption used to house individuals who had run afoul of the law during the early years of the county's existence. It is to be presumed Faulkner County citizens have always been acutely attuned to problems that are imposed on society by those who find themselves at odds with law-abiding people.
Witness the elegant new building constructed for that purpose on the grounds of the county courthouse, a state-of-the-art facility, containing 128 beds and costing $3.8 million and featuring many of the amenities that distinguish a modem concept of incarceration.
Even at the beginning, toward the end of the 19th century, much thought was directed to the matter of crime and punishment in the community. The first jail with its cage fell far short of current views on housing prisoners, but people of the community appear to have recognized the need to address the problems that crime imposes.
The specifications listed for that first jail certainly proved the point that Faulkner Countians were interested in a jail that contained all the elements of a place of confinement. And a reading of the specifications for the jail of 1876 suggests the people hoped the probability of escape would be minimal.
This matter of building the jail was delineated by Mrs. Dunn in her Log Cabin Democrat column, "Faulkner County Reflections."
The building would be a veritable fortress, or at least as secure as possible given the conditions of the time. Here the history of the facility becomes obscure and only assumptions about its use are available.
The county already owned a large tract of land ideally suited for a jail site. The land encompassed an area on the north by Caldwell Street, on the south by Robinson Avenue, on the east by Locust Avenue and on the west by Faulkner Street. The land had been donated by Asa P. Robinson and granted under the condition that if the county failed to keep the land for public use, the ownership of the property would revert to the original owner. Robinson, often called the "Father of Conway," was a civil engineer with the Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad which had established a line through Conway.
Robinson was, according to Mrs. Dunn's research, an "ardent lover of natural beauty." He inserted several conditions for preserving magnificent oak trees that grew within the parameters of the land he gave to the county.
In 1896, the people of the county recognized the need for a new jail and the opportunity to rid themselves of an archaic representation of a jail with its cage. It was to be the second structure built to house Faulkner County prisoners. This building has endured and now stands as home for the county library on the grounds of the Faulkner County Courthouse. It promises to be the home of a Faulkner County Museum in the future. (Editor’s Note: The building is now the home of the Faulkner County Museum)
This jail was fashioned in a style called "monumental construction," a particular pattern of the day. The building is quite small compared to modem-day standards, but it gives the impression that it is much larger than it is. At its conception, the new building cost $2,300. It was originally intended to house prisoners on the top floor of the uniquely designed building and provide a living space for the jailer and his family on the bottom floor. The building enjoyed special prominence because of its stair tower. This noticeable protrusion is separately roofed in the front. When the facility was built, this tower housed an 8-foot-square tank that caught runoff water from the roof and served as a reservoir for washing water. There also was a porch around the first floor that was built from the stair tower to the southeast comer and from there to the northeast comer. There was a swing on the porch.
The outside of the building was constructed entirely of red brick and contained 18-inch walls. The doors were fitted with heavy, five-tumbler locks and the inside door could be unlocked from either side. The keys used to unlock the doors were large, heavy, five-inch long jail keys that hung on a large metal ring. Stories abound about those tension-filled times when the keys were used for self-defense and employed as weapons to knock a fractious person unconscious.
Although the cells and doors were quite formidable, there were occasions when enterprising prisoners would manage to remove the window bars and jump out onto the porch roof to make their escape. It is written that the most notorious criminal to escape from the jail went on to become a name on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. The first prisoner in the jail in 1897 was charged with assault with intent to kill.
The downstairs living quarters of the building were rather undistinguished. The front room contained a large wood-burning stove. The stair tower had two entry doors; one being accessible from the jailer's quarters and the other from the front porch. The place had a large tub in the backyard for the prisoners to use to wash and shave before their appearance in court.
The jail, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was described as a two-story, boxed, square-shaped building with a jail tower on the southwest comer. The peak-shaped roof was covered with tin shingles.
In 1938, the building was renovated by the WPA (Works Progress Administra- tion) and converted into a library. The exterior walls were covered with plaster, jail facilities were removed from the upper story and the place was adapted for library use. An annex was constructed in 1958 on the northeast crner of the building. Another annex was added in 1964 on the southwest corner. Both additions were constructed of painted concrete blocks. Its renovation changed the appearance of the outside of the building with the removal of the porch. The outside door to the stair tower was sealed, the bars were removed from the windows on the upper floor and a large arch was added to the front entryway.
In a paper detailing the restoration of the building, Steve Hartje, while a geography student at the University of Central Arkansas, wrote that after the cells were removed from the building, a visitor was able to note long rods overhead running the length of the room. These rods were attached to the outside of the wall by star-shaped plates on all four sides of the building. In the center, the rods were connected with a turnbuckle for adjustments. These rods were not originally installed in the building of 1896, yet they were common in commercial construction for many years and were always added to compensate for the lack of structural steel in a building.
The formal opening of this facility, now named the Faulkner Van Buren Regional Library (now the Faulkner County Museum), occurred on Feb. 9, 1939.
The specter of Asa Robinson was invoked again before plans for a new court- house-jail were in place. County Judge J. A. Hutto felt the necessity to consult a 62- year-old deed before he felt comfortable about allowing a tree to be cut down on the proposed site for the new structure.
The construction of this present courthouse-jail is replete with accounts of delay after delay because of the contractor's inability to meet deadlines and the intractability of federal government officials. In addition, it was to be assumed that the Depression was an influencing factor in any requests for government funding. A story in the Log Cabin Democrat on June 28, 1935, said that after pending for nearly two years, funds for the construction of Faulkner County's new $100,000 facility would be released and a work order issued to the contractor within days. The bonds approved by Faulkner voters amounted to $77,000, and the federal government paid $23,000 for the courthouse-jail.
On Sept. 6, brick work was begun. It was estimated by the builder that 81,000 face brick and 140,000 common brick would go into the building. Work was completed by Feb. 5, 1936. But moving into the new facility proved to be another matter. The new delay developed because the arrival of the furniture was held up. This problem, too, was blamed on PWA "red tape."
This third jail atop the courthouse was built to meet the requirements of the day with its 28 standard jail cells, but it became the object of criticism in later years because of overcrowding and other problems with its inmates. Space was an acute problem and this lack proved to be costly to the county, which had to pay from $170,000 to $200,000 annually to other counties to hold prisoners when the jail was full. In addition, it is estimated the new jail will provide anywhere from $338,000 to $650,000 in extra money annually by holding federal prisoners. But, according to Sheriff Bob Blankenship, it is estimated that the cost of operating the jail would be upped from $300,000 to about $940,000 because of the almost doubling of staff.
The winds may not have been able to topple that old jail and its notorious cage
before the turn of the century, but the winds of change have brought Faulkner County into the 20th century with a state-of-the-art jail system that rates with the most modem of the day.
Mildred Dunn
Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings, Volume XXXV, Spring and Summer, 1993, No. 1-2, pp. 36-40.