328 Comments for Essex County Penitentiary

Negan, the "floor" is paneling or plywood on the wall there, the perspective there has tricked your eyes.

Motts, what happened to the floor, near the end of the hall? Is it collapsing?

The toilets were somehow all connected so whenever someone dropped a deuce, everyone downwards could smell it in there cells.

I was in there the year it closed down, in 2003. It was as bad as you can imagine while in operation. Fortunately I was only there for six months.

I was there back in the 70’s, the experience was unforgettable..., been in every inch of the building’s all over the grounds...worked in the boot shop, then for maintenance,seen things you wouldn’t believe

I was 18 my first time , wasn't as bad as others, looks bad ,because of decay, plus I lived down the street in n Caldwell.as a kid I used to sneak on the grounds through the woods and go fishing in the pond , true story!

i was on j tier in like 92 or 93

this was the security office down on the main floor near the mess hall

Thanks for the clarification; I explore lots of hospitals so my choice of words are likely biased! I wondered if old state penitentiaries had hospital-like facilities for long-term treatment of prisoners under the security of the institution, but perhaps they were transferred to a more suitable location if this was needed.

I've never heard this called the "hospital wing". We called it the "infirmary". I think there was one doctor and two nurses. If there was anything more than that, I never saw it. In 1971, one of the nurses was our "mail drop"--she would get mail at home and bring it in and give it to me when I came in to the infirmary each day for drops in my eye for an eye infection. I brought the mail up to the top floor, North wing.

The staircases had barred doors at the top and bottom. The "dormitory" cells were on the top (I think 5th or 6th) floor and we ate on the ground floor. So we had to take these stairs several times a day. Once I had an eye infection and had to go to the infirmary twice a day. The guard on our floor would put me in the stairwell and lock it behind me. I went down to the next floor on my own and banged on the bars until the guard there opened the door and took me to the next stairwell, etc. I counted 23 barred doors between me and the infirmary.

Sorry, they are beds. We did not have the luxury of having "benches". This looks like the first of the communal cells (not "communal areas". This was not a recreation area. This was where we lived.) If so, my bed was on the other side of this half-wall divider.

This was, I think, what was sometimes known as the "dormitory" on the top floor of the New or North Wing. It was refurbished in 1971 and re-opened at the end of the year. In December, I was in the first of the cells, near the stairwell. We had 23 beds to a cell (no double or triple bunks at that time). There were three or four such "cells" on the floor. As I remember, the "dormitory" was used for newly arrived prisoners for the first month or two before they were assigned a regular cell on the lower levels. There was a shower at the other end of the hall and we used the hall to have races, including a race running on your hands with your legs crossed in a lotus position (I won that race). From the window we could see the construction of the top two floors of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Long hallways like that are never a good sign in horror games, still not sure if that rule applies in real life.

Thank you for the correction!