On November 15th I ventured to the Ohio State Reformatory with a photo group, Photo Cleveland. They have been doing a few art gallery showings this past year featuring local and surrounding area artists photography and mixed media.
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I had heard its an interesting tour and have wanted to go for a while but never bothered to look into going until they posted about going as a group. The prison was built between 1886 to 1910, and has had many films shot in it, notably Shawshank Redemption. There's a bunch of detail on the wiki page about its history, currently its a great spot for travelers to Ohio to check out. They have self guided and guided tours available. When our group went it was just slightly too soon after the Halloween season (wait... there is an end to Halloween season?) because they were still cleaning that up so we could only access one floor of the cell blocks. There was still quite a lot of interesting things to see with the limited access that there was. We went on the self- guided tour so we explored the place at our own pace.
Entryway and Wardens Quarters
Going up around after the wardens quarters and past all of the Shawshank memorabilia, there were a few open area rooms and the electric chair on display, along with prison uniforms. I took a few multi-exposure frames in that area. After that you can make your way up to the chapel area.
From there you can head over to the cell blocks.
It was a great little photo walk with the group, I'm looking forward to their events in the future. There is one coming up in February and they have an art call out for that show now -
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