The main prison building is four hundred and eighty-four feet in length, running north and south, and forty-four feet in width, fronting westerly on the Hudson, being five stories in height, and containing one thousand cells ; in front and rear are located work shops of different kinds, which together with the keeper's house are all built of rough dressed marble. Attached to the prison building on the south, is a chapel, hospital, kitchen, store houses) &.C. A new prison for female convicts stands on elevated ground, and is built of marble in the Ionic order. It contains well furnished apartments in front for the matrons, and the interior finish for the reception of female convicts, is neat and well arranged.^"

The following relative to the history of the prison. &c., is taken from an article published in the New York Express, April 13th, 1841.

"In 1823 the solitary system of imprisonment was abandoned at the Auburn prison, and was succeeded in 1824 by the present system of shutting up the convicts in separate cells by night, and compelling them to labor diligently during the day.

"The adoption of this system rendered the Auburn prison, which in 1824 contained but 550 separate cells, insufiicient for the accommodation of all the convicted felons in the state, and an act of the legislature was passed in March, 1824, for the erec-

0- Disturnell's Gazetteer, N. Y.

Vol. I. 64

506 HISTORY OF THE

tion of a new state prison in the first or second senatorial districts, "vvhich the commissioners appointed for the purpose, thought proper to locate in Mount Pleasant, Sing Sing, owing to its exhausiless bodies of marble, its healthy situation, and its accessibility by water. On the 14ih of May, 1826, Capt. E. Lynds, former agent of the Auburn prison, with one hundred convicts in obedience to instructions, proceeded to Sing Sing, and commenced the erection of the state prison there.