The late John N. Miskell's family generously made available to the CorrectionHistory.Org webmaster many of his writings, news clips, photographs, and other materials amassed as Auburn Prison educational director and as a corrections historian.

These six photos were among them. All rights retained and reserved.

From John N. Miskell's Photo Collection:


Six
House
of
Refuge,
Randall's
Island,
Images

Above is the anomaly among the half-dozen Randall's Island House of Refuge images from John N. Miskell's correction-related photos collection.

Unlike the other five, its height (6.7 inches) is greater than its width (5.4) and no caption appears beneath it, perhaps because "Electrical Dept." lettering on the blackboard makes one unnecessary. Click image for full photo, use browser's "back" option to return.


The six undated photos of the House of Refuge on Randall's Island found in Auburn Correctional Facility historian John N. Miskell's collection serve as an excellent springboard for exploring the interconnections of NYC and NYS correctional histories. That interconnectedness became evident to this site's webmaster early in his NYC DOC history researches before there even was a New York Correction History Society to help launch the CorrectionHistory.Org website.

Above is a compressed display of a 10.6 inch wide by 8.4 inch high 150 dpi greyscale scanned copy of the Miskell collection photo labled House of Refuge, Randall's Island, N.Y. and captioned "Class in Carpentry -- Erecting a new roof."

Click image for full photo, use browser's "back" option to return. Some browsers may automatically compress the accessed image to fit the monitor's dimensions. So you may have to click it more than once to display its actual landscape letter size. These photos are at least 82 years old. We know that because the House of Refuge closed in 1935.

Originally, the future webmaster of the future Correction History website had sought and obtained permission from then NYC DOC Commissioner Michael P. Jacobson to solicit interest among uniform and civilian staff in establishing a New York City Department of Correction History Society.

But as that solicitation of interest initiative advanced, the organizer's own reseaches into NYC Correction History kept turning up connections with NYS Correction History. Soon he realized that the correctional history of NYC was so interwoven with the correctional history of NYS and its other cities and communities, that a narrow departmental approach would be inadequate to address the subject properly.

So he sought and obtained from the Commissioner, by then Bernard B. Kerik, permission to expand the organizing efforts to include not only NYS DOCS but also all New York correction-related agencies and organizations, governmental and non-governmental, city, state, county, town, village, custodial and non-custodial (parole, probation, et al), adult, youth and juvenile, etc.

Thus, when the State Regents in 1999 agreed to charter our group, we asked for and obtained a waiver of the usual requirement to designate in our name a particular geographic region, a specific juristiction, a governmental subdivision or an agency identity but to leave it as plain and open "New York" Correction History Society.

Above is a compressed display of a 11.25 inch wide by 8.56 inch high 150 dpi greyscale scanned copy of the Miskell collection photo labled House of Refuge, Randall's Island, N.Y. and captioned "Arts and Crafts."

Click image for full photo, use browser's "back" option to return. Some browsers may automatically compress the accessed image to fit the monitor's dimensions. So you may have to click it more than once to display its actual landscape letter size.

While these photos are at least 82 years old (given that the House of Refuge closed in 1935), they also could be 100 years old, given that our research found on an unnumbered page between pages 66 and 67 in the 1918 annual report of the House of Refuge managers a photo matching the one above from the Miskell collection. That 1918 annual report photo was captioned "Class in Clay Modeling." Click the preceding underlined "clay modeling class" caption to acess the 1918 annual report photo. Note less ceiling is shown in the 1918 version. Use your browser "back" option to return.

This is why you can find presentations here that range from the "North Country" bordering Canada to "Yip Yip Vaphank" in Suffolk, from Rochester Penal History to the story of historic county/state cooperation in building correctional facilities in Buffalo suburban Alden as well as histories involving parole, probation, reformatories and advocacy organiations such as the Correctional Association of NY, the Women's Prison Assoiation, the Fortune Society, and Abraham House.

Note that the House of Refuge, the first juvenile reformatory established in the United States, did not come about by government initiative, but emerged from the collective action of leading citizens, not all them affluent and therefore influential by virtue of their affluence.

One who was far from affluent but nevertheless influential was the Rev. John Stanford, who scratched out a living as part-time chaplain at various penal and charitable institutions in NYC (then basically Lower Manhattan) at the beginning of the country as the USA.

Rev. Stanford made the rounds of various institutions in NYC of that era, providing religious services to their unfortunate inmates and patients, including the Almshouse, Bellevue Hospital, Debtor's Prison, State Prison aka Newgate in Greenwich Village, Military Hospital, Magdalene House, and Bridewell Jail, among others.

Above is a compressed display of a 9.7 inch wide by 7.4 inch high 150 dpi greyscale scanned copy of the Miskell collection photo labled House of Refuge, Randall's Island, N.Y. and captioned "Class in Barbering."

Click image for full photo, use browser's "back" option to return. Some browsers may automatically compress the accessed image to fit the monitor's dimensions. So you may have to click it more than once to display its actual landscape letter size.

While these photos are at least 82 years old (given that the House of Refuge closed in 1935), they also could be 100 years old, given that our research found on an unnumbered page between pages 44 and 45 in the 1918 annual report of the House of Refuge managers a photo similar to the one above from the Miskell collection; so similar that the first barber on the left and the sole officer in the scene seem identical to the first barber and officer in the Miskell colletion photo, and are standing in the same relation to each other.

That 1918 annual report photo was captioned "Barber Shop." Click the preceding underlined "Barber Shop" caption to acess the 1918 annual report photo. Note the "customers" aren't facing the camera in the 1918 version, suggesting both scenes may have been from the same photo shoot. Use your browser "back" option to return.

The separate institutional annual stipends, though individually very modest, collectively enabled him to make a living and support his family, albeit in a frugal life style.

When Stanford began his chaplaincy at Newgate, he saw child inmates 11-14 and immediately acted to separate them from adults.

Many youths whom the courts sentenced there had only weeks previous been free roaming the city's streets, child vagants without any school or home supervision. That they might not be behind prison walls, if they given such care and guidance, was obvious to him. So the cleric voiced those concerns to prison and charitable authorities, wrote letters to newspapers, and finally and formally petititioned the Common Council (which included the mayor and aldermen) Feb. 13, 1812.

Stanford's petition presented a detailed plan for a house or an asylum for vagrant youth to receive supervision, care, instruction, and when old enough and sufficiently job ready, employment placement outside. Not wanting for to wait for buildings to be constructed for the purpose, he suggested using a vacant structure as an interim refuge.

Although the chaplain had been advancing the concept of a youth detention center long before them, the idea is generally credited to Cadwallader Colden, John Griscom, Thomas Eddy, and Stephen Allen launching in 1820, through their Society for the Prevention of Pauperism and Crime, a survey of prisons and issuing in 1824 a report that called for segregating juveniles from adult prisoners by establishing a reformatory for wayward youths.

Above is a compressed display of a 10.6 inch wide by 8.6 inch high 150 dpi greyscale scanned copy of the Miskell collection photo labled House of Refuge, Randall's Island, N.Y. and captioned "Food Service." The scene features six young males, all capped, and one adult female, no head covering.

Click image for full photo, use browser's "back" option to return. Some browsers may automatically compress the accessed image to fit the monitor's dimensions. So you may have to click it more than once to display its actual landscape letter size. While these photos could be 100 years old, we know are at least 82 years old because the House of Refuge closed in 1935.

But, just as Rev. Stanford had suggested more than a decade earlier, an existing public building decommissioned from its orginal use -- a former arsenal at Broadway & 23rd St -- was put into service in 1825 as the first House of Refuge in the U.S. for the reformation of JDs and shelter for vagrant youths.

The converted ex-armory continued as a young offenders/youth-at-risk asylum until 1839 when the operation moved to a site bounded by 23rd and 24th streets, 1st Ave. and Avenue A, formerly Bellevue Fever Hospital. A decade and a half after that, it moved to Randall's Island.

In recognition of his role as the institution's initial advocate, Rev. Standford was designated to perform the religious services at the House of Refuge's inaugration ceremonies Jan. 1, 1825, when it opened in the renovated former armory.

The old anti-pauperism group with a name change (the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents) ran House of Refuge through a board of managers selected by the Society, financing its operations in large measure from private donations. But government --city, state, and even federal -- also played significant roles The home was partly funded from a tax on arriving transatlantic passengers and shipcrews and from license fees on taverns, theatres and circuses. The State Legislature and the city's Common Council enacted various laws facilitating the refuge's operations. Courts anywhere in the state could commit JDs and vagrant youths to indefinite terms there until they reached their majority age.

Above is a compressed display of a 9.72 inch wide by 7.28 inch high 150 dpi greyscale scanned copy of the Miskell collection photo labled House of Refuge, Randall's Island, N.Y. and captioned "A Classroom Scene."

On one blackboard is a verse is quoted from artist, critic and writer John Ruskin's October poem in his The Months. Ruskin is reputed to have been influential in the late 19th, and early 20th Centuries. From darkness outside the opened window and the position of the hands of the wall clock, the photo was taken at 10:05 p.m., likely aided by carefully placed extra lighting.

Click image for full photo, use browser's "back" option to return. Some browsers may automatically compress the accessed image to fit the monitor's dimensions. So you may have to click it more than once to display its actual landscape letter size. While these photos could be 100 years old, we know are at least 82 years old because the House of Refuge closed in 1935.

After outgrowing earlier sites, the Society received $125,000 from the state and federal governments for the Randalls Island location.

The newly-relocated refuge was completed for occupancy in 1854, and housing for the Female Division completed in 1860. Within a decade or so, the instituion housed 1,678 youths doing work that doubled as learning productive skills.

According to a NYC Parks and Recreation Department report, "Photographs dating after 1854 show a large, formally laid out complex of 3- to 4-story brick buildings facing westerly toward the Harlem River and Manhattan Island, with the important central and terminal pavilions capped by domes. . . . In 1857, the House of Refuge hosted a national convention of reformatory administrators, and at the time had the largest reformatory population in the United States. The New York State Committee on Social Agencies boasted that the 'New York House of Refuge is now in the extent of its operations, the greatest reform school in the world.'"

But as Correction History has shown repeatedly, bigger isn't necessarily better.

On some other occasion and elsewhere on this website, we can explore the built-in shortcomings keeping large correctional and reformatory institutions from achieving their stated rehabilitative and reformational goals for their large inmate populations.

Here let it suffice to note that the early praise and hopes expressed by so many reformers advocating and sponsoring the refuge, donors and other supporters of it, as well as distinguished visitors to its smaller iterations, such as Gustave de Beaumont, Alexis de Tocqueville and Charles Dickens, eventually faded away. In their place came charges of neglect, abuse, cruelty, and corruption, along with repeated incidents of inmate violence, arsons and escapes, all resulting in investigations, and erosion of public approval.

First in 1901, its female inmates were moved to the newly-opened New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills in northern Westchester, now the NYS DOCCS Taconic Correctional Facility. Then, in the early 1930s, the refuge's younger male inmates (ages 12 to 15) were removed to a state training school newly built at Warwick, and the older boys were transfered to the new facility at Coxsackie.

Above is a compressed display of a 6.68 inch wide by 2.92 inch high 150 dpi greyscale scanned copy of a Page 6 photo captioned "House of Refuge, Randall's Island, New York City" from the House of Refuge managers' 1918 annual report, onto which the webmaster has pasted a present era image of Downing Stadium built on the site once occupied by the refuge.

Click image for full photo, use browser's "back" option to return. Some browsers may automatically compress the accessed image to fit the monitor's dimensions. So you may have to click it more than once to display its actual landscape size.

The House of Refuge closed permanently on May 11, 1935. It had become obsolete. The prevailing social thinking of the time held that the "fresh air" of rural settings provided a curative effect on errant urban youths.

Another factor figuring into the demise of the antiquated House of Refuge was NYC and L.I. parks chief Robert Moses' desire to acquire Randalls and Wards Islands for his planned Triborough Bridge, linking Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx to recreational parkways and other facilities on Long Island. Moses also planned to replace the old insitutions on Randall's and Wards Islands with a sports and recreational complex. The Randall's Island site on which great masterbuilder designated for construction what became Downing Stadium had been the location of the House of Refuge.

It's worth noting that the Bedford Hills reformatory to which the female inmates from the House of Refuge were transferred in 1901 was run by Katharine Bement Davis who in 1914 became NYC Correction Commissioner. Also that in 1935, Frederick R. Sacher, who had been assistant superintendent of the House of Refuge on Randall's Island, was named by then NYC Correction Commissioner Austin H. MacCormick as the new warden of the NYC Reformatory at New Hampton Farms in Orange County, N.Y.

Those developements help illustrate the interconnectedness of NYC and NYS Corretion History so evident in the opening chapters of the House of Refuge story and which continued right through to its closing chapters as well.

To detailed presentation on photo from booklet in John N.Miskell collection
"1970 NYS Correction Training Academy at Beacon Photo: Recognize Anyone?"

To August 1970 booklet from John N. Miskell collection
"100 Years of Progress in the New York State Correctional System"

To John N. Miskell-provided "1869 NY State Prison Chaplain Reports"

To John N. Miskell's "The Light at the End of the World"

To John N. Miskell's "Better Than Hanging"

To
NYCHS
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'Executions in
Auburn Prison:
1890-1916'
To John N. Miskell's
'Why Auburn?
Prison & Community
Relationship'
To John N. Miskell's
'Offering Hope:
Auburn Seminary,
Prison Connection'
To John N. Miskell's
'Medal of Honor
Rite at Auburn
Inmate Grave'
To John N. Miskell's
'Long Watch
of Copper
John'
To John Miskell's The Bell: Auburn Prison.