Sing Sing Day Trips - Ossining, NY

Tourism at Sing-Sing
January 21, 2005
DAY TRIPS
Going Up the River, for a Visit

By SCOTT CHRISTIANSON

WHEN the Sint Sinck Indians settled in a pretty hillside spot overlooking the Hudson River, they could hardly have suspected they would lend their name to one of the world's most notorious prisons. But though the surroundings inspired Alexis de Tocqueville to write, "Except the view of the Bay of Naples . . . the world has not such scenery," New York State fastened on Sing Sing in the 1820's as the perfect spot to stash a growing supply of convicts. Not only was the town convenient to New York City, with its rapidly expanding population, but nearby was a handy granite quarry — perfect raw material for the prison's original grim gray walls.

The Sing Sing of James Cagney movies, with its busy electric chair, and of celebrity inmates like Willie Sutton and the Rosenbergs, yielded to Attica as the state's most infamous prison after the 1971 riot. The old village, long since renamed Ossining, is morphing from prison company town into commuter suburb with riverside condos. But the Sing Sing Correctional Facility is very much a going concern, a maximum-security home to 2,000 inmates and still an imposing and chilling sight. Though a close-up view can be hard to get, you don't have to be under sentence to take a properly distanced look. And while the Sing Sing museum proposed early this month by Andrew Spano, the Westchester County executive, is far from reality, two small museums in town already help to tell the Sing Sing story.

Sing Sing, an H-shaped complex of gray concrete walls, glistening razor wire and multicolored brick and stone, looms above one of the Hudson's widest and prettiest points. From the Metro-North station in Ossining, sightseers can reach it on Hunter Street by heading south via Secor Road, stopping at Hamilton and South Streets to enjoy a better view with the river setting and following State Street on the east side of the tracks as it skirts the walls and towers. But don't linger to take any close-ups, or you will prompt a security check. THE prison wasn't even built when the first prisoners arrived — they had to do the job themselves. Under the command of an autocratic warden, Elam Lynds, they transformed the local granite into what at the time was the world's largest cellblock. Today, only traces of this original structure still exist, but even Sing Sing's newer parts look pretty ancient.

From 1891 to 1963, 614 people were put to death at Sing Sing, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. The executions gave the prison an especially dark mystique, and portions of half a dozen Hollywood movies, including "Angels With Dirty Faces" and "Castle on the Hudson," were filmed there. In 1916, Harry Houdini performed a three-hour magic act at the prison, and in 1931 Charlie Chaplin chose its auditorium to introduce his film "City Lights."

Though New York no longer charges admission fees and shows off its prisons like zoos, as it did in the 19th century, Sing Sing does allow carefully controlled public tours, with written permission and security clearances obtained in advance. Visitors who do make it inside are awed by the size of B Block, scene of a hostage-taking riot in 1983 — six stories high and twice the length of a football field — and by the lingering ghosts within the old death house, now a vocational-training building. And even when glimpsed from afar as they go about their daily business, inmates and correction officers tend to assume mythic proportions.

For a more accessible view of Sing Sing, visit the museum at the Joseph G. Caputo Community Center, a few blocks northeast of the train station. A favorite attraction is a replica of one of the ghastly cells from 1825, seven feet long, six and a half feet high, and just three and a half feet wide, complete with an original iron door. Also on display are a replica of the electric chair (in Mr. Spano's plan, the proposed museum would show the original) and a sobering collection of 19 homemade "shank" weapons confiscated in the prison in recent years, some still encased in plastic wrappers marked "Evidence."

Two examples of the prison's current cells, dating to 1929, are also on exhibition. Visitors who step close to inspect them may be startled to hear recorded prison sounds and then see their own images eerily reflected in a large mirror. A more upbeat attraction is the Old Croton Aqueduct, which provided water to New York City from 1842 to 1991. By advance arrangement, visitors can descend into the original weir chamber, which controlled the water flow, and examine how the original tunnel was constructed.

About a mile north and inland from the prison, aficionados can find a trove of Sing Sing-related information at the Ossining Historical Society Museum, preserved in a tidy house that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Besides some prison artifacts, it has newspaper files, census records, books, maps and other material that probably represent the most extensive documentation about any prison in the nation. The 4,000 images in its W. Arthur Slater Collection of glass negatives show local street and prison scenes from 1890 to 1934 and can be viewed on computer disks.

When enough prison is enough, this museum can also direct the eye away, toward the glorious natural views the prisoners could only glimpse through iron bars. Its paintings include a Hudson River School landscape by Hugh Reinagle, "Village of Sing-Sing," and a work from about 1841, "Hudson River to Croton Point," by Robert Havell, who is perhaps best known as the master engraver for John James Audubon. Grand Slammer

OSSINING is 30 miles from New York City via Metro-North Railroad. By car, take the Sprain Brook and Taconic Parkways, leaving the Taconic at Route 133, and drive west to Route 9.

The Sing Sing Correctional Facility (914-941-0108) is at 354 Hunter Street. To request permission to tour inside the walls, write to the Department of Correctional Services (Attention: Public Information), Building 2, State Office Campus, Albany, N.Y., 12226; or send the department a fax at (518) 457-7070. Applicants should provide the full names, addresses and Social Security numbers of every person wishing to tour, along with the requested date, and allow at least two weeks for processing. Prison officials reserve the right to deny visits but do try to accommodate interested and law-abiding citizens.

The Joseph G. Caputo Community Center (95 Broadway; 914-941-3189), where the replica electric chair and 19th-century cell are on display, is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. To arrange a guided group tour of the Old Croton Aqueduct, contact the Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct (914-693-4117) a week or so in advance.

The Ossining Historical Society Museum, (196 Croton Avenue; 914-941-0001; www.ossininghistorical.org) is open Sunday to Friday 1 to 4:30 p.m., Saturdays 1 to 3 p.m., and by appointment. Admission is free.

Docas Restaurant (125 Main Street; 914-944-9205) offers good Portuguese food. The Main Street Delicatessen and Fine Foods (143 Main Street; 914-762-0651) sells sandwiches and daily hot specials to go.

Scott Christianson, a former executive assistant to the New York State director of criminal justice, is the author of "Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House."