Mansfield, Ohio, The Reformatory and The Shawshank Redemption
Ohio
The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield looks like something from a Gothic novel: six stories of turrets and Romanesque arches rising above the flatlands of north-central Ohio, a building that was designed to inspire reform through beauty and ended up inspiring one of the most beloved films ever made.
Mansfield was founded in eighteen oh eight, and by the mid-eighteen hundreds it had become a railroad junction and manufacturing hub. In eighteen sixty-seven the state selected it as the site for a new intermediate penitentiary, an institution meant to stand between county jails and the state penitentiary in Columbus, designed to rehabilitate first-time offenders rather than simply warehouse them. The building was designed by Levi Scofield, a prominent Cleveland architect, and construction stretched from eighteen eighty-six to nineteen ten. The result crossed three architectural styles, Victorian Gothic, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Queen Anne, and featured what was said to be the largest free-standing steel cell block in the world, a six-story honeycombed tower of cells that rose through the center of the building.
The reformatory's ideology did not survive contact with reality. Overcrowding became chronic. By the nineteen seventies the institution was considered inhumane and constitutionally substandard. It finally closed in nineteen ninety after a court ruling found conditions unacceptable.
The building was slated for demolition when a film production arrived in nineteen ninety-three to use it as a set. The Shawshank Redemption, adapted from a Stephen King novella, filmed its prison interiors here. The movie underperformed at the box office but found an enormous audience on home video and cable television, eventually landing atop many lists of the greatest films ever made. Tourists began arriving in Mansfield asking to see the prison. A preservation society formed, acquired the building in nineteen ninety-five, and saved it from the wrecking ball. The Ohio State Reformatory is now a museum and event venue drawing more than a hundred thousand visitors a year, sustained almost entirely by the enduring popularity of a film.
