**This post was written by both creators in a collaborative fashion**
We went into this research project with the goal of learning about the culture of Auburn, NY by getting to know the town and the people in it. While we were provided a wealth of knowledge and resources on the historical connections to Auburn -- Harriet Tubman, William Seward, Fort Hill cemetery -- and were referred to various pubs, museums, and lakes, we noticed that there was something about the town that was largely absent from Auburn’s personal narrative: the 201 year old maximum facility prison that stands in the middle of the city.
The prison, as physically visible as it is in the town, is not readily introduced as being an important part of the town. Instead, the people of Auburn seem to exist independently of it, unbothered and unaffected by its presence in the town. The first two pages of our website show the how the prison is left out of presentations and perceptions of Auburn bt the people that live there. In this section, we hope to explore the ways in which the prison is an important part of Auburn’s history and its present, impacting the lives of residents of Auburn in ways that they may not notice. Understanding the in/visibility of the prison is crucial to developing a more holistic view of Auburn and the ways that it has become a prison town.
The Auburn prison was built in 1817 with the idea that it would continue to stimulate the growing economy in the village of Auburn. Auburn was an area on the rise after the war of 1812 and was legally incorporated as a village by the New York State Legislature on April 18th, 1815 (Miskell). It was the largest village in central and western New York, beating even Rochester and Syracuse in size. As the town continued to grow, the local government was searching for ways to expand business and looked to the State Legislature for help. Miskell states “Cayuga County had gone Democratic by a sizable majority in the lasted election and Village fathers wanted a reward, they wanted a new industry that would confer importance and prosperity here” (3). The options were either make Auburn the state capital or build a prison there. As we learned from one of our interlocutors, people really wanted the prison as they thought it would help with business and land sales and so they held a town vote to determine Auburn’s fate.
John H. Beach played a major role in securing the land for the prison. He worked to get part of lot #47, which had previously been a Cayuga Indian Village along with a POW camp during the war of 1812 (Miskell). The state was on board with the site due to the available water power and so the Auburn prison was commissioned to be built and the village of Auburn was forever changed.
The US prison system was also forever changed as the Auburn Correctional Facility was then used a kind of blueprint for prisons across the nation. Things such as “The Silent System” where men would not be able to speak to one another for fear of punishment, originated in Auburn. The prison has also produced many products throughout its history. In the early days of the prison, incarcerated men would do work similar to artisans and mechanics, prompting many people in the village to leave as they did not like the idea of competing with people inside the prison for work (Miskell). Contract labor came to the prison in 1828 under Warden Gersham Powers. It was introduced as a way for the prison to hopefully become self sufficient and while it came close, this goal was never achieved. (Miskell) As the city grew, the importance of the prison decreased with many citizens believing manufacturing interests developed without ties to the prison brought new investors to the area more than the presence of the prison (Miskell 14).
We know from information found in Seymour Library, such as a set of stereoscope cards, as well as from presentation in class, that the prison once held the position of a tourist attraction. According to our guest speaker, Allison Griffiths, Auburn Correctional Facility was the second biggest tourist attraction in New York state during its heyday, Niagara falls being the most popular. While we are still not completely sure why the tourism of Auburn began to shift away from the prison, we believe that, as seen through the other pages of this website, Auburn tourism continues to move further away from the prison.
Throughout our interactions with people in Auburn, we have repeatedly seen and heard the ways that the people of Auburn view themselves as being unrelated to the prison. Oftentimes after bringing up the prison as a point of conversation, the people to whom we are speaking immediately dismiss it, saying they “don’t see it” or “never really notice it.” As two people from outside of Auburn, this disregard for the prison seemed strange -- when we enter the town we are acutely aware of the fact that the prison is in the town. This is, in part, because we can physically see it from various vantage points in Auburn, but also because of the nature of our project.
As we continued to do research in the town, we noticed that a common theme in our conversations was people initially saying they had no connection to the prison only to contradict themselves later on. On one occasion, a woman I spoke to told me that she “rarely think[s] about” the prison because she has no connections to it. A few minutes later, though, she mentioned that the prison was important to the economy of Auburn and that she knew multiple COs because many of her friends’ fathers worked in corrections. Another person that I talked to said that he, too, didn’t often think about the prison, but he later went on to tell me that he always knew that the prison was an option for a job if he needed one. This kind of selective association with the prison was a common thread for both of us during our time in Auburn, and we hope to look more closely at how and why this plays out in this manner in our other blog posts.
While the distance between the image of Auburn and Auburn Correctional Facility increases, the dehumanization of the prison remains the same. Through conversation we were able to capture some insight into how people see the prison currently. One thing that we found interesting was how people would talk about the prison in reference to the products it produced rather than the people who made them. When speaking with a woman at the NYS Equal Rights Heritage center, we asked her what she thought of when we said “Auburn Correctional Facility” and she hesitated for a moment and then said “economic driver”. Her hesitation made it clear that that probably wasn’t the first thing that came to her mind so we followed up with the question of what she was thinking about in that moment. She answered with an explanation that she wasn’t originally from Auburn and was therefore still learning about the prison herself. Then she mention the Cayuga Museum and their permanent exhibit about the prison and then proceeded to tell us about the “beautiful tapestries” that had been made in the prison and were hanging in the museum. This was interesting to us because she only talked about the products that had been made in the prison without mention of the people who had made them or even the conditions they were made under. In this situation and others, which are featured in some other posts, we felt the ways in which the prison is continually dehumanized through conversation.
Overall, the blog posts on this page use data collected and recorded from our field notes to contextualize and analyze the role of the prison and its relationship to the town and people of Auburn.
Work Cited
Miskell, John N. Why Auburn?: The Relationship between Auburn and the Prison. Auburn, NY: Cayuga Museum, 1991. Print.
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