Post by oldetowne on Jan 12, 2007 6:43:30 GMT -5
There was an article in the Courant yesterday, one of the precious few that even mentions the word "Wethersfield". It's pasted below for those who missed it. The only question I have is why town staff was dispatched to Coventry to do a substantial amount of labor for an exhibit that the Wethersfield Historical Society may or may not erect at some point in the future. Do other private clubs and organizations in town have the public works staff on call? Is this another example of the "blank check" treatment that the WHS has enjoyed for so many years? (for example, who do you think paid for the new roof at the Village Tavern?) If only there was a televised public comment portion of the Council meetings, maybe someone could ask.....
No Getting Away Again
Two Cells, Once Part Of The Security At The Old Wethersfield Prison, Are Returned To Town
By STEPHANIE SUMMERS
The Hartford Courant
January 11 2007
WETHERSFIELD -- Frank G. Winiarski grew up across the road from the old Wethersfield state prison in the '50s and '60s. The place holding Connecticut's scariest inmates - serial killer Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky for one - was a mysterious magnet for a boy in a small town.
While sledding, Winiarski used to run into a brownstone wall that framed the potters' field where unclaimed bodies of prisoners were buried. That set the course for Winiarski's lifelong obsession with the prison that played a major role in the return of two jail cells to the town Wednesday.
"I can't say enough about Frank Winiarski and how much he's kept it on our front burner," said Doug Shipman, director of the Wethersfield Historical Society.
Wethersfield town staff Wednesday picked up the estimated 1-ton cells from the basement of the Coventry Town Hall, where they served for decades as working lock-ups, and delivered them for basement storage at the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center in Wethersfield. The society hopes to feature them in an interactive learning center at the cultural museum.
"It's something that Wethersfield needs to have. This is a homecoming," Winiarski, a history enthusiast and expert on the prison, said of the delivery Wednesday. "They're back where they were originally installed, maybe a half mile from their original site."
The steel cells are presumed to be the only remaining ones from the Wethersfield prison, which held the likes of Amy Archer-Gilligan of Windsor, the inspiration for "Arsenic and Old Lace," in the early 1900s and Taborsky, the last to be executed at the prison in 1960.
When assembled, the cells measure 8 feet by 5? feet and are equipped with iron bunks suspended by angled chains, and doors adorned by a pattern of cut-out stars for ventilation. Winiarski said they were delivered to the prison in 1900 for use in the segregated block that housed female prisoners and later death row inmates.
Famous figures such as Charles thingyens and Alexis de Tocqueville visited in the 1820s and 1830s as they studied public facilities. Wethersfield was lauded for its workshops, which manufactured goods such as shoes and boots, cane-seat chairs, spectacles, clocks and at one time even rifles and pistols, Winiarski said.
The cells were procured in 1966 by Coventry resident state trooper Ludwig T. Kolodziej, who was named chief of the new police department in the new town hall. They were put into retirement as Coventry opened a new state-of-the-art police station last summer. The temperate winter has allowed public works staff there to dismantle the cells ahead of schedule as they prepare for a town hall renovation, Town Manager John Elsesser said Wednesday.
"We're glad we could help Wethersfield become a cellular community," he joked, but turned serious about the legacy leaving his town.
"We didn't give them away lightly. Somehow it was almost sad to see them drive off on a Wethersfield town truck. It was something unique we had and a little story we could tell people. Now we'll just have to say they're over in Wethersfield."
Elsesser said the donation was sanctioned by the council and that Wethersfield's wherewithal to create a standing exhibit would benefit the region and state.
Shipman, who praised Coventry's generosity, said he is virtually certain about the authenticity of the cells but would love to have a bill of sale to Coventry, for instance.
"As a museum you like to have a full documentary trail. ...We have 95 percent surety that they are from Wethersfield. Frank is betting his reputation that they are."
That's saying something.
Winiarski, who now lives in East Hartford, spent nine years putting together a volume on each warden of the prison. He has prison furniture and crafts made by inmates, given to him by past prison staff and their heirs.
He knows lore:
Its unique women's cellblock held prisoners for more than a century, and took in federal prisoners in 1924 because there were no women's prisons at the time.
The last execution by hanging was delayed by the Great Flood of 1936. After that, the prison converted to electrocution.
In the bright cold Wednesday, museum staff and Winiarski, taking pictures with a disposable camera, watched with enthusiasm the unloading of the heavy pieces of the cells.
"That's the crown jewel of the whole shipment in those locks," Winiarski said of the massive door fasteners.
As he and Shipman chatted about setting up a cell, he said, "I'll give you all the furniture that goes with it. I'll supply everything but the inmates."
Earlier, Winiarski described efforts to save the prison, or even its guard tower, in the '60s against the state push to destroy it. "They thought it was an eyesore. They didn't want it to be Jail Town," said Winiarski, who believes it could have become a tourist attraction if it were preserved. Only the cannery and prison garage remain behind what is now the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Even as a boy, Winiarski said, he never feared living so near the prison, which was demolished in 1967, adding it was the safest place to be if anyone escaped. He recalled a riot in January 1960 over the warden's new regulations on visits and Christmas gifts. The cellblocks and warden's office were trashed.
"There were those big floodlights on army-colored trucks to illuminate the wall." He was 13.
In the next life of the cells in Wethersfield, Winiarski imagines children learning about the days of the state prison.
"I want the children of today to realize times were rough for anyone incarcerated. Nobody was allowed to sit in a cell. Hard labor meant hard labor. You worked."
Contact Stephanie Summers at ssummers@courant.com.
Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant
No Getting Away Again
Two Cells, Once Part Of The Security At The Old Wethersfield Prison, Are Returned To Town
By STEPHANIE SUMMERS
The Hartford Courant
January 11 2007
WETHERSFIELD -- Frank G. Winiarski grew up across the road from the old Wethersfield state prison in the '50s and '60s. The place holding Connecticut's scariest inmates - serial killer Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky for one - was a mysterious magnet for a boy in a small town.
While sledding, Winiarski used to run into a brownstone wall that framed the potters' field where unclaimed bodies of prisoners were buried. That set the course for Winiarski's lifelong obsession with the prison that played a major role in the return of two jail cells to the town Wednesday.
"I can't say enough about Frank Winiarski and how much he's kept it on our front burner," said Doug Shipman, director of the Wethersfield Historical Society.
Wethersfield town staff Wednesday picked up the estimated 1-ton cells from the basement of the Coventry Town Hall, where they served for decades as working lock-ups, and delivered them for basement storage at the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center in Wethersfield. The society hopes to feature them in an interactive learning center at the cultural museum.
"It's something that Wethersfield needs to have. This is a homecoming," Winiarski, a history enthusiast and expert on the prison, said of the delivery Wednesday. "They're back where they were originally installed, maybe a half mile from their original site."
The steel cells are presumed to be the only remaining ones from the Wethersfield prison, which held the likes of Amy Archer-Gilligan of Windsor, the inspiration for "Arsenic and Old Lace," in the early 1900s and Taborsky, the last to be executed at the prison in 1960.
When assembled, the cells measure 8 feet by 5? feet and are equipped with iron bunks suspended by angled chains, and doors adorned by a pattern of cut-out stars for ventilation. Winiarski said they were delivered to the prison in 1900 for use in the segregated block that housed female prisoners and later death row inmates.
Famous figures such as Charles thingyens and Alexis de Tocqueville visited in the 1820s and 1830s as they studied public facilities. Wethersfield was lauded for its workshops, which manufactured goods such as shoes and boots, cane-seat chairs, spectacles, clocks and at one time even rifles and pistols, Winiarski said.
The cells were procured in 1966 by Coventry resident state trooper Ludwig T. Kolodziej, who was named chief of the new police department in the new town hall. They were put into retirement as Coventry opened a new state-of-the-art police station last summer. The temperate winter has allowed public works staff there to dismantle the cells ahead of schedule as they prepare for a town hall renovation, Town Manager John Elsesser said Wednesday.
"We're glad we could help Wethersfield become a cellular community," he joked, but turned serious about the legacy leaving his town.
"We didn't give them away lightly. Somehow it was almost sad to see them drive off on a Wethersfield town truck. It was something unique we had and a little story we could tell people. Now we'll just have to say they're over in Wethersfield."
Elsesser said the donation was sanctioned by the council and that Wethersfield's wherewithal to create a standing exhibit would benefit the region and state.
Shipman, who praised Coventry's generosity, said he is virtually certain about the authenticity of the cells but would love to have a bill of sale to Coventry, for instance.
"As a museum you like to have a full documentary trail. ...We have 95 percent surety that they are from Wethersfield. Frank is betting his reputation that they are."
That's saying something.
Winiarski, who now lives in East Hartford, spent nine years putting together a volume on each warden of the prison. He has prison furniture and crafts made by inmates, given to him by past prison staff and their heirs.
He knows lore:
Its unique women's cellblock held prisoners for more than a century, and took in federal prisoners in 1924 because there were no women's prisons at the time.
The last execution by hanging was delayed by the Great Flood of 1936. After that, the prison converted to electrocution.
In the bright cold Wednesday, museum staff and Winiarski, taking pictures with a disposable camera, watched with enthusiasm the unloading of the heavy pieces of the cells.
"That's the crown jewel of the whole shipment in those locks," Winiarski said of the massive door fasteners.
As he and Shipman chatted about setting up a cell, he said, "I'll give you all the furniture that goes with it. I'll supply everything but the inmates."
Earlier, Winiarski described efforts to save the prison, or even its guard tower, in the '60s against the state push to destroy it. "They thought it was an eyesore. They didn't want it to be Jail Town," said Winiarski, who believes it could have become a tourist attraction if it were preserved. Only the cannery and prison garage remain behind what is now the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Even as a boy, Winiarski said, he never feared living so near the prison, which was demolished in 1967, adding it was the safest place to be if anyone escaped. He recalled a riot in January 1960 over the warden's new regulations on visits and Christmas gifts. The cellblocks and warden's office were trashed.
"There were those big floodlights on army-colored trucks to illuminate the wall." He was 13.
In the next life of the cells in Wethersfield, Winiarski imagines children learning about the days of the state prison.
"I want the children of today to realize times were rough for anyone incarcerated. Nobody was allowed to sit in a cell. Hard labor meant hard labor. You worked."
Contact Stephanie Summers at ssummers@courant.com.
Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant