The current Montgomery County Jail complex dates back to 1964, with multiple additions completed in 1993 and 2004.
But in Dayton’s earlier days, its jail occupied several other locations around town, most notably next to the Old Courthouse for many years.
Dayton’s First Jail and Other Early Locations
A jail was first needed in Dayton after George Newcom was elected to be the first Sheriff of Montgomery County in 1803.
Newcom’s 1796 residence, now relatively famous, had been serving as a makeshift jail but it was pressed for space, given that it was also a tavern, hotel, general store, courthouse, and church.
So Newcom “met his need for a jail by lowering prisoners into a dry well with a rope and by chaining prisoners to a corncrib.”
A proper log jail building was built that year in 1803, which was replaced with a new structure in 1818.
That new jail was considered unsafe by the 1830s, as overcrowding forced multiple prisoners to share a single cell.
On one occasion “when several prisoners were thus confined, they had worked a hole through the wall and were on the point of escaping when timely discovery frustrated the attempt” (Drury).
In 1845, a jail was built at the northwest corner of Sixth and Main Streets, which served the county for roughly three decades but it too was regarded as inadequate for much of that time.
After its time as a jail it became the City Work House. That building was demolished in 1933, and some of its stone was used in the garage that took over the same spot.
The Old County Jail on Courthouse Square
In 1874, a jail was constructed just west of the Old Courthouse on Third Street.
The construction contract for the new jail was awarded to Marcus Bossler (whose grand mansion still stands on Dutoit Street in St. Anne’s Hill) and this jail was larger and grander in appearance, topped off by a mansard roof.
It was considered to be more secure than the previous jail, but over the years there were still escape stories, including one prisoner who got out by “sawing a circular opening through the ceiling of his cell” (Drury).
This jail survived longer than any of its predecessors but was demolished in the 1970s (along with the 1884 new courthouse), for the construction of Courthouse Square.
The site today provides public meeting spaces, summer entertainment complete with food trucks, and a grand Christmas tree illumination for the Dayton Holiday Festival.
A Dayton historian wrote in 1909 that the jail and new courthouse were “the first public buildings making the change from an irregular half-conscious town to an awakened city of solid character and teeming life.”
But today the only survivor is the old courthouse which is now considered one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the United States.
The Current Montgomery County Jail Facility
County and court functions would move just a couple of blocks west on West Third Street in the 1960s.
The first section of the new county jail building was completed in 1964 on West Second Street and the old jail was razed soon after.
A large jail addition was built in 1993, and improvements including dormitories were added in the early 2000s. In more recent years, overcrowding and failures to adequately address inmate mental health issues have led to plans for another significant overhaul to the county jail complex.
Historic images courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library
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