Upon arrival at The Squirrel Cage Jail originally called the Pottawattamie County Jail. There is an old, paint chipped, and original small round door handle on a bright red door. When I walked in through the heavy red door there are metal stairs to walk up to the second floor of the jail.
This building served as the County Jail from September 1885 to December 1969. The jail got the name Squirrel Cage Jail by the design, it is cylinder twenty-eight feet high, twenty-four feet in diameter, and weighs 90,000 pounds empty. There were ten cells per floor and three floors that held two inmates, but these cells were so small I could touch every wall in one pass. Each cell had a bunk bed and a bench. A hand crank at the start of each floor would be …show more content…
On the first floor under the stairs is the shower that I can touch the top of. It’s not very big, totally opened. Inmates would take a shower once a week with their clothes on. The clothes that they were arrested in were the clothes that they had to were during their entire sentence; whether that be three weeks to a year they had one pair of clothing the entire time. What surprised me the most is that I am five feet seven and I could relaxingly stretch my arms out and again touch every wall and the ceiling. I am claustrophobic, and this made the entire tour and experience more …show more content…
The juvenile housing was set up like a camp cabin style, it was one big cell that had six sets of bunk beds to house up to twelve juveniles. I noticed that this area was far more relaxed then the men housing. The women housing was the same way, they had bunk beds all in a bigger room. This soon changed due to the jailors wife believing the fourth-floor apartment was haunted. Due to the jailor and his wife moving to the second floor it meant the women were then moved to the third floor. The Second-floor apartment was fixed up to be suitable to them, walls were put up and doors were