Bridewell Prison (1852-1928)

Built in 1871 on a section of the 96-acre plot in Chicago’s southwest side on which the Cook County Criminal Courthouse currently sits, was the Bridewell Prison. Inmates at Bridewell were held on minor crimes, but the prison population included children as young as seven years old prior to later prison reforms (see Chicago Juvenile Court). Overcrowding quickly became an issue at the prison not only as Chicago’s population grew, but as the Prohibition Era of the 1920s opened the city up to rampant vice and violent crime. In the jail’s first year, its population doubled to a daily average of 419 inmates, holding twice its capacity at 1200 inmates by the 1920s. By this decade, the city’s downtown jail and courthouse (see 54 W. Hubbard Street) were also pushing their capacity, leading to the construction of the Cook County Criminal Courthouse and Jail in 1929 over the place of the Bridewell Prison. The intent for the prison, according to an 1869 report by the Chicago Board of Public Works, was to produce a “change in the discipline and management of criminals which will be beneficial to them and the city”— a desire that carried through to the 1929 courthouse.

The Cook County Courthouse (Pre-Fire: 1853-1871)

Built in 1853 and lasting until the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was the Cook County Courthouse located at LaSalle, Washington, Clark and Randolph streets. The grandiose downtown building had an imposing stature, and incorporated a jail, courthouse, sheriff’s office, and city watch house. Per a Chicago Tribune article from 1853, “the architecture is a mixture of both Grecian and Italian,” complete with cupola, two domes, intricately carved stucco and stone ornamentation, and iron columns. Seeing that Chicago was still developing, it is appropriate that the architects harkened to Greco-Roman ideals of sophistication and power through this design—a trend that would carry through the 1929 criminal courthouse.

However, at the time of its construction, Chicago was still in its relative infancy, a growing city. This meant that the stone and other materials used to construct the building were not of a high grade, and by 1869, the crumbling foundation resulted in numerous injuries. Seeing that the 1929 Cook County Criminal Courthouse employed high-profile Indiana Bedford Limestone and took “special concern” in selecting “good wearing materials, and floors, walls and trimmings that would not require expensive janitorial service,” perhaps this courthouse was a harsh lesson for future governmental buildings (Hammett 157).

The Cook County Criminal Court and Jailhouse (Post-Fire: 1874-1892)

Built in 1874 by Armstrong and Egan, the Cook County Criminal Court and Jailhouse located downtown at Dearborn and Hubbard Streets was Chicago’s main criminal justice building following the fire in 1871. Like the courthouse built in 1929 on S. California Ave, both courthouses also saw high profile trials. While the 1929 courthouse was home to John Wayne Gacy and Al Capone, the 1886 Haymarket Trials — a monumental event in the push for worker’s rights— were held between the walls of the Dearborn and Hubbard St. location. Per an excerpt of The Land Owner from 1872, the courthouse, with its “solidity and comprehensive architecture” was predicted to signify a sense of renewed power and majesty: “The stricken Northside will soon be able to boast far better structures than it did before the fire.”

Like the 1929 Courthouse on S. California Avenue, this court contains not only the central courtroom building, but an attached jail. It likewise boasts a Neoclassical style, specifically “the Italian, or Palladian-Renaissance,” complete with a Roman Corinthian pediment and “Roman-Doric porticos” at the main entrance. Similar to the later courthouse on S. California Avenue, this building’s interior likewise sports Roman pilasters and intricately molded ceilings. Although this courthouse pulled from separate Greco-Roman influences than the S. California Ave. courthouse whose messaging relied more on allegorical figures, both had the same intent with their construction: to signal renewed power of the Chicago government and city more generally following a catastrophic event—the Great Fire of 1871 and the 1920s crime boom, respectively. It can thus be inferred that 1929 courthouse architect Eric Hall sought to emulate his predecessors’ tactic when constructing his new criminal justice building. 
    
The Chicago Juvenile Court (1899)

In the late 19th Century, hundreds of children were funneling through Chicago’s criminal justice system— a system made for adults. According to NPR, “by one count [from 1882], there were more than 250 children aged 14 and under being held in the Cook County jail, at least 20 of them under the age of 11.” The children incarcerated, mostly from low-income and immigrant families, were often booked for small crimes such as minor stealing offenses. In 1889, the Hull House was founded in Chicago by Jane Addams and other women social reformers. Addams and her organization were concerned with the issues affecting children, including child labor abuses and adult sentencing. As a result, activist Lucy Flower conceived of a “parental court” separate from the adult system, an idea that inspired the Illinois bill that created the world’s first juvenile court system in 1899.

The first court was located across the street from the Hull House, at 625 W. Adams Street, and had popular buy in from the community. Per the court’s committee report, Chicagoans believed that “There is no better mission work than this saving of children; it is keeping them from being criminals; it is making them honest citizens. We look to you toward guiding the children of this city towards clean and reputable lives.” In other words, the matter of constructing a juvenile court seemed to be of almost universal concern, and received buy-in from activists, influential bankers and politicians alike. The creation of the building thus signals a trend of Chicagoans being actively concerned about quelling the city’s crime problem— a concern that directly prompted the creation of the Cook County Criminal Courthouse in 1929.

54 W. Hubbard St. Courthouse (1893-1928)
Built in 1893 by Otto H. Matz, the Cook County Criminal Court Building located in downtown Chicago at 54 W. Hubbard street was the predecessor to the current criminal courthouse located on S. California Ave. It was built reusing materials from the 1874 courthouse located on the same plot. Like its predecessor and the 1929 courthouse that took over its duties as the primary criminal courthouse in the county, the Hubbard St. location saw infamous trials such as the Leopold and Loeb case which resulted in a massive crime panic. This panic led to a stark increase in incarceration and the courthouse could not handle such a large criminal population. Likewise, this overcrowding and the despair that followed in suit led to the building being highly stigmatized. As a result, the committee behind the 1929 courthouse decided that the building should not be located downtown, but rather out of sight, roughly six miles from the Loop. Despite the stigma surrounding the building while it was in use, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and designated a Chicago Landmark in 1993, both for its place in American criminal history and for its six-story Richardsonian Romanesque stature. 

The New Cook County Jail (1995)

In 1995, a new addition was made to the 96-acre plot upon which the Cook County Criminal Courthouse (est. 1929) sits. The court and its existing jail have historically been criticized for their high capacity and deleterious conditions, the latter building especially. In response to two decade-long calls for prison reform, a $95 million jail was constructed, which according to the Chicago Tribune, “is a state-of-the-art prison architecture and a radical solution for the overcrowding that has long plagued the jail complex.” The maximum security building’s thousands of lights and 1,500 doors are operated via a computer system, keeping in the jail’s most dangerous inmates. Despite its purpose, the architects borrowed designs from Le Corbusier, a Swiss architect, to foster an environment without the traditional heavy steel bars and immensely cramped cell blocks that the original jail building featured. Furthermore, whereas traditional jails are painted gray, architect Roula Alakiotou used blue, green, yellow and orange for a “calming effect.” As quoted in the Chicago Tribune, Alakiotou claimed that she is “giving the inmate a space that is breathing into him some sort of dignity. The space is not going to aggravate him.” However, considering that the original architects of the jail in 1929 also hoped their effort would “breathe dignity” into the criminal justice system, it appears progress in criminal justice reform is incredibly slow-moving.