Boston Gaol

The Boston Gaol served as Massachusetts' sole prison for eighteen years. As settlers fanned out into the wilderness, organizing new townships as they went, local facilities for incarceration sprang up elsewhere. Around 1689, "the old stone gaol on Prison Lane had three feet thick stone outer walls, its unglazed windows barred with iron, the cells partitioned off with plank, the doors covered with iron spikes, the passage-ways like the dark valley of the shadow of death.

A new building designed by Governor Bernard replaced the old. A plain stone building located in the rear of the court-house. A three story building with corridors on the outside of the upper stories.

The Leverett-street jail opened in 1822, replacing the old prison off Court Street. In 1823 the old gaol was taken down, and its materials were partly used in constructing the gun house and ward room on Thacher Street in the North End.