MacDonald Donald - Alcatraz: history and design of a landmark

Whenever civilized nations occupy an island, they turn it either into a fortress or a prison.
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Island prisons begin with Crete, where Icarus escaped from the labyrinth with his son Daedalus by fashioning wings and flying toward the sun. Napoleon imprisoned at Saint Helena, Dreyfus at Devils Island, and Nelson Mandela at Robben Island are more recent inmates of infamous and isolated prisons. Chteau dIf, a French island prison a mile or so off Marseille, housed the fictional Count of Monte Cristo, while Mussolini sent political opponents to the Lipari Islands off the Italian coast. In his Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn described the notorious Solovki island monastery prison, at one time also the home of the writer Maxim Gorky. On the East Coast of the United States, Governors Island, a former U.S. military base in New York harbor, held a prison where Revolutionary and Civil War spies were hanged. And on the West Coast was Alcatraz, the federal prison where there were no executions but where no one ever escaped.

Architecture plays a crucial role in understanding Alcatraz because it encloses the prisons mystery and danger. The well-known but opaque and imposing cellhouse became the dominant image of the island, visiblefrom a distancethroughout the Bay Area. It stood as the external expression of the prisons internal purposepunishment, discipline, and controlwhile maintaining the intrigue and secrecy of the prison by revealing nothing to the public. The harsh microclimate of the island began to undermine the cellhouses materials and structural integrity, however, and it soon began to deteriorate. And as it began to wear down, so too did the purpose of the prison, which closed in 1963.

And its name, The Rock? It originated with the soldiers stationed there during World War II to guard the harbor, the term conveying the isolation and remoteness of the island. No other name would suit the barren land and rocky formations.

Until recently, distance has always defined Alcatraz. From the brick and masonry fortress and Citadel to the concrete and imposing cellblock, one can see its history in its buildings and understand its past. The variety of styles, from the Third System of defensive forts to the Victorian and mission revival styles, link the island to the mainland and yet maintain its distinction. The federal style of the massive cellblock (started in 1909) contrasts with the more discrete and individualistic styles of the Officers Quarters or the New Industries Building, built with an eye on the modern.

The very distance and secrecy of Alcatraz, imposed by nature and reiterated by its architecture, increased attention on the things most visible from the mainland: its buildings. With their enclosed and hidden functions, the structures intensified the curiosity of the public (normally prevented from visiting prisons) as to exactly what went on there. And when the prison was finally opened to the public, the number of visitors was staggering. It was a chance to find out the secrets of the island, which only the buildings, seen from a distance, could suggestor hide.

This book tells the long history of Alcatraz through its architecture and inhabitants, from its earliest discovery through its use as a military fortress, federal penitentiary, occupied site, and finally national park. It is a story of the constant remaking of the island, physically and architecturally, and how this isolated sandstone rock became one of Americas most visited tourist attractions.