Ohio State Reformatory

Where it stands. The Ohio State Reformatory sits on a low rise on the northern edge of Mansfield, in Richland County, roughly midway between Columbus and Cleveland. Its front elevation runs for some 300 feet along Reformatory Road, and the effect from the gravel lot is deliberately theatrical: turrets, steep slated roofs, a rose window, and a central tower that would not look out of place above a Rhineland river. Behind that facade the ground drops away toward open Ohio farmland, and a modern working prison, the Richland Correctional Institution, occupies acreage that was once the reformatory's own farm. The contrast is the whole point of the building. It was designed to look like deliverance from the road and to function as a cage from the inside.

The story behind it. Cleveland architect Levi T. Scofield, better known for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on that city's Public Square, drew the plans in the mid-1880s. Ground was broken in 1886 on land that had been a Civil War training camp, and the first 150 inmates arrived in September 1896 — where they were promptly set to work finishing the sewer system and the perimeter wall that would confine them. Scofield blended Richardsonian Romanesque with Gothic and Queen Anne borrowings because the founding theory of the institution held that young first offenders could be reformed by beauty; a structure resembling a cathedral rather than a fortress was supposed to lift them out of criminality. The reformatory was pitched as an intermediate step between the boys' industrial school at Lancaster and the hard penitentiary at Columbus. Over 94 years more than 150,000 men passed through it. Its east cell block — around 600 cells stacked six tiers high in a single free-standing steel frame — is routinely cited as the largest structure of its kind anywhere. A federal class action over conditions inside led to a consent decree, and the institution closed in December 1990. Demolition looked certain until the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society took the building on in 1995 and began the slow work of reroofing, reglazing and stabilising.

On screen. The reformatory has carried three significant productions and a stack of smaller ones. Its exterior stood in for a Soviet-era military prison in Air Force One (1997), holding the fictional General Radek, and it appeared earlier in Tango & Cash (1989). Its lasting fame comes from Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which shot across Richland and Ashland counties in the summer of 1993. Important nuance for anyone visiting with the film in mind: the production used the real building for its face and its scale, but built many of the tighter interiors as sets inside a disused Westinghouse plant elsewhere in Mansfield, because the genuine cells were too cramped for a camera crew.

• The administration block's front elevation is Shawshank State Penitentiary itself, seen as the bus of new inmates rolls through the gate
• The warden's office and the parole board room were dressed inside the administration building
• The upstairs room where Brooks, and later Red, lodges at the Brewer Hotel is also within the administration block
• The six-tier east cell block supplies the vertiginous wide shots of the ranges
• The solitary confinement cells, the guard room and the tunnel sequences were staged in and around the real structure

What you actually see today. Preservation here means arrested decay rather than restoration, and that honesty is the appeal. Paint curls off the tier railings in sheets; pigeons have stained the catwalks; standing water pools on the flagstones of the west block. Visitors climb the administration building's six-storey spiral iron staircase, walk the full length of the east block, step into the punishment cells known as the hole, and tour the warden's family quarters, where a handful of rooms have been furnished back toward their 1930s appearance. A museum room displays Shawshank props, costumes and correspondence alongside genuine inmate records, mugshots and contraband. The chapel, the infirmary and the reformatory's small numbered cemetery complete the circuit. Self-guided audio tours take about two hours; guided options go into the tunnels and the roof.

Getting there and timing. Mansfield lies on US 30 near Interstate 71, about 75 minutes from either Columbus or Cleveland by car, and the site is a short drive north of downtown. The building is unheated and unconditioned, which makes January punishing and August humid; late spring and early autumn are the comfortable windows. October fills with overnight ghost hunts and sells out early. The reformatory anchors the signposted Shawshank Trail, a self-drive route linking more than a dozen locations from the film across the two counties, including the Bissman Building that served as the Brewer Hotel exterior and the Ohio State Reformatory's own gatehouse. Access is limited for anyone with mobility restrictions: the ground floor and administration halls are largely navigable, but the cell tiers are reached only by steep steel stairs, and the floors throughout are uneven.