Post-prison Years
| Alcatraz | |
| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
| U.S. National Historic Landmark | |
| The Social Hall, destroyed by fire during the Native American occupation. | |
| Location: | San Francisco, California |
|---|---|
| Area: | 47 acres (19 ha) |
| Built: | 1847 |
| Architect: | U.S. Army, Bureau of Prisons; U.S. Army |
| Architectural style: | Mission/Spanish Revival |
| Governing body: | National Park Service |
| NRHP Reference#: | 76000209 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP: | June 23, 1976 |
| Designated NHL: | January 17, 1986 |
Because the penitentiary cost much more to operate than other prisons (nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta), and half a century of salt water saturation had severely eroded the buildings, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the penitentiary closed on March 21, 1963. In addition, citizens were increasingly protesting the environmental effects of sewage released into San Francisco Bay from the approximately 250 inmates and 60 Bureau of Prisons families on the island. That year, the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, on land, opened as the replacement facility for Alcatraz.
Read more about this topic: Alcatraz Island
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)