When it was built in 1886, at a cost then of $1.3 million, the Ohio State Reformatory (also known as the Mansfield Reformatory) was the largest reformatory in America. It evolved into a state penitentiary over time, and housed over 150,000 individual residents, as many as 3,500 at a time, from death-row inmates to adolescent petty thieves, before closing in 1990. The state built a modern correctional facility next door, and began tearing down the reformatory, before being stopped by local…
