The Old Jail
Commissioned in 1891 by industrialist Henry Flagler, who wanted the county jail moved away from his Ponce de Leon Hotel, the Old Jail was built by the Pauly Jail Building Company, the same firm later tied to Alcatraz, and dressed in Romanesque Revival lines so it would pass for a Victorian home. For sixty-two years it held up to eighty-four inmates under harsh conditions, presided over for much of that time by the towering Sheriff Joe Perry, and eight men were hanged on its gallows before it closed in 1953. Since becoming a museum, visitors and staff have reported the heavy tread of unseen footsteps, cold spots and tugged hair near the old cells, and the recurring smell of sewage or boiling molasses with no source. Some say the apparition of a former inmate still lingers in the cellblock, while others claim to glimpse Sheriff Perry himself, never quite finished with his rounds.
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