Sublunar Photography

The old Vernon County Jail in Nevada, Missouri was originally constructed as the new U.S. Post Office in 1909 and now, over 100 years later, it stands out as one of the more beautifully designed structures in this part of the state. This is explained by the fact that it was designed by notable architect James Knox Taylor who, at the turn of the 20th Century, was Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury. Taylor is listed as Supervising Architect of hundreds of Federal buildings during his time. Some of these buildings include the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital (1908), The Denver Mint (1897) and a variety of other federal buildings and post offices across the country. Sharing many architectural elements and design cues of other work attributed to Taylor, this building which is located in the little middle-of-nowhere town of Nevada, Missouri, is nearly identical to the Post Office credited to him in Niagra Falls, New York as can be seen on his Wikipedia page here.

After 52 years of service, a new post office of an objectively uglier but probably more efficient design was being constructed in 1961 and by 1963 the old post office was taken over by the local Sherrif's department to serve as their new offices and county jail. In order to facilitate the new county jail, a $50,000 renovation was undertaken which seems to have included some interior demolition of the pension and postal inspection offices located on the second floor. Today, there is almost no second floor to speak of aside from a kitchen area/meeting rooms on one end and some maintenance/access areas on the opposite side with a wide open two story center section. How much of this may have been changed for construction of the jail, I can't say for certain. The middle portion is now home to a chunky and overall incongruent cellblock in the center of the floor. There is what appears to be a juvenile cell on one of the perimeter walls and a separate cellblock on the opposite side of the building. Overall, the construction of the cells appears to have been a low-budget half-assed design featuring a mess of an HVAC system strewn across the top. The only real evidence left of the grand interior design is located in the main Sherrif's office and the staircaise to the upstairs kitchen and meeting rooms. Worthy of note among the current interior details are the multiple gun ports running along the new second floor interior perimeter walls. These gun ports are accessed by a ladder to a very tight hallway with a couple of small window-sized frames inside of which are rectangular metal openings with horizontal slits that are aimed directly at the cell doors/hall below. These were designed so that guards would have a safe vantage point from which to observe and shoot, if necessary, any rioting inmates below. I haven't seen any record of riots here, however there were numerous escapes throughout the years which contributed to the justification of a new jail being built reougly 50 years following the establishment of this one.

In May of 2009, the new Vernon County jail was completed at the cost of $8,000,000. The new jail can house 86 inmates versus the comparatively small 24-person capacity of this now obsolete facility. Upon completion, local residents were invited to participate in a $25 fundraiser "lock-in" at the new jail which was presumably "fun".

Since the closure of this jail in 2009, it was left abandoned and has since changed hands several times. Currently, it appears to be owned and inhabited by someone who is working to stabilize/renovate the building.