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Friday, November 13, 2009 | Modified: Saturday, November 14, 2009 OnSite A new life for LortonHow do you remake a 2,000-acre former prison site once a model for rehabilitating criminals into a model of adaptive reuse? Very, very carefully. Washington Business Journal - by Kim A. O'Connell Contributing Writer In the 1920s, inmates at the Lorton Reformatory were given the unusual task of building their own prison. Two decades earlier, President Theodore Roosevelt had commissioned a workhouse and reformatory to serve the District of Columbia. Built on a rolling green landscape along the Occoquan River, the prison complex would espouse the progressive ideals of redemption through industry and self-sufficiency. Instead of wallowing in cells, prisoners farmed the land, ran a dairy and slaughterhouse, and paved the roads, using bricks manufactured in immense beehive-shaped kilns along the river. Eventually, these locally produced bricks were used to build permanent Colonial Revival dormitories creating an open-air prison without walls that would house the inmates and encourage them to lead better lives. Over the next 80 years, however, those lofty goals were largely forgotten, as Lorton became a notorious and overcrowded prison complex before being closed in 2001. Today, not far from the old reformatory, visitors can see kilns of a different sort. Since the prisons closure, the Lorton Arts Foundation has worked with Fairfax County and other organizations to transform the historic workhouse into an arts complex. The Workhouse Arts Center at Lorton, which opened in September 2008, offers studio and gallery space to painters, sculptors, potters and other visual and performing artists, as well as classes and special events. Visitors are invited to stroll through the beautifully rehabilitated brick buildings and watch the artists at work or purchase their wares. For more go to: http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/11/16/tidbits11.html or the Winter 2009-10 'OnSite' supplement to Nov 13-19 Washington Business Journal Matthew Gilmore H-DC list co-editor, web editor dc-edit@mail.h-net.msu.edu http://www.h-net.org/~dclist/ [list website] http://www.h-net.org/lists/subscribe.cgi?list=H-DC [subscribe to H-DC] Remember to check http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lm&list=H-DC for past list messages.
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