The Liberty Hotel

The Liberty Hotel is the old Charles Street Jail at 215 Charles Street, beside Massachusetts General Hospital. The jail was finished in 1851. Architect Gridley James Fox Bryant designed it with prison reformer Louis Dwight. In 1973 a court found it violated the inmates’ constitutional rights. The last prisoners left on Memorial Day weekend in 1990. The building reopened as a hotel in 2007.

The rotunda rises about 90 feet. The catwalks and some of the cells are still there. CLINK. serves dinner in the old cells. Alibi pours drinks in the former drunk tank. Scampo, Lydia Shire’s Italian restaurant, is in the hotel too. Stay overnight, eat in, or stop for a drink.

The jail’s old exercise yard is now a courtyard.