Old Ellis County Jail
Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Due to overcrowding in the existing jail facility, this structure was completed in 1888. The Ellis County Commissioners Court awarded the contract to Pauly Jail Building and Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, Missouri. A round turret with conical roof dominates the design. Decorative brick corbeling runs below the cornice. The two-story brick and stone jail contained the Sheriff's family residence on the first floor. There were twenty 4' X 8' cells which accommodated two prisoners each. The solitary confinement and death cells were in the basement. A rotary system, one of the few in the United States, was installed to prevent escapes. A cylinder contained a group of ten cells. The outer walls were stationary jail bars with only one opening. The cylinder turned to provide access to the single door. The entire jail yard was enclosed by a fence of iron bars. Bloodhounds were kept in the yard in the early days. After a new county jail was constructed in 1929, this facility housed the relief work commission during the depression. Afterward a variety of commercial enterprises occupied the space.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Completed in 1888 to relieve overcrowding, the Old Ellis County Jail was built by the Pauly Jail Building and Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, its round conical-roofed turret and corbeled brick giving it the look of a small castle. The sheriff's family lived on the first floor above twenty cramped cells, with solitary and death cells in the basement. Its rare rotary system — a rotating cylinder of ten cells with a single door, one of few in the United States — was engineered to make escape nearly impossible.
Why it matters
The jail preserves the ingenious and unsettling "rotary" cell design, a short-lived American experiment in mechanized incarceration.
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