MN DOC - Minnesota Correctional Facility - St. Cloud Inmate Search

The Minnesota Correctional Facility at St. Cloud started out as the Minnesota Territorial Prison in 1853. It opened the House of Refuge in St, Paul in 1867, and it was the reform school in 1879 when it moved to Red Wing. All these moves made it possible for the state to consolidate their prison population in the correctional facility which opened in St. Cloud in 1889. The building still stands to this very day as a relic to the gothic architecture of the time and a monument to the beautiful structures that were built on the prairies of the Upper Midwest in the last 19th Century.

The first cell block was a Romanesque Revival that was completed in 1889. This building would have fit in with the gothic feeling of much of the region at the time, and it was meant to be a brooding force that would cause men and young boys to think before their transgressions. The prison kept this first cell block as it expanded, and that Romanesque style influenced the rest of the building over time.

The granite administration building was completed in 1920, and it was designed by the same man, Walter Stevens, who designed the first cell block. The building does not fit together in terms of color, but it has the same style going throughout. The prison was growing, and they needed a place to keep their offices. These offices represented a growth in state government that allowed for more jobs in the area at a time of a boom economy.

Walter Stevens had already designed other wings for the building because he knew that it would need to expand over time. The dining halls were positioned on the north and south ends of the property, and the extra cell blocks were all packed on top of one another. The prison was growing out from the center, and it was still built from the granite that was quarried not that far away.

There is a 22-foot high granite wall around the outside of this property, and it was designed for strength by Walter Stevens to make sure that the people on the grounds could not escape. The property took up the simple style of old prisons, and it has stood all this time. There are many good views of the wall from the outside, and the towering buildings look as though they came from a movie set.

The Minnesota Correctional Facility is a place that still stands after contraction started in the late 19th Century. The prison is still there, and it has a beautiful wall that was designed from granite that brings beauty to a place that was a reform school and license-stamping prison.