The Airy Street Prison in Norristown is one of Montgomery County’s most striking examples of 19th-century architecture, a Gothic-style relic whose beauty belies a history of public executions in its courtyard.
The castle-like structure, shuttered since the mid-1980s, sat on the cusp of demolition a few years ago. The roof on a rear addition partially collapsed in 2019, and after decades of failed initiatives to repurpose the property, Montgomery County was prepared to pay about $1 million to be done with the whole structure and its carceral legacy.
“The idea of investing tens of millions of dollars to just take over the site and do something with the prison, it wasn’t necessarily supported and viewed as a responsible action to the taxpayers,” said Scott France, executive director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission…