OLD ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — The granite jail on Emory Street has stood vacant for nearly two decades but that won’t be the case for much longer.
On Thursday, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball signed over the lease for the Old Ellicott City jail to Preservation Maryland, the non-profit leading the charge to adaptively reuse the space.
It’s been an effort years in the making.
Old Ellicott City jail rehab project one step closer to transforming a painful past into a meaningful future
“The county kind of said, if you have community engagement, you have community support, you can raise the dollars, then we'll talk,” director of revitalization initiatives with Preservation Maryland Laura Houston said.
They raised $4 million, with some help from the county, in the process. The project is now one step closer to becoming a reality.
Preserving a 150-year history of an infamous jail is a big responsibility, but one that Houston doesn’t take lightly.
“We're hoping to be good stewards not just of the building fabric but of the stories that it represents,” she said. “Preserving a site... it connects you to the humans that came before you and hopefully continues to encourage that humanity in ourselves.”
They've partnered with the county, the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation as well as the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, just to name a few.
The jail's history is not a pleasant one. It once held enslaved persons seeking freedom or those who encouraged them. It’s also the site of documented lynchings. Its reputation for poor conditions was so bad that Houston says Congress made efforts to upgrade it in the 1940s.
“It was considered dark and damp, and dirty. And the folks would request to go to Baltimore or anywhere else besides the jail in Ellicott City,” Houston explained.
It’s a delicate balance to address a painful past while looking ahead to the future. But an important one.
The building will be transformed into a shared space for community activities, University of Maryland students, and will serve as the new headquarters for the non-profit.
Some of the original structure, like the jail bars, will remain as a reminder of what the space was and the people who were once inside.
“This long vacant building will become a center for preservation education, community engagement, and honest historical reckoning,” Howard County Executive Calvin Ball said. “Because preserving history means telling the truth even when that truth is uncomfortable, so that we can learn, reflect, and move forward together.”
They hope to break ground by September.
“We are eager to see this work completed in as expeditious a manner as possible, so we're looking for a very aggressive timeline,” Houston said.
That may still be another 12-18 months after groundbreaking, depending on what remediation is needed inside.
They’ve got their work cut out for them; Deteriorated conditions inside have only worsened with a recent flood in January. Another setback includes the reversal of federal grant funding during cuts.
But Houston says they’re determined and ready to take on their largest, and most complex, project yet.
