Prisoners of Luxury

If you like your luxury hotels with a criminal background, check out these spots that used to be prisons:

Liberty Hotel Boston

Completed in 1851, the original building was a collaboration between architect Gridley James Fox Bryant, widely considered Boston’s most accomplished architect of the time, and Rev. Louis Dwight, a prominent Yale-educated penologist whose travels shaped his interest in and advocacy for prison reform. The building is thought to be one of the best existing examples of Boston Granite Style. While former prisoners no doubt stayed for free (but check-out was an issue), the accommodations paled in comparison to this revamped luxury property. The jail’s former exercise yard is now a private, beautifully landscaped courtyard, and its granite exterior and expansive, light-filled interiors remain largely unchanged. Soaring 90 feet, the jail’s central atrium was beautifully preserved and forms the core of the hotel. The hotel also features the building’s trademark windows and historic catwalks.

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Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at the Sultanahamet

The 65 luxury hotel rooms and suites are housed in a century-old neoclassical Turkish prison. It was known as Sultanahmet Jail,and was built next to the courthouse building. Built in 1918/1919, it was the first jailhouse in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, constructed in a contemporary concept considering the regulation of the daily life and relationship with the outside of inmates, who were awaiting trial or serving brief sentences. 

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