Black-and-white HABS photograph of a small Alcatraz cell with a bunk at the left, a fold-down table at the right, a shelf above and a sink at the back. — Open the full imageJPG, 731 × 1024 px, 0.1 MB

Alcatraz Cell House, HABS photograph no. 23: typical cell in Cell Block C (Library of Congress)

HABS photograph no. 23 of the Alcatraz Cell House, 1986: a typical cell in Cell Block C. The Library of Congress marks it with no known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government.

Date: 1986
Kind: photograph
Source: Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: Library of Congress rights advisory: "No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted." Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress), HABS CA-1792-A. HABS is a National Park Service program, and this archive treats the photograph as a work of the United States government on the strength of that advisory (17 U.S.C. § 105). The copy stored here is a JPEG derivative of the Library's image.

The Library titles the photograph “Typical cell in Cell Block C,” photograph no. 23 of the set. It shows a small cell with a bunk, a fold-down table, a shelf, and a sink and tap. The frame is stamped with the HABS number.

The Library’s record gives the call number and reproduction number as HABS CAL,38-ALCA,1-A–23 and the created or published date as 1986. The item record names no photographer; the parent record for the Cell House lists Jet Lowe as photographer. The photograph belongs to HABS documentation of the building as a structure, taken long after the penitentiary closed in 1963, and it is used here only to show the cell house interior. See the parent record.

itemAlcatraz, Cell House, Alcatraz Island: Historic American Buildings Survey record HABS CA-1792-A (Library of Congress)The Library of Congress record for the HABS documentation of the Alcatraz Cell House: 29 photographs, 5 color transparencies, one measured drawing and 3 caption pages. It prints the island's latitude and longitude.itemAlcatraz (Federal Bureau of Prisons history page)The Bureau of Prisons' history page on Alcatraz names Al Capone among the well-known criminals who did time there, and says most of its prisoners were not well-known gangsters.item"U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz: Federal Prison 1934-1963" (National Park Service, Alcatraz Island)National Park Service summary of the penitentiary years: the product of Attorney General Homer Cummings and Bureau Director Sanford Bates, with James A. Johnston as warden for fourteen years and a "concentration model" that later served as a blueprint for the high-security prison at Marion, Illinois.