Lewisburg penitentiary history on display

Apr. 29—LEWISBURG — The former warden's house on the grounds of the U.S. Penitentiary at Lewisburg is filled with 90 years of prison history ranging from staff uniforms to inmate artwork.

The museum — affectionally called the Lewseum by staff — opened in September 2021 following a yearlong careful curation by corrections unit manager Autumn Cotterall-Leib with the assistance of a few colleagues.

"When you're living it, you don't realize it's history," said Cotterall-Leib, a history buff who has been employed at USP Lewisburg for 20 years. "If you don't take a moment to preserve it, it gets lost."

For more than a year, she pored through photographs, documents, displays, letters, paintings and other memorabilia connected to the prison and kept in storage at the facility or in private collections.

No item is too insignificant, said Cotterall-Leib who has put on display everything from a Marvel comic dated June 1989 with references to the Lewisburg prison to a letter from a former employee describing past notable visitors like New York Yankee Lou Gehrig.

Thousands of items are crammed into three stories of the 6,500-square-foot house built in 1933 for $25,000 next to the federal facility for the prison's first warden, Henry Hill. The last person to live in the house was Steven Spaulding about seven years ago when he was warden at FCI-Allenwood.

Too expensive to maintain as a private home, prison administrators decided to turn the residence with sweeping views of the 1,000-acre property into a museum.

At the entrance is a large painting of Robert F. Miller, the USP Lewisburg corrections officer who was killed in an ambush Oct. 12, 1987, during an inmate transfer at Geisinger Medical Center.

On the main floor is a plethora of items, including a miniature display of the prison and vintage telephone booth used by inmates.

Cotterall-Leib created several themed rooms to include a display of confiscated contraband that had been used in staff trainings and an old metal detector chair; a multimedia room featuring documentaries on the prison; inmate artwork; information about former notorious inmates and vintage pictures of inmates, visitors and staff inside the walls.

"A lot of pictures were in a box with no explanation," said Cotterall-Leib who painstakingly worked to uncover stories behind the images whenever possible.

One 50s-era photograph is of inmates sparring in a regulation-sized boxing ring.

"It was a different day and age," said Warden Jessica Sage.

The boxing ring, like the residential swimming pool, is long gone.

Visitors to the museum will learn that Al Capone only spent a few hours in custody at the Lewisburg prison while other high-profile inmates held there include alleged spy Alger Hiss, mobsters John Gotti and Whitey Bulger, serial killer Robert Hansen, ballplayer Pee Wee Kirkland, Native American activist Leonard Peltier and Mutulu Shakur, the stepfather of the late rapper, Tupac Shakur.

They'll also see evidence that inmates were entertained by performers ranging from Louis Armstrong in 1958 and the Beach Boys in 1971.

There's even a room dedicated to the artwork of inmates which is rotated out on a fairly regular basis.

"The inmates ask for their artwork to be put here," said Sage, adding that while the 1,100 prisoners are not permitted to visit the museum, they're well aware of its existence. "There are no secrets here."

Many past and present staff members have been to the museum since it opened.

"The retirees get lost in the staff room," said Cotterall-Leib, referring to a second-floor room that features small photo identification cards of past employees taped to every square inch of the four walls.

The museum and its contents are especially poignant, said Sage, because "many generations of people have worked here their whole lives. It's family."

And, she adds, "They don't build prisons like this anymore."

Cotterall-Leib said there are still many items in storage she hopes to put on display and even more prison mementos held in private hands she hopes will be donated, like the antique switchboard once used at the prison which still bore the phone numbers and was given to the museum by a staffer's relative.

"She wasn't kidding about building an addition," said Sage of Cotterall-Leib's aim of expanding the museum.

The museum first opened to the public during last August's car show on the prison grounds and will be open again late this summer, as well as by appointment for organizations.