From 1880 to Today: The Erie County Jail

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

For more than 140 years, Erie County has held prisoners on Delaware Avenue between Eagle and Church streets.

Erie County Jail, 1890s.

The Erie County Jail was built in 1877 with room for 200 prisoners. It was connected by an underground passage with what was then Buffalo City Hall (and is now old County Hall and the County courthouse).

The current holding center building was built on the spot in 1938.

Published by

Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.