Old City Jail Providing New Haunts for Artists

VENTURA — It sounded like an outrageous idea.

Take an old jail--complete with exposed water pipes and cold concrete walls the color of dirty dishwater--and transform it into an art gallery.

But that is precisely what a cadre of local artists have done to the third floor of City Hall, which for half a century was the women’s jail for Ventura County.

For the next month, the former jail will serve as a temporary gallery for a juried exhibition of 74 county artists.

“I think it is great,” said Patricia Legnon, a local painter whose work is included in the exhibit. “This is a beautiful space.”

It is doubtful any former inmates would have described it that way.

Built in the late 1920s, the jail was opened in 1932 in a building west of the county courthouse, which is now Ventura City Hall.

Inside that building, in a dark space isolated above Poli Street like some kind of modern-day medieval tower, was the women’s jail. The two structures were connected by an atrium and elevated walkway during a restoration several years ago.

But “it still has the feeling of an attic,” city historian Richard Senate said. “You still get the feeling of what it may have been like.”

For 50 years, prostitutes, thieves, swindlers and murderers were kept behind bars on the third floor of the white marble building, which offers stunning views of the Pacific Ocean and Channel Islands.

“According to our account,” Senate said, “the first woman jailed on the third floor committed suicide.”

In the early 1980s, the county started to dismantle both jails and transfer inmates to its new facility across town, and eventually the city of Ventura took over the site.

The bars and bunks were ripped out, but the city never developed the 6,000-square-foot space, using it instead as a storage area for boxes of files and old furniture.

That is how local artists found it a few weeks ago when they set out to turn the former jail into a gallery.

“The floors were torn up,” Legnon said. “There were holes and cracks.”

But with the help of more than 50 people, Legnon and others were able to haul away broken glass, shield the boxes with drywall and repaint some of the interior.

Now, they want to lobby the city to turn the third floor into a permanent exhibition space.

“This has just been unused storage space for office junk,” said sculptor Michele Chapin, adding that the city is sorely lacking areas where local artists can display their work. “There is nothing in town like this.”

The current exhibit, which is being done in conjunction with the Chamber Music Festival, will only be up until June 14. After that, the future of the former jail is uncertain.

“There hasn’t been any official word on what is going to happen to this space,” said Jennifer Easton, the city’s coordinator for public art. “It is one of those things that remains to be seen.”

In the meantime, artists and city officials are enjoying the strange mix of art in a spooky old jail.

In fact, it has been rumored that the ghost of a former inmate has had her kicks with a few of the pieces of artwork.

While setting up the exhibit, Easton set a painting of a cow skull on the floor beneath the spot on the wall where she planned to hang it.

“When we came in the next day,” Senate said, “somebody had turned the skull picture upside down. We wondered if it was a prankster or a ghost.”

But Senate, who moonlights as an amateur ghost hunter, said this spirit appears to be a friendly fiend--perhaps one who likes art.