Featured Image Credit: Neighbors United Below Canal / TIMOTHY A. CLARY / Staff / Getty
Space is at a premium in New York City, and with it, comes a whole host of problems.
There's plenty of crime in New York, and as the city continues to reach for the skies, the world's tallest jail is set for construction in downtown Manhattan.
Located in Chinatown between SoHo and TriBeCa, the 'jailscraper' is due to stand at a whopping 40 stories, making this skyscraper 300-foot-tall and about a third the height of the Empire State Building.
To put it into context, it's just short of the Statue of Liberty's impressive height of 305 ft.
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Alongside the fact it'll cast a massive five-block shadow, there are concerns that the neighborhood will become home to 1,040 new inmates.
It comes after the city council vowed to shut down the Rikers Island correctional facility during a 2019 vote. Four smaller prisons will be dotted around the city, with one being in Chinatown.
There was a much smaller jail that had been operating on the site since the '80s, although the jailscraper is poised to replace it at a towering 'eyesore'.
The building was the Manhattan Detention Complex, better known as 'the Tombs', and sat as a 15-floor facility with 900 beds.
More than being much taller, the jailscraper is tipped to have improved quality-of-life features including rec centers, children's playrooms, and health clinics.
Speaking to The Guardian, local business owner Dennis Chung shared his worries that the jailscraper will be the end of his pho joint: "With the jail on top of the pandemic, it might be over."
Elsewhere, prison reform advocate Dana Kaplan sees it as a good thing and added: "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to try and transform the city’s criminal justice system into something that is more humane."
Referring to it as a 'fundamentally different experience', Kaplan explains why the building has to be so tall: "Just being frank, it was impossible to achieve those elements in the square footage provided by the existing department of corrections facilities."
Adding to the backlash, no one knows what the new facility will look like. The city is going with a 'design-build' process where one firm will do it all when it comes to imagining and constructing the jail. Even though the destruction of the Tombs was completed in December 2024, there's no sign of the jailscraper.
Known as 125 White Street, its estimated cost is a beefy $2.13 and is part of a bigger $8.7 budget for four facilities in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan. Despite the project being paused due to protests from Chinatown residents, local activists, and even elected officials, things are once again rumbling forward. This has led to fears that Chinatown will soon be known as Jail Town,
The new facility isn't expected to open until 2027 at the earliest, but that's not soon enough for Chung. Even though he hates the idea of the jailscraper taking over his neighborhood, the business owner concluded: "We already tried opposing it, protesting it, and it didn’t work. I just hope they build it faster, so things can hopefully get back to normal."
