As a kid i remember visiting my aunt when she was locked up here. It was such a weird feeling walking out from the visit to be hit with the view and sounds of a vibrant downtown. The EL making its noise, cars honking, masses of people on the streets, the lake breeze hitting you ever so slightly between the buildings. It’s almost like the inmates get trolled everyday when they look out their window to realize all the beautiful freedom they were stripped off. The city will forever keep moving while you’re stuck in that mf rotting.

I’m Rail Operator for CTA and I always see this building when I operate the train approaching Harold Washington library north bound on the brown line.

The Metropolitan Correctional Facility is a federal holding facility, not a state prison or county jail.

Brutalist doesn’t mean “brutal” - it comes from “Beton Brut” which is French for “raw concrete”. While some brutalism is indeed brutal, other brutalist structures are quite lovely!

Our college dorm was right across the street from this building. We got in trouble for putting signs in our windows trying to communicate with the inmates...

When I visited the Sears tower, I noticed the prison. I knew right away what it was. The window style made it obvious. The architecture screams prison. Prisoners were playing sports on top.

I was there in 1993 for about 8 months awaiting trial and sentencing, alot of the floors are dormitories not cells, there are bunk beds tucked into every square inch, its filthy and terribly overcrowded

This was a good one. I live in Palatine (NW suburb of Chicago about 30 miles from the building) and have all my life, but I've always been curious about this mysterious place. I remember when Ken Conley and that other guy scaled down the building with tied bedsheets. They were WAY high up there. I could have NEVER done that! Of course like all escapees, they failed to plan their post-escape. I watch so many reality prison escape documentaries and it always BLOW my mind that these guys are willing to say crawl through a 12" steam pipe for 80' with cockroaches and rats surrounding them and then once free they have NO CLUE where to go or what to do.... SO they get re-captured. BLOWS MY MIND! great video )

I can't be the only one who looked at that and immediately could tell it was a prison. One look at the windows or lack of them. It looks nothing like a NORMAL Skyscraper

I’ve been going to visitations for about 5 years with the 16th of this month being the most recent time I was there. Renovations were made in parts of the jail. One thing I do like about it is the art created by the inmates displayed throughout the visiting room. Also with programs opening up you can see the drive some of the inmates show trying to correct the wrongs of their past. I’ve had the pleasure to sit in a graduation ceremony for those who passed their GED. Some people do want to change and it’s good to see it first hand.

My uncle worked 30 years at this prison and was assistant warden at one point, I believe. Dealt with the worst of the worst in those years. I remember when a guy escaped lol

It would have been nice to have actual pictures of the inside, but I guess security concerns prevented this.

Since I work construction in Chicago, I’ve been in buildings where we could watch them go to the rec yard while we took break. Always something interesting to watch

Miss Kerman is a very kind and intelligent person. She taught classes at the prison I was incarcerated in here in Ohio.

Milwaukee also has a "skyscraper" prison located in downtown Milwaukee called MSDF, Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility which is ran by the Department of Corrections. It's a building within a building, meaning there is an outer shell that makes it look like a normal building with windows, but then if you go about 5 feet deeper there is another shell which is the actual prison structure, the window in the cells, which are fogged so you can't see out, actually look out to the space in between those two shells. They spent ALOT of money trying to make the building look like a normal office building. I did 342 days at MSDF and it sucked. You're stuck in your cell 23hrs a day. My only saving grace from going nuts was getting a job in the kitchen and the only reason i did that was to get out of my cell and for the extra food. The majority of people in Milwaukee don't even know it's a prison, because it doesn't look like one, but plenty of people are actively trying to get it shutdown because it's a hellhole. Most people don't do more than a year there though because it's really only an intake facility for people who have violated their probation, been revoked and are either waiting to see if their probation or parole will be revoked (aka revocation hearing) or waiting to be transferred to an actual prison in Wisconsin after being revoked. Bottomline is everyone who is there would much rather be in an actual prison then at MSDF.

It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses

A rope made from bedsheets down from the 17th floor? That's a lot of bedsheets.

You know hearing this stuff makes me think of the game Watch dogs. They actually based a mission in the prison now. Of course, for security reasons they couldn't use the real layout so they use their imaginations now. It was pretty cool to see The game used the building as a point of interest in the game for mission

This is interesting, having walked by this multiple times on my way to school every day this answers quite a few of my questions and stuff

Never been in there but I once had an office in the CBOT that overlooks the MCC and I have a photo of a Peregrine Falcon that nested on the side of the MCC, the bird would eat its prey (pigeons) on a small balcony outside one of the office windows. I posted the photo somewhere and the Peregrine Program at the Field Museum contacted me to learn the particulars about the photo; the bird was banded but they couldn’t get any good photos of the bird due to how high the nest was and how far the MCC is from other tall buildings. But if one of us got to the office early enough we could see the falcon dining on a pigeon.

It would be impossible for Christopher Nolan’s brother to escape from the 11th floor with a rope made of bedsheets. Some years later bank robbers repelled from the 17th floor with a rope made of bedsheets. Wtf.

We got an 8 floor, & a 13 floor county jail here in downtown Detroit. They're also building a new skyscraper County jail complex,& courthouse set to open at the end of 2023/start of 2024. Where's the video on these gems?

Absolutely fascinating and informative! Subscribed now of course 😊

I live in Chicago I have no idea about it until now. Thanks for sharing this information.

Love how informative this channel is..

Thought this was very well done~thank you for the research & video👍🏻

Thank you for the video! This building always gave me the creeps deep down. Glad I don't have to go anywhere near that place anymore!

Great vid 🎉

The county jail in Lexington,KY was like this. A seven story concrete block in downtown Lexington. I had the dubious pleasure of being a guest for ten days or so. Nasty doesn't even begin to describe the place, an effective deterrent for crime.

Quite honestly the building still looks and feels like a prison.

Looks like it belongs in the 5th element movie. Lol

@7:58 There is a song that begins in the background. What is the name of the song? I couldn't find it listed in the description.

1:32 in 1932 when Chicago was newly founded 😂😂😂

@1:32 When Chicago was founded in 1932?

As many times as I been through Chicago I didn't even know that they had a skyscraper prison. The few people I do know from Chicago or anywhere else in Illinois always talked about doing time in Joliet. Wow I just learned something new.

Same type of building is here in buffalo. The Erie county holding center. More than once Ive been on the roof top yard leaning against the fence on a summer sunset. Watching the rest of the city go about their lives. I'm glad I don't live like that anymore

Looks like a prison to me, just taller. Fort Lauderdale and Miami had vertical windows, when I see those windows I can’t be convinced it’s anything but jail.

That architecture firm designed my high school. No windows opened. We joked that it was a training facility for future inmates, and that was before any of us knew about the MCC.

I remember going to the Sears Tower as a kid and seeing this, expressing disappointment to my dad that he didn't have a basketball court on our roof like these lucky guys!

It’s crazy how they treat cartel leaders different from mafia leaders.🤔

San Francisco’s county jail 850 is the same way , well not a skyscraper but it is a high building, right next to highway 80. Getting on the bay bridge from SF. Unless you know what it is you would think it’s just a old building

Nice purse, Hush Puppy...! What a bunch of jokes...! Thanks, keep up your awesomeness...

So far this channel is just informing me about how much of a dystopia i actually live in

When I was a teen shortly after this was built I remember commenting to my dad how I wonder what its like inside this place thinking it was a funky modern office building. He replied he hopes I never get to find out. 😄

So does Baltimore & Kansas City as well as the FCI OKLAHOMA (Federal) that is built on the tarmac of the airport so inmates walk into the prison directly from the airplane's cockpit without touching or seeing the ground.

I actually used to live very close to this building when I was in college and had a dorm there.

Alright gentlemen yard time , get on your balconies

We got one like this in NYC named the tombs the yard is on the roof

Thanks again John in Chicago

I'm from Kentucky and we had a dude disappear. 4 years later i ran into him. He'd gotten arrested with ecstasy and spent four years in this jail as a white dude. It had to be rough because he kidnapped a girl, was chased and finally pulled over and shot himself. Crazy.

LA has 2 separate sky scraper prisons. 3 if you count one location with 2 side by side.

always impressive research done for your videos. i see chicago with a new light after hearing so much of you narrating about it's history. thank you!

Cool! Metropolitan Correctional Center Chicago!

Do people really think it doesn't look like a prison? I mean, it absolutely looks like a prison...

San Diego's central county jail is a sky scraper as well. . . I do NOT miss that place at all.

Pretrial Jail is one of the BIGGEST waste of tax payers resources, not to mention a sometimes life destroying event, and in almost ALL cases it's an unnecessary part of the legal process. I'd say 95% of people arrested would show up to their court date, with or without a bond being paid. 95% of those incarcerated pre-trial due to bond being financially out of reach or no bond being issued would still have showed up without being held in jail. When held in jail you lose everything, including the means to communicate easily or at all with the outside world. Have a car payment due and to one of the last 3 needed to pay it off? Your car will be repoed. Are you re ring an apartment while incarcerated? You will be evicted and all your belongings will be thrown away. Have a good job that you like and they like you? Well if you miss 2 months of work waiting to-see the judge, there's not to many employers that can afford to hold your position, understandably so.

The lack of symmetry of those windows was driving me insane throughout this entire video! Why was it done like that? Does it have something to do with confusing the inmates to limit escape attempts?

This is off the chain 😮

Thank you

Good video

Worked in downtown Chicago and did not know about this facility. WOW! TFS! ❤

“So in 1932 when Chicago was newly founded….” You need a copy editor. Contact me.

Christopher Nolan's brother seems to be the kind of guy Batman is going to chase down.

MDC in Brooklyn and MCC in Manhattan are similar. Chicagos i feel like looks bigger though. MDC just had the yard as part of the unit where the basketball court had a big open side window just like that to let fresh air in.

Whoa! I walk pass here often, never realized what it was!

The Arapahoe County Jail in Dove Valley, CO. It is across the street from the Denver Broncos training facility. It has similarly shaped windows, but elevated. Broncos players have been incarcerated for drunk driving and spousal/girlfriend abuse in the past in that place. They are placed facing the practice field so they can see their teammates practice while they cooled their heels, tiptoed to see. This was in the past when a color man during a preseason game remarked that the Broncos had the biggest police blotter in the NFL. The NFL since have a "no tolerance" policy on these things. The Aurora theater mass shooter was held there for his trial as the building also houses the courts.

I’m from St. Louis, and did a year in here. It’s also a federal holdover

Beautiful design.

i used to live across the street from this place it was wild bc my bedroom view was the sears tower and the prison & i always got to b the person who got to share the fun fact that that was a prison w my friends xD on warm days u could see the prisoners play volleyball on the rooftop

San Diego has a multi story high-rise skyscraprr with small slits the middle of downtown that is a Federal Prision. My buddy was there. They get their 1 hour of PT on the roof.

in Pittsburgh you have a tall building as a jail as well, and also Rykers in NY

I lived in Chicago my entire life and just know finding out about this prison.... wow

Boston got one of those. Actually it's in Cambridge across the river. I think only the top floors are used as the county jail and the "yard" was on the roof. Great city views tho

I met and got Piper Kerman s autograph when i was in the joint and was taken back to the city to attend a lecture on her womens prison program at Columbus State where i went to school back in 97 for graphic communications

I like your content. I wish you would do some Milwaukee or Racine historical locations also

Very interesting. Prison hiding in plain sight!

I was at mcc in 2010 to 2012 on the 23rd floor an it actually was easy time because it was an open dorm with bunks an it wasnt closed cells on that floor an it was 4 tvs an rooftop on weekends 💯💯💯

They need to build another one for the ninjas running wild in Chicago today

Fort Worth, Texas has one as well. Only 12 stories tall but it's the main intake for Tarrant County. So not technically a prison, just a jail. The courthouse is next door and there is a tunnel underground joining them along with a sky-bridge on the 6th story if I remember correctly.

Milwaukee has one of these too. I grew up in Milwaukee and drove by it every day. It’s called the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility. Commonly known as MSDF. Inmates fear it.

Hush Puppy. 😂😮😂 Bro really laid out the hustle on social media.

There's one in Montreal as well.

You can see this prison from the lasalle/van buren train platform. It's right in front of it.

Thanks.

We got one of those sky scraper type prisons in down town Fort Lauderdale Florida

Wow they actually made Azkaban irl

I used to live a couple blocks away my old building can be seen in the city views of this vid and I've heard a lot of crazy stuff about that place. A lot of times I'd even run into panhandlers claiming they were just released from there

I used to live at Clark and Polk, I could almost wave to them on the roof!

Being from Chicago, this still trips me out lol 😂

This building is three blocks away from my job. I see this building every day.

Bars are almost totally nonexistant in federal correction facilities. In 2006 in the MCC, the only bars were barred doors separating the two sections of the high security floor, and those might no longer be there. In MCC Chicago, FTC Oklahoma City, and 4 FCIs, I saw bar doors in usual use only in the weekend spent at FCI Terre Haute. The normal cell door is a heavy steel door with a narrow vertical window and a small horizontal door for handcuffing and passing meals and other things through.

I havent been locked up in chicago however the fdc on oahu is an even bigger high rise with no ground level entrances, no rooftop rec yard but it is much newer since it houses any military detainees not being moved to Leavenworth, and nearly all federal retainer for drugs since anything over personal use amounts immediately falls under a federal high drug trafficing and smuggling(of what ever they decide is *smuggled contraband or people or you fall under the high drug trafficing zone framework. This will blow your mind the oahu fdc is sitting within what amounts to the international terminal side of the honolulu international airport however assuming someone even tried escaping, the distance somehow needed to be covered is probably far north of 1 mile to the international terminal however zero flights are cleared for departure after 2130-ish 7 days a week due to the amount of noise a large 2,3, or 4 engine craft produces however i think the lastest landing times permitted is.sometime 0100 and 0200. On a side note both the airforce and navy have established permanent bases flanking the airport so escape on their respective bases would ate night. Newport news city jail...wait for it...has zero windows available at all and charges every immate/detaineei about 92 cents per day is added against the "detainee/ptisoner's accounts so yeah the second youve served enough of your time for the state and in my case the city of Newport News. If you were unable to maintain a positive account balance you will already be saddled with a further financial burden that will practically ensure recidivism for 80 to 85% of all prisoners/detainees spending any time in brick city will return within 36 months. Newport News city jail is 12 stories tall with the top 3 floors having a staggered roof top rec yard that is covered with chainlink fence on top of each instead of netting. I was there almost 5.5 months before the whole unit was moved to the yard for the "its finally not ridiculous cold, rainy, snowing etc" shakedown br guards. Lol i was only on the yard 15 minutes and got a severe sun burn from it. Definitely not a fun time when anything for it isnt allowed lol... Howard county detention center took a different approach instead altitude . Most of the ground floor cells were buried to eye level at the horizontal slit windows with retention ponds creeping nearly up the ground floor windows. The 2nd tier cells had even smaller slits both vertically and horizontally with wider gaps between thos windows. Thankfully newport news is my last unwanted forced residence just about at the 10 year mark...ill straight up say that detention didnt accomplish this change. I did with support from my dad and the place i was at, his house, middle class burbs, my moms dogs(she was out in California already before i got home, and kumar, the grey tiger stripped weirdo who used to bring me huge rats & rabbits all the time. Birds never managed to make it in lol just huge roundish areas with that something violent happend here kinda feel...there ya go...

Omg do Wayne county (Detroit)

Back in the last 90s and early 2000s visitors will get stamped with a UV blacklight type of ink on their forearms or hand after being verified by security to get through. Probably still do.

Here in Orange County, Ca, we get ignored bc we're between San Diego County (with the same population) & LA (vastly larger than both). However, our Men's Central ALONE holds 1.4k prisoners, with satellite ones adding hundreds more. It was built in 1968 & was and still IS state of the art in tech & innovation. Our Sheriff refused to release our worst offenders during COVlD, despite repeated threats from our governor. He stated his responsibly was to the safety of the citizens of county. WOW.

I grew up in Illinois my whole life and never even knew about this.😮

I remember that 2012 case when those 2 escaped.

We used to sit on the rooftop of my buddy's trading firm, smoking stogies and drinking, watching the residents of MCC play basketball on the rooftop yard. Two totally different worlds.

Went to high school 2 blocks away and it was a running joke that R Kelly was always in our presence

I was born in the Metropolitan Hospital in NYC.