Established in 1929, the facility promoted the farm school ideas of communal living and outdoor health. Like similar institutions of the era and in keeping with the ideals of juvenile reform, the facility originally had no fences to disrupt the campus-like setting, and inmates were housed communally in stone cottages rather than in individual prison cells. The thirteen original buildings, including the eight residence halls, the administrative building, the kitchen/dining hall facility, the gymnasium, and the power-house, are faced with native stone and arranged around a central courtyard. Inmates from the reformatory at Rahway constructed the buildings using stone quarried on the site, and several existing nineteenth century farmhouses were rehabilitated for use by supervisors of the institution.
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