An 1878 limestone jail in Albany, Texas, saved from demolition in 1940 when playwright Robert Nail Jr. bought it for $25. Its former cells now hang Picasso, Renoir, Klee, Modigliani, and Calder, while the walls still carry the carved initials Scottish stonemasons etched into each block to prove they’d been paid, plus decades of prisoner graffiti that earned the building its nickname: the alphabet jail.
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Featured in: Buildings that outlived their first purpose