Island Swap

Alcatraz Prison leaves San Francisco Bay for New York Harbor Alcatraz Island-the site of the former federal prison in the San Francisco Bay that has been etched into the cultural consciousness-may be more metaphorically imposing than physically. Although the island is rocky and a sprawling 22 acres, as prisons go, said Rich Weideman, chief of the office of public affairs for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Alcatraz is actually quite small. And it is the limited capacity of the prison building itself, Weideman added, that limits the number of visitors who can tour the rock, as it is commonly known.

According to the company that services ferries to and from the island, annual demand to visit the prison is nearly double the number of visitors this land mass can accommodate. So Alcatraz Cruises and the U.S. National Parks Service, which oversees the island, joined forces to create a mobile exhibition, Alcatraz: Life on the Rock, in an attempt to bring the history of the island to the rest of the country. Now, roughly 2,905 miles from the real prison, Life on the Rock has landed on Ellis Island in New York Harbor.

While the museum display won't rival the experience of seeing the prison building itself, with its wide avenues of cell blocks, dank, cold solitary confinement rooms and large halls filled with rows of open showers, the exhibit does recreate some of the visceral sensations of Alcatraz. Sounds of seagulls, foghorns, boots clacking on cement floors and the indecipherable mumbling of hundreds of male prisoners are all piped in at different stages in the tour. Housed in glass cases are artifacts donated by prison alums-guards and inmates-like a pair of brass knuckles on loan from a former foreman, a cookbook the Alcatraz Women's Club sold to families on the island and, most notably, a baseball with initials written on it in blood found by the same foreman in the exercise yard. The exhibit also includes a recreation of a nine-foot-long, five-foot-wide, seven-foot-high cell, with a cot, bedding, books and other personal items a prisoner might have kept inside.

Though Alcatraz is best known as a federal prison, Life on the Rock also reveals the island's storied history. First documented by a Spaniard in 1775 as "La Isla de los Alcatraces," or "The Island of Pelicans," in the 1800s Alcatraz was the site of a garrison and later a military prison. The island was deemed ideal for housing prisoners because of the strong, cold, deadly currents of the bay.

By 1934, it was converted into a federal prison and would soon become infamous for housing notorious criminals like Al Capone and Robert Franklin Stroud ("The Birdman of Alcatraz"). Weidman points out that nearly every inmate who ended up at Alcatraz was transferred there from another prison.

"Everybody who went to Alcatraz was already in prison. It was the end of the line," said Robert Luke, or prisoner 1118AZ, the number he was given during his five-year stint from 1954 to 1959.

"You knew what Alcatraz was. It was nicknamed America's Devil's Island. It was supposedly inescapable. When you go to a new prison, you are always apprehensive. I had heard that this was another prison with more rules and smaller cells," Luke continued. "It was more regimented. There was no place where you could get away from a set of eyes."

Luke, who visited the exhibit on Ellis Island this past Saturday, had a checkered past with the law before ending up at Alcatraz at the age of 26. He recalls being a violent young man and a bank robber, doing stints at San Quentin State Prison and the Los Angeles County Jail. He was moved to the San Francisco-based island after beating up two inmates and attempting to escape from Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas.

When he first arrived, Luke fared little better. Within a few weeks at Alcatraz, he found himself frustrated over his work detail at the mess hall and one night he destroyed his cell. "The bed, table, sink, toilet, shelves were smashed up. I used my rulebook to start a fire. Violence was my way of getting out of stuff," Luke recalled.

After this outburst, Luke was transferred to the notorious D-block, the unit of the prison where the solitary confinement cells were held. Luke spent 29 days naked in a small steel room, in pitch darkness. In his autobiography, Entombed in Alcatraz, Luke wrote, "I was fed big chunks of bread with water once a day. Every three days, I had a meal consisting of a baked potato, a raw onion and some peas, all mixed up, and water."

To keep up his strength, he would pace the cell and do exercises. He maintained his sanity though daydreaming. "I had a capability to sit right there and take a trip," Luke said. "I could go golfing or shopping. When I was going through that period, I had lost that capability, but when I got into that [solitary] cell I got that back. I just left. Like a daydreamer, I could just leave. If you totaled up the hours [I was mentally present at Alcatraz] I only did maybe a month there. I think that is what kept me sane."

Unlike many Alcatraz inmate alumni, toward the end of his time on the island Luke made a conscious choice to stay out of the prison system. He remembered sitting on some steps in the exercise yard one evening and catching a faint whiff of freshly mown grass. "I smelled that and I said to myself, 'What am I doing here?' I went all the way back to when I was 15 years old and the first time I got in trouble with the law. It was all my choice to get there and I blamed everybody, but it was my choice," Luke noted.

After his incarceration, he returned to Los Angeles, married his current wife Ida, and largely kept that chapter of his life private.

"My wife and I seldom talk about it. It was like being in a war and no one knew about it except me and my family," Luke said. "Until I went back to Alcatraz [in 2010], I didn't meet one prisoner or one guard."

However, when Luke returned to Alcatraz, now a tourist destination, he was shocked by the rock star treatment he was shown. Visitors asked him to sign autographs or take pictures with them.

"I got to that landing and I was just shocked that everybody was welcoming me like I was some kind of hero. I don't understand that," Luke noted.

Weideman, who is seen as an expert on Alcatraz and was once a ranger on the island, said many inmates tell him they can't believe the support they are shown. He attributes this phenomena to the myth of Alcatraz created by the over 19 films made about the prison and its inmates, including Escape from Alcatraz and The Rock.

"I have led tours of Alcatraz for a leader from Poland, Lady Bird Johnson, President Jimmy Carter, the Prime Minister of Australia?Everyone wants to go to there. It's in the world's psyche," Weideman observed.

Richard Pietrowicz, who visited the exhibit on Saturday with his family, noted that Alcatraz is by far the most famous prison he knew of and that it has received internationally notoriety. Conversely, he added that he wouldn't be able to name a prison in a different country.

Alcatraz was shut down in 1963 under orders of the Kennedy administration because it was expensive to run and the infrastructure on the island was eroding due to salt water damage. For about 19 months starting in 1969, the island was occupied by a group of Native American activists who sought to update the facilities and transform them into Indian education and cultural centers. (This sliver of Alcatraz's history is also a section of the museum exhibit). The island was eventually opened to the public in 1973 and landmarked in 1976. Today, Alcatraz attracts roughly 1.3 million visitors per year.

Carlos Ramos, who was also on Ellis Island over the weekend, said he only knew about Alcatraz from the films he had seen about it, but wanted to make a stop to San Francisco on an upcoming vacation to see the prison itself.

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AS SEEN ON TV This year, the Fox Channel officially picked up the new series Alcatraz, which will start midseason in 2012. JJ Abrams, the Midas-touch creator of Lost and director of Star Trek, will executive produce and Jorge Garcia, "Hurley" from Lost, and Sam Neill are also set to star in the drama.

The show centers around San Francisco Police Department detective Rebecca Madsen, played by newcomer Sarah Jones, who finds a fingerprint at the scene of a homicide that leads back to former Alcatraz inmate Jack Slyvane, who has long been deceased. Madsen enlists the help of Alcatraz expert Dr. Diego "Doc" Soto (Garcia) and together they learn that not only is Slyvane alive and roaming the streets of San Francisco, killing people along the way, but he mysteriously hasn't aged since he left the island prison. Top: A replica of an Alcatraz cell. Photo by Wyatt Kostygan. Right: A with initials inscribed in blood, which was found by a former prison foreman in the exercise yard. Photo by Wyatt Kostygan. Far right: A replica of a Civil War-era sally port entrance from the prison. Photo courtesy of Allison and Partners. Below: Robert Luke, former bank robber and prisoner 1118AZ. Photo courtesy of Allison and Partners [photosmash id=20 layout='gallery_view_layout']