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| Old Bath County Jail – Owingsville, Ky. |
This is an update to a prior post dated April 11, 2011, on the Old Bath County Jail in which I could not confirm that the pictured structure was in fact the old Bath County Jail. In doing research on an upcoming post, I found information confirming that this beautiful structure was Bath County’s jail.
From the National Register (Owingsville Commercial District and Courthouse Square):
The late-19th-century Bath County Jail (see photos 6,7 and site 5) reverberates, in a sense, the massing of the courthouse. This two-story, hip-rolled building is also of brick construction, and its centered square tower has a pyramidal roof each side being broken by a pedimented dormer. The boxed cornices of the building and tower are supported by modillions. Windows of the first floor have pedimented hoodmolds while those of the second are flat. To the south is a one-story polygonal addition, and at the rear is a two-story, shed-roofed appendage.
Bath County’s current jailer, Palmer “Jaybird” Crouch, has held the position since 1973. For the first two years, inmates were still held in this old jail (today, inmates are housed in the Montgomery County Jail). Crouch and his wife resided in the jailer’s quarters attached to the old jail and Crouch’s wife would prepare meals for the inmates until the state determined that the structure was unfit as a jail. [*]