The mess hall has been laid out so that the prisoners will sit at the table in the ordinary way, facing one another, with alternate wide aisles for service. Feeding the prisoners in a large mess hall has now been generally adopted in this country, and is infinitely better than the continental system of feeding them in the cell. Man is a gregarious animal, especially when his waywardness has landed him in prison, and the old systems, which aimed at the solitary confinement of the prisoner and tried to reform him by opposing all the things which were natural to him, were as stupid as they were cruel. Over the mess hall is the auditorium, large enough for all, with two stairways so that the inmates from cell blocks 3 and 4 may be separated from those in cell blocks 1 and 2, and the connecting corridor has been divided by mesh grilles, so that these two general classifications which are very desirable may be maintained. THE CONNECTING CORRIDOR The connecting corridor is not only advantageous in permitting all portions of the institution to be reached under cover, but has been very desirable as a place of recreation for the prisoners. It will be noted that it is cross ventilated by windows north and south and that, with its extended southern exposure, it makes a very satisfactory place for recreation and exercise in bad weather when the men cannot work outdoors. A signal advantage, too, arising from this type of plan is that the cell blocks on the second and third stories are lighted on all four sides because of the one story height of the connecting corridor. The cell blocks are not only closed off from the connecting corridor by a glass partition, but at each floor the corridor between the cells is again closed off from the stair hall so as to make the quarters for the men as quiet as possible. The intolerable banging, rattling, and reverberation of the usual steel cell in the huge modern cell block is one of the chief things to be said against it. It will be noticed that the institution as planned resolves itself into three courts, all of which will be kept in grass and planting and will look as little like the usual prison enclosure as is possible to make them through gardening means. [Illustration: TYPICAL FLOOR PLANS OF CELL BLOCKS] THREE DOMINANT IDEAS In designing Westchester the dominant idea was to accomplish three things: first, to create an institution which would look as little like the conventional jail as possible; second, to give each inmate the privacy of a separate compartment; and third, to build a county jail that, without giving much more in appearance and accommodation than the old type, should not exceed it in cost. [Illustration: PLANS AND CELLS ELEVATIONS OF CORRIDOR AND CELL]