By 1808Delaware
For nearly 150 years, the heavy doors, barred windows and brick walls at 20 W. Central Ave. have told a story that is difficult to separate from Delaware itself. The building began life in 1878 as both a county jail and a home. Sheriffs raised their families there while prisoners occupied the cellblock immediately behind them. It survived overcrowding, changing ideas about criminal justice, threats to its future and decades of government use. More recently, visitors came through those same doors for history tours, paranormal investigations, museum exhibits and even weddings.
Now one of downtown Delaware’s most recognizable landmarks is preparing for another role.
The Delaware County Historical Society has sold the Historic Jail and Sheriff’s Residence to developer Andy Warnock, a Delaware native and principal of The Westwood Collective. Plans call for converting the former residential quarters into offices while retaining and ultimately finding new uses for the jail itself. Among the possibilities for the old cellblock are a maker’s space, art gallery and, perhaps most memorably, a Prohibition-era speakeasy.
A Jail That Was Also a Home
The 8,500-square-foot building is an unusual reminder of an era when jail administration was literally a family affair. Designed by Toledo architect David W. Gibbs and completed in 1878, the building combined two very different functions. The front was an elaborate residence for the county sheriff and his family. Behind it stood the institutional cellblock, connected directly to the house.
The arrangement reflected a broader 19th-century movement to reform county jails. Ohio Gov. Rutherford B. Hayes, Delaware’s own future president, championed prison reform during his years in state government. One result was a new type of county building that placed the sheriff on site rather than treating the jail simply as a place of confinement. The sheriff’s wife traditionally served as the jail’s “Matron.” She prepared meals and helped care for prisoners, meaning the dividing line between domestic life and incarceration could be as narrow as a doorway or food pass-through.
That arrangement continued for generations. About 40 Delaware County sheriffs and their families lived in the structure during its first century. Eugene Jackson, sheriff from 1965 through 1976, was the last sheriff to make the building his home.
Architecture Meant to Be Seen
This was not designed as an anonymous government box. The National Register nomination describes an elaborate structure with a central tower, gabled dormers, sandstone trim, decorative cornices, multiple rooflines and polychromatic brickwork. A key-shaped weathervane once underscored the building’s purpose from above. The cellblock itself was given battlements and a crenelated tower, lending a decidedly fortress-like appearance to the rear of the complex.
Architectural descriptions vary slightly depending on the source. The National Register documentation categorizes the complex as Queen Anne, while the Historical Society describes it as primarily Italianate with Gothic Revival and Second Empire details. What is not in dispute is the extraordinary amount of design devoted to a building whose function could have been purely utilitarian.
Inside the residence were pressed-tin ceilings, fireplaces, carved woodwork, arches and an asymmetrical Victorian floor plan. The jail retained massive iron doors, barred windows, catwalks, cells with wall-mounted metal beds and even passages beneath the cellblock. Construction originally was estimated at $22,000, but architectural embellishments helped push the final cost to $25,845, according to the historic record.
From 16 Prisoners to 45
The building was designed for a much smaller Delaware County. Its principal jail space included 16 cells for men and two for women. During Sheriff Wornstaff’s tenure from 1957 through 1964, the prisoner population commonly ranged from only four to eight. By the 1980s, that picture had changed dramatically. As Delaware County grew, the old jail sometimes held as many as 45 prisoners. Cells were double-bunked. Some inmates slept on mattresses on the floor. The bullpen contained a table large enough for 16 people, leaving others to eat in their cells. Interestingly, cells were not routinely locked unless security or an inmate’s welfare required it.
Sheriff William B. Lavery was the last sheriff to operate the jail. In 1988, the county opened a new facility on U.S. 42 and ended the Central Avenue building’s 110-year career as an active jail.
A Building Delaware Chose Not to Lose
Its survival was not always guaranteed. The National Register nomination file shows just how uncertain the building’s future once was. When preservationists sought National Register status in 1990, Delaware County commissioners formally objected to the nomination. The nomination paperwork itself described the structure as threatened and referred to county plans for demolition. Preservation ultimately won.
The building entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, recognized for both its architecture and its importance in the history of county government and corrections. Later preservation studies continued to recommend that it be retained.
After the jail closed, county government found new uses for the property, including offices for the Delaware County Law Library and the Fifth District Court of Appeals. Eventually the county again sought a new future for the building, putting it on the market in 2018. The Delaware County Land Bank ultimately sold the property to the Delaware County Historical Society in October 2021 for $350,000. County officials said at the time that permanent deed restrictions protected the building’s historic integrity. The property also included roughly 0.45 acre and 19 parking spaces.
The Society then did something important: it put people back inside. Tours, exhibits and special events transformed a building many Delaware residents had passed for years into a place they could actually enter and explore. The cellblocks that once housed prisoners became part of the museum experience. Paranormal tours added an entirely different kind of audience. There was even one decidedly unexpected use. On Halloween 2025, nine couples were married there as part of an event involving the City of Delaware and the Historical Society.
Eight Offices Up Front and Something Different Behind Bars
The latest transition will again rely on the building’s unusual two-part design.
The former sheriff’s residence is planned to contain eight private offices. Renovation work will include HVAC and electrical upgrades along with a shared kitchenette, conference room and lounge. Rooms in the residential portion will be modernized for office use while exterior work moves forward as well. Westwood Real Estate Co., the brokerage affiliate of Westwood Collective, expects to occupy part of the building as it expands into Delaware and recruits both residential and commercial agents. Other offices could be leased to outside tenants.
The more intriguing question lies behind the residence. The old jail cells are expected to be addressed during a second phase. Westwood and its architects are considering several concepts rather than stripping the cellblock of the features that make it unique. Those ideas currently include a maker’s space and art gallery or a Prohibition-themed speakeasy integrated into the old jail.
Dave Kerr and Cara Hering of Delaware-based DK Architects are working on the project.
There is no announced final choice for the cellblock yet, making the speakeasy more possibility than promise. But the idea illustrates the larger challenge facing the project: finding a financially viable contemporary use without erasing the very features that give the property its value.
Another Century Begins
The irony is difficult to miss. A building constructed to keep people inside may now depend for its future on drawing people in. The sheriff’s bedrooms are headed toward a new life as offices. Rooms once devoted to county government may hold real estate professionals and other businesses. And the iron cells at the back, preserved through more than a century of changing uses, could someday become a place for art, craftsmanship or an evening drink.
The building has already outlived the jail system it was built to serve, survived a period when demolition was contemplated and found uses its 1878 designers never could have imagined.
Now, 148 years after its doors first opened, the old Delaware County Jail is preparing to unlock them again.
