Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas

In Albany, Texas, a limestone fortress built in 1878 as a jail now houses an art collection worthy of major cities—works by Picasso, Renoir, and contemporary artists. The building narrowly escaped demolition in 1940 when, Atlas Obscura reports, a local playwright named Robert E. Nail Jr. bought it for just twenty-five dollars. Visitors can still see the original prisoner graffiti and the marks left by Scottish stonemasons who carved each limestone block, earning the structure its nickname, 'the alphabet jail.' A building originally designed to contain things deemed dangerous or valuable still serves that purpose today—just with a very different collection inside.

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