Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison in Ossining, New York. It is located in Westchester County approximately 30 miles north of New York City on the edge of the Hudson River. The name comes from the original name of the village of Ossining, though the penitentiary was first called "Mount Pleasant" when it opened in 1828.

Today Sing Sing houses more than 1,700 prisoners. There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block, which still stands, into a museum.

In 1825, the New York state legislature gave Elam Lynds, then warden at Auburn Prison the task of constructing a new, more modern correctional facility. Lynds spent months researching possible locations for the prison, considering Staten Island, the Bronx, and Silver Mine Farm, an area in the town of Mount Pleasant, located on the banks of the Hudson River.

By May, he had finally settled on the Mt. Pleasant location and selected 100 convicts from the Auburn State Prison, where he was a warden. When the state appropriated $20,100 to purchase the 130 acre site, Lynds transported the 100 prisoners by barge along the Erie Canal to freighters down the Hudson River. They arrived in Sing Sing on May 14, "without a place to receive them or a wall to enclose them." Lynds' plan was to use prisoner labor to excavate marble from a nearby quarry and use it to construct the prison, a practice Lynds had seen used in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.


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