The Big Rapids jail where seventeen sheriffs raised their families

It has twin turrets, stained glass, and the steep, fussy rooflines of a Queen Anne mansion — which is a strange look for a jail. The Old Jail on South Stewart Avenue in Big Rapids went up in 1893, and from the street you would take it for a wealthy family’s home. In a way it was. The building held cells in the back and the sheriff’s living quarters in the front, so the lawman’s wife and kids ate dinner a few rooms from the men he had locked up.

Seventeen sheriffs and their families lived there over the years, all the way until 1965, when the county moved its prisoners to a new lockup by the courthouse. That is a long run for a small county jail, and it makes the place the oldest public building still standing in Big Rapids. Picture a sheriff’s daughter doing her homework at the kitchen table while a deputy carried supper trays to the cellblock down the hall — that was just family life here for seven decades.

When the county was done with it, the building could easily have come down. Instead the city took it over in the 1970s, and the local preservation people went to work on it. Today it earns its keep as a community hall. Weddings, anniversary parties, concerts, even church services fill the rooms that once rang with cell doors. A state historical marker stands out front to explain why a place that looks like a Gilded Age home spent its first lifetime as a jail.

Stand in the parlor at a wedding reception and it is easy to forget. Then you notice the heavy doors, the small high windows toward the back, and you remember the building never really pretended to be only a house.