Good Ridding

It has been universally condemned as a 20th century house of horror. Three men committed suicide there last year, and 46 others attempted it. Most of its inhabitants spend 14 hours a day confined to rooms that are not much larger than a closet. At midday, the noise level reaches the din of a subway station at rush hour. Yet the Tombs, Manhattan's gloomy House of Detention for Men, lives on: a crowded, understaffed, twelve-story abomination that in January gained the distinction of being declared unconstitutional in federal court. Confinement to the Tombs, said the court, was in and of itself cruel and unusual punishment.

The original structure came to be known as the Tombs because its architect used a pharaoh's tomb as his model. The present building, completed in 1941, was designed to hold 932 inmates. In 1970 there were 2,000. Now, with a population of only 530, conditions remain so appalling that the New York board of corrections began hearings last week to decide the gothic jail's fate. The most likely verdict now appears to be to destroy the Tombs. Its passing will not be mourned.

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