Completed in 1851 by architect Gridley James Fox Bryant, the Charles Street Jail on Boston's Beacon Hill was considered a model of enlightened incarceration — a granite Italianate structure whose octagonal rotunda and radiating cellblocks embodied the reformist ideals of its era. When Architectural Resources Cambridge transformed the building into The Liberty Hotel in 2007, the $150 million conversion preserved that original granite facade with its arched fenestration and rose window above the entrance, adding a fourteen-story contemporary tower behind without disturbing the jail's civic gravitas. The 298-room property carries its institutional bones openly rather than concealing them. That honesty extends inward: the bar named Clink retains original brick archways and iron cell bars, candle-lit banquettes set against masonry that held some of Boston's most notorious inmates for over a century. The rooms in the historic wing look directly onto the granite courtyard walls — as visible in the images, some guests wake to the sight of original cell apertures framed in stone. Interiors designed by Cheryl Rowley deploy a palette of deep navy, charcoal herringbone wallcovering, and custom key-and-lock motifs woven into the carpets, nudging the carceral theme into something wry rather than gimmicky. Brass-trimmed dark wood furniture and tufted leather seating throughout the lobby bar ground the conversion in a register that acknowledges the building's weight without being crushed by it.

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