Each day, the workers lined up in the walled recreation
yard next to the Cell House. Then they walked down the steep flight of
stairs to the industries.
Those who did not work had to spend the entire day,
except for meal times, in their cells. They could not earn money to buy
magazines, musical instruments, art supplies, and other pleasures. They
couldn't accrue extra "good time" days which would be deducted from their
sentence.
The long, white New Industries Building sits atop a
landfill. Alcatraz used to have a dent here called Pirate's Cove which the
Army found inconvenient. They buried the cove under tons of gravel
quarried off the Rock's summit. The Bureau of Prisons built the New
Industries in the 1940s after several escape attempts from the older Model
Industries Building.
