At 335 feet tall, the Manhattan Detention Facility rising at 125 White Street in Chinatown is already earning a nickname it can’t shake: the jailscraper. Designed by HOK for New York City’s Department of Design and Construction, the 1,053,671-square-foot tower will become the tallest correctional facility ever built when complete. But the more interesting story isn’t its height — it’s what HOK is attempting to do with it.
The building sits on the same footprint as the old Manhattan Detention Complex, known for generations as The Tombs, which was demolished in 2024. It is one of four borough-based jails commissioned by New York City to replace the notorious Rikers Island complex — a system that, at its peak, held up to 15,000 detainees under conditions that earned international condemnation. HOK is leading the design of both the Manhattan and Brooklyn facilities, with the Brooklyn jail already topping out at 295 feet.
Designer:
The design splits the building into two main volumes, separated at the base by a pedestrian walkway that cuts straight through the site — a deliberate gesture toward the neighborhood. Chinatown doesn’t lose the block; it moves through it. At ground level, a public lobby, community and retail space, and a staff lobby face the street, while below grade, parking for Department of Correction and NYPD staff keeps the site’s working infrastructure out of sight.
The facade does much of the heavy lifting. A reddish mesh screen and undulating panels wrap portions of the exterior, and toward the middle of the building, this double-skin system serves a dual purpose: it lets those in custody look outward while maintaining visual privacy from the street. Around this zone, HOK has positioned the building’s recreation hall — a spatial acknowledgment that daylight and fresh air are not privileges.
The interiors are guided by a design brief that reads more like a hospitality spec than a corrections document. Materials should be warm and non-institutional. Spaces should give people in custody a sense of personal agency, control over light and temperature, and access to greenery. Visitor areas are designed to feel welcoming rather than processed. Public artwork salvaged from The Tombs — aluminium wire sculptures by Kit-Yin Snyder and stone bas-reliefs by Richard Haas — will be preserved and reintegrated around the new site.
The project is not without opposition. Local leaders have raised concerns about the site’s structural integrity and written directly to Mayor Zohran Mamdani asking for a reevaluation. Construction is underway. Completion is slated for 2032.
Whether the jailscraper succeeds as architecture — let alone as reform — won’t be clear for years. What HOK has produced in the meantime is a building that at least refuses to look like what it is.
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