Kingston Penitentiary
former Canadian maximum security prison
Kingston Penitentiary (known locally as KP and Kingston Pen) is a former maximum security prison located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, between King Street West and Lake Ontario.
History
Constructed from 1833 to 1834 and opened on June 1, 1835, as the "Provincial Penitentiary of the Province of Upper Canada," it was one of the oldest prisons in continuous use in the world at the time of its closure in 2013. Kingston Penitentiary was one of nine prisons in the Kingston area, prisons which ranged from low-security facilities to the maximum-security facilities of Kingston Penitentiary and of Millhaven Institution, which was initially built to replace Kingston Pen.
The institution was built on land described as "lot number twenty, in the first concession of the Township of Kingston." The cells originally measured 73.7 cm (29.0 in) wide by 244 cm (8.01 ft) deep and 200.7 centimetres (6 feet 7.0 inches) high. The area had a 12-foot high wooden picket fence. In 1845 towers, stock walls, and the north gate house were completed. From 1859 through 1861 a dome was added connecting four cellblocks.
The site was chosen for "combining the advantages of perfect salubrity, ready access to the water, and abundant quantities of fine limestone." Six inmates were accepted when the penitentiary was opened. English author Charles Dickens visited Kingston in 1842 and commented in his American Notes: "There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely governed, and excellently regulated, in every respect. The men were employed as shoemakers, ropemakers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters, and stonecutters; and in building a new prison, which was pretty far advanced towards completion.
The public source identifies “Kingston Penitentiary” as former Canadian maximum security prison. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kingston, Penitentiary and former.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6413577. VIAF identifies the subject as 134796042. The Library of Congress control number is n85358485. Authority coordinates are 44.219, -76.514. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1833, 1834, 1835 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kingston Penitentiary” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.