Red Hat Cell Block
prison cell block at the Louisiana State Penitentiary
The Red Hat Cell Block is a former prison housing unit of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana which, for a time, also contained the state's execution chamber and electric chair.
After a 1933 escape attempt, prison authorities constructed a new prisoner cell block, a one-story, 30-cell building at Camp E. That cell block, which became the most restrictive inmate housing unit in Angola, was colloquially referred to as "Red Hat", after the red paint-coated straw hats that its occupants wore when they worked in the fields.
After a federal court ordered Louisiana prison authorities to enact reforms at Angola, Warden C. Murray Henderson phased out "Red Hat", and in 1972 Elayn Hunt had "Red Hat" officially closed. Red Hat became a dog kennel. In 1977 Camp J took "Red Hat"'s role as the most restrictive housing unit in Angola. On February 20, 2003, the National Park Service listed the Red Hat Cell Block on the National Register of Historic Places as #03000041.
Composition
Red Hat had 30 prison cells. Each cell measured 3 feet (0.91 m) by 6 feet (1.8 m); a solid steel door was the point of entry and egress. Each cell had a 1-square-foot (0.093 m2) window near the cell's roof for ventilation; prison guards controlled a steel flap located at each cell window. Each cell housed an iron bunk without a mattress.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7304224. Authority coordinates are 30.966, -91.614. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1972, 1977 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Red Hat Cell Block” 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.