![]() ![]() ![]() Not only do restaurant visitors get to see a bit of Brandenburg’s history, they also get food and Jersey-style pizza. Many diners look at the pictures on the wall, climbing on chairs to find faces they recognize. “We did all this for the people of Brandenburg to bring back a place for them, it’s all Brandenburg and Meade County history,” Lomerson said. The owner tried to leave the jail as original as possible with vintage staircases, door facing and brick walls. “Mother Nature has played havoc with Brandenburg,” Lomerson said. In one of the downstairs rooms there are pictures featuring scenes from before and after the 1974 tornado and the 1937 flood. ![]() The addition to the restaurant was made with hand-sawn cedar and has a metal roof to match the rustic look of the nearly 150-year-old jail. The ghost hunters say the ghost is a white-bearded old man named Bixley. Although Lomerson has never seen it, if he ever did he might have to hand the keys to the building to someone else, he said. Ghost hunters have ventured to the jail several times and said there is a ghost there. Renovation began a year-and-a-half before the restaurant opened in August 2007. The prisoners were moved from the jail the next day and the building was dormant for more than 30 years. The jail was in operation until April 3, 1974, when a tornado blew away the courthouse that occupied what now is the parking lot. Seating for the cell tables is first-come, first-served but call-ahead seating is available. “They made sure whoever was in here would not get out.” “We didn’t know any of that but we found out real quick, we found out the hard way,” Lomerson said. It was hard to put heating and air in the building because the walls are thick brick with a steel plate down the middle so the inmates could not cut through. Lomerson said kids enjoy shutting the heavy steel doors as if they were locked away inside. The men’s cells are upstairs near the gallows. The last hanging at the jail was in 1932. One public hanging took place outside from a tree. Upstairs, carpet covers the door but above it remains the hangman’s hook where 13 condemned prisoners met their ends. On the ceiling in that area, the remains of the gallows trap door can be seen. Now those two cells serve as the Elvis room and the Clint Eastwood room for dining. The lower level has two cells that housed female prisoners, four to a cell. The jail once held the jailer’s living quarters and two cell blocks. James stayed there three weeks until Jesse and the boys came to get him. He went across the street to recover in a hotel - a building that still stands today. Owner Richard Lomerson said James spent four days incarcerated there and was shot in the town after leaving the jail. ![]() Patrons can dine in the cell that once housed famous outlaw Frank James of the James gang. The building, which looks much as it did at the time of its 1860 construction, takes visitors back to the time when outlaws and gunslingers frequented the cells. By BECCA - Clanging cell doors, remnants of history, pizza and stromboli all are part of the dining experience at Jail House Pizza in Brandenburg. ![]()
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