Howard was originally a farming hamlet in the southern part of Cranston, Rhode Island

Cranston, Rhode Island

Cranston, once known as Pawtuxet, is a city in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. With a population of 80,387 at the 2010 census, it is the third largest city in the state. The center of population of Rhode Island is located in Cranston...

. In the mid-19th century, most of the land was acquired by the State of Rhode Island

Rhode Island

The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

 to construct a state prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

, a poor house, and other state facilities. The Rhode Island State prison, built here in 1892, and now called the Maximum Security Building, is a stark and imposing gothic structure built of granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 block. Over the last several decades, numerous other institutional buildings for incarcerated criminals and the mentally retarded were constructed here. Today, Howard encompasses an area of almost one square mile. Its numerous prison buildings house over 2,000 male and female prisoners as well as several hundred mental health

Mental health

Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...

 patients.

See also

• List of prisons in Rhode Island
• Rhode Island Department of Corrections