Ohio's shocking new attraction: 'Old Sparky'

By Laura Bly, USA TODAY

An electric chair and other macabre artifacts, including a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe from the 1920s and a wooden cage used in the late 1800s to restrain mental institution patients, will be on display next month as part of a new, R-rated exhibit at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus.

Admission to "Controversy: Pieces You Don't Normally See," opening April 1, will be restricted to visitors 18 and older and children accompanied by adults.

The exhibit's most famous object is an electric chair that executed 315 inmates. Last used in 1963, it was once the highlight of paid tours of the old Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. The prison sold postcards of the electric chair and souvenir pictures of the condemned men until it discontinued tours around 1931, notes the Columbus Dispatch. New visitors, the paper adds, "will not be allowed to sit in or touch the chair or other items in the collection."

"We think this exhibit will capture the public attention and public interest," executive director Burt Logan told the Dispatch. "History has a good side, which we often remember, and another side that we don't often see. We are not taking a stand of any type with this collection. These items represent part of the history of Ohio. It's purely an educational issue."

Ohio isn't the only place to use "Old Sparky" as a tourist draw.

The capital punishment exhibit at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville highlights its own decommissioned electric chair, and the gift shop sells such prisoner-made items as leather handcuff cases and correctional officer key chains. And Washington, D.C.'s National Museum of Crime & Punishment has an "electric chair helmet. " Made of leather, sponge, and wire mesh, the museum reports it "was essentially the weapon that Massachusetts state prison executioners used to end the lives of 65 men and women between the years 1901 and 1947."

So, readers, would the chance to see an electric chair jump start your vacation plans?

Posted Mar 8 2011 11:52AM

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