In Yonkers, a Shuttered Jail Becomes Part of a Budding Art Scene

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Mayor Mike Spano looked out at the waterfront here and decided it was no place for a jail. So last year he put the Yonkers City Jail up for sale.

The two-story brick building, which held prisoners from 1926 until it was shuttered last fall, sits on the Hudson River in an area the city has long tried to revitalize. Mr. Spano thought someone might turn it into a restaurant or a brewery.

The prospective buyers were more exciting than he had hoped for: Daniel Wolf, an art collector and dealer, and his wife, the artist and architect Maya Lin. Mr. Wolf was enchanted by the building and wanted to transform it into a home for his expansive collection and a space for studios and a gallery.

“I just thought it was a really beautiful building,” Mr. Wolf said as he walked through the jail on a recent afternoon. “It kind of looks like a museum. It has that feel to it, although it’s a jail.”

With metal bars on the outside windows and rooms inside with heavy double doors, Mr. Wolf said the jail would be “a fortress” for the contemporary paintings, 19th- and 20th-century photography, prehistoric American art and ancient Chinese ceramics that he has amassed over four decades, most of which now sits in boxes in storage. He plans to keep one of the jail cells intact “just for fun.”

Otherwise, the building will get a major makeover, with renovations expected to cost more than the $1 million he paid for it in December.

Mr. Wolf, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, envisions a Jean Lurcat tapestry in the stairwell and a chandelier in the entryway. Eventually, he plans to add two more floors for art studios designed by Ms. Lin, whose work includes the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala.

For Mr. Spano, who has been mayor since 2012, it is a triumph that the pair is investing in Yonkers, a city known more for its blue-collar industrial past and struggle over desegregation than for its art scene. The sale of the jail is part of the mayor’s ambitious plans to develop the waterfront and make it a place where young people want to live.

The mayor argues that if Yonkers, the state’s fourth largest city, can attract artists and technology companies, then those who might otherwise head to Brooklyn will follow. He often notes the arrival of Mindspark, a tech company owned by the media company IAC, which recently moved into a historic building downtown that was once an Otis Elevator factory.

At his annual state of city address last week, Mr. Spano announced that the New York artist David Hammons had purchased a warehouse on the city’s southwest side for an art gallery. Mr. Hammons is known for using found objects and focuses on themes related to African-American life.

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