Yesterday Boston’s historic Charles Street Jail building reopened as an upscale boutique lodging option called the Liberty Hotel. While most of the 300 rooms and suites are housed in a separate, newly constructed tower, the original jail building offers 18 rooms with exposed brick walls, stainless steel fixtures and mahogany furnishings. Located in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood near Mass General Hospital and overlooking the Charles River, the hotel’s central rotunda lobby area features catwalks once used to monitor inmates, while mosaics depicting true crimes and prison scenes play along with the building’s criminal past. The original “drunk tank” takes on new life as the appropriately-named hotel bar Alibi, while the former prison exercise yard is now a landscaped courtyard garden.

A quick check today revealed room rates for two adults on a weekend night in October to range from $315/night for a King room or room with two doubles to $715 for an 800-square-foot one-bedroom suite to $5,500 for the 2,200-square-foot presidential suite, which also includes a library and butler’s pantry.