A collage of the Broad Street section of the wall of Her Majesty’s Prison, now known as Freedom Park, Lagos.
The Eyes of a Lagos Boy Photo of the Week series showcases a rephotograph – about 80 years apart – of the Broad Street wall section of the place now known as Freedom Park, taken in the mid-1940s and in 2023.
The image shows that part of Broad Street to the left, a prison wall with Y shaped barbed wires on top and the General Hospital Marina on the right.
The shot below, by Eyes of a Lagos boy, shows the place as a green space with Western House, completed in 1958 and Independence Building 1960 in the background. This part of Broad Street itself now serves as a safe space that accommodates numerous internet content creators, musicians, street parties, dancing and a skatepark. The photograph offers interesting cues about the changing character of social life in Lagos.
The collage holds both past and present in dialogue: a reminder of the city’s colonial scars and a celebration of how Lagos continually reinvents itself. It asks us to think about space—not just as architecture or geography, but as memory and possibility.
This is what photography does best: it freezes time, and when paired across generations, it reveals how societies transform. From prison wall to park, from confinement to creativity, Broad Street’s story is also Lagos’s story.
Her Majesty’s Broad Street prison was built in 1871, its iconic walls were imported brick by brick from Britain in 1885. The Colonial report for 1898 indicates that 676 males, 26 females, and 11 juveniles were imprisoned at Broad Street prison for the year.
The prison housed colonial dissents, political prisoners, pirates, robbers and other offenders. Famous politicians that were inmates include Sir Herbert Macaulay, Michael Imoudu, Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro and many others. It was closed down a hundred years after its construction in 1971.
After about three decades of abandonment, plans were drawn up by architect Theo Lawson with Lagos state government approval to transform the site into a creative space with a food court, museum, galleries, concert stages, an amphitheatre and several other facilities.
This story was first published in January 2024
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