The “For Rent” sign has fluttered for weeks outside the Italianate stone building on a prominent corner near downtown Towson.

The location of what’s known as Bosley Hall is desirable, the small space’s price is affordable, the neighbors affable, the landlord legendary. There’s even parking out back.

But office space is a hard sell these days, and may be even harder when what you are offering includes nowhere-but-here amenities like powder rooms that were once jail cells, storage areas with bars, and a display featuring historic handcuffs.

Bosley Hall is the Old Towson Jail, which housed people accused of theft, murder and fraud for nearly two centuries. Though most entered involuntarily, historians have documented that indigent men and women committed crimes just to get into the jail; it had strong heaters, decent food and a central location.

Arthur Bremer slept here as he awaited trial for trying to assassinate Georgia Gov. George Wallace in Laurel while Wallace was running for president. In John Waters’ 1988 movie “Hairspray,” Tracy Turnblad skips out of the Towson jail after she’s locked up for protesting segregation. And it was on the land behind the building in 1885 that a mob of Towson residents lynched Howard Cooper, a Black teenager accused of raping a white woman. Cooper was hours from having his case appealed to the Supreme Court.

In the mid-2000s, Baltimore County closed the jail, then a women’s pre-release center. Later, officials announced that they needed $700,000 just to stabilize the deteriorating building. At the time, it did not have the county historic landmark protection or the national historic protection it has now, and it easily could have been demolished, just as the five outbuildings once attached to it were.

Enter Marty Azola, the historic preservationist behind some of Baltimore’s best-loved landmarks, including the Bromo Seltzer Tower, the Rockland Grist Mill, the Rogers Mansion at the Maryland Zoo and the Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust Company Building.

Azola’s father started the company, and his children worked for it, too. As a child, Azola lived just a few blocks from the old jail; he couldn’t bear to see it crumble. As Baltimore County officials prepared to open a modern facility on Kenilworth Avenue, Azola offered to pay the $700,000 to stabilize it, then invested $1 million more to turn the former jail into offices.

The result is a stunning lobby featuring the original oak floors with a mahogany inlay, a curved staircase with detailed appliqués, and parlor-like conference rooms that include fireplaces and historic windows. The $895-a-month room for rent, which a psychologist used until she retired, is on the first floor, part of the former warden’s home.

“It just doesn’t grab you as a jail. I mean, does this look like a jail? Well, except for the bars over there,” said Azola, gesturing to the steel accents around a kitchenette. “Instead of scary, I would say it’s become interesting.”

Since he reopened Bosley Hall in 2011, Azola said, it’s been fully leased. Vacancies occur only when people retire; word of mouth is usually sufficient to find someone new. The half-dozen other tenants include an attorney, an international food service software company, a wine appraiser and a church office.

“It’s so unique and different here, it’s become quite the conversation piece. Who has an office like this?” said Bob Schindler, a wine appraiser who works at a conference table Azola built for him in a nook of the stone building.

Schindler stores his wine in some old cells. Azola once made wine himself, and has some old bottles in the jail from his last vintage.

Schindler enjoys regaling clients who stop by.

“We have more fun in here than human beings ought to be allowed to have” in an office, he said.

Upstairs, Dave Edwards appreciates the quiet. The managing director of a firm that manages food service software, Edwards began with a few offices and has expanded as his company has gained new contracts and hired more employees. The old Towson Jail, he said, is the company’s U.S. headquarters.

“I really like the sense of history, and the creativity it took to repurpose these spaces,” said Edwards, who lives in the same neighborhood where Azola grew up. “I’ve also become well acquainted with the ghosts.”

Evenings are the best times in the office, Edwards said. A police station and a fire station are across the street, but at night, quiet descends on the building, and when the wind howls the walls whistle softly. Friendly spirits, Edwards assured Azola, and ones that make the space feel warm.

The white paint and restored wood give the space a clean feel. Windows bring in natural light.

Edwards pays extra to rent some of the cells in the basement for storage. Azola keeps two, which were solitary confinement cells, as janitorial closets.

Counties and cities have been repurposing historic jails into hotels, apartments, museums, office buildings or public amenities.

The Liberty Crest Apartments in Lorton, Virginia, spent their first 100 years as a reformatory. The Jail Hill Inn, a chic bed-and-breakfast in Galena, Illinois, in the old county lockup, leans into the lockup-turned-luxury theme with striped robes. The Liberty, a luxury Boston hotel on the site of an old city jail, calls its restaurant The Clink and decorates it with bars. Preservation Maryland is working to transform Ellicott City’s old jail into a civic space.

Azola once considered opening a burger place called The Joint for Towson University students but decided to stick to office tenants. He is one, too; he and his wife, Lone, have headquartered their company here. They live in a restored dairy barn at Devon Hill, another historic property they’ve restored.

At 79, Azola is not looking for more projects. But he never plans to leave the Old Towson Jail.

“We’ll kind of hold this building’s hand for a long time, I think.”

This article has been updated to correct why the Tracy Turnblad character from the movie "Hairspray" was in the Towson jail.