Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US prison, also pile) the prison quarry, in allusion to the convict’s task of breaking stones; thus fig. the prison, ext. as ‘making little one’s out of big ones’.

1891		C. Roberts Adrift in America 107: I have often spoken to tramps who had been in houses of correction [...] Often they will go round a circuit of many miles to escape [...] getting put on the ‘rock-pile’ as they call it.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 41: Here is where you get vagged and break rock on the pile. [Ibid.] 115: They couldn’t be blamed for sizing me up as a proper recruit for the rock pile.
1904		‘Hugh McHugh’ I’m from Missouri 89: They sent them to the rock pile.
1905		F. Hutchison Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 83: ‘[O]ut on the rock pile makin' little ones out o’ big ones’.
1911		S. Ford Torchy 93: The one from the rock pile, Brother Bill.
1913–14		Van Loan ‘No Business’ in Taking the Count 163: Six months on the rock pile, making little ones out of big ones.
1924		‘Digit’ Confessions of a Twentieth Century Hobo 12: Rock-pile...State highways or work. [Ibid.] 74: I would do six months on the rock-pile first.
1935		W. Smith Bessie Cotter 11: He’s just sore because he must go on the rockpile.
1948		Sat. Eve. Post 23 Oct. 132/3: Everybody was dead-pan and silent. But disciplined — like convicts on a rock pile [DA].
1970		‘Red’ Rudensky Gonif 16: It was the most ill-fated break in the rockpile’s history.

2. (US black) any tall building; thus topside of the rockpile, the top flat, the penthouse.

1943

D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 9 Oct. 20: The banter [...] went to stash in the skull’s walk-back on the topside of the rockpile on the heavy lump.

3. (US) one’s home.

1959

A.J. Cox Delinquent, The Hipster and The Square (1962) 31: Come on, make with it. I gotta get back to my rockpile.