Eastern State Penitentiary — A Castle Prison in America
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In the City of Brotherly Love, there stands Eastern State Penitentiary. Its medieval façade of towers and 30 foot high stone walls belies its main influence: that of a monastery. Eastern State Penitentiary was originally intended to advance the cause of prison reform by focusing more on rehabilitation than on punishment even down to its name. A “penitentiary” as opposed to a prison was where prisoners would repent their past crimes and come out reformed individuals eager to remake himself … or herself, as both women and men were housed in this same facility, to serve God and the nation. But as it turned out, Eastern State was no respite.
Architecture of a Penitentiary
The architecture inside Eastern State, designed by architect John Haviland, was inspired by the monastic cells of European monasteries where monks, alone with their thoughts, could lead themselves closer to God. Haviland designed a hub and spoke system where cell blocks all radiated out of the warden’s office called “The Center.” Inside the cell blocks, each cell housed only a single sky-lit window to let in the sun so that prisoners would look skyward to Heaven. The prisoners of these cells would face complete and total solitary confinement for the period of their sentence. No one was allowed to talk to them: not their family, not their fellow prisoners, and not even the guards.
A “Model” Prison
Eastern State was supposed to be an advancement that the new country, inspired by the successful revolution, would distinguish itself from the old world of Europe. In Europe and early American jails, prisoners would all be thrown together in something akin to a holding pen where the accused would mingle with hardened criminals. At Benjamin Franklin’s home, the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, thought they came up with a solution in Eastern State Penitentiary.
No expense was spared for this new, more “humane,” and revolutionary structure. Eastern State cost $780,000, equivalent to over $16 million in today’s dollars; only the US Capitol cost more at the time, and each cell would have something even the White House didn’t have: running water and toilets. It opened in 1829 but finished seven years later in 1836, and it would include women, a dog, and Al Capone as its inmates. It would claim even the guards as its prisoners. Guards had to live in the prison and only allowed to leave for not more than 18 hours without permission. Many, if not most, drank to excess to pass the time.
Solitary Confinement
At Eastern State, solitary confinement was not a punishment, a controversial practice in today’s prisons, but the actual regimen. Prisoners would enter Eastern State hooded in something akin to a burlap bag and then thrown into their cell to be left completely alone until the last day of their prison term. Their jailers had to wear socks over their shoes to maintain the silence, and they were forbidden to speak to the prisoners. They didn’t know any of the prisoner’s crimes or their names as they were referred to by their prison numbers.
Faced with such mind-numbing solitude, prisoners tried to communicate with one another through secret coded taps on the walls or through heat vents that could carry their voices. When caught, their punishment was truly medieval. Prison officials would use straitjackets on offender’s body and leave them on for so long that their body parts would turn black for lack of circulation. In the Mad Chair, prisoners would be strapped to a chair for hours or days on end leading to swollen or bluish-black limbs. The Water Bath had guards throw ice cold water on an inmate seated in a chair and then foisted up in chains. In the winter months, ice crystals would form on prisoners’ skin from the cold. The most brutal form of punishment, and the most common, was the Iron Gag. A prisoner would have his hands crossed behind his neck and then the Iron Gag, placed on the victim’s tongue, would have its chains tied to those crossed hands. Any movement by the prisoner’s hands would pull and tear at his tongue causing immense pain. Yet even the “good” and behaved prisoners suffered in Eastern State. Many went completely insane from the solitary confinement.
Charles Dickens, the famed author of The Christmas Carol and The Tale of Two Cities, devoted a chapter to Eastern State in his travel journal, American Notes for General Circulation. He traveled to America, and on his visit to Philadelphia, stopped by the penitentiary. Dickens was appalled by the conditions and wrote:
“I am persuaded that those who designed this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentleman who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing … I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye, … and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment in which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.”
At Eastern State, he met with the poor souls of the penitentiary. One prisoner “looking as wan and unearthly as if he had been summoned from the grave” was allowed to keep a rabbit in his cell. After the interview with Dickens, when the rabbit ran back inside the cell, the inmate followed back timidly as though the rabbit was his master. He met another prisoner, a young girl “not more than twenty,” seemed to be subdued but upon seeing the lone skylit opening and perhaps meeting people who would soon be out of the prison, she began to sob.
Eastern State Today
With tales of its brutality and criticism of its practices, the “Pennsylvania System” was eventually abandoned in 1913. Eastern State continued to be a notorious prison, however, but solitary confinement was only used, like still today, as a punishment. Finally, in 1971, the state of Pennsylvania closed Eastern State Penitentiary due to the high upkeep and renovation costs of the aging superstructure. The city of Philadelphia bought the prison in 1980 to be redeveloped as a commercial site. Surprisingly, proposals from developers came in, but in 1988, all “inappropriate reuse proposals” were halted by Mayor William Goode. In 1994, Eastern State Penitentiary opened as a museum and is today a National Historic Landmark.
As you’ve probably already guessed, Eastern State is said to be haunted with stories of laughter emanating from deep within the prison, mysterious sounds of footsteps and voices, and a lone guard seen at an abandoned guard tower. Because of its past, many actually consider Eastern State Penitentiary to be one of the most haunted places in America and one of the most unique castles in America.
