A visit to the Eastern State Penitentiary Museum in Philadelphia is informative, eerie, and thought-provoking. This massive museum is in the Fairmont neighborhood, so if you arrive there hungry, you can pick from an array of cuisines within a few blocks. Fortifying oneself with some food is recommended, as a full tour of the sprawling grounds of the museum will get some steps in. We chose substantial and delicious bahn mi (described as “Vietnamese hoagies”) at a small cafe called iPho (get it?) a couple blocks down the street.
We discovered that you could park on the street for free, but after lunch we wisely moved from a two hour to a three-hour parking space. You’re going to need that extra hour if you want to take in the whole museum (and you have the stamina for a three-hour museum visit). And, also if you pay online ahead of time you save a couple bucks. (My husband did this from just outside of the museum on his phone after reading that fact on the entrance sign.)
Okay, so finally inside the high gray walls of the museum, where you pick up an audio tour and strap on your headphones. I developed a dislike of audio tours over the years, because some of them are just too distracting and go on way too long. But this one was excellent. They kept the entries short and included the voices of former inmates and experts when possible, and it was also narrated by actor Steve Buscemi (a favorite from many Coen Brothers movies, which my daughter and I are partial to).
The core tour takes you through the history of the prison, but also the history of the philosophy of prisons in general. I never considered the fact that at its root, Penitentiary is – yes – penitent. The belief in the early days of American prisons was that prisoners needed complete silence, solitude, and lots of time (and a Bible which was the only allowed reading material) to contemplate the reasons they were locked up.
The early cells were relatively comfortable and well appointed for cells. Not exactly where you’d be wanting to spend your days and nights for months or years, but the cells included wood floors, a skylight, running water and a toilet that could be flushed once a day. (This is more than a lot of people “outside” had in those days.) Each cell had a small exercise yard reached through a tiny door in the back.
It wasn’t the accommodations, per se, but that complete solitude and silence business that drove prisoners over the edge. Most humans (as lots of people found out during the pandemic) are just not cut out for solitude and silence 24 hours a day. The prison reformers finally decided this was true and got rid of that idea.
Prison accommodations and philosophies did not improve from that point, however. Cramming two or sometimes more than two prisoners in one cell, which in later days had cold concrete floors, less light and more interaction between humans had its own problems. (An excellent timeline of the Prison is located here.)
When the basic tour ends, you have free reign to explore the rest of the interpreted spaces. Some are artist installations, which is interesting use of cell space; a multi-media area with lots of sobering information about the “war on crime” and the ill effects of prison life and prolonged stays; and a host of other interpreted areas with their own audio tour links.
Just when we were ready to exit after thinking we’d seen enough, we saw a sign to the prison synagog, which was located down a narrow alley which also once held craft shops where prisoners made things with their hands. The synagog is a tiny gem which was carefully researched and restored to its 1950s incarnation. It represented, for me, faith and hope amid the grimness that is the rest of the bleak, stony behemoth of the prison complex. A wall inviting visitors to leave their mitzvahs (simply defined here as “good deeds”) was balm after the harsh realities of the prison history and information on prisons today presented in this excellent museum experience.
Here are some photos from around the museum.
