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Historic Exhibits
“Voices of Eastern State” Audio Tour
With this state–of–the–art audio tour, the long-abandoned cellblocks come alive with the sounds of daily life inside the ancient prison.
The William Portner Memorial Exhibit on Jewish Life at Eastern State
The newly restored Alfred W. Fleisher Memorial Synagogue and the companion exhibit on Jewish life at Eastern State Penitentiary are open to the public:
Mondays - Fridays 3:15 pm
The synagogue and exhibit are open for a special guided tour. Space is limited and subject to availability.
Saturdays & Sundays 1pm - 5 pm
The synagogue and exhibit is open for walk-in visitors.
“If Reform is Possible...
The Worldwide Influence of the Eastern State Penitentiary
...It Will Happen Here”
When the Eastern State Penitentiary opened on October 25, 1829, it was the world's most expensive and high-tech prison. This massive institution loomed over Philadelphia on a lonely hilltop. Its design unified the world's most advanced building technology with a radical new system of prisoner isolation.
The new prison caused a worldwide phenomenon. As governments began to copy the new prison, Eastern State Penitentiary became the most influential prison ever built.
Mary Jo Bole: Purge Incomplete
This installation details the fascinating history of plumbing at Eastern State Penitentiary, a building that had running water before the White House. Ms. Bole's installation includes sculptural elements in resin, frosted glass, and brass that are recreations of architect John Haviland's original plumbing schematics.
Linda Brenner: Ghost Cats
Thirty-nine sculptures represent the colony of cats that took up residence in the prison grounds after the penitentiary closed in 1971.
William Cromar: GTMO
A materially and dimensionally accurate representation of one cell from the now abandoned Camp X-Ray at GTMO (military abbreviation for the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) is inserted inside of a now-abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary cell.
Susan Hagen: Recollection Tableaux
A series of miniature dioramas in Cellblock 7 show - accurately and poetically - the daily lives of prisoners at Eastern State throughout its history.
Alexa Hoyer: I always wanted to go to Paris, France
Using three televisions to screen excerpts from over seven decades of prison film history, this installation challenges visitors to re-examine their notion of prison life.
Johanna Inman and Anna Norton: Living Space
This series of five videos of time-lapse photographs featuring the subtle changes in light and weather that occur at Eastern State Penitentiary. The locations chosen for the videos represent areas and architectural features common to the site, each with distinctive characteristics created by the structure itself as well as the effects of time.
Troy Richards: The Criminal Us: Anonymous Confessions Juxtaposed
This installation addresses the differences and similarities between the convicted criminal and those outside the criminal justice system and asks the question, "At what point is an act a crime?"
Matthew and Jonathan Stemler: Juxtaposition
This installation gives new life to fallen material by dividing the cell horizontally with suspended plaster pieces. It provides an area in which to consider the building’s past and present experience in light of material position.
Judy Taylor: my glass house
Black and white, glass-plate photographs showing specimens of the natural habitat found within Eastern State's walls replace missing windowpanes in the penitentiary greenhouse.
Artist installations are supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency, through the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts (PPA), its regional arts funding partnership. State government funding comes through an annual appropriation by Pennsylvania’s General Assembly and from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PPA is administered in this region by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.
Arts programming is made possible with funding from Eastern State's Halloween Fundraiser (Terror Behind the Walls), the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Independence Foundation.
Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Inc.