A Critical Facility Upgrade that Saved Lives
A steeply sloped roofline sets the Operating Room apart from other sections of Cellblock 3, one of John Haviland’s original seven blocks of the penitentiary’s radial plan. This distinct addition once held clerestory windows that supplied steady northern light to the room below. Such light was critical to the work of the doctors and inmate nurses performing surgery on Eastern State's burgeoning and aging inmate population.
Powerful Evidence of Changing Prison Policies in America
The nickname for Cellblock 15, “Death Row,” sends a chill up the spine. Here, several men waited out the last months of their lives.
The two-roomed Catholic Chaplain’s Office contains unique evidence of a prisoner’s faith –23 murals painted by inmate Lester Smith.
Prevention of the irrevocable loss of original building material by protecting vulnerable roofs from further damage.
The small, sunny Solarium above Eastern State Penitentiary’s hospital block tells the story of a prison system struggling to keep a deadly disease under control.
Tuberculosis had plagued prisons for centuries. Known by a variety of names (“consumption,” “scrofula,” “phthisis,” “white plague”) and often misunderstood, the disease spreads easily in the dark, damp, crowded conditions so common to prisons worldwide. The disease could devastate a prison’s population.
There are a surprising number of “eyewitnesses” to Eastern State Penitentiary’s history, but time is running out to preserve their memories.
Interviews with former inmates, guards, and staff are essential to understanding what day-to-day life was like at the prison. We have recorded the stories of some of these eyewitnesses, but more than one hundred remain.
Historians call the process of recording personal memories “oral history.” An Eastern State oral history project in 1992 recorded interviews with 55 former inmates, officers and staff members.
Situated within the row of converted exercise yards along Cellblock Seven is a synagogue used by the Jewish inmates of Eastern State from the early decades of the 20th century until the prison’s closing in 1971.
A careful archeological investigation of the famous 1945 escape tunnel.
More than one-hundred prisoners managed to escape from Eastern State Penitentiary.
The first escapee, William Hamilton (Inmate No. 94), scrambled down from the warden's quarters in 1832, just three years after the prison opened. Leo Callahan, inmate C566, scaled the east wall with five other inmates in 1923, and remains the only inmate in the prison's history to avoid recapture. We're still looking for him.
But none of the escapes fascinate the public like the 1945 “Willie Sutton” tunnel escape.
Stabilization of the Penitentiary greenhouse including repair of the concrete base and restoration of the roofing structure.
Eastern State Penitentiary appears to have always maintained a greenhouse on site. Although the relatively small buildings were not capable of supplying food for the large prison population, they were used to train inmates in job skills. Gardening also provided an enjoyable activity for many prisoners and was used to reward inmates for good behavior. These buildings represented a tranquil, meditative space within the relatively harsh environment of the penitentiary.
Critical stabilization of the roofs over the Operating and Recovery room, protecting these important spaces and allowing for the future restoration and interpretation of the Hospital Block.
The hospital is an amazing area. The beds in the recovery room still stand side by side, lined up next to the headphone jacks that inmates used to listen to radio programs. The huge reflecting lights still hang in the operating room, and the door into the operating room still reads: Dr. Goracci, Medical Director.
