If you happen to be in the Philadelphia area around Halloween, a visit to Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary is a must. It’s a combination of horror and thrills that alerts almost all of your senses.
This week one hundred and ninety six years ago, Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary received its first prisoner. With the construction of the penitentiary in 1829, the state offered more than just another prison: it offered a new path for rehabilitation. Three years before his death in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin along with Dr. Benjamin Rush among others helped to form the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.
The Society itself was extremely instrumental in the direction and planning of the new prison, the funding for which was approved in 1821. The approved design for Eastern State Penitentiary was that of British architect John Haviland.
Cherry Hill State Prison (as it was originally known) could accommodate five hundred prisoners in isolation with seven corridors of heated and sky-lighted cells. The warden met with inmates each day during their incarceration. The halls of prison felt like a house of worship.
Burglar Charles Williams would enter Eastern State Penitentiary as prisoner Number One on October 25, 1829. The accusation of the theft of multiple items would subject him to a two-year sentence. Between 1929 and 1930, Al Capone also was incarcerated there — reportedly with lush accommodations including a radio and a rug. Gangster “Slick Willie” Sutton had a stay in Eastern State as well, and the site was even visited by author Charles Dickens and Alexis de Tocqueville. After Dickens’s 1842 visit, he was critical of the solitary confinement system.
Sutton was one of twelve prisoners who carried out an escape in 1945 after a year of digging a 30-yard tunnel under the exterior wall of the prison. When Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot’s wife’s cat was murdered by Pep the dog in 1924, the furry friend was given a life sentence at Eastern State.
The Penitentiary became a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and the prison closed in 1971. In its final years, overcrowding continued to be a chief concern and the inmates even helped design cellblocks 13 and 14 — with 15 being for the most hardened prisoners. It briefly provided temporary housing for inmates after the Holmesburg Prison Riot.
Eastern State Penitentiary would re-open once again for self-guided history tours beginning in 1994. Each year, over 200,000 people visit. In 1991, funds began to be raised for Terror Behind the Walls which would eventually become Halloween Nights. The annals of the history of Philadelphia includes many mentions of Eastern State — especially at Halloween.
Michael Thomas Leibrandt lives and works in Abington Township, Pennsylvania.
