Who owns eastern state penitentiary

As a result, PowerCorpsPHL not only enriches the lives of its corps members, but also provides Philadelphia the ideal opportunity to grow a diverse, talented workforce. An initiative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, HOPE Crew trains young people in preservation crafts while helping to protect historic cultural sites on public lands.

Eastern State Penitentiary was once the most famous and expensive prison in the world, but stands today in ruin, a haunting world of crumbling cellblocks and empty guard towers. Interactive Map. Choose a PHL Neighborhood. Choose a Category. Recenter When Map Moves Toggle. Distance From. View My List See what you've added to "Favorites". Continue Browsing. Your contact information will not be shared with any third parties.

Would you like to receive updates from the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau? Register Now. Sign In. Forgot password Enter your email address and we will send you a new password to use for your account. A newspaper article reported that the governor donated his own dog to the prison to increase inmate morale.

Any space between the cellblocks is now nearly gone. The Penitentiary, intended to hold inmates, now holds 1, An article in the Philadelphia Public Ledger , August 20, , describes Capone's cell: "The whole room was suffused in the glow of a desk lamp which stood on a polished desk On the once-grim walls of the penal chamber hung tasteful paintings, and the strains of a waltz were being emitted by a powerful cabinet radio receiver of handsome design and fine finish Inmates set fires in their cells and destroy workshops in a riot over insufficient recreational facilities, overcrowding, and idleness.

Inmates at Eastern State riot over low wages. Prisoners short-circuit electrical outlets, start fires, and cause other disturbances. Warden Smith puts down the riot with a strong show of force. Twelve men escape through a tunnel that emerges at Fairmount Avenue and 22nd Street.

Prison plaster worker Clarence Klinedinst designed and built most of the tunnel. At the time of the escape Klinedinst had only two years left to serve.

Most of the men are caught within minutes. Klinedinst is out for two hours, and has ten years added to his sentence for prison break. Bank robber Willie Sutton takes credit for planning the tunnel. Inmate John Klausenberg tricks a guard into opening the cell of another inmate.

With the cells open, the inmates overpower the guard and begin the largest riot in the prison's history. Several hours later, a large force of police, guards, and state troopers reclaim the prison.

The riot fuels discussions to close Eastern State. Most inmates are sent to the State Correctional Institution at Graterford. While the Penitentiary's electrical and mechancial systems are in terrible shape, its walls and paint are in perfect condition. City of Philadelphia uses Eastern State to house prisoners from the county prison at Holmesburg, following a riot there. Eastern State is all but totally abandoned. Philadelphia Streets Department uses grounds for storage. Vandals smash skylights and windows.

An urban forest grows in the halls and cells. The city transfers Eastern State Penitentiary to the Redevelopment Authority to seek proposals for commercial use.

Eastern State Task Force, a group of architects, preservationists and historians, is formed. Mayor Wilson Goode urges the Redevelopment Authority to reject all proposals for commercial use of the property. Penn, instead, relied on imprisonment with hard labor and fines as the treatment for most crimes, while death remained the penalty only for murder.

But upon Penn's passing in , conservative groups did away with his Quaker-based system, and incorporated the harsh retributions that were the norm elsewhere. Jails simply became detention centers for prisoners as they awaited some form of corporal or capital punishment.

It would take another seventy years before anyone would try to do away with this severe penal code. Benjamin Rush was a prominent Philadelphia physician with an interest in politics.

More than a decade later, he would lead the push for ratification of the federal Constitution. He was an outspoken abolitionist, and would later earn the title "father of American psychiatry" for his groundbreaking observations about "diseases of the mind.

As a newly minted doctor training in London in , Rush ran into Benjamin Franklin who was then serving as an agent to Parliament for the Pennsylvania Assembly. Franklin, a celebrity among the Parisians, urged the curious twenty-two-year-old to cross the English Channel and experience the Enlightenment thinking that filled French parlors. The following year, Rush did. He mingled among scientists, philosophers and literati, listening to progressive European theories about such issues as crime and punishment that would eventually follow him to America.

In Rush was back in the company of Franklin and his American contemporaries proclaiming that a radical change was needed not just at the jail on Walnut Street, but the world over. He was convinced that crime was a "moral disease," and suggested a "house of repentance" where prisoners could meditate on their crimes, experience spiritual remorse and undergo rehabilitation.

This method would later be called the Pennsylvania System and the institution a penitentiary. Changes were made at the Walnut Street Jail—inmates were segregated by sex and crime, vocational workshops were instituted to occupy the prisoners' time, and much of the abusive behavior was abolished—but it wasn't enough.