When my fiancee and I travel, we like mixing the must-sees in a city with those sites and places that are a little more of out of the way. So when finding ourselves in Philadelphia with our end-of-the-year vacation time last week, we made the obligatory stops at the Liberty Bell, Constitution Hall and some of the awesome historical monuments – but then we took ourselves over to Eastern State Penitentiary for a spooky afternoon. We’re so glad we did, too, because this place was awesome – a perfect mix between historical significance and dark spookiness. This is the photo that attracted me to the site – you can see why!

Eastern State Penitentiary at night (image courtesy of USHistory.org)

Eastern State Pen has a very interesting history as a prison that worked to reform the way prisoners were rehabbed from their life of crime in the late 1700s. You can read the history and its importance to the overall American justice system here. The net, though, is that the model upon which the prison was based stressed total and complete isolation of its prisoners so that they may reflect on their sins. Absolute and total quiet at all times. No human contact whatsoever, save the sliding of a meal through an available slat from a guard that prisoners never saw or spoke to. So no matter if you were a murderer, a thief or were in prison for something far less bad – you atoned by essentially getting solitary confinement for the entire length of your sentence. That ended only in the early 1900s when the prison changed its model – however, by that time, it was more than 100 years old and less than modern. So the net is that the building, up until it closed in 1971, was the source of enormous human suffering – which on a cold and chilly December day is not hard to empathize with.

To wit this picture of a space – used in later years for actual solitary confinement – which could generously be described as a damp hole in the ground. One story on the audio tour we took involved a dentist treating a patient so dangerous that the guards would only let him be treated through bars in the window while the dentist remained outside of the actual confinement area.

Solitary confinement at Eastern State Penitentiary.

Here are just a few of my favorite snaps from the day! But if you find yourself in the Philadelphia area, with $14 to spare, I can’t recommend this ruin enough. It comes with a free audio tour that provides you a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style experience, so you can explore as much or as little as you like.

A view from one of the upper corridors, built later in the prison’s history.

A recreation of the cell Al Capone stayed in during his time at Eastern State. Some say he may have received special treatment.

A view down a closed corridor at Eastern State Penitentiary.

The penitentiary bills itself as a stabilized ruin. This explains it!

This door, with a cross at the center, struck me as a curious decorative choice.