Prior to traveling anywhere, I read copious amounts about the place I plan on visiting. Copious amounts, from sources including books, magazines, websites, guides, and blogs. My favorite travel guides are the Eyewitness Travel books published by DK. Before my recent trip back east, during which we visited Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia, I purchased DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Philadelphia & The Pennsylvania Dutch Country. As usual, it did not disappoint and chronicled countless sites I was interested in visiting while in the City of Brotherly Love. At the top of my Philly Must-Stalk List was Eastern State Penitentiary, which Eyewitness Travel described as an abandoned former prison turned museum. Yeah, I pretty much started drooling upon reading those words. In person, the locale was even more amazing than depicted in the book. Because Eastern State has been repeatedly called “one of the most haunted places in the world,” I figured what better time to blog about it than now?
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Tickets to Eastern State Penitentiary cost $14 per person and include either an audio tour or a guide-led tour. We opted for the audio tour, in which visitors are led through the vast premises via messages digitally-recorded by various experts, former guards, former inmates, historians, and other individuals, including actor Steve Buscemi who became enamored with the prison during a location scout for his 2000 film Animal Factory. Though Buscemi did not end up choosing the site for the movie, its haunting beauty stayed with him and he generously lent his voice to become the main narrator of the audio tour, escorting guests through what he calls a “magnificent ruin still standing in the middle of a modern city.”
As we learned via Buscemi, Eastern State Penitentiary, also known as the “House,” was originally founded in 1829, thanks largely to the efforts of the Philadelphia Quakers and the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. For years, the groups had lobbied for the reform of area jails, which were known for their poor and often brutal conditions.
The Gothic Revival-style institution, which was designed by British architect John Haviland, was established as a place where prisoners would spend time alone and seek penitence for their crimes. As such, it was given the name “Eastern State Penitentiary.”
Initial construction of the 11-acre site lasted from 1822 to 1836 and cost $780,000.
The unique pinwheel layout of the penitentiary, which consists of 14 cellblocks (originally 7) that extend like bike spokes from a central room, served as a model for more than 300 prisons across the globe.
Though Eastern State’s exteriors are extremely stark and foreboding . . .
. . . consisting of all-encompassing 30-foot high walls . . .
. . . (you can see just how tall those walls are below – use the large benches in the bottom right of the photos as reference) . . .
. . . each of the 450 original cells was considered largely modern. (And yes, I know that was a run-on sentence. Blame poetic license.)
The cells all featured skylights and, in keeping with the solitary concept of the prison, private exterior exercise yards.
Each also boasted central heating and running water, amenities that the White House did not even have at the time. Yep, that’s the toilet pictured below.
“You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”
Additional cellblocks were added to the structure from 1877 to 1926 , bringing the total to 14, with space for 1,700 prisoners.
Eastern State abandoned its solitary nature in 1913, at which time inmates began gathering for meals, recreation and religious ceremonies.
During its tenure as a prison, many of history’s most infamous criminals were incarcerated at Eastern State, including Al Capone. A re-creation of his lavish cell is pictured below, though there is some debate as to how extravagant his confines actually were.
For various reasons, the site was shuttered in 1971.
It was then left to deteriorate. Some images from that time period are pictured below. As you can see, the prison became so overgrown with foliage, it looked like a virtual forest.
The city of Philadelphia purchased the property, which was becoming more dilapidated by the day, from the state in 1980 and began making plans to transform it into a commercial center.
Thankfully, in 1988 a group of preservationists dubbed the “Eastern State Task Force” stepped in to thwart the renovation and to revitalize the site.
Around that same time, the prison’s doors were opened to a select few for tours. Due to the dangerous conditions of the building, initial guests had to sign liability waivers and wear hardhats to gain admittance.
Over the next few years, volunteers and preservation groups work to clean up Eastern State Penitentiary and to raise money in order to transform the site into a tourist attraction. On Halloween night 1991, a fundraiser was held for the prison. The event was so successful that it became an annual affair and eventually turned into a season-long Halloween attraction known as Terror Behind the Walls.
The gargoyles pictured below, who are named Frank and Carson, are not authentic to the building, but are props installed each year for Terror Behind the Walls. During the nighttime event, the prison is turned into a massive haunted house and guests are invited to explore the grounds in the dark. Sounds like my perfect evening!
In 1994, Eastern State Penitentiary opened its doors to the public for daily tours.
The tours proved immensely popular and today the prison is one of Philadelphia’s most famous attractions, well-loved by visitors and locals alike.
Though Eastern State has been “cleaned up” and visitors are no longer required to sign waivers or wear hardhats when touring the premises, caretakers had the foresight to leave much of the property’s decay intact.
Seeing it is nothing short of breathtaking.
Not only did Eastern State turn out to be one of our favorite places that we visited during our trip, but it is one of our favorite places we have visited period!
Our time in Philadelphia was extremely limited (we only had three days to explore the city) and we originally planned on spending two hours at the penitentiary, yet we just could not tear ourselves away and wound up staying for more than four hours. It still didn’t seem like enough, though. I literally could have spent all day there.
While exploring, I snapped more than 200 photos and I am pretty much in love with every single one (as evidenced by the number that appear in this post), even the ones that are overexposed . . .
. . . and underexposed.
#framer
There was beauty literally around every turn.
I just could not stop snapping.
I mean, come on!
I became just a wee bit obsessed with the gate below.
Can’t stop . . .
. . . won’t stop.
As if there wasn’t already enough to love, Eastern State Penitentiary is also a filming location!
The prison appeared in Tina Turner’s 1985 music video “One of the Living.”
The Dead Milkmen also shot their 1988 “Punk Rock Girl” music video there.
In the 1995 thriller 12 Monkeys, Eastern State Penitentiary masked as the insane asylum where James Cole (Bruce Willis) was sent.
Several areas of the site were utilized in the filming, most notably the anteroom outside of Cellblocks 2, 10 and 11.
Eastern State Penitentiary portrayed a Malaysian prison in the 1998 drama Return to Paradise.
The property’s exterior was digitally altered to appear as if it was on a coastline in the movie.
Sting shot the album cover and album art for 2001’s . . . All This Time at Eastern State.
That same year, the prison was featured in a Season 1 episode of the MTV reality show Fear.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) took refuge at Eastern State in 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Both the exterior . . .
. . . and the interior were utilized in the flick.
Eastern State was also the main location featured in Whitney Peyton’s 2010 “Crazy” music video.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Eastern State Penitentiary is located at 2027 Fairmount Avenue in Philadelphia. You can visit the prison’s official website here. The nighttime Terror Behind the Walls event runs each year from mid-September through early November.
