Eastern State Penitentiary Travel Guide

One of Philadelphia's most significant historic sites stands, all but forgotten, just a short walk from the Fairmount Park museums. The Eastern State Penitentiary , whose gloomy Gothic fortifications fill an entire block of the residential neighborhood along Fairmount Avenue at 22nd Street, embodies an almost complete history of attitudes toward crime and punishment in the US. Since it opened in 1829, the Quaker-inspired prison's radical efforts to rehabilitate inmates via isolation, rather than punish them, attracted visitors from around the world; when Charles Dickens came to America in 1842, he wanted to see two things, this prison and Niagara Falls. Though it underwent substantial changes in its 140-year history, and has slowly decayed since its final closure in 1970, the bulk of the Panopticon-style radial prison survives, and preservationists have recently completed a major restoration program. Guided tours leave on the hour (June-Sept Wed-Sun 10am-6pm; May-June & Oct-Nov Sat & Sun 10am-5pm, last tour 4pm; $7; tel 215/236-7326) and point out its many novel architectural features, as well as the cell where Al Capone cooled his heels and the block where Tina Turner filmed a music video.