He was such a skinny guy they kept giving him ice cream to eat. Its incredible he remembered what the eisenhowers were like. The dying breed of person. I wanted to take should be to these people. Tonight on cspans q a. Each week, American History tvs american artifacts takes you to museums. Opened in 1829 philadelphias eastern state penitentiary operated as a prison until 1971. We visited to learn about the history that coined the term penitentiary and tried to reform criminals. Host my name is nick, a tour guide at eastern state penitentiary. Today, we will spend the next hour looking to this beautiful building. This is today an estate of stabilized ruins. This is after 142 years used as a prison, which when it first opened in 1829 was considered experimental. It was a brandnew type a prison. It was so unlike anything else tried at the time. They did not want to call it a prison. They invented a new word penitentiary. The root is penitent. This is the first attempt at the humane treatment of a criminal. A very quaker inspired idea that deep down everybody was perfectly good. In this building, that person would have a chance to reflect on their life and become penitent to reform themselves through that feeling. A great question is, how do you make someone penitent . How do you make someone confront some of those decisions they had made . Well spend a lot of time inside the cells addressing that. While were out here, take a quick look around, i want to show you some of the architecture of this place. When it first opened in 1829 the architecture of the building, a young reddish manned british man won a 100 prize to design the thing. He wanted to look hundreds of years older than it was. Th gothic revival style. The battlementse. Even the imposingness of the st one facade, you have to imagine it the way of philadelphian would have. First off, you would hopefully be seeing it from two miles away. The city today is totally surrounding the entire prison, but when it first opened, this was acres of open farmland all around. Imagine that you are in that smaller city. You look up to you would look at the largest public structure on the continent. It was supposed to intimidate. All of the castlelike elements are supposed to make us think about o nene of the things we associate with the castle authority, dungeon, torture. Imagine what happens in the eestnet of the castle. In the basement of the castle. Inside what was happening to you was a new attempt at humane punishment. On the outside was a harsh and intimidating kind of look towards the outside. It is also, as far as castles go totally safe. Those battlements are kneehigh. They are not going to help in all along the outside of the perimeter, you will see arrow slit windows, but they do not go through the wall. There is no apertura on the inside. Again, just for the look of the thing, rather than the actual function. But i want to bring us around the way, show you more of the architecture outside. Im going to head just up this way. Watch your step. It is very icy out. I am going to bring us into the corner here, just to give you a sense of the scale of this place. 10. 5 acres. The premier wall, you can get a sense of. 30 feet high. It goes another 10 feet deep. This is almost 8 feet thick. This goes for halfmile all away around the site. So not just the largest but i want to stress this this was the most expensive thing one of the United States had ever built. The only more expensive building was the capito dome in d. C. This tells us a lot about the priorities of these early pennsylvanians. This was the major project. It was 8 times over its budget. The kept building a. They were committed toward this new idea, just to try something new as far as crime and punishment compared to what they had been doing. But we are going to head inside to cellblock one. Come on in. This is cellblock one from 1829. It is by todays standards kind of gloomy. But back then this was considered beautifully well lit for 19th century standards. Every cell had its own skylight. Wso we said the outside architecture resembled kind of gothic revival castle. You see the inside. It is much more cathedrallike. A lot of these early ideas penitence very religiously inspired. This is when crime was equated with sin. A lot of these ideals of penitence are built into the building. Before we focus on what eastern state was doing, take a look at prisons before him. This is what we are trying to not do. This is an illustration of newgate prison in london. Total chaos. Fighting. What we think about congressional officers it does not matter if someone was, picked someones pockets or step them to death, everyone was in the same room together. The artist did not draw the open sewer. Disease was probably. Typhus was so common they called it jail fever. He did not have to worry if you had money. Prisons would have a separate area for the aristocracy. But if someone did not have money or did not have family to support them for their time in prison they might not eat. Many of these prisons, food was not provided. You had to purchase it. This was way different than what we think about prison today. Today, prison is the punishment. Back then, jails were the waiting area pit this is someone where someone would be held pretrial. In the meantime, if they want to dance on the table or play ball or gamble, i love this as an example. One jail had a bar in it. If you did not have enough money, you could sell your clothes for liquor. Of course, the trial would occur in the punishment, again not time. It would be maybe a fine, an execution for serious crimes, banishment occasionally, but much more commonly physical punishment. There are some examples we have illustrated along the wall. Whipping vyer com very common. The worse the crime was, the more times the criminal would be beaten. Then they are free to go. Branding. This is another painful one. But you can see, i mean, the pain of being burnt with a hot iron was not the real punishment. The real punishment was branding, the mark that lasted forever. Sometimes on the face indicating criminal. Compare that to the ideas here about trying to change someone. Very different approach. Stockades, pillar is. Pillories. This is more about public emilio. If you are familiar with philadelphia, there is a beautiful park called open to square cllalled logans square. You could bring your whole family to have an entertaining evening of throwing rocks at criminals or catch a public hanging. Pennsylvania was the first state to say maybe we do not want to do that outside. So this was it. This was our criminal Justice System. Had some quirks reformers were looking at. Prisons were filthy, filing, overcrowded. The punishments were not seen as cruel and unusual. This is a bigger issue pretty can imagine, lets say there is a young firsttime offender. They get arrested, they spent a few weeks in walnut street jail. They are getting drunk catching typhus, hanging out with criminals, they get whipped. You can imagine what that persons life is like afterwards. There is no incentive to reform. Not only are they going to go back to their old ways, but they consider a prisons in area where you can learn new crimes. Tricks o f the trade networking right . These guys want to switch it up. If you visit philadelphia, you will get acquainted with ben franklin. He was so active in civic life. He invites some wealthy philadelphians over to his place. I love the name of the group they come up with. The Philadelphia Society for alleviating the miseries of public prisons. We are looking at the First Organization in the world dedicated to prison reform. This is shortly before franklin was involved with helping to write what became the bill of rights. That language about cruel and unusual punishment, we see that in the 8th amendment. They had a new idea for how a person could run that they would need a very expensive, custombuilt prison. The idea that they had it took them 30 years to convince the state. It is called a separate system. And all of the architecture and technology in this building was designed around the idea. So instead of dozens of people tossed together, at eastern state penitentiary one prisoner would spend the entire sentence an average of two to 8 years in this cells. They would never leave. They would never see another prisoner. And they had to serve the time in absolute silence. Again, the goal was penitence. How do you make someone penitent . It was quaker inspired belief that athe innate goodness of a person. If you seal away the evils of the outside world, it would return to that goodness. After a few hours, and a few days, they would ask for something to do. A book was provided. The bible. And no other books. No reading material outside of that. No newspapers. Not even letters. No personal visits from friends or families. But it was not pure isolation. They had a few professional visits. The mo instructorral the moral instructor. In prisons today, we have caseworkers and psychiatrist. That got started here. Same thing with jobtraining. A professional would come, give the prisoner the materials they needed to learn the craft or a trade. Cellblock one is the shoemaking cellblock. There was another one for furniture making, cigar rolling. A simple idea, but just, again the hope is in here, they are going to have this quiet reflective time. Learn how to become a new person and leave with a set of job skills and get a job and become a tax paper. Taxpayer. Amazingly high ideals. Yeah and when it first opened there was a lot of hope for the wave was going to go this way. You can maybe get a sense of what happened. When it first opened, the entire world sat up and took notice of philadelphia. Foreign dignitaries were being sent to the city for the first time with the expressed purpose of studying this building. Part of it was this new idea of penitence but much of it was actually the architecture and technology. This was really, there are some architectural historians that consider eastern state penitentiary the first modern building in the world on account of its largescale environmental systems. Every cell had running water. Every cell had a flush toilet. It connects to a central sewer. This building had central heating in 1829. Even the warden was required to live in that front gate house. He did not have a toilet. They did not think of it as a luxury. It was the answer to how to keep someone isolated . No distractions in that little crucible of penitence so that they could focus on their own personal path of betterment. Every cell even had its own backyard. 23 days hours a day locked inside. They were allowed for two and half hours for fresh air and sunlight. Almost like a little dog run off the back of each cell. If a prisoner wanted to garden it was encouraged. The position thought it was there. Some prisoners even kept birds and rabbits. One prisoner was it growing teaches. Peaches. Three meals a day delivered it to the cell. Its funny. If all you heard about was the peaches and cocoa and gardens you would be like, this place is amazing. If all you heard about was the enforced isolation, you would think that this was the most terrible prison ever built. The fact it was both. Thanks was an entirely new type of punishment. This was an entirely new type of punishment. They had to say, listen, do not expect anyone to change lastingly unelless you take your material needs first. Only then, will the prisoner be able to focus on the spiritual discipline. Brandnew ideas for this time. This is a curiosity. You can see this prisoner here hooded. He has got an officer, called a keeper. Being led into the cell. Whenever were moved around, they were hooded. So they cannot see anyone else. It ups that feeling of isolation. They cannot see the building. If you are trying to escape, you come out of the cell, what is the first thing you see . It is totally quiet. Now what . But here is a curiosity. We have hoods with eye holes. What is the purpose if they could see the building . This is a new idea here. The hoods were to preserve the anonymity of the prisoner. They were only identified by a number. The hope was only a handful of people knew they would have served time. After the time at eastern state the hope was they would go and have a fresh start. Compare that to being branded on the face and known as a thief the rest of your life. Or today a felony conviction will show up on student loan applications are housing applications. These were brandnew ideas for that time. But im going to show you the inside of one of these cells of the early system here. Much of the building we are keeping in the state of stabilized decay. This area you can see, we actually restored a cell to what it wouldve looked like in that early separate system. Wood floors, that gate would have led to that backyard. There are these curious half doors on the outside here. The first three cellblocks they built they did not bother putting doors to the inside. Prisoners were part were brought into the back door. This was a feeding window. Trying to cut down on human contact. Imagine if your meal slides in silently. If you did not clean it, by the time it was retracted, you would not get your next meal. So on paper, everything sounds great. But in practice, the separate system had so many issues with it. Imagine today in a prison who mops the floors. The prisoners. Who was supposed to do that if everyone is locked in, learning Cottage Industries . They. Broke the rules prisoners were brought out to work in the kitchen, in the laundry. The first warden, sandalwood, wanted a butler. So we took a prisoner out of isolation. William hamilton becomes his personal server. Servant. He was the first person to escape. If everything happened according to plan, it would be a strict prison. But in actuality, it was impossible to maintain. Lets take a look inside one of the cells up the wayhere. So these two cells are open. Take a step inside. Watch your head here. So, you can hear out echoey it is. Part of that was the silence. So the entire place was whispered the officers were told to put socks on over there boots. If you were in your backyard, your neighbors were not. They did not want inmates shouting over the walls. I should mention, what we see in the cell today, this became in the 1930s, one of the maximumsecurity units. So the bed frame is bolted to the ground. The toilets this is a modern toilet encased in concrete. And access to the backyards they eventually started using the backyard spaces for other things. And the entryways to them were sealed up. So we are looking at a lot of players layers of a prison through decades of history. Lets head on back out this way. Pretty spacious and there. Compared to other prisons at that time, especially. And also designed for one. Add in the backyard, that was a lot of space. A lot of expense, but this prison, the separate system had so many different problems built in. One was, i mean, you can imagine what happens if you keep someone alone in silence for years. Not exactly mentally healthy. And that silence rule was being broken so frequently. They were trying to be humane but the punishments were well, they escalated quickly. It starts they would take a meal away. Then they would take yard time away. But the prisoner could not stop talking or trying to communicate with other people. They were learning, shouting down the toilet. Putting notes into adjacent yards. They had something called the iron gag. Think of it like a horses bit. It locks around the back of the head with chains. In 1833, there was one death in the prison. A prisoner serving 12 years for murder choked in the iron gag. The inspection came in here. They were addressing a number of different whistleblower complaints about the warden. It turns out the place was going not according to plan. That inspection learned prisoners were regularly allowed out of the separate system. They found out the wife of one of the officers was throwing parties in the front gate house and inviting the prisoners. It was chaos. And then they also found out this issue with the Mental Health of solitary confinement. Starting to not admit that it was a problem but certainly address that problem solve itself. They did not have to worry about the effects of isolation when they had to worry about overcrowding. 12 years in, they ran out of cells. The entire prison was billed for solid built for solitary confinement but now they had to head two had to have two or three or five to a cell. This is two cells joined together. At the highest peak of population, there were seven prisoners in one cell. So all of these reasons for building the prison, this penitentiary to separate someone from the challenges of being with another person, they did not have to worry about disease or violence or contraband or criminal ideas being passed around. Suddenly they are right back to where they started. So this was for decades in the late 1800s, this separate system was unraveling. Until 1913, they admit the separate system was broken. Again, looks great on paper. In practice, it was unworkable. Expensive to build and run mentally unhealthy and then so overcrowded they could not keep everyone separate anyway. The prison changes. I want you to imagine this place in the 20th century. Much closer to what we think of prisons today. Prisoners have a cellmate. They are allowed to talk. Instead of eating and working alone in a cell they eat in the mess hall. They play sports together. They make chess clubs. There is an orchestra are they right publications for the print shop. You can imagine, lets say you are an officer, you unlock every cell you are going to meet all of these people to breakfast. What is your big concern going to be . Suddenly, they have to address securityin in a way they had not needed to in the early days of isolation. These gates, the door had been removed but you get the idea. This gate was for some luck one. Called a riot gate. That is not original to the building. 1924 is when they add gates. Now they have to think about how to move large numbers of prisoners around . How do you address security . How do you run a congregate prison in an old stalled building built before electricity and designed for an entirely different style of confinement . Lot of issues, and we will see a lot of patchwork fixes along the way. But this is the heart of the prison. This is one of the reasons the place became worldfamous. This circle on the floor 10 1 2 acres. In the middle of the rotunda. Officers named the spot center. From this one spot, just like turning and looking around, you can see the entire prison. This was just seven cellblocks. All of the link up to this one central hub. Now, this was not the first centrally planned prison. The architect, his real contribution was keeping it empty. Other prisons would have kitchens or something here. He said, take it away. Keep it open for convenience ventilation, and watching. Watching you get right away p you can see the whole place. Its convenient to get to anywhere. You feel the cross breeze. It is amazing ventilation. And it is an economic weight of staffing the place and economical way of staffing the place. 7 cellblocks laid out unconnected. You need one officer patrolling or seven officers. From here, because we can see everything, though, you can see some of the changes early on. This radial plan, this is copy 300 times all around the