The Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
February 12th, 2008 / / Links: Google Earth, Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Virtual Earth / Nearest placesShare This
The Eastern State Penitentiary is a former state prison in the United States. It is located on Fairmount Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5 blocks north of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
It was significant architecturally, influencing the design of 250 other prisons, and is a U.S. National Historic Landmark.
Designed by John Haviland and opened in 1829, Eastern State is considered to be the world's first true penitentiary. Its revolutionary system of incarceration, dubbed the "Pennsylvania System" or Separate system, originated and encouraged solitary confinement as a form of rehabilitation. It was opposed contemporaneously by the Auburn System (also known as the New York System), which held that prisoners should be forced to work together in silence, and could be subjected to physical punishment (Sing Sing prison was an example of the Auburn system). Although the Auburn system was favored in the United States, Eastern State's radial floor plan and system of solitary confinement was the model for over 300 prisons worldwide. The name "Penitentiary" comes from the word "penance". The original goal was for prisoners to want to open up to God, thus seeking penance.















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