Eastern State Penitentiary

During our visit with my parents in NJ we not only spent some time at Valley Forge (below), but we also saw Young Frankenstein on Broadway and visited the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Many people think of Alcatraz with they envision famous prisons, but E.S.P. holds quite a prominent place in prison history as well. They have a great self-guided audio tour done by the actor Steve Buscemi.


They have fixed up this portion of the prison to show you what the doors would have looked like to the cells when the prison was orginally built. They were only large enough to pass food through to the prisoners. Eventually the doors looked like these...

The doors had peep holes in them so you could see what things looked like inside. Unfortunately the prison is quite a state of decay and it used to be that you could only visit wearing a hard hat. However, they are slowly but surely renovating the prison for it's visitors. I highly recommend that you stop by and visit if you are in the Philadelphia area seeing the other historical sites. A cooler day is probably best though, as they were having a heat wave while we were there and there is certainly no air conditioning to be found.