Eastern State Penitentiary History
Continued from here.
The cornerstone was placed on May 22, 1823, and the first prisoner was admitted on October 25, 1829. Previous to the laying of the cornerstone, the commission had selected a site of a little over 10 acres in size about two and a half miles northwest of City Hall. As construction proceeded, the great front wall arose, 30 feet high, 12 feet thick at the base, and 670 feet long. In the center, was the main administration building, dominated by two fifty-foot towers. Behind the forbidding front arose the cell blocks. The first cell blocks were one-story and held 38 cells each. Subsequently, as a result of increasing the capacity of the prison from 250 to 400, the remaining four cell blocks each had two-stories. When fully completed, the prison had cost a total of $772,600.
Once completed, the prison epitomized the Pennsylvania System. Individual cells existed for each prisoner, the rooms measuring 12 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 10 feet high, and each had an unroofed exercise yard attached to it. Every effort was made by the staff to enforce the solitary aspect, especially when prisoners were in the exercise yards. Moreover, a prisoner had to wear a mask or hood when out of his cell. This practice existed until 1904. The other aspect of the system, work, was also applied from the opening of the prison. Labor, it was hoped, would teach the prisoners trades land the products of the work would help pay the expense of the operation of the prison. Shoe-making and weaving became the basic labor activities and remained so, until an act of the Commonwealth in 1897, the result of free labor's opposition, put all but an end to such work in prison.
From the first, those responsible for the Eastern State Penitentiary spoke and wrote glowingly of the success of the Pennsylvania System. Nevertheless a public investigation of the prison in 1834-35 proved that the system lacked perfection, and that the guards had already turned to time-honored methods of enforcing discipline.
In addition, due to the prison's elevation, there was a chronic deficiency in the water supply. Similarly, once the commission decided to omit Havilan's proposed central heating system, the prison was plagued by a succession of inefficient heating methods. Despite such troubles, the fame of the (prison and the system grew during the 19th century, resulting in generally improved treatment of prisoners throughout the world. Surprisingly in the United States, it was an alternate penal system that was overwhelmingly adopted, the congregate system. This regimen, exemplified at the penitentiary at Ossining, New York, called for the prisoners working in groups, but under strict silence. Thus, when the Pennsylvania system was abolished at Eastern State Penitentiary, the system passed out of practice in the United States.