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As I walked into Eastern State Penitentiary, it was hard to imagine anyone living there. The place was in ruin, stable but very obviously crumbled and corroded. Aside from the audio tour guide’s voice in my ears, the hallways were quiet, with some rooms restored to how they would’ve looked during the prison’s prime. They were almost Church like, as intended by the building’s designer, and much more livable looking than how I imagine today’s prisons. Imagining the silence that accompanied the space, though, it was easy to see why so many of the inmates were incredibly unhappy in their time at Eastern State.

Eastern State Penitentiary was founded in 1829 by a Quaker group called the "Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons”  (General Overview). It was revolutionary for its time, a prison meant to change prisoners for the better instead of merely locking them up. Its silent, penitentiary atmosphere was coupled with impressive accommodations for its prisoners: heat, decent food, and better plumbing than the white house had at that time. They were even taught “honest work (shoemaking, weaving, and the like)” to carry with them into the outside world (General Overview). The only catch was that the prisoners had virtually no contact with anything that could distract them from their own thoughts. They ate alone, exercised alone, and had access to only one book, The Bible. They never saw any of the other prisoners, and their only company was a window on each ceiling called, “The Eye of God.”  

There is such controversy in modern society about prisons: what’s wrong with them, how they should be changed, and generally the omnipresence and seeming uselessness of such institutions in the modern world.  Arguments rage endlessly across political, social, religious and economic boundaries about the prisons themselves while neglecting what inspires our individual opinions about penal theory: the prisoners themselves.  How the prisoners are viewed by society and individuals is largely responsible for how prisons are designed and up kept.

Samuel Brewster stayed in his cell, with cold walls and endless silence. On the ground, lied some cloths and other component parts of pairs of shoes, but he did not want to make the shoes. He just sat to the wall. Twenty minutes, or more time passed. He did not know. Suddenly, he stood up and rushed at the door, with hands knocking heavily at the iron door: “I! I will not make another pair!”(Buried Lives, 106) He angrily repeating his words again and again, but no one answered. He knew, maybe he would be brought to the dark room, but he did not care. No one talked to him. Isolation, this was the most terrible thing he met here. In such an isolated cell, so silent that seemed there was only one man, that was him, in the world. Meals arrived on time, but they could not change anything except told him another day came. He did not know how many days passed or how many days left, actually he just wanted to listen or talk or other ways of communicating. He had something else such as making shoes or reading to do, but he did not want to follow the rules made for prisoners, for shoes a month, it seemed enough for him. He was not interested in the words in the reading material because they could not change the situation here, could not bring more voices here. He was bored with the repeating days the endless silence and the useless books or shoes, trying to break the situation by ‘denying work, damaging work supplies, destroying cell furniture, rebuffing and manipulating religious counselors , and attacking overseers’. (Buried Lives, 107)

            When Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829, it was meant to be the greatest prison created to date. The Quaker reformers who conceived the prison were disgusted by the way in which incarceration was handled in the United States. Everything from the physical condition of the prison itself to the treatment of the prisoners was good for nothing more than detaining criminals as opposed to trying to actually solve the problem. Eastern State was meant to solve all of those problems by looking at incarceration from an entirely new perspective.   

            As a concept, Eastern State was the perfect prison. It was designed for penitence through solitary confinement. The idea was that if the prisoners were forced to be alone with their nothing but their own thoughts for the duration of their sentence, they would eventually reflect on their crimes and reform their ways at some point. Each prisoner had their own cell and exercise yard where they were confined for the entirety of their sentence. In order for this to work, the quality standard of the cells had to be higher including the best plumbing and heating available. One of the main points the Quaker reformers worked towards was that the prisoners were not being punished but rather reformed and prepared to reenter society to need incarceration again.

When analyzing the architecture of Eastern State Penitentiary, I must distinguish the layout of the cells from that of the prison; the cells were designed with penitence in mind whereas the prison was designed to effectively monitor and control the lives of the prisoners. In each cell, there is a long skinny window. This window encouraged the prisoner to look toward the heavens and contemplate his relationship with God. The architecture of the cell further highlights this window. With an arched ceiling and bare white walls, the cell did not distract the prisoner from his own thoughts nor did it allow the prisoner to escape the light pouring in. Though the cell is dank and cold, light reaches every corner of it in the daytime. Separating the cell from the rest of the prison are thick walls and small doors. Both the walls and the doors illustrate a meeting point between the design of the cell and that of the prison. The thick walls made it harder for prisoners to communicate with each other and more difficult for prisoners to escape. The doors also emphasized the importance of both penitence and control in Eastern State Penitentiary. When walking through the small doors, prisoners had to duck their heads and were humbled before fully entering their cells. Moreover, the wooden door, which extended past the door frame, sealed the prisoner into his cell. In contrast to the individual cells, the prison was not designed to reform prisoners, but to enable constant surveillance.

    Prior to Eastern State Penitentiary, prisoners used to lock their prisoners together in a big, appalling and filthy room, and leave them to fight with each other. At the time, prisons only served as a place to hold the prisoners temporarily, but rather than a halfway house or workhouse that actually help to deal with their problems. Therefore, in pursuit of creating a more effective and helpful system for both inmates themselves and the society, Quaker reformers came up with an idea that they thought would definitely lead incarceration situation in the United States to a much brighter future. In 1829, the opening of Eastern State Penitentiary introduced their brand new way of incarceration -- isolation. Instead of staying in the same room, prisoners would go into their individual cell, which includes a bed, a desk and chair, a flushing toilet, heating pipes and a glass skylight. Since they couldn't have any visitors, they only had a Bible to keep them company. Their heads were covered whenever they went in or out of the cell, because in this way, it could prevent them from knowing where they were, and could ensure that their faces wouldn't be recognized once they got out.

I sat on the dusted ground, cold like an outdoor bench in the chilliest winter day. The difference was I could heat the bench after ten minutes, but not these tiny square inches under my body. The huge cement monster was sucking all my warmth. I liked the silence, though. It let me feel the texture of the wall, watch the skylight’s dramatic effect on the tiny hair on my skin, and think about thoughts in my head. I wanted to sing, but it would be embarrassing with the presence of two cellmates. So I sang inside my head. The voice was not mine, but a darker and more ethereal version of the singer’s, seeping into me along with the coldness. I may have unconsciously opened my mouth and made a sound, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

In America’s early history, prisons were little more than holding cells for inmates. Large numbers of prisoners of all ages, genders, and criminal history were kept together in large rooms. This caused serious problems, among them career criminals teaching new ones some of their tricks, lack of adequate nutrition and sanitation, and a lack of safety for prisoners and guards. Therefore, when the Quakers of the early 1800s broke ground on Eastern State Penitentiary, they did it in the belief that they were doing good for everyone involved. The prisoners and guards would be safe, the prisoners would be able to repent for their sins instead of learning new ways to break the law, and they would be able to do this in a clean environment.

Unfortunately, this did not last very long. Eastern State’s solitary confinement couldn’t hold up against the number of prisoners entering the penitentiary, and even when it did, prisoners were often thinking more about how to communicate with each other than how to communicate with God. While Eastern State was founded with good intentions, it ended up being very similar to older prisons: people who left often reverted back to crime and ended up back in jail (usually for something more serious).

Eastern State Penitentiary was created by the Quakers in order to make the prisoners better people. The Quakers believed that, if treated in the correct way, the prisoners would reflect on themselves, see that they were wrong, and repent for their sins.This did not happen. Prisoners began rebelling almost as soon as the prison opened.

Eastern State, from the outside, seemed orderly and exactly like a prison that others should (and did) try to imitate. On the inside, however, Eastern State was edging towards chaos, with not many things going correctly. In Eastern State, it was never quite clear who ruled the prison, the guards or the prisoners. This grey-area dynamic made it close to impossible to keep the prisoners under control. Indeed, some of the guards did not even try to make it clear that they were in charge, and did things like play chess with the prisoners while they were supposed to be walking the halls.

Prisoners were never meant to be punished; the Quaker reformers thought that isolation was enough to make the prisoners feel remorse for what they had done. But the guards did resort to physical or emotional punishment when prisoners acted up.

Eastern State tried to strip prisoners of any individuality they may have retained. There was meant to be no one to talk to besides a minister who would come to the cells to try to reform or convert the prisoners.

When I stay alone

  Have you ever been eager to stay alone without any noises from outside? Have you ever wanted to do nothing but sit in a corner with yourself? Have you ever been tired to talk you anyone else? Have you ever enjoyed the time when you are alone? Yes, I have. However, have you ever imaged that what will happen if you have to stay alone for years, or even decades? Eastern State Penitentiary was such a place where prisoners stayed in single cells all days without any communication with others.

  At the gate of Eastern State Penitentiary, I noticed the luxuriant Parthenocissus on the high walls. From the outside, it does not look like a prison but a garden. But when I went into the gate, everything changes. The cold iron barriers, the old wooden doors and the rusted lockers showed the horror of the penitentiary. The world seemed be divided into two extremely part by the high walls—outside, there were beautiful views with the breeze of freedom; inside, there were chillness, fear and loneliness left by the heavy history.

  The cells looked not too bad—each of them had a bed, a desk and a toilet. There was a moment when I even thought that the life might be comfortable because the prisoners need to do nothing at all—they did not have to worry about the meals; they could get up whenever they want without annoying alarm clock; they did not work and suffered the pressure of survival… Nonetheless, when I experience the thirty-minutes stay in a cell, I change my mind.