Destination PA: Eastern State Penitentiary

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (WHTM) — Thursday’s Spot Pennsylvania takes us to the Fairmount portion of Philadelphia, in which you are going to find one of the state’s most distinctive sights: The Jap Point out Penitentiary.

When driving down 22nd and Fairmount Ave you just can’t skip this substantial castle like developing. Within just these walls is just one of the oldest prisons in The united states.

The penitentiary was operational as a jail for 142 a long time from 1829 until eventually 1971. And then immediately after 1971, it sat deserted for almost 20 several years prior to it turned the historic web-site of the museum that it is today.

Its vaulted, sky-lit cells the moment held numerous of America’s most notorious lawbreakers, like “Slick Willie” Sutton and “Scarface” Al Capone.

Mr. Capone invested a lot of his everyday living in jail, but his initially time in jail was at Eastern Point out. He got caught with a gun at a movie theater, which carried a optimum sentence of one yr in jail for concealing and carrying a deadly weapon.

Numerous of the prisoners serving time invested their times wanting for ways to escape. On April 3, 1945, 12 males, which includes the popular lender robber Willie Sutton, all escaped from a tunnel they made.

Clarence, a reliable prisoner, executed all sorts of maintenance on the making, so he lived in the cell with unique obtain to all types of tools. For about a person yr he dug a tunnel from the corner of this cell all the way out on to Fairmount Avenue.

There are unlimited stories of what took place inside of the penitentiary’s partitions. You can discover about them in-individual at day or evening. The summer night tours even function a beer backyard.

Most of our website visitors encounter the museum by means of a self guided audio tour, which is narrated by actor and director Steve Buscemi.

There is so substantially to see and learn inside of the Eastern State Penitentiary, a person of the most famed prisons in the planet.

Visit the Japanese Point out Penitentiary to expertise its prosperous history, its architectural importance, and its relationship to the American criminal justice system currently.