Eastern State Penitentiary HSR: I
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Eastern State Penitentiary HSR: I. Statements of Significance 1 Table of Contents GENERAL INTRODUCTION Identification of writers, contributors, acknowledgments Table of Contents I. STATEMENTS OF SIGNIFICANCE A. Introduction, Statements of Significance (JC) ...............................................................................................1 B. Significance of Eastern State Penitentiary in the Context of Philadelphia History (EJL) ..........................3 C. Statement of Architectural Significance (JC) ................................................................................................7 1. Sidebar: Assessments of ESP's Architecture (JC) ..........................................................9 D. Statement of Penological Significance (FH) ............................................................................................13 E. Prisoners' Presence and Perspectives: Introduction and Statement of Significance (LPS).......................18 F. The Role of Eastern State Penitentiary in the Development of Building Technology (DC).....................23 II. MOTIVES AND MOVERS, ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION A. Penological Philosophy 1. General Background (FH)...........................................................................................................26 2. The Philosophical Background to the Pennsylvania System (FH).............................................27 B. Prison Labor: General Background and Early Years (FH).......................................................................36 C. Background and Social History 1. Beginnings, 1787-1818 (MTT)....................................................................................40 a. Leading Reformers of the Eighteenth Century (MTT) ..............................................41 b. Walnut Street Jail (MTT)...........................................................................................42 c. Deterioration of Walnut Street Jail (MTT) ................................................................44 2. Building The Pennsylvania System: 1818-1829 (MTT)..............................................44 3. ESP and the Orthodox/Hicksite Controversy (MTT) ..................................................50 D. Choosing and Refining the Design, 1818-29 (JC) .................................................................92 Copyrighted Material Eastern State Penitentiary HSR: I. Statements of Significance 2 § PREFACE: Approach, Team, Acknowledgments This historic structures report on the prison was commissioned by the Eastern State Penitentiary Task Force and the City of Philadelphia. Funding was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Getty Grant Program, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the City of Philadelphia. The purposes of this Historic Structures Report are those stated the in the Request for Proposals prepared for it by the Eastern State Penitentiary Task Force in 1992. The Task Force sought a better understanding of the “context for Eastern State Penitentiary as an historic site” from study of its significance as an architectural design, as an example of 19th-century institutional theory and architecture, as a technological solution, as an institution within its neighborhood, as the product of the individuals and groups who shaped and administered it, and, finally, as the environment of inmates who occupied the penitentiary. It was to be a “descriptive, analytical and synthetic study, . an essential tool in the process of planning for the reuse and interpretation of the site in totality and of its individual structures.” The Historic Structures Report (HSR) was to provide the underpinnings for both interpretive planning and prioritizing physical intervention to restore or alter the component buildings. The Task Force previously undertook an evaluation of existing physical conditions, entitled Eastern State Penitentiary: National Historic Landmarks Condition Assessment Report, and a follow-up Stabilization and Protection Plan. Those will be used in conjunction with the HSR and concurrent planning studies to establish a strategy or strategies and a phased schedule for implementation of reuse. The Historic Structures Report is the product of a multi-disciplinary team, assembled to address various aspects of the history and significance of Eastern State Penitentiary. The team process was anticipated in materials submitted with the proposal as “an interactive dialogue, involving exchange of findings and interpretive hypotheses, so that conclusions can represent interdisciplinary syntheses.” The dialogue started when the team first met, before the selection interview, as a verbal exchange about issues to be considered and ways in which the team members could collaborate to achieve a synthetic interpretation bridging the various disciplines. Our dialogue continued against a backdrop of ongoing research and recording of the physical fabric, in the form of measured drawings and notes summarizing the documentation of construction chronology,. The team who researched and wrote this report is composed of: • Jeffrey A. Cohen, of the Latrobe Papers, American Philosophical Society, writing mainly on the penitentiary's architectural history [JC] • David G. Cornelius formerly of Keast and Hood Company (now of the Vitetta Group Historic Preservation Studio), writing principally on building technology and systems [DC] • Finn Hornum of LaSalle University, writing principally on matters of penal philosophy, history, and governance at ESP [FH in the body of the report] • Vera Y. Huang of the University of Pennsylvania, working with Finn Hornum and Leslie Patrick-Stamp on statistical aspects of the prison's history [VH] • Emma Jones Lapsansky of Haverford College, writing on social and institutional history [EJL] • Leslie C. Patrick-Stamp of Bucknell University, writing principally on the inmate population and its perspectives [LPS] Copyrighted Material Eastern State Penitentiary HSR: I. Statements of Significance 3 • Michele Taillon Taylor of the University of Pennsylvania, writing principally on the social identities of the founders and working with Emma Jones Lapsansky on the social history [MTT] The measured survey was conducted by Harry Edmund Bolick and Jeffrey B.Halferty, with guidance from Scott D.Hoffman and Marianna M. Thomas and assistance from Michael E. Schuldt. The drawings were prepared using Autocad Release 11 by Harry Bolick, with assistance from Jeffrey Halferty, Scott D. Hoffman, and Scott D. Kelly, and oversight from Marianna Thomas. Drawing files prepared by Venturi Scott Brown Associates, Inc. for the Administration Building were incorporated into our plans. The architectural team offered information and insights at team meetings, and assisted with the organization and production of the report, particularly Michael Schuldt and Edward J. Morrison. Team meetings were scheduled at intervals during the project, several during the initial period of defining the problem and establishing the research tasks, others for sharing of information, ideas, conclusions, leads, and a final meeting to discuss implications of Task Force responses to the first partial draft. Collaboration between individual team members facilitated coordination of efforts and guided the research of two graduate interns. Regular progress reports to the Task Force and minutes of discussions between team representatives and the Task Force HSR Committee were shared with team members to maintain regular and prompt communication of Task Force concerns. Our goal has been to complement what has already been set out in print in well- documented works, not to attempt a new, comprehensive history of Eastern State Penitentiary. To that end, there are references throughout the text to material covered in previous works; but rather than rework scholarship upon which one can confidently lean, we have sought mainly to uncover aspects of ESP’s history that are less well known. This had meant a weighting of our effort not toward the philosophical genesis and birth of the Pennsylvania system, the initial design for ESP, its dissemination, nor the earliest years of the institution, but toward its middle and later years, the history of over a century of adaptation, reworking, and reconciling changing ideals with challenging realities. Similarly, the measured drawings of existing 1993 conditions form a record of the cumulative adaptations and changes, rather than an attempt to reconstruct the plans and sections at any given previous period. This research effort has been unlike most, where one pans in a rushing stream for rare nuggets, usually searching painstakingly for morsels of pertinent contemporary evidence. In this case one of the greatest challenges is the sheer quantity of the contemporary documentation. The papers of the prison, with manuscript records for nearly every prisoner, and a very nearly full run of daily, monthly, and annual reports, force one to balance a scale of scrutiny broad enough to feasibly cover a reasonable span of time, on one hand, with enough detail to learn specific new things on the other. The overview provided by the rich annual reports has served as a framework on which to interweave the particular from other sources, which often belie the advocacy present in the official publications. We have appended our raw notes from these sources as a less polished but most useful contribution; it could easily be expanded to twice this amount of information without being repetitive; further scrutiny of the detailed records holds most