Eastern State Penitentiary: A Center of Community

This weeks’ excursion to Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) was my first visit exploring the site.  Last year, I volunteered at Bache-Martin Elementary School located directly behind the penitentiary.  My first time traveling to the school, I only saw the back walls and I remember wondering if a prison could be detrimental to the student’s learning.  However, I soon realized it was not just any prison, but Eastern State, a historical monument.  Its presence enriches the surrounding community and acts as a central reference point for locals. 

The historical importance of ESP continues to increase tourism into the surrounding area.  As the world’s first penitentiary, its purpose was to aid inmates’ rehabilitation through silent confinement.  The walls are deteriorating, but are not being renovated; this physical evidence adds to the sense of place and proves its history.  Sparse images on the walls depict influential famous Philadelphia figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, placing the Penitentiary in context with visitors’ common knowledge of the city and illuminating its significance.  Its change over time from a place of individual confinement to a incarcerated community.  As development and expansion increased inside the walls, a separate community formed in the surrounding area.  After its closing and establishment as a museum, these communities converged.  ESP was originally 2 miles outside of Philadelphia city limits, but currently rests in the center of a prospering community.   

Community is the formation of “collective identities” the sense of “belonging” (Crooke 174). The neighborhood surrounding the school and ESP is well kept, possibly due to the importance and popularity of the neighborhood’s central ESP.  Bache-Martin’s small playground is also located on ESP grounds and is maintained by Friends of Eastern State Penitentiary Park.  The school administrators recently received a grant from Friends to improve their annual fall festivals.  Supporters of ESP involved in the maintenance of the site are also involved in community development.  ESP is the community; the attention and publicity it has received is cause for investments.  This monetary support in turn built the neighborhoods and continues to give them cause for rehabilitation.    

Connections between museums and surrounding communities are increasing survival tactics benefiting both the site and its locals.  It is often employed by museums and embraced by the community.  It also promotes cooperation and aids in solving local social problems such as crime (Crooke 182).   I continue to support the integration of haunted tours into museum programming because it increases revenue which then is recycled into the surrounding community.  However, it should be required that any lack of historical accuracy should be explained to visitors.  Visitors enter with a preconceived notions of fear associated with prisons and especially confinement.  ESP cannot nullify these socially perceived connotations, but they can help provide the educate visitors about the foundations for these fears.