Look at one of the most influential — and infamous — prisons ever built, rising here. Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829 on a design by architect John Haviland, whose Gothic fortress exterior hid a revolutionary interior: a central surveillance hub from which seven cell blocks radiated like the spokes of a wheel, so that one guard could observe all corridors simultaneously. Jeremy Bentham had proposed the panopticon in theory; Haviland built it.
Each prisoner was held in solitary confinement, given a private cell with a skylight called the Eye of God, and allowed out only for individual exercise in a private yard. The Pennsylvania System, as it was called, believed that silence and solitude would lead to penitence — hence penitentiary. Charles Dickens visited in 1842 and wrote that the solitary confinement was torturous; reformers from around the world visited and copied or condemned it.
Al Capone was held here in 1929 and kept his cell furnished with expensive rugs and paintings. The prison closed in 1971 and opened as a historic site in 1994, its ruins preserved in a state of intentional decay. Walk the cell blocks; the crumbling plaster and collapsing ceilings are part of the experience.