When Eastern State Penitentiary opened in Philadelphia in 1829, it was the largest and most expensive public structure in the United States and a model copied by more than 300 prisons worldwide. Architect John Haviland designed a hub and spoke plan with seven cell blocks radiating from a central watchtower, hidden behind a neo-Gothic fortress with 30 foot walls. The Pennsylvania system rejected New York’s Auburn model of silent group labor and whipping in favor of total solitary confinement meant to produce penitence. Each cell had central heating, a flush toilet, a water tap, a low door that forced inmates to bow, and a single skylight called the eye of God, while prisoners moved under hoods.

The silence broke minds instead of healing them, and inmates tapped messages on the pipes. Guards answered with the iron gag, ice water baths, restraint chairs, and the Klondike punishment cells under Cell Block 14, and writer John Neal condemned it in 1841. Overcrowding, 671 prisoners in a building meant for 560 by 1870, ended solitary confinement by 1913. Leo Callahan went over the wall in 1923 and was never caught, Willie Sutton and 11 others tunneled out in 1945, and Al Capone furnished his 1929 cell with antiques and a radio. After a 1961 riot the prison closed in 1970, and a forest grew inside before it reopened as a preserved ruin.

• Pep the dog, inmate C-2559, actually Governor Gifford Pinchot’s gift to boost morale rather than a cat killer serving life
• A 97 foot escape tunnel dug over a year, with dirt flushed down the cell toilets, and 30 other unfinished tunnels found in the 1930s
• How the radial layout that made solitary surveillance easy became a blind-spot nightmare once inmates mingled
• The 1988 task force that stopped plans for a mall or condos, and an audio tour narrated by Steve Buscemi
• Ghost Cats, a Guantanamo cell recreation, Tastykakes thrown from the towers, and the closing Prisons Today exhibit