Eastern State Penitentiary

     This week, our class visited Eastern State Penitentiary ("ESP"), the world's first penitentiary. The day was cold and wet, and seemed painfully appropriate for visiting such a place. The penitentiary was first opened in 1829, and remained an operational prison until 1971. A tour guide led us through much of the compound, using everything around as visual references while he narrated parts of the place's history. Our tour guide made no attempt to glorify the history of ESP. He described how the penitentiary was intended to house one inmate per cell, but this model immediately broke down once they accepted prisoners beyond their capacity. Eventually, ESP became as wild and corrupt a place as every other prison of its time. Some time after closing down, ESP was designated a national historic landmark and later opened for historical tours. ESP also opens annually as a haunted house, but their intentions seem admirable, as the proceeds from the haunted house go towards the daytime museum and upkeep of the building.
     One thing that ESP's staff said really stuck in my mind. ESP claims that it is not a museum, but rather a historic site. As they said, this was because ESP lacks any sort of exhibit space. This is not entirely accurate, though. The entire site of ESP works as a visual experience, from the towering outer walls to the preserved cells. Each part of ESP that a visitor sees works together to create a certain experience, just as exhibits in any museum would. The result of this is a transformative experience. The tour guide claimed that he wanted people to walk away thinking about the prison system and other such big questions. The combined parts of ESP lead a visitor to this thinking. It works in the same way that art and natural history museums work as described by Michelle Henning. That is, the exhibits in such museums gain their significance not in the fact that they are artifacts, but rather in that they work to create a transformative experience in visitors (Henning 114). This is entirely true of ESP. The exhibits here are the various parts of the building. Their significance is not in that they are the preserved parts of an old prison, but rather their significance is their effect on visitors. In this way, ESP is obviously a historic site, but it is also a museum.
     All in all, I was very impressed with Eastern State Penitentiary. The tour guide gave us a very pleasing experience, combining history with visual artifacts. Many historical museums fall victim to glorifying the past (I'm looking at you, Betsy Ross House). ESP, however, did well to avoid such a thing. The individual parts of ESP worked together as a whole, and I think those maintaining the site have done a good job of keeping the place historic.