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| In this Tuesday, March 12, 2013 photo, shown examples of shanks made by inmates at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The defunct and decayed prison that serves as one of Philadelphia's quirkiest tourist attractions, plans to displaying dozens of never-before-seen artifacts for 10 days only in a "pop-up museum." |
PHILADELPHIA
(AP) -- A mounted wooden fish. Dog figurines. Colorful soap carvings of
clowns and Santa. A wallet made of interwoven cigarette packs. It sounds
like a bad garage sale - until you get to the shivs. And the
century-old mug shot book. And the inmate death ledger.
Those
items are among dozens of prison artifacts set for display at the
historic Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The brief exhibit
opens Saturday and runs for 10 days.
The
defunct and decayed prison, which once housed gangster Al Capone, was
abandoned in 1971 but has since been preserved in a state of semi-ruin,
becoming one of the city's eeriest and quirkiest tourist attractions.
The
objects have never before been exhibited because the dank, decrepit
facility didn't have any climate-controlled rooms. But recent
renovations will allow the prison to temporarily convert its staff
conference room into a "pop-up museum."
Chronicling
the inmates' arc of arrival, hard time and departure, artifacts range
from mug shots and the prison's original front-gate key to handicrafts,
shanks and a death ledger. Many died of tuberculosis; some were executed
elsewhere; others served their sentences and went home.
The
objects remind visitors that hundreds of people once lived and worked
in the now spooky and silent cellblocks, said Sean Kelley, director of
public programming. The site also featured amenities such as a
synagogue, chapel, print shop and curio store, where inmate crafts were
sold to the public.
"Life here was incredibly
varied. ... A lot of people find that surprising," Kelley said. "It's
amazing how this place was really a small city."
The
prison sits behind forbidding, 30-foot-tall walls in the city's
Fairmount section. It was an architectural marvel when it opened in
1829, boasting indoor plumbing and central heat even before the White
House. Such conveniences enabled solitary confinement that would,
ideally, lead to penitence - thus the term "penitentiary." The solitary
system was scrapped in 1913.
After closing
more than 40 years ago, the facility largely became a crumbling mess
until historical preservationists stepped in. It reopened for daily
tours in 1994.
That's about when former staff
and ex-inmates started returning keepsakes of their time at Eastern
State, Kelley said. One guard's widow showed up with a bag full of her
husband's mementos, including a nearly complete set of a magazine that
prisoners published from 1956-67.
"The objects have been coming back to us for years," Kelley said.
That
includes an inmate-made model clipper ship, which was returned in 2010
by Edwin Feiler Jr., of Savannah, Ga. Feiler had bought the foot-tall
boat - and dozens of smaller ones, also crafted by prisoners - for a
Navy-themed party at his University of Pennsylvania fraternity in the
1950s after hearing about the inmates' handiwork through word of mouth.
In
a recent phone interview, Feiler vividly recalled "the crash" of the
penitentiary gate as it closed behind him when he picked up the crafts.
The ship would later spend decades as decor at his beach house on
Georgia's Tybee Island.
He decided to give it back to Eastern State after his daughter, Cari Feiler Bender, began doing publicity for the site.
"When
something like that's on display, it becomes more meaningful to
everybody," Feiler said. "All you have now are those (prison) walls, but
there were people there. It was alive."
Eastern
State archivist Erica Harman said one of her favorite objects is a
2-inch-tall decorative cutlery set that an inmate carved from soup bones
in 1856. He used a jackknife, which was allowed during the era of
solitary confinement.
Harman called the exhibit "a great reminder of the inmates' humanity."
"They're
not just numbers, they're not just criminals. They're people," she
said. "That can be hard to remember when you're looking at locks, cells
and keys."
