Episode 9 covers the part of Eastern State Penitentiary’s story that most haunted clips skip: what happened after the prison closed.

We follow Eastern State from its 1971 shutdown into the long period of abandonment, when weather, time, and neglect transformed an infamous institution into a threatened landmark. We explain why abandonment matters historically (not just aesthetically), how redevelopment ideas and demolition risk grew during those years, and what changed in 1988 when preservation advocates pushed Philadelphia’s leadership to halt the selling process and pivot toward saving the site. Finally, we trace the turning point in 1994 when daily “hard hat tours” began, bringing the public back inside the walls and setting the stage for Eastern State’s modern identity as a stabilized ruin with an educational mission.

This episode is about memory, ethics, and preservation: what it means to keep a prison standing, how you tell the truth without sanitizing it, and why a ruin can function as evidence.

Sources and links are in the show notes. Come back next week for the next episode.

#AncientSecretsandHauntedJourneys #ASHJ #ASHJPodcast

IN THIS EPISODE

• 1965: National Historic Landmark designation (context for later debates)

• Years of abandonment and decay after closure

• 1988: preservation pivot (task force advocacy; halt to sale process)

• 1994: daily “hard hat tours” begin

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Preserving a prison is an ethical decision, not just a tourist one.

• A stabilized ruin keeps the scars visible, which keeps history honest.

• Public memory of incarceration shifts when the public can finally enter the walls.

Sources & Links (Episode 9):

https://easternstate.org/about/history-of-eastern-state-penitentiary

https://web.sas.upenn.edu/philamonuments/memory-sites/eastern-state-penitentiarys-uneasy-transformation-from-prison-to-museum/

https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/eastern-state-penitentiary/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_State_Penitentiary

Check out my Linktree here https://linktr.ee/ashjpodcast

Episode 8 follows Eastern State Penitentiary into its final decades, when the original philosophy was long gone and the building itself was becoming too costly, too outdated, and too deteriorated to keep running.

We break down what “decline” actually meant in practical terms: a prison designed for one model of incarceration being forced to operate as another, an aging physical plant requiring constant repairs, and a system under pressure from changing standards and capacity needs across Pennsylvania. Then we lock into the closure timeline with clear dates, covering Pennsylvania’s decision to cease operations in 1970, the site’s brief city use in 1971, and the final closure that same year.

This episode isn’t about legends. It’s about the quiet administrative ending of a massive institution and why that ending became the hinge point that led to everything that came next: abandonment, decay, preservation battles, and Eastern State’s second life as a public historic site.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why Eastern State became increasingly expensive to operate

• 1970: state operations ceased (documented milestone)

• 1971: brief city use and final closure (timeline clarity)

• Transfers and what “closure” actually looks like inside bureaucracy

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Eastern State didn’t end dramatically, it ended administratively.

• Old architecture + new prison reality created unsustainable strain.

• Closure was a hinge, not an ending.

Sources and links are in the show notes. Come back next week for the next episode.

#AncientSecretsandHauntedJourneys #ASHJ #ASHJPodcast

Sources & Links (Episode 8):

https://easternstate.org/about/history-of-eastern-state-penitentiary

https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/eastern-state-penitentiary/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_State_Penitentiary

Check out my Linktree here

Episode 7 takes a “history-pressure” approach to Eastern State Penitentiary: not battles and uniforms, but what national crisis eras do to prisons over time.

We track how Eastern State operated through the Civil War era and beyond, and why it became a major holdout for the Pennsylvania System even as most other U.S. prisons shifted toward the Auburn model. Then we follow the hard, documented turning points that changed Eastern State’s reality from “moral experiment” to “stressed institution”: the erosion of strict separation under overcrowding, the official abandonment of the Pennsylvania System in 1913, and the way expansion altered the prison’s original hub-and-spoke security logic.

This episode focuses on the facts that show the transformation clearly: what the prison was designed to hold versus what it actually held, how the state responded to capacity pressure, and why by the mid-20th century the blueprint that once made Eastern State famous could no longer function the way it was intended.

Sources and links are in the show notes. Come back next week for the next episode.

#AncientSecretsandHauntedJourneys #ASHJ #ASHJPodcast

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why Eastern State remained the major holdout for the Pennsylvania System into the Civil War era

• 1913: official abandonment of the Pennsylvania System at Eastern State

• Capacity pressure: original design scale vs later population reality

• Mid-century expansions and how security geometry was compromised

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• History forced a philosophy-built prison into reality-based operations.

• Expansion and overcrowding eroded the original system long before it ended on paper.

• By 1945 and beyond, the prison’s “perfect” design had been compromised.

Sources & Links (Episode 7):

https://easternstate.org/about/history-of-eastern-state-penitentiary

https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/eastern-state-penitentiary/

https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/eastern-st-penitentiary

Be sure to check out my linktree here to get the book!