I go to a lot of museums. The biggies are great, but I tend to prefer the pleasures from bite-sized portions of more out-of-the-way, unexpected ones like Bucharest's National Museum of the Romanian Peasant (hand-written signs about how to love your grandma), Oklahoma's Woolaroc (largely for nostalgic purposes) and Hanoi's bizarre Ho Chi Minh Museum, with Soviet-inspired exhibits of winner detergent boxes.
I'm adding one more to the list:
Philadelphia's super Eastern State Penitentiary, considered the country's first prison and example of 'modern architecture,' whatever that means. It operated as a 'solitary' prison, all inmates had own cells, from the early 1800s till 1971, when it was abandoned into a eery ruin. Self-guided tours of the paint-peeling site not far from Philadelphia Museum of Art 'Rocky steps' are $12 and I could easily have spent three or four hours. I will go back.
Here are some photos that make up yet another reason why more people should go to Philadelphia.
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| Bulletin board outside one cell |
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| A certain 'Chico' put his name in here in 1960 |
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| Me with original cell toilet |
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| Cell blocks radiate out spoke-like from center |
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| Failed escapee carved a (hard to see) face, below the light |
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| Prison's baseball field |
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| Sting came her for (close-up) photo for an album cover |
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| Castle-like exterior made solely to intimidate -- it did to Charles Dickens |
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| (Modern) art in one of the cells |
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| Much of the cell interiors left as is/was |
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| Al Capone's cell was nicer than most |
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| All cells were solitary, each with tiny outdoor area - this would be only view you'd get |
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| Art penciled-in over one cell doorway |
