THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER TWISTED PAST THE GROUNDS OF THE Centennial construction sites, flowing east through the WaterWorks falls before continuing past Center City toward the Delaware River. On the river’s east bank, walkers straying from the footpath came to the bottom of a small hill that peaked past the grounds of a fortress. From the riverside, the building resembled a castle at the edge of the industrial town. Thirty-foot stone walls surrounded eleven acres of land, and notched parapets crowned five octagonal towers along the front wall. Spaced evenly between the towers, fourteen narrow, vertical embrasures angled toward the inner grounds, inspiring thoughts of archers defending a king. But the protectors of this building held guns, not bows, and instead of keeping the enemy from entering the fortress, they kept him from leaving it.
Philadelphia’s Quaker fathers had planned this building as an alternative to the city’s Walnut Street Jail; like the Revolutionary-era jailhouses before it, the Walnut Street penitentiary had served as a holding tank more than a prison. Inside of it, male and female inmates intermingled and the warden tended bar. Disgusted with these conditions, a group of Quakers met in the late eighteenth century to discuss penal reform. The group took their ideas to the Pennsylvania state legislature, and for the next forty years, they petitioned the government to fund an experiment that centered on rehabilitation through meditation and hard labor. In 1821, after receiving a $100,000 grant from the state, the Quakers purchased a cherry orchard on farmland north of Center City for $11,500. They then solicited plans for the world’s first prison entirely given to solitary confinement. Architects competed to provide the template that most successfully coordinated the twenty-four-hour surveillance of 250 inmates with the prisoners’ exercise, food, labor, plumbing, and ventilation needs. The winning proposal belonged to a British architect named John Haviland.
Haviland envisioned seven one-story cell blocks that radiated around a circular hub. Standing at the hub’s center, prison guards could see down the corridor of each cell block, which held two rows of eighteen cells; each cell had a stone floor, one bed, a toilet, a water tap, a desk, and a small skylight. To ensure anonymity and enforce silence, authorities planned on blindfolding the men as soon as they entered the prison walls, disorienting their sense of direction and discouraging them from communicating with guards. Meal servers would also minimize noise: before serving food and water through slots in the cell doors, they would pull wool socks over their shoes and attach leather straps to wagon wheels. Even exercise would be conducted quietly— Haviland planned for each cell to have a small yard behind it, enclosed by ten-foot walls. Guards arranged exercise so that prisoners in adjoining cells were not in their yards at the same time. And to frustrate prisoners from tapping codes against the pipes, Haviland looped hot water cyclinders from each cell into the corridor.
Although the Quakers believed their system offered mercy, many people disagreed. No prison had ever fully practiced solitary confinement, and prison reformers in America and Europe called the Philadelphia experiment cruel—accusations that started a pamphlet war between officials in Philadelphia and reformers in New York, New England, and Europe. Despite the controversy, however, tourists praised Haviland’s work in 1830. Although the first three cell blocks were occupied and operating as the Quakers had intended, it was the front entrance building, an expensive exercise in Gothic detail, which earned these rave reviews. Because of its initial success, the Eastern State Penitentiary, or the “prison at Cherry Hill” as the locals said, would influence more than three hundred prisons worldwide, becoming the most imitated American building in Europe and in Asia in the nineteenth century.
But by the time of William Westervelt’s trial, Haviland’s plans had failed. At the end of 1875, there were 1056 inmates sharing 585 cells.
In their monthly reports, wardens over the years had complained of odors, overcrowded conditions, and carbon monoxide poisoning. The walls surrounding each exercise yard had blocked air circulation, and heating stoves in tunnels underneath the cells had warmed sewer pipes, releasing sewage odors. Frustrated with Haviland’s spending, state commissioners had demanded that the architect alter his plans for the last four cell blocks so that the prison could house more prisoners. As a result, these four blocks had two floors, exercise yards disappeared, and prisoners shared cells. The warden was charged with pairing inmates who would not be tempted to talk, which sometimes meant placing the sane with the insane.
After Judge Elcock sentenced Westervelt on October 9, he returned to Moyamensing Prison in South Philadelphia. On April 20, 1875, a wagon delivered the prisoner to the doors of Eastern State Penitentiary. Guards escorted him underneath the tall arch and through the vestibule, two oak doors, and a gate. At the physician’s office, Westervelt took a bath and had a haircut and shave. He met with the doctor and the warden, and he received his summer clothes: cotton pants, two handkerchiefs, two pairs of socks, leather shoes, and a shirt with the number 8082 sewn into it. For the next seven years, 8082 would also be his name. Placing a hood over Westervelt’s head, a guard led him through the prison yard to his cell block, put his number on his cell door and reviewed the rules posted by a sign on the wall. The whale-oil lamp attached to the wall would stay lit until 9:00 P.M. After a few days of good behavior, he could ask for a Bible. Until then, he was left with his thoughts.