Philadelphia, PA Photo - Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Eastern State Penitentiary. The Eastern State Penitentiary is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located on 2027 Fairmount Avenue between Corinthian Avenue and North 22nd Street in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia and was operational from 1829 until 1971. The penitentiary refined the revolutionary system of separate incarceration first pioneered at the Walnut Street Jail which emphasized principles of reform rather than punishment. Notorious criminals such as bank robber Willie Sutton and Al Capone were held inside its unique wagon wheel design. When the building was erected it was the largest and most expensive public structure ever constructed, quickly becoming a model for more than 300 prisons worldwide.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.