Established 2023

Eastern State Penitentiary

Opened in Philadelphia in 1829, Eastern State pioneered the so-called Pennsylvania System of solitary confinement.

Individuals were caged alone in small cells, with no communication between each other or with the outside world.

Though today we know that profound isolation damages mental health, its original designers believed it would encourage introspection and penitence.

By the end if the nineteenth century, this system had broken down, mostly due to a lack of space, and printing presses entered the prisons in the 1890s. Until the prison closed in 1971, the print shop produced forms, documents, and reports for the government and published a range of newspapers edited and written by the men incarcerated there.

Learn more about Eastern State.

The Umpire (1913-1919) was a four-page weekly that circulated within Eastern State. At first, it was created to share news about the prison's baseball league. Later, it published poems, jokes, news, and editorials on prison labor and reform.

Roberto imagines what it might have been like to receive a newspaper in your cell at Eastern State

Pen Points and Grate-Phil News (circa 1934) were companion four-page monthly newspapers printed at Eastern State Penitentiary: one for circulation at Eastern State Penitentiary, the other for Graterford Prison. Only a single copy of each is known to exist.

How do walls affect a person’s mindset in prison?

Eastern Echo (1956-1967) was a color magazine printed at Eastern State Penitentiary on modern equipment. Circulating nationally, it published a wide range of art, scholarship, and opinion on prisons. In early 1968, the editorial team quit because of censorship.