ABSTRACT
Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) was America’s first attempt at humanely rehabilitating criminals. Inspired by the Quaker philosophy of nonviolence, ESP admitted its first prisoner on 29 October 1829. The greatest praise given John Haviland, ESP’s young architect, was that he “captured a philosophy in stone.” Modeled after European prisons described by John Howard, ESP had a central rotunda with seven radiating cell blocks. This hub-and-spoke design was replicated in approximately three hundred prisons worldwide.
