Vanishing Point by Bill Fultz on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Cell Block 7
Eastern State Penetentiary
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Two, 5 image HDR’s, Photomerged

Eastern State has more to it than just abandonment, the architecture here is awesome! Here in Cell Block 7 you can walk up to the 2nd level catwalk giving an impressive perspective of this section of the prison. I’ve posted a picture before of Cell Block 7 as one of my first posts ever on Flickr and even though I like the shot, I’ve always wanted to return and recapture it. On my first trip here in2007 I had just bought a digital camera so basically the shots were from my first trip here were snapshots.

Located just outside Downtown Philadelphia, Eastern State Penitentiary stands like a fortress over an entire city square block. Constructed in 1829, at the time of it’s completion it was considered a state-of-the-art maximum security prison and was world famous for it’s brutality and design. The idea of the time was that you change the behavior of inmates through “confinement in solitude with labor.” The prison design is like that of a wagon wheel and was copied throughout the world in the early through late 1800’s. In 1971 it was abandoned and left in ruin until 1994 when the first daily tours began. Much of the prison is left in a half-state in decay, and some areas are left in pure ruin. It really is one of the coolest places I’ve visited in my life.