Online Eastern State Tour Includes Then and Now Photos

When I wrote about how there’d be no Terror Behind the Walls this year, I stumbled across an online Eastern State tour. Well, two of them. Sort of. In addition to their interactive Now map, they’ve also included a link to a past tour. Both offer 360-degree views, but each is also a little different.

The Now Tour

A map with pins invites online visitors to explore Eastern State Penitentiary.  The pins highlight 10 areas of the prison, including:

1. The Facade
2. Cellblock 7
3. The Surveillance Hub
4. The Hospital
5. The Hole
6. Death Row
7. The Kitchen and Bakery
8. The Baseball Field
9. The Synagogue
10. Al Capone’s Cell

When you click a pin an info box with a photo of the area pops up. You can move around within the photo to see side to side and even behind you.

Also, if you click the arrows, you not only explore the pin you clicked, but its surrounding area. Click enough and you’ll make your way to other areas highlighted in the Now tour.

I discovered this when I clicked the pin over the Baseball Field and realized I could navigate across the field to the Big Graph sculpture that displays incarceration statistics. Below is a photo I took of the graph during my visit. (Which presents very interesting, but also sobering and discouraging, stats about the incarceration system in our country.)

Prison Facts

You can learn things about the prison that you might not have known. Here are a few facts I’d forgotten but re-learned thanks to the online Eastern State tour:

• It looks like a medieval or Gothic prison on purpose. “Architect John Haviland said that the building should ‘strike fear into the hearts of those who thought of committing a crime.’ “
• The prisoner’s Synagogue is thought to be the first of it’s kind in America.
• There was a Death Row at Eastern State, but no prisoners were ever executed there.

Eastern State’s Online Tour from 1998

They also include a link to a previous online tour from 1998. They invite visitors to check that out and compare those images of how the prison looked then versus now.

Most of the areas are the same, except the 1998 tour takes you to more places within the prison, including:

• The Base of the Guard Tower
• Inside the Operating Room
• Cell Block 4 – Lower Level
• Cell Block 12 – 2nd Floor
• Cell Block 6 Link
• Cell Block 2, 10, 11 Link
• Greenhouse and Perimeter
• Exercise Cell
• Warden’s Office
• Dining Halls
• Behind the Clock
• Inside the Guard

On many of the photos, there’s an “i” with a circle around it. Click those to get information on the area.

Some photos also include a “target” icon. (A circle with four points on each side and a dot in the middle.) Sometimes they’re not readily visible. You sort of have to navigate around the 360-degree view to make them appear. (This also applies to the “i” icons.) Clicking the targets jumps you to another area of the prison.

Sometimes you even have a choice of where to be taken, like when you’re on the roof. There are multiple targets to choose from. Click one to zap over to the Guard Tower, behind the clock, or even to the Chapel.

Ghost Tours?

Sadly, there’s not a ghost tour up on their site, and neither of these tours mentions the possible paranormal activity that makes so many ghost hunters and paranormal investigators curious about this place.

In fact, COVID-19 aside, I don’t think they’re as open to paranormal investigators like they once were. I can’t find any info on their site about it at all. Not like I once could.

Back in 2010, I wrote about Eastern State’s ghost hunt prices. They were high, because after being on the two biggest ghost hunting shows them, Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures, it was a much sought after destination.

Now? They’re non-existent.

I wonder if they even still have the info card in Cellblock 14 or any narration on their audio tour about their paranormal activity? Or will they, when they reopen?

It definitely seems like they’re trying to move away from their haunted history to focus more on bringing light to a need for change and improvements within the correctional system.

Price

The best part of the online Eastern State tour is that it costs nothing except your time!

For More Info

To take the online tour and see the Then and Now photos, visit: https://www.easternstate.org/explore/online-tour

Check-In

Have you taken the online Eastern State tour? Which one did you like better: then or now?

I kind of liked the tour from 1998 best for some reason. At least that’s the one I found myself spending the most time on.