Last week, I discussed
the history of Eastern State Penitentiary.
I find the Quaker ideas for punishment and penitence really interesting. These ideas had to be executed properly in
order to create the isolation and self-reflection that was so important to the
early prison reformers and the Quaker roots of prisons in Pennsylvania. The man whose design encapsulated everything
they wanted was John Haviland, “the most famous and internationally influential
prison architect of all time” (1).
Haviland was born in December 1792
in Somerset, England. We don’t know much
about his early life, but he was good at math and art and so was sent to London
in 1811 as an apprentice to the architect James Elmes. By 1815, Haviland left London for St.
Petersburg. He wanted to be an Imperial
Engineer. This did not work out and he
left Russia, but not before meeting Sir George von Sonntag. Von Sonntag had lived in Philadelphia and
probably suggested that Haviland head to Pennsylvania.
Haviland arrived in Philadelphia in
1816 “armed with letters of introduction to President Monroe and others,
written by von Sonntag and John Quincy Adams, then United States Minister to
Russia” (2). Once in Philadelphia,
Haviland opened an architectural drawing school. He also began to get commissions for
churches, public buildings, and homes.
When, in 1821, Philadelphia was looking to build a prison, Haviland
submitted a design and won. This would
be Eastern State Penitentiary. Haviland
supervised the construction of Eastern State until it was finished in 1836.
Being the architect of Eastern
State Penitentiary made Haviland almost a household name. He was commissioned to build private and
public buildings throughout Philadelphia.
He was also commissioned for the asylum in current-day Portsmouth,
Virginia. Haviland was also working on
buildings in Pittsburgh, Trenton (New Jersey), and New York City. He even had the opportunity to redesign the
Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh that had been started by rival architect,
William Strickland.
Haviland supervised the
construction of the court and detention center in New York City “which later
became known as the ‘Tombs’ because of its heavy Egyptian style – the name
persisting even in subsequent structures” (3).
Prisons became Haviland’s specialty.
He designed the state prisons in New Jersey, Rhode Island and Missouri,
and the county jail in Trenton, New Jersey.
He also submitted plans for prisons in Washington, DC, Arkansas and
Louisiana, but none of these were built.
In 1839, Haviland was a little
disillusioned with the United States and offered his services to build prisons
in England, France, and Mexico. But in
1840, when Pennsylvania allowed individual counties to build their own prisons,
Haviland was right back at it. He built
the prison in Harrisburg in 1840, Reading in 1846, and Lancaster in 1849.
Haviland died in March 1852 of
apoplexy. In addition to not knowing
much about his early life and family, we don’t know much about his later
personal life. We know Haviland married
von Sonntag’s sister and that they had one daughter and two sons, but that’s
about it.
So that’s Haviland. Not a whole lot is known about his outside of
his building designs. He was extremely
influential though, even if it’s in sort of a roundabout way…
Haviland’s key piece of prison
design was in the radial prison layout.
He didn’t come up with this design though. England’s Suffolk County Jail in Ipswich,
designed by William Blackburn, another prison designer, was probably the first
radial jail with a central surveillance point.
Also, mental hospitals at this time had radial plans. In 1814, while Haviland was in London
studying architecture, a plan for a radial mental hospital was published. It’s possible that Haviland saw or heard of
both of these radial plans.
At any rate, Haviland took the radial
design and brought it to America where it really caught on. Three of the prisons Haviland worked on
influenced other prisons at the time and for years afterwards: the prison at
Pittsburgh, which was V shaped; the prison at Trenton, which was a
half-radiating plan, with five wings; and Eastern State. Trenton’s plan included improvements on the
Eastern State plan, including “detached exercise yards, cell doors into the
corridors and two-storey wings” (4).
This was the most imitated prison design of Haviland’s.
As mentioned in the previous post
about Eastern State, the solitary confinement that it had was controversial. It was really only ever used in
Pennsylvania. The rival system from New
York (solitary confinement at night; communal, but silent work during the day)
was adopted pretty much everywhere else in the United States. The New York system also had rectangular cell
blocks, rather than the radial plan. The
radial prisons were used in a few places in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Indiana, and New Jersey, as well as the United States Disciplinary Barracks in
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas built in the 1930s (5). So, while Haviland’s plan wasn’t really used
throughout the United States, it was in bringing the idea to the U.S. that made
it popular throughout the rest of the world.
As was mentioned in the previous
post, a lot of countries (including Great Britain, France, Prussia, Russia, and
Belgium) sent delegations to the United States to take a look at Eastern State
and other prisons. Alexis de Tocqueville
and Charles Dickens both visited Eastern State; de Tocqueville liked what he
saw, Dickens did not. Most of the
delegations agreed with de Tocqueville, preferring the Eastern State type
prison to the other prisons they saw in the United States.
When Britain began building these
type of prisons (while they’d had them before, they hadn’t really caught on
nationwide), Haviland submitted designs.
The Model Prison, called Pentonville, was this design. Pentonville had similar modifications to
those of the Trenton prison. Pentonville
was completed in 1842; it became the most copied prison in the world. Britain built similar prisons throughout its
empire, in Egypt, Australia, Malta, Burma, and Canada (6).
Other countries also copied the
Pentonville design. Berlin built theirs
in 1844, and by 1910 Germany had over 40 of this design. Belgium had over 20 modelled on Pentonville,
some opting for V or X shapes rather than the multiwinged radial plan. Spain built over 40 prisons based on
Pentonville, beginning in 1859, including the prisons in Madrid and
Valencia. Holland, Switzerland, much of
Scandinavia, Finland, Portugal, Austria, and Hungary all built large prisons
based on Pentonville (7).
The only large countries that did
not build large prisons based on Pentonville were France, Russia, and
Italy. At this time all three countries
were in the midst of political unrest and so their governments were not stable enough
for large scale construction projects.
All three countries did built small detention centers on the radial plan
though.
These Pentonville copies extended
all the way to China and Japan. The
first westernizing influences in Japan were through prison reform. Japan built over thirty-three radial prisons
modelled on Pentonville, including full circle radial designs.
Prison reform was a huge topic in
much of the world in the late 18th c. and early 19th c.
and these new prison ideas spread rapidly worldwide. By the end of the 19th c. though,
there were new prison designs being developed, and few radial prisons were
built except for a few in the United States.
So, as I mentioned Haviland was
influential, even if he didn’t develop the ideas he’s known for. He brought radial designs from England to the
United States. The rest of the world was
looking to the young United States in all sorts of matters, including prison
design. Haviland’s American prison
designs were then copied and brought back to England, where they created the
Pentonville system. Pentonville was then
copied throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
I find this so fascinating. There’s really nothing new under the sun and
Haviland’s path shows us that. Haviland
didn’t invent the radial plan, and it wasn’t truly his American prisons that
were copied, but rather, it was all of his ideas together and modified that
became the famous prisons worldwide. So,
even if you don’t have a new idea, you might bring it to a new audience or have
a new way of implementing it. That’s
really cool to think about.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 - Eastern State Penitentiary-John Haviland
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