Moyamensing Prison: Egyptian Gothic on Passyunk Avenue

At this corner of East Passyunk Avenue once stood one of Philadelphia's most architecturally striking and historically dark institutions. Moyamensing Prison opened in eighteen thirty-five, designed by architect Thomas U. Walter in an English Gothic style, with Egyptian Revival touches such as the massive pylons of its debtors wing and lotus-column ornament an unusual choice for a place of confinement.

The prison pioneered isolated confinement as a reforming principle, and with later expansions could hold nearly five thousand inmates, with separate wings for women and African Americans. Among its most notorious residents was H. H. Holmes, widely considered America's first documented serial killer, who was executed here. Pennsylvania adopted the electric chair in nineteen thirteen and first used it in nineteen fifteen, ending the gallows era. The prison closed in nineteen sixty-three and was demolished five years later, leaving only a street corner to mark where so much history unfolded.