Restored Synagogue Opens to the Public for the First Time with special look at Chaplain’s Office

Dates:

Saturday and Sunday,
April 4 and 5, 2009

Tour Times:

Ongoing from 10 am to 4:45 pm. Reservations are strongly recommended and can be made online now or by calling our ticket office at (215) 236-3300 between 10 am and 5 pm daily.

Reserve your tour now

Price:

Free with admission to historic site. General Eastern State audio tour included.

Eastern State Penitentiary’s beautiful, freshly-restored synagogue opens to the public for the first time this weekend, with a rare opportunity to see the Catholic Chaplain’s Office as well.

The synagogue, originally constructed in the 1920s, had fallen into near total ruin after the penitentiary’s abandonment in 1971. The space has been faithfully restored to its appearance in 1960, with dark wooden benches surrounding the room, beautiful ark, an ornate plaster Star of David and an eternal flame. The Reader’s Table has even been restored and returned to its place. A set of workshops next to the synagogue has been converted into an exhibit about the synagogue’s history and Jewish life inside the institution over its 142-year history. The exhibit includes oversized images of the synagogue in use by prisoners, and of its appearance before restoration.

This weekend only, visitors will have the opportunity to meet the curators and archaeologists, see the artifacts recovered from the space, and be the first to visit the reborn holy space and exhibit. Tours of the Alfred W. Fleisher Memorial Synagogue and the exhibit will continue daily throughout the season.

The tour continues with a visit to Eastern State’s Catholic Chaplain’s Office, prior to its renovation and stabilization. The office, with its beautiful Catholic and Prison-themed murals painted by a former inmate, has never been open to the general public. Visitors have an opportunity to see it before restoration begins. Eastern State’s Board of Directors has created a special Catholic Chaplain’s Office Restoration Committee, headed by Jean Bender and Dominic Liberi, dedicated to raising the funds needed to preserve this unique site. The first step in this restoration project is an in-depth analysis of the space and what it will take to restore it. Eastern State has raised the initial $30,000 for this assessment study through a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission as well as donors to the Catholic Chaplain’s Office Restoration Fund. The study is in progress and the preliminary results indicate that restoring this sacred space and determining how to convey its history to visitors will require an additional investment of more than $300,000. For information on how you can help support this project, please visit our stabilization page.