Eastern State Visitor Center

FAIN: CHA-264417-19

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Inc. (Philadelphia, PA 19130-2610)
Sara Jane Elk (Project Director: August 2018 to October 2023)
Kerry Sautner (Project Director: October 2023 to present)

Construction of a new visitor center at the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site.  The visitor center will provide accessibility and amenity upgrades and allow for enhanced humanities programming at this historic site in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site seeks a four-year $500,000 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the design and construction of the museum’s first visitor center, fulfilling a long overdue need both to provide reasonable accommodations for our visitors and enabling Eastern State to better fulfill our mission and the goals of our strategic plan. Although Eastern State now ranks among Pennsylvania’s top visitor attractions, yet it has never had modern amenities including accessible restrooms with flushable toilets. The new visitor center will create a climate-controlled multipurpose room which will be suitable to host an array of humanities programs from evening events and pop-up exhibits to lectures and forums on issues related to criminal justice reform.