Gargoyle on outside portal to Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By Dorevabelfiore (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.I probably should have saved this one for closer to Halloween, but I just couldn’t wait because it’s almost too good to be true. This very threatening-looking, shackled gargoyle can be found on the exterior of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’m not sure if the gargoyle is functional or not, but it fits perfectly into the prison’s neo-Gothic design. In the nineteenth century, when Eastern State and many other American prisons were built, much was made about the relationship between revival architectural styles (including Gothic and Egyptian) and philosophies of crime and punishment. It would make a fascinating topic of study, but I’m not sure I would have the stomach to poke too deeply into the history of the penitentiary system.
Eastern State isn’t a functioning prison anymore, but it’s still a pretty creepy place and hosts an annual Halloween event called Terror Behind the Walls. I know I wouldn’t have the stomach for that one.
Alexandra Kiely, aka A Scholarly Skater, is an art historian based in the northeastern United States. She loves wandering down the dark and dusty corners of art history and wholeheartedly believes in visual art's ability to enrich every person's life.
Her favorite periods of art history are 19th-century American painting and medieval European art and architecture. When she not looking at, reading about, writing about, or teaching art, she's probably ice dancing or reading.
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Go there on Halloween and any other time of year! It’s a really cool place and isn’t that creepy at all. It can be quite pretty in the right light (I blogged about my recent trip there: http://wp.me/p5id06-gq). To show how absolutely not creepy it is, every summer a few thousand Tastykakes are flung from its roof onto the crowds below celebrating Bastille Day. The gargoyle isn’t creepy, he’s just reaching for processed snack goods!
A Scholarly Skater 
Truly horrific! Remind me not to go there at Halloween!
Go there on Halloween and any other time of year! It’s a really cool place and isn’t that creepy at all. It can be quite pretty in the right light (I blogged about my recent trip there: http://wp.me/p5id06-gq). To show how absolutely not creepy it is, every summer a few thousand Tastykakes are flung from its roof onto the crowds below celebrating Bastille Day. The gargoyle isn’t creepy, he’s just reaching for processed snack goods!