25 + 170 points
Disobedient Nature by Dela Dejavoo
June 25th, 2008 10:44 AM
This past week I had to chance to explore the fine city of Philadelphia for the first time. It being the old stomping grounds of Auntie Matter, she was kind enough to show me around the city. One of the places she took me was Eastern State Penitentiary. Opened in 1829, Eastern State was the first penitentiary in the world. Where jails up to that point had acted merely as holding cells to house criminals and keep them off the streets, the penitentiary had the lofty goal of actually reforming it's inmates. It sought to do this by keeping each inmate in total solitary confinement for the duration of his/her stay. Each prisoner was hooded when brought in and walked to their single cell where they were to have no contact with another human being until their sentence was up. The guards even wore socks over their shoes to muffle the noise of their feet as they walked down the corridors.
As I walked through the now defunct penitentiary, the idea of prisoners being held in such isolation made those tiny stone cellblocks seem all the more daunting to me.
And it was all the more striking when I saw that these walls built entirely for the purpose of being inpenetratable had now been quite penetrated by nature.

This was the most powerful example I encountered (forgive the quality of the photo as it was quite dark in there). Here is one of the cells, built to allow nothing in and nothing out, with a tree (complete with fungus) growing right through the middle of it.
I was rather in awe of this vision.
If you click through below there are a few more examples of how nature has taken over this immense castle-like prison.
As I walked through the now defunct penitentiary, the idea of prisoners being held in such isolation made those tiny stone cellblocks seem all the more daunting to me.
And it was all the more striking when I saw that these walls built entirely for the purpose of being inpenetratable had now been quite penetrated by nature.

This was the most powerful example I encountered (forgive the quality of the photo as it was quite dark in there). Here is one of the cells, built to allow nothing in and nothing out, with a tree (complete with fungus) growing right through the middle of it.
I was rather in awe of this vision.
If you click through below there are a few more examples of how nature has taken over this immense castle-like prison.
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foecake, chicago, foecakefleur10 comment(s)
posted by susy derkins on June 25th, 2008 11:46 AM
Whoa, great story, and yet we´ll go through. Favorited.
posted by Sparrows Fall on June 25th, 2008 11:51 AM
This is fantastic. I love the image of that cell, built to aggressively cut people off from the outside world, burst at its seams with the power a massive tree trunk.
posted by Dela Dejavoo on June 25th, 2008 8:43 PM
i don't know what "boss" means in this context.
posted by Rainy on June 26th, 2008 6:04 AM
My guess is it means cool, well done, impressive, neato.
posted by Julian Muffinbot on June 26th, 2008 3:37 PM
i already mentioned this to dela, but i figured i should let all you other sf0ans know that i walked through that same prison only a day later, and i very nearly took a picture of that same tree growing through the cell, with this task in mind, and for some reason i thought "nah." i guess i knew even before reading this task that i'd already been beat!
Yes! It is really unnerving to walk past there at night.