A new view

I have to admit that I walked into ESP with a bias view, I didn't think that I would like and didn't think I would really learn anything. I will also admit that I was wrong, the tour was great and I picked about a lot of information about the place and penitentiary and jails themselves. I think people should definitely consider that part of Eastern State a museum. It gives you the history of the place, who the people who were to come up with the idea, the actual kind of people that would have been living in the cells, and the evolution of the place itself. If I didn't go today, I would have never knew that Benjamin Franklin was part of the idea or that people from all over the world came to see just how it was built and worked. For the haunted part of ESP, I think they should get a pass for it. The guide said they receive 65% of their budget from these kinds of tours and it helps them maintain the place so that they can give actual history tours of the place. The question I guess would be, how do you separate the two? And in all honesty, I really don't have an answer for it. It would be nice for everyone to think about this place as something that is important to the city of Philadelphia and also the country, but when most people hear Eastern State Penitentiary, they think of the Terror behind the walls.
For involving the community with ESP, that is something that I would have no clue on how to do. I am pretty sure the area is made up of college students, hipsters, young families, and young professionals. That is a very diverse group of people that have different motives and interest in life. Crooke talks about community development with the area, but with ESP the buildings are falling down and there didn't seem to be places where you could have neighborhood get together. Also, most people don't really grow up in the area. A few of friends have lived or live there now and they have never even been to the place before. In Crooke's essay she uses examples of communities and museums coming together, but these are very different than Eastern State. A museum in Cape Town and Northern Island are where terrible things have happened to the people who have lived there. They want the history of the places to never to be forgotten and let other generations learn about what happened to their families in the past. These places had a community to cater to, ESP doesn't really have one.