Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh was a Pennsylvania state prison that operated for nearly 140 years on the North Side bank of the Ohio River before permanently closing in 2017. Known in its later years as SCI Pittsburgh, the facility held maximum-security inmates and also functioned as a diagnostic and classification center for the western half of the state’s correctional system. The roughly 20-acre site now sits vacant, with the state planning full demolition and cleanup by 2027.
How the Prison Began
The original Western State Penitentiary opened in the 1820s in what was then Allegheny City, near the Allegheny Commons. Architect William Strickland designed it on a variation of the panopticon model, a circular layout that let guards watch every cell from a single central point.1Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Western State Penitentiary Historic Resource Survey Form It embodied the “Pennsylvania System” of penology, which kept inmates in solitary confinement around the clock on the theory that isolation would push them toward moral reflection. In practice, the system proved brutal and unworkable.
An 1833 legislative act authorized demolishing that first structure, and a second prison rose on the Commons site by 1836. The surrounding land was redesigned as a public park in 1867, which blocked further expansion just as the inmate population was growing.
The Move to the Ohio River
In 1876, prison inspectors proposed taking over the abandoned House of Refuge, a former juvenile detention site about three miles away on the banks of the Ohio River. Governor John Hartranft approved $100,000 for construction on June 12, 1878, and the first inmates transferred to the Riverside site on November 27, 1878.1Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Western State Penitentiary Historic Resource Survey Form By the summer of 1885, the old Commons location stood completely empty.
The new architecture abandoned the panopticon idea in favor of traditional cell blocks with tiered walkways and heavy masonry walls, reflecting the era’s shift toward congregate labor and prison industry. The towering stone walls and Gothic-influenced exterior that defined the prison’s appearance for most of the twentieth century dated largely from these campaigns and from major additions in 1921 and 1938.
Notable Prisoners and the 1997 Tunnel Escape
Among the most prominent inmates was Alexander Berkman, the anarchist who attempted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick during the 1892 Homestead Strike. Berkman was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 22 years, serving 13 before his release in 1905.2Cambridge Core. The Ambivalence of Alexander Berkman’s Anti-Prison Anarchism He later published a detailed memoir about his years inside.
The facility’s most dramatic security breach came in January 1997, when six inmates tunneled out of the maximum-security compound. They used a jackhammer and other prison-issue power tools assigned to a steam-pipe installation project in a cellar beneath the machine shop, where some prisoners were working unsupervised for up to an hour at a time. The tunnel ran roughly 40 feet long and 15 feet deep, passing under the prison walls. A multi-state manhunt eventually recaptured all six men, and the breakout exposed serious weaknesses in the aging facility’s oversight and physical infrastructure.
Why the Prison Closed in 2017
The Department of Corrections first mothballed the site in 2005 to cut maintenance costs on the deteriorating nineteenth-century buildings, then reopened it around 2007 to absorb inmates from other overcrowded institutions. The final shutdown came in January 2017, when the governor announced that SCI Pittsburgh would close permanently.
The prison was the most expensive in the state to operate, costing $100.5 million a year, and it needed an estimated $15.1 million in infrastructure work just to address immediate problems. Closing it was projected to save roughly $81 million annually. More than 1,900 inmates were transferred to other facilities, and over 500 staff members were offered positions at other state-run institutions. Because the prison had also functioned as a diagnostic and classification center that processed newly sentenced individuals for placement across the system, the shutdown required reworking intake procedures statewide.
What Is Happening to the Site Now
Since the 2017 closure, the Pennsylvania Department of General Services has controlled the vacant riverfront property. In 2022, the state legislature passed Act 24, authorizing DGS to convey the roughly 20.3-acre site through a competitive solicitation process to the buyer offering the best value and return on investment.3Pennsylvania General Assembly. 2021-2022 Regular Session HB 2171 PN 2894 A review committee may weigh factors beyond price, including proposed land use, job creation, and return to the tax rolls. The law explicitly bars using any portion of the site as a gambling facility.
A 2023 Land Use Feasibility Study commissioned by DGS recommended full demolition as the most viable path to maximizing the property’s development potential. Environmental assessments identified significant contamination throughout the campus, including asbestos and lead paint, all of which require remediation.4Pennsylvania Department of General Services. SCI-Pittsburgh Land Use Feasibility Study Estimated cost for demolition and cleanup is about $43 million.
Demolition was delayed by a lease with Paramount, which used the empty prison as a filming location for the television series “Mayor of Kingstown.” The production brought an estimated $90 million into the regional economy and created more than 3,000 jobs before the state informed Paramount in late 2024 that filming would need to end by November 2025. Demolition work was expected to begin as soon as that lease expired, with full site remediation and clearance projected for completion by 2027.5Pennsylvania Department of General Services. SCI Pittsburgh Land Use Feasibility Study Annual security costs for the vacant property run between $800,000 and $1 million while the state waits for the site to be cleared and sold.