“For myself, sir, as an architect, I cannot too often repeat to you that both the design, and the execution of your works have interested me in the highest degree; and it gives me real pleasure to offer you my sincere thanks for the obliging manner in which you have furnished me with the information needed for my studies in your interesting country.”
Such testimony is the more impressive, when we remember that it comes from a gentleman who had not only exhibited convincing proofs of his fitness for the responsible duty to which he was called by his government, but who had at the same time shown his freedom from the constraints of mere imitation. As justly remarked by M. Moreau-Christophe, the plan of Mr. Haviland was not servilely copied; but while endeavoring to accommodate some of its details to peculiarities of religion, national character and climate, M. Blouet rendered his hearty tribute of acknowledgment, alike honorable to himself and to its object, for the reform which he had witnessed in the main elements of the design.
The most striking mode of illustrating the facts, is to assemble plans of the chief prisons erected before the Eastern Penitentiary, and to compare them with the plans of separate prisons for convicts, since constructed. It will be apparent at the first glance, that there has been a sudden and radical change, and that the Eastern Penitentiary is the head of the new series. Even in many particulars, in which the old and the new forms may exhibit a resemblance, there will be found an essential difference in the principle of the design; the same feature being found to have a different object, or a different relative value.
The influence of the reputation acquired by such success, was immediately felt in the enlargement of Mr. Haviland’s sphere of professional exertion. At the same time that he was occupied with the completion of the series of cell-blocks at Cherry Hill, he was also engaged upon several other similar works. The Western Penitentiary having been proved to be unsuited to its objects, he was invited, about the year 1834, to superintend its reconstruction in conformity with the plan of the Eastern. The authorities of the county of Alleghany requested his direction of the prison of that county, then about to be built; and he also drew the plan of its Court House. The State Penitentiary of New Jersey, was built by him after the model of Pennsylvania; and he also designed and superintended the erection of the prison of Essex county, in New Jersey, and the Halls of Justice, (the city prison,) of New York. The nearly simultaneous direction of these buildings at places very remote one from another, required an extraordinary energy and power of endurance. In 1841, the prison of Dauphin county was constructed by him at Harrisburg, the capital of the State; and it was at that time generally regarded as the best example in this country of a small county jail. It would be unfair to judge of the details of the preceding works, by a comparison of them with the latest and most costly specimens of this class of buildings. The English government at a great expense, and with a generous liberality of encouragement, of which there was no parallel in the United States, procured a series of experiments upon the ventilation of large buildings, and upon the fitness of various kinds of walls for the necessities of our discipline; and authorized the construction of a model prison, upon which were lavished the best science and art within reach of the commissioners; and the result was naturally an improvement in the details of contrivance, as well as in the material execution of these. The heating, ventilation, means of prompt communication, and other particulars of security and comfort were established by methods superior to any which had been previously in use in this country. The yards for exercise, which as first tried at Cherry Hill, were found to shade too much the cells on the ground floor, were detached and placed in the spaces between the blocks. The warden’s dwelling, which in the Eastern Penitentiary had been erected on the circumference of the radii, at a distance from the centre of supervision, (because of an original intention to have eight blocks of cells, instead of seven,) was fixed in its more suitable relative position. These changes, however, some of which were recommended by Mr. H. himself to the foreign commissioners who visited us,[1] do not diminish the weight due to the fact, that upon the construction of the Eastern Penitentiary, there was a sudden change of model; and that that establishment was the type of the new form, as respects essential features.
Notwithstanding the pride reasonably inspired by the flattering evidence of his success, it is one of the most creditable reminiscences connected with the professional career of Mr. H., that instead of resting upon what he had accomplished, instead of reluctantly yielding to the evidence of progress in Europe, he was prompt to seek and to employ in his own later designs, whatever new details he found to be sufficiently recommended by theoretical or experimental evidence. The funds at his disposal for the erection of county jails, were not adequate to the most perfect elaboration of his own, or other conceptions; but it may be seen that when called upon, as he was not long after the completion of the Dauphin county prison, to build one with forty cells for the county of Berks, in Pennsylvania; he availed himself of the opportunity to introduce some of the most recent conveniences of arrangement. In Lancaster county, where his services were next required, he exhibited the same professional interest. The prison of this county had not been long occupied, when he was summoned from his career of public usefulness. He died suddenly at his residence in Philadelphia, on the 28th day of March last.
We have, though necessarily in a brief and imperfect manner, adverted to the peculiar claims of Mr. Haviland, to the grateful recollection of every friend of the separate discipline; because in the progress of events, it may have happened that some of our readers have lost sight of that record of the “early and bad state,” which is requisite to judge rightly of his merits as the leader towards the present “improved state” of prison construction. Those who shall hereafter witness signal triumphs of benevolence and skill, to which his labors have opened the way, may—and if the fortune which has awaited even the most eminent of reformers shall not be reversed, probably will—fail to conceive the full measure of his contributions towards the crowning result; but while a tradition survives amongst his associates in prison reform, and their successors in Pennsylvania, his name will not cease to be mentioned with honorable distinction.
Amongst the memorials which he has left in other departments of his art, we might refer to the United States Naval Hospital at Norfolk, Virginia; and the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Asylum, recently finished at the capital of this State; both of which institutions manifest in a high degree the industrious preparation, the sound judgment, the economy, and the practical skill, which he employed upon his designs. Regarding his function as that of an exponent of the knowledge which enlightened observation had gathered from experience, his first step was to acquaint himself with the best conceptions of those for whom he was to interpret by physical structure; and he wrought with fidelity to express those conceptions by the most fitting external fabric; but our limits compel us to abstain from a notice of these and similar works.
In conclusion, it must be added, that while witnessing the establishment of his reputation, in a manner rarely exampled in the history of his profession in modern times, especially where the object has not been to minister to the wonder and delight of the multitude, Mr. Haviland maintained a singular modesty of deportment and of speech, even amongst those who knew most intimately the interest which his success had excited in his own bosom. He was frank and amiable in his intercourse, and liberal in the instruction of those who sought his advice upon the important subject of his principal thoughts. He has left to his survivors and to posterity the example of an unpretending, but eminently useful career.
At a meeting of the Philadelphia Prison Society, held soon after his decease, the President, in appropriate terms, announced the decease of Mr. Haviland; and the following resolutions were unanimously adopted, and ordered to be printed in the Society’s Journal.