He's been dead for 72 years, but Al Capone just got a cellmate at Eastern State Penitentiary

For 20 years, visitors to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia got a glimpse of how Al Capone may have lived while incarcerated there in 1929.

But a new installation at the former prison — now historic museum — reveals something new: that Capone had a cellmate.

Capone's solo cell was for decades based on a newspaper account in the Public Ledger that described a “beautiful rug of soft colors,’’ refined wood furniture, “tasteful paintings’’ and a cabinet-style radio that played waltzes.

The exact cell to house America’s most famous gangster, in what was once the world’s most famous prison, remains a guess.

As part of on-going preservation and renovation projects, the history museum planned to paint the crumbling walls of the cell to look more like they might have looked when Capone lived there. However, workers uncovered in the peeling layers of paint a glimpse of the museum's past they wanted to preserve.

Instead of painting over new evidence of murals and other decorative elements, they “moved’’ Al Capone next door to Cell 3, giving the bootlegger a more historically accurate exhibit that finds him in less fancy digs, which he shares with a cellmate. The original cell is left empty, its peeling walls exposed. Visitors can tour both spaces.

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Capone’s seven months at Eastern State was his first stint in prison, following a concealed weapon bust in a movie house while he was en route from Atlantic City to Chicago. (Capone was accused of getting busted on purpose to stay safe from rival gangs.)

The expanded Capone installation opened to the public last week. It can be found in an area of the prison known as “Park Avenue’’ that historically housed the more high-profile prisoners. It is based in part on a second newspaper article from the Philadelphia Record that contradicted some of the descriptions in the first report, and revealed that Capone did not have a private cell after all:

“Capone's cell, which he shares with an embezzler known as 'Bill' Coleman, prison statistician, doesn't look like the cozy den of a king of leisure … It is by no means the most luxuriously furnished cell in the prison. There are others that are more sumptuous.”

The new cell may not be “sumptuous,’’ but it still contains a desk, small table with fresh flowers, dresser, nightstand, and cigar stand complete with half-smoked cigar. There are small paintings on the wall, and Capone gets to keep his waltzes.

Capone was released on March 17, 1930, an event that was greeted with much public fanfare, as evidenced by newspaper clippings from that time. The gangster would later serve part of an 11-year sentence for tax evasion beginning in 1931, doing time in both Atlanta and, most famously, in Alcatraz. He died in Florida from complications of syphilis in 1947.

Before the new exhibition opened to the public, Liz Trumbull, manager of Historic Preservation and Architectural Conservation, offered a closer look at the now-empty Cell 1, where she pointed out evidence of a large mural, as well as other decorative elements that may date back to Capone’s time.

We asked her to explain in more depth why the cell was moved, why the original walls were left uncovered and insights into the new exhibit.

Tell us more about Cell 1?

We call that the Archeological Cell, and it’s where we used to interpret Capone for the last 20 years. It was about 2000-2001 when the exhibit first went in, and we have had this fine furniture in that cell all this time that we picked up based on that first newspaper article. But the walls looked like walls at any other place in Eastern State, with peeling paint and plaster. It wasn’t representative of what it would have looked like when he was here. So we chose to do a preservation project.

We planned to peel back that first layer of plaster and then move his stuff back in with a new coat of paint … (but) we uncovered almost 20 layers of paint, which caused us to pause our project and reevaluate. We are evaluating the paint samples and trying to understand how the cell may have looked over time, and are supporting that with archival evidence, reading about inmates painting in their cells or about institutional painting campaigns.

We also have historic images of cells over time. That’s when we saw the mural in a photo taken outside this cell. That was particularly interesting to us. The only remaining paint evidence (of the mural) was that vertical stripe in that back left corner, and if you overlay a new photo of the cell, that lines up exactly with the painted frame in the old photo. So there was a mural in that cell, if not that mural. … This is how it is going to remain for the time being. We have lot of questions that remain. And this is too important to cover it up. We want to keep that evidence for future studies.

We know from historic images that there were a couple of really detailed murals in other cells, but we don’t have a record of where they might have been. We did a very brief survey of cells throughout the prison and while we didn’t find murals anywhere, we found evidence of other cool decorative schemes, geometric designs, faux wood painting, that was happening in a lot of places … including a common horizontal stripe that exists in a lot of the cells.

OK, let’s move next door. Tell us about Cell 3?

We began calling that the Restoration Cell after we began the project. The big changes were that we painted the walls of the cell. We chose that color based off what we learned by studying both of these, contemporary to 1929 when he was here. It’s a lime wash on top of plaster. We patched some of the walls to make it a smoother surface, and then moved his furniture back in. We left one of the walls unpainted to provide a piece of evidence of what it would have looked like.

We have this other article that also describes his cell, and what we realized recently is they were published one day apart from each other, and one of the articles talks about how luxe Al Capone’s cell was, with this glowing image of cell at Eastern State. But the next day, it (the second article) includes a number of quotes from the warden that there are other cells that are much more “sumptuous,’’ and is was really nothing special.

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The big change was that second bed …He had a cellmate, and his name was Bill Coleman. The second article provided context and perhaps painted a more realistic picture, but we used both to interpret what it might have looked like.

We also have a toilet and we added toilet paper to remind us that even if the cell may look comfortable, they didn’t have any privacy. That toilet is visible from the door and it is visible from the cell. That’s the reality of life in prison… And those are authentic beds from Eastern State, we took them from elsewhere on site. The other furnishings are true to the period.

Elsewhere at Eastern State

Jewish Life: Tour the restored synagogue at Eastern State, believed to be the first built in an American prison, and in use from 1924 to 1971.  Workshops near the synagogue have been converted into The William Portner Memorial Exhibit on Jewish Life at Eastern State Penitentiary as part of the first fully restored part of the historic prison.

Catholic Chaplain’s Office: Inner offices built by Warden Michael Cassidy in the 1880s but they were later converted into space for prison chaplains of various faiths. In 1955, inmate Lester Smith painted murals on the walls of the Catholic chaplain’s office where the fragile images are preserved today. Look for the mural of the inmate kneeling in Confession.

The Big Graph and Prisons Today: Learn about modern day incarceration rates in America, the country with the highest number of people serving time in the world.

The Big Graph is a “16-foot tall, 3,500-pound plate steel sculpture (that) illustrates three sets of statistics, depending on the viewer’s position,’’ according to the prison website. “From the south, The Big Graph illustrates the unprecedented growth in U.S. incarceration rates since 1900. From the north it illustrates the racial breakdown of the American prison population in 1970 and today. From the east, The Big Graph charts every nation in the world, both by rate of incarceration and by policies around capital punishment.’’

Guests can learn more about modern day prison life and issues such as capital punishment in the “Prisons Today’’ exhibit, which speaks to the core mission of the museum

New Art Installations: If you visit this season, be sure to tour newly installed art installations including Dehanza Rogers’ “#BlackGirlhood,’’ a video exploration of “the school to prison pipeline’’ and “sexual abuse to prison pipeline’’ for young black women; Benjamin Wills’ “Airplanes,’’ an exhibit of handcrafted paper airplanes from incarcerated people throughout the U.S., and Alexander Rosenberg’s “A Climber’s Guide to Eastern State Penitentiary Architecture … And How to Escape It.’’

If you go

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site is located at 22nd Street and Fairmount Avenue. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 pm. Admission includes “The Voices of Eastern State" Audio Tour, narrated by actor Steve Buscemi; Hands-On History interactive experiences; history exhibits; and a critically acclaimed series of artist installations. Visit easternstate.org