KFC, dinosaur prints, rock'n'roll: The stranger-than-fiction forgotten history of Graterford Prison

"It will be modern in every respect," said Eastern State Penitentiary warden John Groome.

That was 1928, and he was talking about the future State Correctional Institution Graterford, a monumental structure then being built in Montgomery County to accommodate the growing population of inmates from Philadelphia.

When it opened the following year, Graterford Prison was pitched in the media as "light-filled" and idyllic — but also "most economical," its kitchen "the last word in efficiency." Its long, echoing cell blocks reflected a transitional moment between Eastern State's, with its dungeon-like cells dedicated to what was thought to be the healing, reflective isolation of solitary confinement, and the new "modern": super-secure, surveilled with sterile pods of cells clustered around central common areas.

READ MORE: Pennsylvania's newest, most expensive prison is finally ready — and inmates are dreading it

As its replacement, SCI Phoenix, is formally dedicated Friday, it's hard to imagine nostalgia for Graterford. (It will not be demolished, but there are no immediate plans for reuse other than administrative offices.) Yet its 89-year history is the story of Pennsylvania's evolving correctional philosophy and practices.

Its past was a more violent time, with severe consequences including brutal deaths within prison walls. But it was also in some ways a more progressive one, when there were a fraction as many inmates and, in ways both beneficial and dangerous, the prison walls seemed more permeable. Orchestras and ballet troupes performed in the prison auditorium; lifers sold Kentucky Fried Chicken reportedly smuggled in by guards; inmates traveled to box at the Blue Horizon, perform skilled labor off-site, and record rock albums; and community and college sports teams were invited in to face off against teams of prisoner athletes.

The state paid construction contractors $400 million to build Phoenix. When Graterford was built, just before the Great Depression, times were different.

The state had purchased 43 farms, felling old oak and hickory groves and razing century-old farmhouses, to make way for the institution.

"Virtually all the construction will be done by prisoners, who will be taken from Philadelphia to Graterford," the Harrisburg Sunday Courier reported in 1928. In fact, it noted, 72 inmates were already working "cheerfully" to clear the ground.

After moving in, inmates continued to work as not only masons and plumbers, but also firefighters and farmers, growing 800 acres of corn and hay, tending to a pheasant hatchery, and caring for cattle on the hundreds of acres of farmland that remained outside the high prison walls.

They even competed in the Pennsylvania Farm Show for a while. In 1964, a senior heifer from Graterford won first prize in her category.

James Myles, 80, a lifer from Philadelphia who's been at Graterford 49 years, worked on the dairy farm starting in 1978, driving a tractor, pasteurizing milk, caring for cows.

"They gave me my own barn. I had about 65 cows or more," he said from Graterford. "It was real nice."

They called the men who worked in the Outside Service Unit "trusties," because they were relatively free to roam the grounds. In the early 1990s, one of them found a fossilized dinosaur footprint. An inmate-led dig began, and paleontologists who came to visit credited the prisoners' careful archaeological work.

Haywood "Red Dog" Fennell, who was at Graterford from 1970 to 2017, when he was resentenced and released, recalled operating heavy machinery to build new parking lots, a carpentry shop, and other infrastructure to support a state prison population that increased 700 percent to more than 48,000 during his incarceration.

In 1984, for the first time, the state began double-celling inmates in Graterford's 6-foot-by-12-foot cells to accommodate those swelling numbers.

It was a more dangerous time, Fennell acknowledged. He was just a teenager when he was thrown into the general population. "How was I going to survive? All the people I had read about, I was there amongst them. I had to learn how to adapt."

He'd been a welterweight boxer with the Police Athletic League, in the same North Philly gym as Joe Frazier. So, he joined Graterford's boxing program; he recalls fighting at the Blue Horizon and the Spectrum. "As long as I could get a win and a trophy in the name of the institution, I had no problems," he said.

The prison also fielded baseball and basketball teams, running ads in the local paper to recruit opponents from local schools and community centers. Those friendly games continued even after a man was reportedly stabbed to death on the basketball court in 1993.

Tyrone Werts, who resided at Graterford from 1975 until 2011, when his life sentence was commuted, recalled professional scouts coming into the prison to watch on occasion.

Professional musicians also performed at the prison. The ballet Orpheus was performed at Graterford and broadcast live on local television. Community orchestras and college bands played there. A jazz festival booked a show.

Back in the day, too, it was possible to start a rock band at Graterford and get a contract with Polydor Records. That's what happened with a group called the Power of Attorney, which recorded its debut album at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia.

Sometimes, though, critics wondered just who was running the place — and how it was that lifers were able to run "concessions" selling Dunkin' Donuts, fried chicken, water ice and pizza behind bars.

There were occasional escapes. And, in 1981, a group of inmates held 38 hostages in the Graterford kitchen for six days.

Werts said there was violence and a fair amount of drug use: marijuana, heroin, meth. Still, he said, "it was a small percentage of people that participated in that kind of activity. Because Graterford was such a progressive prison, most guys were involved in school or sports programs."

In 1995, 650 state troopers descended on the prison for a raid that reportedly cost $2 million. It netted around 250 homemade weapons and 55 packets of cocaine.

"We were locked down for several weeks," Werts said, "and when we came out of our cells, everything was different."

The lifers on the outside unit were pulled back in.

"We came back from our jobs, and they had six vans parked outside and a list of men," Myles said. Some other men remain on the Outside Service Unit, but Myles said the lifers were the ones who'd kept the farm running smoothly. In 1999, the Department of Corrections announced its prison farms were no longer profitable and shut them down.

The boxing program ended, too, Fennell said. So was a chapel that had at one point been the only dedicated prison synagogue in the nation. After VH1 produced a show in 2002 called Music Behind Bars, featuring an inmate band called Dark Mischief, there was a public outcry. Inmates said the music programs in the prison were quickly terminated as well.

Still, as things cooled off, Werts said, Graterford administrators remained open to innovation.

He was president of the Lifers Organization, and helped bring the first Inside Out college program in state prison into Graterford. Inmates designed their own parenting program, bussing up children to build healthy relationships with their incarcerated fathers. In the past few years, a music program also returned.

READ MORE: How a Temple professor and a prison inmate started an international movement

Nancy Wolff, a Rutgers University professor, was welcomed in to create programs like drumming for emotional literacy, yoga and mindfulness-based stress reduction, in a "cover room" stocked with yoga mats and soothing music. "I was working with the men to deal with the issues that were getting in the way of their ability to stay out of prison," she said. She said she was not expecting to make the transition to Phoenix.

Werts is hoping Phoenix will be a bit more like Graterford than the other, mostly newer prisons scattered around Pennsylvania.

"Graterford has always been the vanguard of the prison system, and very progressive in terms of rehabilitation, treatment and programming, including programs run by incarcerated people," he said. "It's different as you move farther upstate."