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Holmesburg Prison

1896 establishments in Pennsylvania1995 disestablishments in PennsylvaniaBuildings and structures in PhiladelphiaDefunct prisons in PennsylvaniaHolmesburg, Philadelphia
Human rights abuses in the United StatesHuman subject research in the United States
Holmesburg Prison
Holmesburg Prison

Holmesburg Prison, given the nickname "The Terrordome," was a prison operated by the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Department of Prisons (PDP) from 1896 to 1995. The facility is located at 8215 Torresdale Ave in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia. It was decommissioned in 1995 when it closed. As of today, the structure still stands and is occasionally used for prisoner overflow and work programs.It was the site of controversial decades-long dermatological, pharmaceutical, and biochemical weapons research projects involving testing on inmates. The experiments and research conducted on prisoners soon influenced ethical standards that are used today in modern research. The creation of the Nuremberg Code with the rule of informed consent was drafted based on this case as well as several others, like the Tuskegee experiments in Alabama.The prison is also notable for several major riots in the early 1970s as well as a report released in 1968, the results of an extensive two-year investigation by the Offices of the Philadelphia Police Commissioner and the District Attorney of Philadelphia documenting hundreds of cases of the rape of inmates. The 1998 book Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison, by Allen M. Hornblum, documents clinical non-therapeutic medical experiments on prison inmates at Holmesburg. Currently, the Philadelphia Department of Prisons's Training Academy still operates near the jail.

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Holmesburg Prison
Torresdale Avenue, Philadelphia

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N 40.037123 ° E -75.018779 °
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Holmesburg Prison

Torresdale Avenue
19136 Philadelphia
Pennsylvania, United States
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Holmesburg Prison
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Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference

On November 7, 2020, four days after the United States presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and an attorney for then-president Donald Trump, hosted a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a small business in the Holmesburg neighborhood of Near Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The event was held at the company's garage door and parking lot to discuss the status of the Trump campaign's legal challenges to the ballot-counting process in the state, where the president's early election lead over Joe Biden had shifted to a shortfall as mailed-in ballots were counted for Philadelphia, historically a heavily Democratic city. The site of the press conference, a local landscaping business, was unexpected. Many journalists and others quickly observed a comical aspect to its location, near a sex shop and a crematorium. This site selection led to speculation that the Trump campaign meant to book the upscale Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia, five city blocks from the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where Philadelphia's ballots were being counted. Shortly after Giuliani began talking to the assembled reporters, the Associated Press projected Biden as the winner of the Pennsylvania vote and thus the nationwide election. Several news outlets characterized the event as the symbolic end of Trump's presidency.The event was ridiculed by journalists and users of social media. It garnered further ridicule after it emerged that one of the speakers at the event was a convicted sex offender. It resulted in lawyers withdrawing from the legal team that the Trump campaign had assembled to challenge the election results. In response to the press conference, a Four Seasons-themed charity run was created, and the landscaping company capitalized on the newfound attention by selling T-shirts and other merchandise.