Excavation Of George Washingtons House Finds "Mystery Building"

Excavation Of George Washingtons House Finds "Mystery Building"

www.philly.com

Six weeks into the excavation of the site where George Washington and John Adams lived and conducted their presidencies, archaeologists have unearthed significant portions of the original President's House - the nation's first "White House" - including foundation walls of the house kitchen, where Washington's enslaved chef Hercules conjured up many a memorable meal. "We uncovered much more than we thought we would," said Douglas Mooney, field director of the URS Group, a private firm conducting the dig in concert with the city and the National Park Service.

"We had no idea any of that was there," he continued. "We always thought those back buildings [including the house kitchen] were built on very shallow foundations. Now we can see most of the kitchen is there and the entire kitchen had a basement."

In addition to the unexpected finding of kitchen foundations, the excavation also has uncovered the rear wall of the main President's House, which stood at the southeast corner of Sixth and Market Streets until it was largely demolished in 1832. In fact, in one of the exciting moments of the dig, archaeologists broke through the cement basement of one commercial building last week and there, right on top of a remaining President's House foundation wall, was an 1833 penny. It was common practice for builders to place a properly dated coin beneath new construction - and the commercial building was, in fact, erected in 1833.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I find this fascinating. I live maybe 10 minutes from this excavation. More than 200 years after the fact, right in the heart of center city Philadelphia, they find something like this.
It's not like this is a random abandoned house. It is what many call the original WHITE HOUSE.
The article goes on to say that they've found several passageways which may have been used as a trash dump. Trash dumps are gold mines for archeologists.
Who knows what they'll find there. This could be very interesting.

www.philly.com
(visit the link for the full news article)