INDEPENDENCE MALL — The excavation of the President’s House, across from Independence Hall, continues to uncover treasures from the past. Archaeologists have unearthed several foundations over the past few weeks. They are now focusing on the wells and privy pits, and are also finding tobacco pipes from a store that was on the site after the President’s House was demolished in 1832.
The dig’s field director is Douglas Mooney: “It was typical for Philadelphia in the late 1800s, when people went onto public water and
public sewers, that they filled in their old wells and privies. And when they did that, they dumped whatever trash they could in there, so what we are finding in the wells and privies in that particular lot is pipe bowls and pipe stems.”
Mooney is hopeful that artifacts from the President’s House will be found at they bottom of those pits — a point, he says, that may not be reached for weeks.
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