Blockley Almshouse Site
Located at the corner of 38th Street and Civic Center Boulevard in West Philadelphia, and excavated in 2001 prior to the construction of a new parking garage.
Blockley Almshouse Site
Originally, this site sat on a high knoll or terrace overlooking the west bank of the Schuylkill River and a small tributary stream (now buried under 38th St.). In 1838, this land was incorporated into the property of the Blockley Almshouse, and by the mid- late 19th century was being used as a cemetery to bury the poor, the insane, and the outcast people who died in this institution.
Vicinity of the Blockley Almshouse Site ca. 1843
In the mid-19th century, low-lying tidal marsh land around this site were turned into an open dump and were gradually filled-in with trash and other rubbish. By 1913, when this photo was taken, land-filling activities had buried the site below more than a dozen feet of debris.
In the 1930s this area was cleared, leveled, and an electric powerplant was built almost directly on top of the site. By the early 1970s, this land was transformed once again — this time into a paved parking lot.
In 2001, construction work for a new parking garage re-exposed portions of the long-buried original landscape of this site (the raised soil in the background of this photo), and in the process turned up preserved burial remains and coffin fragments from the long forgotten former almshouse cemetery.
Archaeologists were quickly called in to investigate the discovery and to carefully and respectfully move the burials to another cemetery so construction work could resume. During initial assessments of the site, archaeologists examined exposed parts of the original landscape and found the graves that had been made within it. They also found small patches of the historical ground surface, sealed just below the asphalt paving from the old parking lot.
Eventually, the archaeological team exhumed more than 450 well preserved burials from the former almshouse cemetery. Remains from the site were re-interred in the adjacent Woodlands Cemetery after the excavations were complete.
Investigators also made a rather grizzly discovery — dozens of boxes of autopsied skeletal remains, from cadavers that had been used to train the Almshouse's medical staff, and afterward disposed of in the surrounding landfill.
In the process of removing these burials, archaeologists also found traces of a Native American site within the preserved sections of original ground surface. Although no thorough study of the prehistoric component was legally mandated in this instance, evidence suggests that this Native American site was quite large, and probably represented a relatively stable long-term settlement, or "base camp".
Blockley Almshouse Site map showing areas where Native American artifacts were discovered
Eventually, more than 130 lithic, or stone artifacts were collected from this site, including this siltstone projectile point. The style of this stemmed point suggests that the site was occupied sometime during the Late Archaic and Early Woodland Periods, between about 4,000 B.C. and 0 A.D.
Other tools found include a group of "bifaces" — pieces that show signs of having been made by flaking both their top and bottom faces, and that may have functioned as knives or scrapers.
A heavy-duty chopping tool from the site, made from a large quartzite stream cobble.
A collection of some of the flakes, or manufacturing debris recovered. Most of the flakes found were of a type of rock known as jasper; however, few of the tools from the site were of this material. This situation suggests that finished jasper tools made at the site were later taken away by the site's occupants when they eventually moved on to another camp. Those tools that were found here were ones that had outlived their usefulness, and were discarded.
