Archaeology at Bartram’s Garden 1975-Present.

Joel T. Fry

Archaeology at Bartram’s Garden 1975-Present.

Year: 2016

Summary

Bartram’s Garden, an historic garden and house protected by the City of Philadelphia since 1891, saw little interpretation or visitation for almost a century. The current revival of the site can be credited to intervention by NPS historians, archaeologists, and landscape architects beginning in the 1950s.

Professional preservation and conservation advice was coincident with documentary and biographical rediscovery of the Bartrams — particularly the 1955 rediscovery of William Bartram’s sketch of the garden layout in 1758. Bartram’s Garden was listed as a NHL beginning in 1960, and the park size has substantially increased in recent years.

Familiar names in Philadelphia preservation and archaeology played a role in reviving Bartram’s Garden from 1975 to the present. A complex site with many phases of occupation from the prehistoric archaic to the post-industrial — archaeology has been a consistent component in planning, interpretation, and restoration work at Bartram’s Garden since the 1970s.