1. December 14, 2010
Museum Review
Reopening a
House That’s
Still Divided
By EDWARD
ROTHSTEIN
PHILADELPHIA — The
convulsive currents that
roil the telling of American history have become so familiar that they now
seem an inseparable part of the story itself. Here is a nation, conceived in
liberty and dedicated to a proposition of human equality, that, for much of
its first century of life, countenanced slavery, institutionally supported it and
economically profited from it. The years that followed have been marked by
repair, reform and reversals; recompense, recrimination and reinterpretation.
Extraordinary ideals and achievements have been countered by
extraordinary failings and flaws, only to be countered yet again, each turn
yielding another round of debates.
And here, in this city where the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence were signed; where a $300 million Independence National
Historical Park has been created, leading from the National Constitution
Center to Independence Hall; and where the Liberty Bell, as a symbol of the
nation’s ideals, draws well over a million visitors a year, a great opportunity
existed to explore these primal tensions more closely on a site adjacent to the
Liberty Bell Center in Independence park. Unfortunately, those
opportunities have been squandered in “The President’s House: Freedom
and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” which opens on Wednesday.
It is almost painful, given the importance of this site, to point out that the
result is more a monument to these unresolved tensions than a
commemoration of anything else. After $10.5 million and more than eight
years; after tugs of war between the city and the National Park Service and
black community organizations; after the establishment of a contentious
oversight committee and street demonstrations, overturned conceptions and
racial debates, it bears all the scars of its creation, lacking both intellectual
coherence and emotional power. On Wednesday the Park Service takes over
the site with its work cut out for it, since rangers will have to weave the
competing strands together.

2. But consider what opportunities there
were. The construction of a new $9
million exhibition space for the Liberty
Bell drew attention to this adjacent site,
where the nation’s first two presidents
— George Washington and John Adams
— had lived between 1790 and 1800,
when Philadelphia was the nation’s
capital.
The house had long ago been
demolished — much of it in the 1830s
— and in the 1950s the site, near Sixth
and Market Streets, was the location of a
public restroom. But the house was once
one of the grandest mansions in
Philadelphia. Its inhabitants included
Richard Penn (grandson of the
Pennsylvania colony’s founder); the
British general William Howe (who occupied Philadelphia while
Washington’s army licked its wounds in Valley Forge); Benedict Arnold
(who may have begun his espionage here); and Robert Morris (a financier of
the Revolution). All vanished history.
Then, in an illuminating 2002 article in The Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography, the historian Edward Lawler Jr. mapped out the
house and its probable dimensions, and pointed out the irony that just steps
from the new Liberty Bell Center was a site that had once sheltered
Washington’s slaves.
The Park Service contested some of his conclusions and refused to outline
the footprint of the lost President’s House in its designs for the center. But
the issue was soon taken up by scholars, including Gary B. Nash, author of
the new book “The Liberty Bell,” as well as by political activists like the
lawyer Michael Coard and his Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, who
argued that the existence of slave quarters adjacent to the city’s paean to
liberty demanded major commemoration.
There was a cascade of events, chronicled by The Philadelphia Inquirer,
including Congressional legislation and financing, city oversight and funds,
an expansion of the Liberty Bell exhibition, the establishment of an
oversight committee and the solicitation of redesigns. In 2007 an
archaeological dig began, revealing the foundation and the remains of a

3. tunnel once used by servants and slaves. The dig, viewed by the public,
ignited debate.
Washington ultimately took nine slaves
to Philadelphia from Mount Vernon,
where more than 200 slaves were held.
And they were part of a household staff
that may have numbered two dozen,
including white indentured laborers and
servants. Though the slaves were part of
a population of nearly 4,000 others in
Philadelphia, there were also more than
6,500 free blacks in the city in 1790, and
Washington’s slaves were exposed to the
experience of liberty.
We know some astonishing details about
the effects. Ona Judge (here called
Oney), a servant to Martha Washington,
and Hercules, the household cook, both
escaped to freedom.
Some of Washington’s most unattractive
characteristics also emerge. He and
Martha Washington pursue Judge for years, though she later establishes
herself with her own family in New Hampshire. And though Washington
expressed his opposition to slavery, and freed his own slaves in his will, he
went through bizarre machinations to ensure that the slaves he took to the
nation’s capital would not be subject to local laws granting them freedom
after six months. He exchanged them with others at Mount Vernon, issuing
instructions: “I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive
both them and the public.”
So here we not only have the father of our country showing his darkest side,
we also see the foundations of the nation at their darkest. Yet here is where
Washington invented the executive branch, conducting affairs of state. Here
is where it became clear that a democratic ruler was no king, had no claim
on his dwelling place and was himself meant to serve the people.
How, then, should such a site be developed? A 2005 call for designs stressed
that it would have to pay attention to many themes: the house, its workers,
the executive branch, African-American Philadelphia, escapes to freedom. In
addition, it noted that community discussions led to five “cultural values”
that should be clear: identity, memory, agency, dignity, truth. There was also
a requirement that the site be open 24/7 to visitors.

4. As ultimately designed by Kelly/Maiello, the site is a space bounded by a
low wall roughly outlining the footprint of the house (but often departing
from it), marked by protruding rectangular slabs into which are inserted
mock fireplaces and video screens. In the house’s heart, a transparent wall
allows visitors to view the archaeological work in progress. And attached to
the walls are either long panels surveying historical themes — the executive
branch, slavery in the President’s House — or rudimentary illustrations. A
few show the escape of Judge, a few give some glimpse of foreign policy in
the house (protests over the Jay Treaty with England), and more give some
sense of slavery (including Washington’s signing of the Fugitive Slave Act,
which put all escaped slaves in danger).
“History is not neat,” we read. “It is complicated and messy. It is about
people, places and events that are both admirable and deplorable.” And the
President’s House, we are told, “exposes the core contradiction at the
founding of this nation: enshrinement of liberty and the institution of
slavery.”
But what precisely is being exposed? A few yards away, the Liberty Bell
Center discusses abolition and slavery; the park’s visitor center has an
exhibition about the Underground Railroad; the nearby African American
History Museum has a powerful audio and video history of blacks in
Philadelphia. Accounts of slavery are even found at Mount Vernon.
Here, though, we get neither a sense of the place, nor a sense of the issues
(and much of the year, the open air will be inhospitable). We don’t learn
about the differences between Washington and Adams. We don’t learn much
about the pictured events. There is no real narrative. Illustrations can also be
melodramatically contentious: we see a seemingly disdainful Washington
dangling a “peace medal” before a suspicious Seneca Indian leader
As for slave life, it is also difficult to piece together. The video screens that
come to life above the fake mantels give the impression of a half-finished
21st-century home. The videos themselves (with scripts by Lorene Cary), in
which slaves and servants provide first-person accounts of experiences, at
least provide some sense of life. But how do we put these experiences in
context? What was Philadelphia’s free black community like? How did
white workers and black slaves live together here?
We are told that the President’s House “offers an opportunity to draw
lessons from the past.” But what lessons? That Washington was flawed?
That slavery was an abomination? Are these revelations? A memorial to the
practice of slavery is mounted here, inscribed with the names of African
tribes from which slaves derived, but it has no particular relationship to

5. Philadelphia or this site. The need for some such memorial is keen, but here
it seems thumped down as an intrusion.
So what is learned? Not what makes this site special, but what makes it
ordinary; not the foundations of what led to the overcoming of slavery, but a
sense of its enduring presence. Would this display be any different if
presidents had not lived here? And would our understanding be any different
without it?
When was the Presidential House demolished? Who lived there? What
was located on the site of the Presidential House in the 1950s?
How many slaves did Washington take to Philadelphia? How many
escaped? Why did they escape?
How large was the free black community in Philadelphia when
Washington was President? How large was the slave community in
Philadelphia then?
How did Washington prevent his slaves from being freed within 6
months as local laws allowed?
What are the author’s complaints about the site? Do you agree with
them?

6. Write a short story about the Philadelphia Presidents House tunnel that
connected the servants quarters with the main house.