Louis Massiah, founder and director of Scribe Video Center, will talk about the five-channel video installation that will be part of the President's House site at Sixth and Market Streets in Philadelphia, slated to open in December 2010.
These dramatic vignettes look at the lives of the nine enslaved Africans brought to Philadelphia by George and Martha Washington during the first presidency (1790-1797) and the resistance of the free African American community, and explore the contradictions of freedom and slavery in establishing a new nation.
Special Guests: Karen Warrington, Member of the Project Oversight Committee and Director of Communications for U.S. Congressman Bob Brady; Lorene Cary, Scriptwriter; Novella Nelson, Actor; Beth Warshafsky, Digital Media Painter and Computer Graphics Art Director; and W. Tre Davis, Actor.
History as Cultural Work: The President's House Project in Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Inquirer culture writer, Stephan Salisbury, reports "Glitches bedevil President's House," on 25 September 2011:
The President's House is broken.
That should not come as a surprise to most of the tens of thousands of visitors who have passed through the exhibition and slavery memorial on Independence Mall.
More often than not, they've been greeted by blank video screens.
In fact, since "The President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation" opened to the public in December 2010, key elements of the exhibition have not functioned properly.
The video screens, which tell much of the story of enslaved Africans associated with the site, repeatedly have shuddered and died. The large glass box that encloses archaeological remains of the house where George Washington and John Adams served most of their presidencies and where Washington held nine enslaved Africans has fogged up and leaked.
Officials at Independence National Historical Park, steward of the exhibition, say the city, as construction manager, is responsible for shepherding repairs.
City officials say they are chagrined.
"It's an embarrassment," said Gary Knappick, deputy commissioner of public property, who hastened to add that when repairs are made, the city is determined "to get it right, and get it right the first time."
Repairs may be on the way, but visitors have been complaining for months.
"People, visitors to the site, have been concerned because the videos were not operating," said Karen Warrington, director of communications for U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D., Pa.) and a member of the committee that oversaw development and construction of the site.
The finicky screens have been swapped out, in some cases repeatedly, but replacements haven't worked any better.
The problem is highly technical, Knappick noted, but can be summarized succinctly: The President's House environment is too hot and wet for the current video configuration.
Emanuel Kelly, principal of Kelly/Maeillo Architects & Planners, designer and builder of the President's House exhibition, said the pace of repairs had been slowed by complicated warranty coverage on various parts and by less-than-enlightening responses from far-flung subcontractors. Late summer's relentless rain did not help.
He said he persisted in trying to get the original units to function, and they just as persistently refused to do so.
Different parts of the video system are covered by different warranties, and no single manufacturer could be held responsible when a screen went dark, Kelly said.
So who would be on the hook for non-warranty costs?
"Probably we are," Kelly said, adding that he didn't yet know what those costs would be.
After months of tinkering, architect, park, and city officials met in August and agreed that complete replacement of the screens seemed appropriate.
"They were giving it such a college try to make what was there work," Knappick said. The city, to nudge things along, suggested an outside evaluation, and Kelly agreed.
In the evaluation, Kelly said, "we found the design and manufacturing were flawed"; tests on how the original units would perform in the face of "water and heat were not all done before bringing these units to site."
A new test screen, made by a different manufacturer, will be installed, possibly by late November, Knappick said. If it works, all the screens will then be replaced. The new units, manufactured in California, will not sit flush with the exhibition's masonry elements, which will help prevent the electrical components from overheating.
If the demo screen works correctly, replacing all the screens will take perhaps three months, Knappick said.
The problems with leakage at the glass archaeological box, Kelly said, "are minor."
The glass began fogging as soon as the site opened, largely because of moisture within the excavated area. Dehumidification equipment seemed to be improving that situation.
Then, on July 3, the top of the box fractured, and now leaks have appeared within what is supposed to be a dry area.
Knappick said the city brought in a consultant who determined the glass fractured because of a "rare" manufacturing flaw.
The California manufacturer will ship replacement panels within the week, and Knappick said installation should be complete by mid-October.
There also have been leaks through the seals between the glass panels, which Knappick said have been repaired. Other leaks have been traced to an area near the foot of the glass box. Water has been seeping through a weatherproof barrier beneath and making its way into the excavated area below.
"We're waiting for dry weather" to repair that leak, Knappick said, adding that the repairs might be completed in the next week. Kelly added that "you need at least two days of dry weather" in order to effect the repairs, which should not be costly.
There are reports of other possible water issues inside the archaeological area, but examination of them also awaits drier weather, according to park officials.
Once the site is functioning as intended, it will be transferred completely to the care of Independence National Historical Park.
"We're doing the best we can under the conditions," Kelly said.
In the movie The Sixth Sense, the boy who sees dead people is sitting in his classroom and his teacher asks, "What was the capital of the United States from 1790 to 1800?" No one in the class knows the answer, and probably not one in a hundred Americans watching the movie knew that it was Philadelphia. Until earlier this year, had the question been, "Where was the Philadelphia 'White House' and what did it look like?" perhaps one in a million could have gotten it right.
Why is this? Why should the building which served as the Executive Mansion of the United States for ten years while the national capital was under construction, the house in which Washington and Adams lived for the lion's shares of their presidencies, the seat of the executive branch of the Federal government from 1790 to 1800 be so obscure?
"Residence of Geo. Washington and R. Morris, south-east corner of Sixth and Market Streets, Philadelphia." The notation at the bottom left reads, "Drawn from memory by C.A. Poulson." Wood engraving by Charles A. Poulson and an unknown engraver. From William Brotherhead, ed., Sanderson's Biography of the Signers (Philadelphia: 1865),
The President's House stood on the south side of Market Street, about 500 feet north of Independence Hall. The site is now part of Independence Mall, and the Liberty Bell Pavilion sits just to the east of it in what had been the president's garden. A public bathroom has occupied the house site for the past 48 years.
Public Restroom on site of George Washington's Philadelphia Residence
A new building to house the bell is under construction less than 100 feet from the old one, and this Liberty Bell Center will partially cover the site of the backbuildings of the President's House property. Under the new cener's porch will be the smokehouse and its addition.
Washington moved into the President's House in late November 1790, with a household staff of about 24 -- 16 or so white servants, and 8 black slaves. He had spent most of the autumn at Mount Vernon, leaving his secretary to prepare the Philadelphia house. The semi-weekly correspondence between the two contains a treasure trove of detail about the mansion, including Washington's instructions about where the servants should be housed. He initially discussed converting part of the hayloft into lodging rooms, then considered walling off a section of the servants' hall, but finally decided to use the smokehouse. The secretary acknowledged the president's order in an October 31, 1790 letter: "The Smoke-House will be extended to the end of the Stable, and two good rooms made in it for the accommodation of the Stable people." Subsequent letters between them confirm the order.
The "Stable people" consisted of the white coachman, A. Dunn, two black slaves, Giles and Paris, and a likely third, Austin. The smokehouse was small, about 8 1/2 feet square on the interior, and the addition slightly larger, about 8 1/2 by 11 1/2 feet. (The dimensions are recorded on a 1785 map of the property.) According to French exile Moreau de Saint-Mery, segregation in 1790s Philadelphia was so great that white servants would not eat at the same table with free blacks, let alone slaves. Washington instructed that the household's other black men be housed in a room to themselves in the attic of the main house. Rather than mix the races in the smokehouse, it seems likely that the president would have given Dunn the small room to himself, and Giles, Paris and Austin, the larger one.
Independence National Historical Park (INHP) vehemently objects to the addition to the smokehouse being called a slave quarters. In April, an INHP historian questioned whether the addition was even built, although, a month later, the park’s preliminary report on the history and interpretation of the house acknowledged that it was. Another INHP official stated that where the slaves lived cannot be established with any certainty, and that all types of servants –- wage-earners, indentured servants, slaves – lived by the stables. This statement is true only over time. Dunn was a wage-earner; Washington later replaced the stable slaves with white German indentured servants, although the earliest record of this was not until 1792. The INHP final report deftly avoids the controversy by calling the smokehouse and its addition "housing quarters."
. "Robert Morris House (known as Washington Mansion) 190 High Street." Photostat of drawing by Harry W. Neff and Charles Abell Murphy (based on the designs of David H. Morgan). Dated "[19]38." Free Library of Philadelphia.
The use of this euphemism may have contributed to the recent comments in the Philadelphia Inquirer by an INHP spokesman: “primary documents call [the rear of the President’s House] the servants’ hall”; “[there are no historical records] that said it was a slave quarters”; “and we are standing with the fact that no one knows if slaves slept there or if slaves didn’t sleep there.” The story was picked up by the Associated Press, and published in the New York Times and elsewhere.
Actually, the servants’ hall (to the east of the kitchen ell) and the addition to the smokehouse (to the south of the ell) were different spaces. The servants’ hall was also called the “refectory,” or dining hall. In his letters, Washington accounted for housing all the servants elsewhere, so it seems likely that none of them, black or white, slept in the servants’ hall.
Why is INHP bending over backwards to avoid dealing with slavery in the President’s House? The park took over operation of the Mall in 1974, the same year that an INHP report confirmed that the blacks in Washington’s presidential household were slaves rather than free. The presence of the slaves is not mentioned on the interpretive panel outside the public bathroom, although the park has had sole responsibility for interpreting the site for the past 28 years. INHP statements (including one on its Web site) imply that everyone has known all along that Washington had slaves in Philadelphia, assertions which just make people angry. Five hundred protesters who had only recently learned of the presence of the slaves demonstrated at the site on July 3rd. INHP’s confused claim that there was no slave quarters will only increase public hostility and mistrust.
Fortunately, things seem to be changing. The Philadelphia City Council and the Pennsylvania Legislature passed unanimous resolutions urging INHP to commemorate the President’s House and its slaves, and the U.S. House of Representatives attached an amendment to the 2003 budget of the Department of the Interior requiring it to do so. Progress on the commemoration was made at an October 31 meeting of National Park Service and INHP officials, community leaders, historians, and designers. Additional meetings are scheduled, and a public meeting is promised.
As in The Sixth Sense, the President’s House site has its ghosts. Future visitors to the Liberty Bell will walk across its entire footprint, including the quarters of the stable slaves, as they approach the new Liberty Bell Center building. After 200 years of obscurity, it now appears that the house and the lives of its less-illustrious inhabitants will be remembered.
***
Mr. Lawler is leading a petition drive to persuade the Park Service to draw attention to George Washington's President's House and slave quarters in Philadelphia. His work has been published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. [Obviously he won. Yeah! For historical accuracy and truth. America is finally growing up and leaving fuzzy propaganda history in the dustbin of life.]
From The Granite Freeman, Concord, New Hampshire (May 22, 1845); reprinted in Frank W. Miller's Portsmouth New Hampshire Weekly, June 2, 1877, under the title "Washington's Runaway Slave, and How Portsmouth Freed Her." Author: Rev. T.H. Adams. (source US History.org)
There is now living in the borders of the town of Greenland, N.H., a runaway slave of Gen. Washington, at present supported by the County of Rockingham. Her name at the time of her elopement was ONA MARIA JUDGE. She is not able to give the year of her escape, but says that she came from Philadelphia just after the close of Washington's second term of the Presidency, which must fix it somewhere in the [early?] part of the year 1797.
Being a waiting maid of Mrs. Washington, she was not exposed to any peculiar hardships. If asked why she did not remain in his service, she gives two reasons, first, that she wanted to be free; secondly that she understood that after the decease of her master and mistress, she was to become the property of a grand-daughter of theirs, by name of Custis, and that she was determined never to be her slave.
Being asked how she escaped, she replied substantially as follows, "Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn't know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington's house while they were eating dinner."
She came on board a ship commanded by CAPT. JOHN BOLLES, and bound to Portsmouth, N.H. In relating it, she added, "I never told his name till after he died, a few years since, lest they should punish him for bringing me away. …"
Washington made two attempts to recover her. First, he sent a man by the name of Bassett to persuade her to return; but she resisted all the argument he employed for this end. He told her they would set her free when she arrived at Mount Vernon, to which she replied, "I am free now and choose to remain so."
Finding all attempts to seduce her to slavery again in this manner useless, Bassett was sent once more by Washington, with orders to bring her and her infant child by force. The messenger, being acquainted with Gov. [then Senator John] Langdon, then of Portsmouth, took up lodgings with him, and disclosed to him the object of his mission.
The good old Governor. (to his honor be it spoken), must have possessed something of the spirit of modern anti-slavery. He entertained Bassett very handsomely, and in the meantime sent word to Mrs. Staines, to leave town before twelve o'clock at night, which she did, retired to a place of concealment, and escaped the clutches of the oppressor.
Shortly after this, Washington died, and, said she, "they never troubled me any more after he was gone. …
The facts here related are known through this region, and may be relied on as substantially correct. Probably they were not for years given to the public, through fear of her recapture; but this reason no longer exists, since she is too old and infirm to be of sufficient value to repay the expense of search.
Though a house servant, she had no education, nor any valuable religious instruction; says she never heard Washington pray, and does not believe that he was accustomed to. "Mrs. Washington used to read prayers, but I don't call that praying.["] Since her escape she has learned to read, trusts she has been made "wise unto salvation," and is, I think, connected with a church in Portsmouth.
When asked if she is not sorry she left Washington, as she has labored so much harder since, than before, her reply is, "No, I am free, and have, I trust been made a child of God by the means.["]
Never shall I forget the fire that kindled in her age-bedimmed eye, or the smile that played upon her withered countenance, as I spake of the Redeemer in whom there is neither "bond nor free," bowed with her at the mercy seat and commended her to Him "who heareth prayer" and who regards "the poor and needy when they cry," I felt that were it mine to choose, I would not exchange her possessions, "rich in faith," and sustained, while tottering over the grave, by "a hope full of immortality," for tall the glory and renown of him whose slave she was.
