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If you haven’t been following along since last January, some local amateur historians have been attempting to find out if some old fort or burial ground or angel skeletons or ancient powerful civilization is under the site for the Sugarhouse Casino, so they can block it from going there. Or they’re just curious, whatever, the end result’s the same.
Anyway, Plan Philly earlier this week posted a story with the headline, “Big discovery at SugarHouse site? And here it is!
SugarHouse archaeologists, led by an amateur local historian, on Tuesday continued to unearth part of a foundation on the proposed casino site.
The historian, preservationist Torben Jenk, says the find is a portion of Batchelor’s Hall - a society whose members included many prominent 18th Century Philadelphians, and where the nation’s first botanical garden of medicinal plants was established in 1729.
“It’s a 279-year-old structure, and we found it using a 204-year old survey,” said an excited Jenk on Monday evening. “It’s the second oldest building that we can document to date in Fishtown.”
But casino spokeswoman Leigh Whitaker said the casino’s archaeologists, A.D. Marble, say what was found is much less historically significant, and from a different century, than the place where Pennsylvania Hospital founder and trustee Lloyd Zachary socialized and renowned botanist John Bartram may have tended the plants.
“We did not find Batchelor’s Hall,” Whitaker said. “We found a foundation of a residence or other building from the 19th Century.”
It’s nice everyone did all this work and then their opinions lined up exactly where everyone expected them to. However, I believe I have come up with a compromise (pictured above). They can call it “The Second Oldest Casino in Fishtown.”
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