Tudor Place Archaeology Survey Earns Excellence in Historic Preservation Award
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Tudor Place Historic House and Garden
1644 31st Street NW
Washington, DC 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 18, 2012
Washington, D.C. – June 18, 2012 — For its intensive site-wide archaeological survey, Tudor Place Historic House & Garden has been awarded the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office’s Ninth Annual Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. The museum’s executive director and Trustees and representatives of Dovetail Cultural Resources, which carried out the work, will accept the prize for Archaeology this Thursday, June 21, at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue. Seventeen other prize categories include Stewardship, Design & Construction, Publications, and Affordable Housing, among others. Former Historic Preservation Review Board Chairman Tersh Boasberg will also recceive a Lifetime Achievement Award.
“We are thrilled to be recognized for this foundational survey that informs interpretation of the site and the larger scholarship on houw suburban estates of the early 19th century functioned,” said Tudor Place Executive Director Leslie Buhler. “Archaeology is a critical component of our research. We look forward to what further excavations will reveal.”
The project revealed more that 800 artifacts from the 18th through mid-20th centuries. It also offered clues to the location of possible slave quarters, what may have been a burned barn, and a small brick dwelling on the 1816 National Historic Landmark site.
The “Phase 1” survey, completed in May, covered the propertys full 5.5 acres. Dovetail Cultural Resources conducted it for Tudor Place with funding from the Clark-Winchcole Foundation. The project met goals including identifying past building sites; locating (for reference in future improvements) areas without significant subsurface cultural significance; and providing archaeological context for past and future excavations. It consisted of a pedestrian survey, close-interval subsurface “shovel tests” to recover artifacts, and mapping of all points of interest using GPS.
The survey was one of several preservation and conservation projects begun or completed at Tudor Place in 2011. Others, to cite just a few, focused on Martha and George Washington’s unique tabletop plateau and their waxwork (already the source of a rare decorative artifact); the architecturally noteworthy Temple Portico; and the Box Knot Garden once tended by Tudor Place’s original owners. All such endeavors by the Tudor Place Foundation provide documentation for school programs, educator workshops, public programs, and scholarly research.
