Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18BC27 Federal Reserve Building
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
Site 18BC27, the Federal Reserve Building Site, consists of three city blocks near Camden Yards in downtown Baltimore. The site is bounded by Conway Street on the north, Hill Street on the south, Sharpe Street on the east, and the B & O Railroad tracks to the west. It is the location of several early 19th-late 20th century houses and commercial buildings. The site encompasses the location of 18BC25 in the southern portion of the site (see related synopsis report). Soils mapped for the area are classified as “Urban Land” meaning that 80% of the surface is covered either by buildings or by impervious surfaces such as asphalt or concrete.
Development in the three blocks on which 18BC27 is situated began at the end of the 18th century. The area was known as “Otterbein” because of the local Otterbein Church completed in 1786. The church stands at the corner of Conway and Sharp Streets and was named for one of its first pastors, Philip William Otterbein.
Houses on the block were few in number in the early 1800s. Those houses that were standing all faced on Sharp Street. A diverse number of occupational types were in evidence. Merchants and shopkeepers such as Robert Miller and John Webster predominate, but bricklayers, carpenters and laborers also existed on the Sharp Street block. The area even included a mariner, several cordwainers, and a ropemaker. The area was generally considered fashionable and was occupied by such distinguished individuals as the Swedish ambassador.
By mid-century, the number of houses in the area had increased dramatically. The blocks on which the bank building stands, however, were still relatively undeveloped. Houses and shops occupied a solid block facing Sharp Street but were less frequent on Barre and Lee Streets. Of importance, however, was the appearance of numerous houses on Welcome and Reese Alleys and on York Street. The inhabitants of the area included numerous tradesmen, clerks, a glass cutter, and even a lumber inspector. Several grocery stores, a bar, and small craft industries began to show up on the block. St. Joseph’s Church, which in the late 19th century became, “a sanctuary for seamen from nations throughout the world and for Baltimore waterfront workers”, was built in this period.
The entire area was nearly completely built up by the end of the 19th century. Store fronts and saloons intermixed with dwellings made up the Sharp Street skyline. A fire company (Engine No. 2) had located across from St. Joseph’s on Barre Street and the Baltimore Fruit Exchange covered most of the block south of Lee Street. A sash weight warehouse, several stables, and even a pickling factory could be found on the block. The inhabitants were workers in the surrounding businesses or general laborers.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began buying the western edge of the blocks in the early 20th century for expansion of their rail yard. By the 1920s, the B & O Railroad had purchased and demolished the entire block for use by the railway. During 1979, the portion of the rail yard made up by the site was obtained by the Federal Reserve Bank for construction of new facilities.
The only documented archeological work to ever be conducted at 18BC27 occurred in the spring of 1980, prior to construction of the Baltimore Branch building for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The Bank funded limited archeological salvage at the site after staff from the Maryland Historical Trust alerted the Bank to the discoveries made their by Peter Middleton, an avocational archeologist. Middleton had located a number of artifact-filled privies and wells which were exposed during the early phases of foundation excavation at the site. By the time professional archeologists arrived on-site, most of the building remains had been removed and snow covered the ground. Land stripping machinery was used to further clear the site and features were excavated as construction work continued to get underway. In many cases, pothunters/bottle collectors located and dug features before they were investigated by archeologists.
The location of subsurface features was usually a hap-hazard procedure characterized by incidents of machine operators reporting the near destruction of a feature, by hasty surveying of newly pothunted features from the site and by the necessary recording of partial feature or structural remains. All exposed features were mapped using transits tied to a permanent datum. The project was further hampered by cold, wet, and snowy/icy conditions, combined with a tight construction timeline. It was not possible to excavate all exposed and identified features, but a substantial sample was obtained nonetheless.
Feature excavation proceeded in a structured way, unless conditions prevented this. Upon the discovery of a subsurface feature it was completely exposed by a combination of flat shoveling and troweling. The attempt was made to expose a sufficient area around the feature to assure that it was not intruded upon or intrusive into another feature or that it was not associated with a larger feature (such as a well within a building foundation). The cleaned feature and its immediate surroundings were then carefully drawn on a feature form and a black and white photograph was taken. The cleaned area was kept clean as long as possible to assure that no further contamination would occur to the matrix. Plan and section drawings were done to record the details of a feature, such as shape, size, and stratigraphy.
The actual excavation was by trowel with every attempt made to assure that separate matrix strata were removed and provenienced apart from the rest of the fill material. Any artifacts found during the course of excavation were individually removed after recordation procedures and, if appropriate, photography. All material from each recognized stratum of the feature matrix was kept separate. Feature fill was screened through hardware mesh using a combination of dry and wet sifting. Artifacts collected from the screens were then bagged by provenienced and sent for further processing in a lab setting. Selected features were chosen for soil and flotation sampling, but the samples do not appear to have ever been analyzed.
The excavations encountered a total of 54 cultural features dating from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Five feature types were discerned, with the majority (48%) being privies, and the rest being wells, drainage features, cellars, and other structural/construction features. The privies tended to be situated near the rear of the 80 foot house lots along property lines, and may have been utilized by the inhabitants of adjoining structures.
An estimated 60,000 artifacts were recovered from the features at 18BC27. These are cataloged in the table above as miscellaneous historic objects as no detailed catalog of materials is provided in the full site report. The materials recovered were reflective of the wide variety of items available in the 19th century. They include ceramics, glass, leather, bone, and other materials. Ceramics were the most numerous items recovered, including porcelain, stoneware, and earthenwares. Many of the remains recovered from the Federal Reserve Building Site were organic materials such as leather and wood which were preserved by the mucky fill of the walls and privies.
Excavations at the site revealed numerous intact features as well as well-preserved artifacts, including organics. Unfortunately, time constraints as well as very poor field conditions resulted in less than ideal documentation of the site. Not all of the features at 18BC27 were excavated. Many were simply surveyed into the site map and subsequently destroyed when the new Federal Reserve Building was constructed. The site was largely destroyed and has no remaining research potential.
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