While archaeology is best left to those with appropriate credentials, alleys, yards, gardens, sheds, basements, crawlspaces and attics provide a fertile field for anyone with an antiquarian bent.
This collection of everyday objects from former times, had its origin during a kitchen renovation in 1990, when the removal of an archaic refrigerator exposed unforeseen archaeological strata to the light of day.
(In the absence of a coherent collections management policy, most of the museum’s holdings were de-accessioned shortly after it went online in 2012, and are now in more responsible hands. The Glover Park Archaeological Museum is therefore purely virtual.)
Raleigh Tipped Cigarettes. A discarded pack, entombed beneath the floorboards during a back porch enclosure on Tunlaw Road. The series number 115 on the blue tax stamp permits reliable dating of the home-improvement project to 1945.
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Dog License Tag, issued by the District of Columbia Office of Collector of Taxes, for the years 1939-1940 (provenance unknown). The shape of the tag was regularly changed––round, octagonal, heart-shaped, etc.––so that it could be seen at a distance if the license was up to date, and the tax had been paid.
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Old Overholt Straight Rye Whiskey, pint bottle. (Private Collection). Discovered in an obscure corner of a Glover Park basement in 2023, the age of this artifact is not in doubt, as it has retained its green tax strip, which reads “Made, Fall 1941” and “Bottled, Fall 1946.” Although a case can be made that it might have been consumed and discarded by a contractor during a post-World War II home improvement project, other scenarios cannot be ruled out. One of the oldest American whiskey brands––widely known as “Old Overcoat”––the Overholt Distillery in Broad Ford, Pennsylvania was founded by Abraham Overholt in 1810, inherited by his grandson Henry Clay Frick in 1881, and passed into the hands of Frick’s business partner, Andrew Mellon, in 1919.
(For further reading, see Sam Komlenic, “The True Story of Old Overholt Rye,” Whiskey Advocate, January, 2018.)
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Cavalier Distilled Dry Gin. This half pint bottle was discovered behind a cabinet during a kitchen remodeling in the 1990s. It is possible that it was finished and hidden by a workman during an earlier kitchen renovation, circa 1950. (The date printed on the label––“Copyright 1933”––refers to the year that the Continental Distilling Corporation of Philadelphia celebrated the repeal of Prohibition by introducing the Cavalier brand.)
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Playing Marbles (Cat’s Eyes, Aggies, a blue Clearie, and a Lime Jelly-Mayonnaise Composite). These glass spheres are the only surviving traces of a formerly ubiquitous children’s pastime. As it was usually played, a number of marbles were placed within a circle incised in a patch of bare ground, and participants then took turns trying to knock them out of the ring by propelling a larger marble at them with a dexterous flick of the thumb. Marbles are most frequently associated with a Pre-Nixonian clay matrix, and may be found near the sides of older houses, or in well-shaded areas beneath trees at the edges of older playgrounds, but they also turn up in less readily predictable places. Aside from the highly-durable artifacts themselves, little of this ancient Spring ritual survives other than its terminology–knuckling down; funsies, or playing for fun; keepsies, or playing for keeps; and, of course, playing for all the marbles.
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Tombstone Fragment, circa 1850. In the second half of the 20th century, Holy Rood Cemetery was a place where vandalism flourished; the damage was compounded when lawn crews drove their trucks over toppled tombstones. This situation only began to be remedied in 2010, when Holy Trinity Catholic Church––whose burial ground it had been since 1832––and Georgetown University––which held title to the property––began discussion of a plan for its restoration. (Although the fragment, found on the east side of Tunlaw Road, is too small to be deciphered and reunited with its original plot, it was returned to the cemetery.)
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Fossil seashell. Because limestone is composed almost entirely of the compacted and solidified sediment of ancient plants and animals that settled to the ocean floor, fossils of seashells like this one are frequently found preserved in it. And since the District of Columbia is below the Fall line, which is where the Atlantic coastal plain meets the Piedmont, it is conceivable that the ocean once extended this far inland. But as this particular fossil turned up near the bend in Whitehaven Street, behind Trader Joe’s and the Glover House, it could have gotten there in a truckload of fill, and its scientific value is negligible.
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Cobblestones. Found in the 2200 block of Tunlaw Road, these cobblestones have been tentatively identified as rejected material for Paleolithic tools, and are likely to have originated in College Run, a former stream that is now a storm-drain under 37th Street.
In the 19th century, amateur archaeologists identified the large deposits of cobblestones in local stream beds as places where prehistoric people obtained the raw material for making stone tools. A promising cobblestone, gradually reduced and shaped by a process called lithic reduction, was turned into a useful implement. When a stone didn’t break just right it was tossed aside after only a few blows. In the 1880s, the local cobble deposits that were dug up and carted away to pave city streets included so many that could (briefly) have been worked by human hands, that the archeologist William Henry Holmes was led to remark that Washington was being “paved with the art remains of a race who had occupied its site in the shadowy past.”
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Fossil bivalve mollusk. The scientific value of this particular fossil (tentatively identified as Cucullaea gigantea, an extinct species that flourished along the Potomac River and its tributaries upwards of fifty million years ago) is almost certainly impaired by the anomalous situation in which it was discovered, i.e. on the lid of a District of Columbia super can in Glover Park.
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Minie Ball, Caliber .58. This Minié ball, standard ammunition for the army in the Civil War, was probably dropped by a Union soldier on duty at the Signal Camp of Instruction, a training facility for the newly-founded Signal Corps, and a part of a network of signal stations intended to give Washington timely warning of any Confederate threat. While it has always been clear that its northern end was the signal station atop Red Hill (where the Russian Embassy is today), this find, unearthed during backyard excavations on the west side of Tunlaw Road, suggests that the Signal Camp is likely to have extended to a point well south of what is now Benton Street.
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Neo-Gothic Tracery Molding, Indiana limestone. Although earlier dates cannot be ruled out, this find may be associated with the construction of the West Towers of the National Cathedral, which were completed in 1990. As shaped architectural elements of this type were left unguarded near Wisconsin Avenue during the construction of the cathedral, discovery of this block at the rear of a former group house on Tunlaw Road suggests that it was transferred from the cathedral grounds nocturnally.
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Detail, showing incised markings: “Y-7” “J.L.” “D.H.”
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The M-1951 Entrenching Tool, a collapsible shovel and pick intended for military use, was indispensable for digging foxholes and filling sandbags. Sold as army surplus, items like this sometimes saw action again in the 1950s, when children used them to build “forts” and “clubhouses” in the woods. Although its short wooden handle (which appears to have rotted away) would have made it impractical for gardening, this particular rusted remnant was found at the edge of the Whitehaven Community Garden, south of the intersection of W Street and 39th Place, one of two former victory gardens in Glover Park.
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Sign, “Long’s Fence.” This sign can be dated to the period between 1945, when the Long Fence Company was established, and 1960, when dialing two letters and five numbers was replaced by dialing seven digits, and LA. 9 (pronounced “Lawrence nine”) became just 529. LAwrence was just one of about two dozen Washington telephone exchanges, such as ADams, Decatur, DUpont, HObart, ORdway, REpublic, TRinidad, and WOodley. In Glover Park, most phone numbers were FEderal numbers, FE3-, FE7- & FE8 being the most common. Although telephone exchange names began to be phased out in 1960, their use, in both speech and print, persisted for years.
(“C&P Plans Fall Start for All-Number Dialing,” Evening Star, July 12, 1960.)
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S. S. Kresge Waxed Paper Folder, early 20th century (provenance unknown, anonymous donor).
Kresge Waxed Paper Folder (reverse). “A thousand uses in the modern home” applied not only to the waxed paper sheets, but also to the folder that held them, which could be used for filing sewing patterns, recipes, accounts, post cards, snap shots, souvenirs, and “many other purposes.”
Sebastian S. Kresge founded his first five-and-dime store in Detroit in 1897, and opened his first store in Washington, at 11th and G Street, in 1910. He died in 1966, and the company changed its name to Kmart in 1977. When the last Kresge store in Washington, on 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue SE, closed in 1987, it was the loss of its luncheonette, which had offered $1 breakfasts and $2 lunches, that was most lamented.
(“Kresge Closing Saddens Area’s Elderly,” Washington Post, January 14, 1987)
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Golf Balls: TopFlite 3 XL Regular Trajectory; Wilson ProStaff Distance 4. In the early 20th century, it was discovered that a pattern of concave dimples made golf balls more aerodynamic. Since then, the design of the modern golf ball has been dictated by increasingly refined calculations of the effect of variables such as the size, shape, depth, number, pattern, and overall surface coverage of a ball’s dimples, and the effect of total dimple volume on its trajectory. As a result, even balls hit by amateurs can easily cover distances of several hundred yards. Because these two finds were discovered in a patch of dense ivy in an alley between Tunlaw Road and Observatory Place, it is unlikely that they needed to travel anything like that far.
(See also, “The Burden and Boon of Lost Golf Balls,” New York Times, May 2, 2010)
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Billiard Cue Ball, Acrylic. Billiards––originally an aristocratic lawn game using mallets and wooden balls––moved indoors in the 17th century, where it was played on felt covered tables with balls made of ivory. By the late 19th century, as the game became more democratic, billiard balls began to be made out of celluloid––a material that was, unfortunately, highly flammable, and sometimes exploded during manufacture. By the 1920 the preferred standard was balls made of Bakelite, which did not explode. Modern billiard balls are made of a variation of Bakelite called Phenolic Resin.
The anomalous situation in which this cue ball was found is worth noting. Although specific rules govern putting the cue ball back into play after a jumped cue ball foul, it would probably not have been feasible in a case where the cue ball achieved a velocity sufficient to fly out of a door or window and come to rest in a patch of ivy at the rear of Observatory Place.
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Ford Meter Box lid, installed circa 1950. The Ford Meter Box, patented by Edwin H. Ford in 1899 as a place to install residential water meters outside of houses, has been a part of the American urban environment for more than a century. In 2002, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer introduced a fixed network, radio technology system that that permitted water meters to be read remotely, and the classic cast iron meter lids were replaced with polymer lids that would not interfere with the transmission of data.
(“D.C. Automating Meter Reading,” Washington Post, March 25, 2002)
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Polymer Meter Lid, post 2002
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Wall Calendar and Delivery Schedule, Chestnut Farms Sealtest Milk, 1952. Basement cleanups and kitchen renovations occasionally bring to the light of day evidence of a highly-evolved dairy culture that still flourished in the middle of the last century, and that only came to an end in the 1980s.
(John Kelly, Were there once dairies in Washington?)
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Pad of Order Slips, Thompson’s Honor Dairy.
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Pad of Order Slips, Thompson’s Honor Dairy (reverse).
Once one of the largest private firms in the Washington area, Thompson’s Dairy made its last delivery in 1971. This pad of order slips from the middle of the last century was discovered during a kitchen renovation in 1990, when the removal of an archaic refrigerator exposed long-hidden archaeological strata to the light of day.
(For more information, check out Kent Boese’s Lost Washington: Thompson’s Dairy, which concludes with numerous personal memories of the days when milk, cream, butter, cheese, yogurt––and more than a dozen other things!––were delivered to your door.)
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Milk Bottle, half pint, inscribed “Safe Milk for Babies”, Chestnut Farms Dairies, Chevy Chase (date unknown).
Until about fifty years ago, bottled milk was still delivered to insulated boxes that sat by the front door, and empty bottles were returned to the dairy the same way. (This mid-20th century artifact, found when vines were removed from an embankment in a Glover Park alley, was one that never made it back.)
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Milk Bottle, pint, Wakefield Simpson Brothers Dairy (date unknown)
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Milk Bottle, pint, Chevy Chase Dairy (date unknown)
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Milk Bottle, Embassy Dairy (1951?)
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Hemingray No. 42 aqua glass pin insulator, manufactured between 1921 and the 1950s by the Hemingray Glass Company, and left behind after utility repair at 37th and U Streets, circa 1995. “The No. 42 is a double petticoat type, with a long, smooth leakage path on the inner petticoat.” Although primarily associated with telegraph lines along railroad rights-of-way, it was also “accepted as standard for most telephone construction.”
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Mason jar, No.8, Ball Perfect, screw top, without lid , blue (pre-1937 lettering).
The first Mason jar was patented by John Landis Mason in 1858, and the name became generic after patent expired. By 1939 the Ball Company dominated the market in glass jars used in home canning to preserve food. These jars saw their peak use during World War II, when food was rationed and the government encouraged the public to grow their own produce (see Victory Gardens). After the war, when fruit and vegetables again became available in stores year-round, home canning declined, and the jars were put away. This example was one of about a half dozen that turned up in an unused storage shed on 40th Street in 1977.
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Mason jar, No.10, Ball Ideal, with glass lid , blue (1923-1933?).
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Pint Bottle, brown glass, with embossed inscription: “FRANK STEIL BREWING CO., BALTIMORE, MD.”
This yard sale find can be dated between 1900, when Frank Steil took over the management of the Baltimore brewery, with its beer garden, restaurant and a concert hall, and 1919, when the Volstead Act ushered in Prohibition. “Another big brewery is to be converted into a meat-packing plant, it was learned yesterday.” (“Frank-Steil-Brau Comp.,” Der Deutsche Correspondent, December 7, 1900, p. 5; “To Remodel Brewery,” Baltimore Sun, November 11, 1919, p. 20)
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This bottle (embossed “Rock Creek” and “4/52”) came to light during landscaping work in the alley east of Observatory Place circa 1989. The Rock Creek Ginger Ale Company got its start in a former bowling alley on 7th Street SW in 1920, at a time when ginger ale was a popular mixer with bootleg alcohol. After Prohibition was repealed, the firm went on to become one of the largest independent bottlers in the country. Rock Creek’s founder died in 1978, and his heirs sold the business to the Canada Dry Potomac Corporation, whose “portfolio of consumer-preferred brands includes Canada Dry, Sunkist, A&W, 7UP, Snapple, Body Armor, Sparkling Ice, Essentia and Rock Creek (a local favorite) among others.”
For more information, see “Brewing Up a Fortune in Ginger Ale” (Bob Levey, Washington Post, Feb. 22, 1978); and “Rock Creek and Other Ginger Ales in Washington” (John DeFerrari, Streets of Washington, Sept. 21, 2020.
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Bottle, Old Dominion Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co., Arlington, Virginia (1958-1964?).
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Lincoln penny, 1951D. Unless something about their date resonates with the finder, coins found in yards are usually returned to circulation.
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Lincoln penny, 1973D.
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Jefferson nickel, 1963.
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Washington quarter, 1974
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Penny, “American Large Cent”, 1829 (struck by nail punch?). The site on Tunlaw Road where this coin was turned up by a gardener corresponds to lot 266 of Beatty and Hawkins’ Addition to Georgetown, land owned by Michael Homiller in 1820.
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Carlton Fletcher
The citation and acknowledgement of my research is greatly appreciated.
All rights reserved.
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The support of the Advisory Neighborhood Council (3B) is gratefully acknowledged.