Whither the Early Republic: A Forum on the Future of the Field

Space in the Early American City

Space in the Early American City BERNARD HERMAN It remains an astonishing fact that historians of all stripes continue to wrestle with the evidential legitimacy and interpretive opportunities afforded by the worlds of objects and images people made and the ways in which the critical space of ‘‘things’’ can shape and direct our understanding of the past in new and important ways. Despite notable contributions, the interpretation of urban life in the early republic remains curiously detached from the material substance of the lives of those who lived in the early American city. Our challenge is twofold. First, we need to commit ourselves with greater confidence to the integration of the evidence of material culture into the history of the early republic. Second, our ability to make this happen demands that we truly embrace interdisciplinary approaches—and this means that we embrace different strategies for the consideration of evidence as well as underutilized bodies of evidence. A 2003 roundtable discussion on how best to incorporate the lives of George Washington’s enslaved servants into the interpretation of his house and the larger contexts, both historical and political, of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia illustrates the problem and points to the need to incorporate material culture more effectively. George Washington’s Philadelphia presidential mansion has been the subject of a thoroughgoing research effort. Edward Lawler’s detailed hisBernard L. Herman is Edward F. and Elizabeth Rosenberg Professor of Art History and Director of the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. His books include The Stolen House (1992) and Architecture and Rural Life in Central Delaware, 1700–1900 (1987), both of which received the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award. His forthcoming books Town House: Architecture and Material in the Early American City, 1780–1830 and Bricklayers and Housetops: The Architecture of Gee’s Bend Quilt will appear in 2005. 170 • BERNARD HERMAN tory of the house mapped out the physical history of the site and the evolution of the building over time, and it is his work that provides the basis for the observations about the layout and appearance of the house.1 Lawler reconstructed plans of the house as it stood at the time the Washingtons lived there. Coupled with the information on the house, Lawler also charted Washington’s lodging assignments for his household, including free and enslaved servants. His discussion of the location of the principal reception rooms on the ground floor and the president’s private chambers in the upper stories is well grounded in the documentary record . Similarly, the National Park Service invested considerable effort in researching the site and its occupants. Their work extended beyond the written record and included archaeological explorations with particular attention to an icehouse that stood near the rear of the property. The combined evidence—written, architectural, and archaeological—for the first president’s urban mansion is extraordinary in its variety, depth, and, significantly, its ambiguities. What we do not know about the president’s house focuses on the ways in which its many and varied residents inhabited those spaces and what those spaces signified to them and to those around them. Given the historic proximity of the president’s house to Independence Hall (less than 500 feet) and all the buildings and public spaces that housed the operations of the newly formed federal government, we are compelled to consider the broader interpretive implications of urban space and culture . An issue that underscores the difficulty and importance of these considerations for writing inclusive histories of the early American republic is how we narrate the lives of the occupants of the president’s house. Washington’s correspondence, for example, clearly documents the presence of the enslaved Africans forced to accompany the president ’s family from Mount Vernon to the streets of Philadelphia, but it provides no commentary on their lives in the Washington household. Washington wrote at length about the remodeling of the house in preparation for his tenure, and in those letters he described changes he wished undertaken for the accommodation of his servants. Prominent among the renovations were provisions for servant housing and work spaces includ1 . Edward Lawler Jr., ‘‘The President’s House in Philadelphia: The Rediscovery of a Lost Landmark,’’ The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 136 (2002): 5–95. SPACE IN THE EARLY AMERICAN CITY • 171 ing the conversion of a smokehouse, the division of the attic into...