Urban Archeology is all around us you just have to know where to look. So far we have found some interesting things in our house. I found some old tools. some old glass marbles, vintage Christmas cards, we found a bunch of old buried granite slabs ( used to be a patio in our sunken garden) and some really cool Cincinnati newspapers from 1936 which I am carefully restoring. Our plan is to frame parts of them for our vintage bar/pub room that will be going in the basement.
My neighbor Mark is something of an Urban Archaeologist, he found and saved a lot of stuff from the demo of the house on the corner. This house was a disaster and REALLY too far gone to save (something I rarely come across but this one really was) Today they are creating a lovely native garden in its place that will be a real asset to the neighborhood.
Mark showed me these treasures over the weekend. They don't look like much BUT they were very old street signs the city dumped along time ago. In most of the Hilltop neighborhoods you will find old dump sites. Usually about 1/2 way down the hill. Our neighborhood is no exception. He found the remnants of these old street signs for our neighborhood. They area baked ceramic glaze material and really nice "back in the day". If would be interesting to see if the city would let us duplicate these old signs and replace the flimsy ones we have today? Before the modern convenience of curbside pickup almost every neighborhood has a dump site. You simply took the trash to it. many of these sites are long forgotten but they all give a peek back in time. One of these days I'll get Mark will take me down there, I'd love to poke around and see just what I can find.
He has found all manner of interesting things, Old bottles, square cut nails and of course these signs. The point of this is Old things are all around you if you take the time to look. Our house when it was build has a 'summer kitchen' a separate structure several feel from the house where meals were prepared. About 1900 an addition was added on the back of our house and the kitchen was Incorporated into the house. We located the stone footers when we started cleaning up the yard. The area will "Eventually" be our side brick courtyard. This means I will be carefully removing top soil to see what is in the ground in that area before we bring in heavy equipment to regrade the site.
So has anyone else found anything interesting in their old house renovation?
Urban Archeology: Neighborhood dumpsites
Reviewed by citra
Published :
Rating : 4.5
Published :
Rating : 4.5
