Penn archaeology students are working with local volunteers to excavate Black Bottom, the former West Philadelphia neighborhood that the University demolished in part to make room for campus infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Undergraduates are involved in this project through a course \u2014 \u201cArchaeology in the City of Brotherly Love\u201d \u2014\u00a0taught by Penn anthropology professor Megan Kassabaum. Its 11 students contribute to Heritage West, a community archaeology project that studies the neighborhood through excavation and oral histories.<\/p>\n
Kassabaum, a co-director of Heritage West,\u00a0explained that the first two weeks of the semester focused on teaching the neighborhood\u2019s history within Philadelphia. Students attended lectures and took a walking tour that examined Penn\u2019s expansion into Black Bottom. Then, they moved to the excavation itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we\u2019re on-site, they\u2019re working side by side with community members,\u201d she said, adding that many of these volunteers \u201chave history in the Black Bottom\u00a0\u2014 either themselves or their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kassabaum emphasized that community volunteers offer perspectives that supplement classroom instruction by building a well-rounded understanding of the area.<\/p>\n
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Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI think that if you talk to the students at the end of the semester, they will probably have learned much more from the community members than they do from us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The course was previously offered in fall 2023 \u2014 when the excavation began \u2014\u00a0and returned for enrollment in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Oct. 2, Philadelphia’s City Council voted to formally recognize Black Bottom \u2014 a predominantly<\/a> Black neighborhood that existed<\/a> in West Philadelphia as early as the 1840s, and was demolished in the 1960s. The neighborhood stretched roughly between 32nd and 40th Streets east to west, and University and Lancaster Avenues north to south \u2014\u00a0the space University City currently occupies.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Penn Museum, up to 10,000 people were displaced \u201cunder the guise of \u2018urban renewal\u2019\u201d when the West Philadelphia Corporation \u2014\u00a0a consortium of institutions \u2014 wanted to redevelop the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n Laura Wolf-Powers \u2014 the author of \u201cUniversity City: History, Race, and Community in the Era of the Innovation District\u201d \u2014 said that Penn, Drexel University, and other academic institutions were part of the corporation. They worked with the city\u2019s redevelopment authority to construct a new plan for the area, leading to the demolition of homes and businesses for projects including the University City Science Center and University City High School.<\/p>\n Developers claimed that the Science Center could bolster employment in the neighborhood, according to Wolf-Powers. The efforts faced strong resistance from Black Bottom residents, who argued that demolition would displace the community and destroy cultural history.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was people\u2019s neighborhood,\u201d Wolf-Powers said. \u201cThere were social ties that they had there.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that housing discrimination limited the places to which displaced Black residents could move, and that compensatory payments to homeowners were insufficient to purchase replacement homes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe redevelopment authority did provide some compensation to the homeowners in the Black Bottom, but it was not very much, and it was certainly not enough for them to buy another home somewhere else,\u201d Wolf-Powers stated.<\/p>\n Darnell Holmes, a Heritage West community volunteer whose grandmother grew up along Lancaster Avenue, said that accounts from his relatives provide insight into daily life in the historic neighborhood.<\/p>\n He recalled his mother\u2019s descriptions of clam shops where residents gathered and purchased food for family and neighborhood celebrations. He also described the act of residents making clothing and other handmade items in their homes.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the people there had things that we would consider now to be hobbies, but that was just daily life,\u201d Holmes said.<\/p>\n