President's House (Philadelphia)

The three-and-a-half-story brick mansion on the south side of Market Street was built in 1767 by widow Mary Lawrence Masters. During the British occupation of Philadelphia from September 1777 to June 1778, the house was occupied by General Sir William Howe, who used it as the British Army's headquarters. Following the British evacuation, it housed the American military governor, Benedict Arnold. Arnold began a secret and treasonous correspondence with the British while living in the house. The next resident was John Holker, a purchasing agent for the French, who were American allies in the war. During Holker's residency, the house suffered a fire. Financier Robert Morris purchased the house from Richard Penn in 1781, although transfer of the deed was delayed because of the Revolutionary War. Morris refurbished and expanded the house, and lived there while Superintendent of Finance. Washington lodged with Morris during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, which he presided over at Independence Hall. In 1790, Philadelphia became the temporary national capital, and Morris gave up the house for Washington's use as the Executive Mansion. Morris moved to the house next door, that he also owned. President Washington occupied the Philadelphia President's House from November 1790 to March 1797, and Washington's successor, President John Adams, occupied it from March 1797 to May 30, 1800. Adams then visited Washington, D.C., to oversee the transfer of the federal government and returned to his Peacefield home in Quincy, Massachusetts for the summer. He moved into the not yet completed White House on November 1, 1800, the first U.S. president to live there, and occupied it for just over four months. Thomas Jefferson won the 1800 presidential election, was inaugurated on March 4, 1801, and became the first U.S. president to occupy the White House for his entire presidential term. In the 1804 presidential election, Jefferson was reelected, and resided at the White House during his entire two terms, which lasted from 1801 to 1809. Post-presidential Following President Adams's 1800 departure, the house was converted into Francis's Union Hotel. Hardware merchant Nathaniel Burt purchased the property in 1832, and gutted the house, inserting three narrow stores between its exterior walls. He and his descendants owned these stores for just over a century. The party wall between 530 and 532 Market was the four-story west wall of the President's House, and would have been incorporated into the expanded Oak Hall. and replaced by a memorial site in 2010 after archeology studies. Advocacy by historians and African American groups resulted in the 2010 commemoration of the site. In 2026, the signs mentioning slavery were removed under the direction of the Executive Order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" during the second Trump administration. ==President Washington in Philadelphia==

'', a painting by Edward Savage completed between 1789 and 1796, depicting (left to right): George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington, Nelly Custis, Martha Washington, and an enslaved servant, probably William Lee or Christopher Sheels The nation's first president, George Washington, along with First Lady Martha Washington and two of her grandchildren, "Wash" Custis and Nelly Custis, lived in President's House in Philadelphia. He had an initial household staff of about 24, eight of whom were enslaved Africans, plus an office staff of four or five, who also lived and worked there. The house was too small for the 30-plus occupants, so the President made additions: ''"...a large two-story bow to be added to south side of the main house making the rooms at the rear thirty-four feet in length, a long one-story servants' hall to be built on the east side of the kitchen ell, the bathtubs to be removed from the bath house's second floor and the bathingroom turned into the President's private office, additional servant rooms to be constructed, and an expansion of the stables."'' Pennsylvania had begun a gradual abolition of slavery in 1780, freezing the number of slaves in the state and granting freedom only to their future children. The law did not free anyone at once; its gradual abolition was to be accomplished over decades as the enslaved aged and died off. The law allowed slaveholders from other states to hold personal slaves in Pennsylvania for six months, but empowered those same enslaved to legally petition for their freedom if held beyond that period. Washington recognized that slavery was unpopular in Philadelphia, but argued (privately) that he remained a resident of Virginia and subject to its laws on slavery. He gradually replaced most of the President's House enslaved servants with German indentured servants, and rotated the others in and out of the state to prevent them from establishing an uninterrupted six-month residency. He was also careful that he himself never spent six continuous months in Pennsylvania. Joe (Richardson) was the only slave added to the presidential household. He was brought up from Virginia in 1795, following Austin's December 20, 1794, death in Maryland. Oney Judge , one of nine slaves held by Washington at President's House in Philadelphia Oney Judge was the personal slave of Martha Washington, and was about 17 when she was brought to the President's House in 1790. More is known about her than any of the other enslaved because she gave two interviews to abolitionist newspapers in the 1840s. She escaped to freedom from the President's House in May 1796, and was hidden by Philadelphia's free-black community. The President's House steward placed runaway advertisements in Philadelphia newspapers offering a reward for her recapture. She was smuggled aboard a ship to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Judge hoped she was safe, but she was recognized on the street by a friend of the Washingtons. Through intermediaries, Washington attempted to convince her to return, but Judge refused unless she was guaranteed her freedom upon their deaths. Martha Washington's nephew, Burwell Bassett, traveled to Portsmouth in 1798. He lodged with Senator John Langdon and revealed his plan to abduct Judge. Langdon sent word for Judge to go into hiding, and Bassett was forced to return without her. Hercules Hercules was the chief cook at Mount Vernon in 1786, and was brought to the President's House in November 1790 to run the kitchen. He requested that his 12-year-old son Richmond accompany him, but Richmond spent less than a year in Philadelphia. Much of what is known about Hercules comes from a nostalgic and affectionate account by Martha Washington's grandson, who presumed that "Uncle Harkless" had been content in slavery. Hercules left behind Richmond and daughters Evey and Delia at Mount Vernon. but by then he had been freed under the terms of George Washington's will. The mystery of his journey after escaping Mount Vernon seems to have been solved in 2019. Genealogist Sara Krasne, searching records at the Westport Historical Society in Massachusetts, found a Hercules Posey, born in Virginia, who died of consumption on May 15, 1812, age 64, and was buried in the Second African Burying Ground in New York City. ==Archaeology and advocacy==

Liberty Bell Center As the turn of the 21st century approached, a major new building to house the Liberty Bell was planned for Independence Mall. Nearly the length of a football field, including its porch, the Liberty Bell Center would stretch along the east side of Sixth Street from Chestnut Street almost to Market Street. 2000 archaeology An archaeological excavation of the Liberty Bell Center's footprint was undertaken in November and December 2000. A technological marvel built by Robert Morris in the early 1780s, the icehouse had been a windowless building erected over an octagonal stone-walled pit, in diameter and deep. In midwinter the pit would be packed with blocks of ice harvested from the Schuylkill River. The icehouse provided refrigeration for most of the year: The Door for entering this Ice house faces the north, a Trap Door is made in the middle of the Floor through which the Ice is put in and taken out. I find it best to fill with Ice which as it is put in should be broke into small pieces and pounded down with heavy Clubs or Battons such as Pavers use, if well beat it will after a while consolidate into one solid mass and require to be cut out with a Chizell or Axe. I tried Snow one year and lost it in June. The Ice keeps until October or November and I believe if the Hole was larger so as to hold more it would keep Christmas..." The truncated icehouse pit was measured and photographed by the National Park Service, and then reburied. The footprint of this building was located under the porch of the planned Liberty Bell Center, about from the LBC's main entrance. Independence National Historical Park Superintendent Martha Aikens countered with an op-ed proposing that the enslaved be interpreted at the Germantown White House, some miles away. Nash's anger inspired the founding of the Ad Hoc Historians, a group of Philadelphia-area scholars whose immediate concern was the interpretation for the under-construction Liberty Bell Center. The issue led to the formation of two African-American groups that advocated for the enslaved: Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, founded by attorney Michael Coard; and Generations Unlimited, founded by local historian Charles Blockson and activist Sacaree Rhodes. This included a terse statement from Independence Park: "The Liberty Bell is its own story, and Washington's slaves are a different one better told elsewhere." Pitcaithley read Independence Park's interpretive script for the Liberty Bell Center's exhibits, and found it disappointing. He described it as "an exhibit to make people feel good but not to think," that "works exactly against NPS's new thinking," and "would be an embarrassment if it went up." In July 2002, a provision was inserted into the FY2003 Department of Interior appropriation bill requiring NPS to study this and report back to the U.S. Congress. Congressmen Chakka Fatah and Robert Brady secured $3.6 million in federal funds for the project, which they jointly announced on September 6, 2005. A national design competition for the President's House site was announced in late 2005, and more than twenty teams of architects, artists and historians submitted proposals. Six of these teams were selected as semi-finalists, and were given stipends to create models and finished drawings. The models and drawings were exhibited at the National Constitution Center and the African American Museum in Summer 2006, and the public had several weeks to comment and cast votes for their favorite design. 2007 archaeology A second archaeological excavation was begun on March 27, 2007. This was focused on the house's backbuildings, and a temporary observation platform was erected atop the footprint of the main house. Early discoveries included brick foundations of the three Burt stores, built between the exterior walls of the gutted house. Excavation of the kitchen established that it had a basement, and a section of this had a root cellar below it. At the juncture of the kitchen's foundations and the stores' was found an 1833 coin, possibly left by the builders to mark their completed work. As the stores' plaster cellar floors were chipped away, older foundations were revealed beneath them. The excavation uncovered the rear wall of the main house and, most surprisingly, much of the curved foundation of Washington's bow window. This two-story semi-circular expansion of the State Dining Room (and the State Drawing Room above it) was designed by the President to be a ceremonial space in which he would receive guests. "There can be little doubt that in Washington's bow can be found the seed that was later to flower in the oval shape of the Blue Room [of the White House]." Hundreds of thousands of people visited the observation platform between March and July 2007. The excavation was closed with a July 31 ceremony that included speeches, the dedication of a bronze plaque listing the names of the nine enslaved held at the site, a prayer, and the African ritual of spilling of sand and water as oblations. ==President's House Memorial==

Completed in 2010, the memorial, ''President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation'', is an open-air pavilion that shows the outline of the original buildings and allows visitors to view the remaining foundations. Some artifacts are displayed within the pavilion. Signage and video exhibits portrayed the history of the structure, as well as the roles of Washington's slaves in his household and slaves in American society, until the federal government removed the exhibits in 2026. CBS described it as the only federal historic site to commemorate the history of slavery in the United States. File:President's House Philadelphia.jpg|Memorial at the site of the former President's House. File:2012-07 Independence National Historical Park 07.JPG|President's House Memorial, looking north. File:2012-07 Independence National Historical Park 08.JPG|Kitchen foundations Trump executive order and removal of exhibits In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14253, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." In it he directed the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, to ensure memorials do not "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living" and "instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape." The Service initiated a review of all its 433 national parks, monuments, and historic sites. Employees were told to report items for review for removal, and to post signs and QR codes at all sites. Both went up in Independence Park, asking viewers to report repairs, service improvements, or "any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features." At the President's House, 13 items across six exhibits were reported. Asked for confirmation, an Interior Department spokesperson replied: “As the President has stated, federal historic sites and institutions should present history that is accurate, honest and reflective of shared national values,” and “Interpretive materials that focus solely on challenging aspects of U.S. history, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, may unintentionally provide an incomplete understanding rather than enrich it.” All exhibit panels were removed on January 22, 2026, not just the flagged items, Politico reported that the Interior Department did not answer questions about what would replace the removed exhibits. with city officials saying the removal violated a long-standing cooperative agreement that required consultation before alterations, and pointing out the panels were funded primarily by the city and private donations, not the federal government. White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement that President Trump "continues to fulfill his promise to restore truth and common sense to the United States and its institutions" and "is ensuring that we are honoring the fullness of the American story instead of distorting it in the name of left-wing ideology". The Interior Department said in another that it was taking appropriate action in accordance with the order On February 16, federal judge Cynthia M. Rufe granted a preliminary injunction, a temporary measure to restore the displays while the case played out in court. Rufe said unilateral changes had violated federal law and agreements requiring consent of the city, and that additionally the exhibits about Oney Judge were essential to the site's selection under a 1998 law meant to commemorate the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Rufe had expressed horror over the government's argument that it gets to choose the message it wants to convey, and in her ruling stated "As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto 'Ignorance is Strength,' this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not." The administration restored some of the displays after Judge Rufe, two days later, gave it until February 20. An hour before the government was going to miss the deadline, Third Circuit judge Thomas Hardiman partially granted its appeal, so that the remaining displays do not need to be returned, and forbade changes to the President's House, so that those already back must remain. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that 16 of 17 glass panels were reinstalled on February 19, with the remaining one needing repairs, and that this was out of the site's 34 panels total. The Inquirer reported further decisions as being unlikely before May. The architecture firm responsible for the memorial issued a statement opposing changes to the site and the city's main tourism agency, a nonprofit, offered to find another location open to the public to host the displays if they were removed from the President's House. A local data librarian became a founding member of Save Our Signs, a project to crowdsource a photo archive of national parks' displays. Forty-five local preservation and historical groups sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum opposing changes to, or removal of, the slavery exhibits. Neighboring counties and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro filed amicus briefs in support of Philadelphia's court case, and the Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution condemning the review. ==See also==