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The King of Prussia Inn Project

So What's so Important about the King of Prussia Inn?

The King of Prussia Inn was constructed on 1719. Over the years, the King of Prussia Inn was, at different points in time, a farm, a tavern or inn (at this time, they functioned as the same thing), and even a boarding house. It's one of southeastern Pennsylvania's most beautiful and historically important buildings. As the years passed, the town of King of Prussia grew and expanded from a small rural area into an extended suburb of Philadelphia and an important shopping area with the construction of the King of Prussia Mall. By the mid1900’s, the King of Prussia Inn was surrounded on both sides by Route 202, a busy four lane highway serving the greater Philadelphia area, and was starting to become pretty shabby. Route 202 was becoming congested as the Philadelphia area continued to grow and expand. That's when PennDOT's team of planners, engineers, archaeologists, and historians got involved, and developed a plan to improve Route 202 and save the wonderful old inn at the same time. Their plan involved conducting an archaeological investigation to gather as much information about the Inn's buried past as possible, then actually picking the huge stone building up and moving it to a new and safe location! After PennDOT had completed their archaeological excavations, the King of Prussia Inn found a new home approximately one mile down the road from its old location, where it had been for well over two centuries.

How did the Inn (and the Town) get that Funny Name?

How the King of Prussia Inn received its name is for the most part unknown; however, there is one story that seems most likely. During the French and Indian War (1756-1763), also known as the Seven Years War, King Frederick of Prussia had helped the British in their defeat of the French. His actions caused the British people to be thankful for what he had done to help Britain. So it is possible that the King of Prussia Inn, which was an establishment that catered to overnight travelers while serving meals and drinks, was named after King Frederick of Prussia.

What happened in and around the King of Prussia Inn?

Click on the different colored blocks to find out what was happening during that period of time...

What did the Archaeologists Find?

The painstaking process of uncovering the history of the King of Prussia Inn had to be tackled one stratum, or layer of earth, at a time. Each stratum was excavated with shovels, trowels, and other hand tools, exposing old foundations, the round stains of wooden posts, and other evidence of how the land around the Inn was used. Then all of the soil from each excavated stratum was pushed through screens in order to find the smaller artifacts. The smaller artifacts included bone, porcelain and glass sherds, and various metal objects ranging from iron nails to a copper alloy padlock.

Once these artifacts were recovered, they were taken to a lab and cleaned; sometimes with water, sometimes, for fragile objects like pieces of bone, a damp toothbrush was used to gently remove the loose dirt. When the artifacts were clean, they were then separated into groups based on the material they were made from and what part of the site they were found in. By studying the collection of artifacts, and analyzing the results of the excavation, the archaeologists were able to piece together much of the property's buried history. The excavations uncovered a cobblestone pavement, that turned out to be the floor of an old stone barn, and they also uncovered part of the Old King of Prussia Road which had been laid out in 1787.

Through their patient work, the archaeologists contributed an important, and missing, part of the King of Prussia Inn's remarkable history.

How did they Move the Building?

In August of 2000, the huge stone building was slowly, gently, jacked up off of it's foundation on a set of massive hydraulic jacks, then a set of motorized carts, or caissons, with rubber tires slowly (sometime just several feet per hour) moved the Inn to it's new home. The move took two full days to complete, and was a spectacular engineering success! Click on the 2000 block above and see some more pictures of the big move!