14. An Entire Cemetery Under a Philadelphia Apartment Building
Construction workers on an apartment building in Philadelphia’s historic district were certainly not expecting to encounter coffins and fully intact human remains. The site near the Betsy Ross House was supposedly a decommissioned burial ground for the First Baptist Church. They found as many as 60 individuals, and they took the remains to a forensic osteology lab for documentation, cleaning, and analysis.
There is no state or city regulation on how to handle unearthed bones except if they are at a government site, so the company had no legal obligation to turn it over to an archaeological dig or to pause construction; however, the Executive Vice President did acknowledge the need to be respectful and wanted to allow the process to run its course.