Archaeological dig at transit center site in downtown Indy
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH ) — If you drive past the construction site for the new transit center downtown, you might notice something a little different.
Archaeological crews have uncovered pieces of Indianapolis history.
Construction on the west part of the site, along Delaware Street, has slowed to give those archaeologists time to dig.
The findings were an interesting surprise to the people involved with the project
The future site of the IndyGo transit center, along Washington Avenue between Delaware and Alabama Streets, has most recently been a parking lot.
But construction crews have discovered the land’s history goes back much further.
“Some of those buildings date back to the late 1800s,” IndyGo’s Director of Marketing Bryan Luellen said.
Luellen knew that buildings had stood on the property before, but he didn’t know that anything was left of that bit of Indy history.
“We definitely anticipated that there would be some, we just didn’t anticipate that it would be this extensive,” he said.
Crews testing soil on the property started uncovering parts of what Luellen calls “urban fill.”
“Old plates, shards of glass, old bottles,” he said.
It’s a time capsule of sorts and now archaeologists are preserving the pieces according to state rules.
“Those pieces are getting documented and captured and photographed,” Luellen said, “We don’t want to lose this history.”
State historians will then compare the site findings with old blueprints of the buildings that stood nearly 200 years ago.
“When they demolished the buildings, they might not have documented what was there at the time,” he said.
The discovery has impacted the timeline of the transit center’s construction but at this point, Leuellen said there isn’t a timeline for excavation of the site.
It will depend on the number of artifacts at the scene and their historical significance.
“Work has just slowed right now and since they’re still documenting we don’t know what the full impact is yet,” he said.
The dig sites are in the area where the bus routes and parking would be, so that part of the transit center won’t open when IndyGo had hoped.
However the actual transit center building, along Washington Avenue, is still being built and should open on schedule by the end of 2015.