What do you do when your job is to build an apartment building on what could be the city’s oldest African American cemetery? You start by asking a lot of questions, according to contractor Vaughan Buckley.

Wash N’ Lube car wash at 4125 Chestnut St was demolished earlier this month.

That’s what Buckley, head of Vaughan Buckley Construction, is doing after it was discovered last week that the site of a proposed apartment building at 4125 Chestnut Street, the property formerly occupied by the now-demolished Wash N’ Lube car wash, could have graves below.

“Consultants and other professionals in this field are being contacted and interviewed by my team and I, to help us throughout this process,” Buckley wrote in a formal statement on Friday. He said that the company is bringing in environmental and soil specialists to deal specifically with the cemetery situation.

The possibility that a graveyard was on the site became widely known after a Philadelphia Inquirer article was published last week.  Continue Reading