Photos: Excavating the Gerrard Hall portico foundation.
Gerrard Hall is the fourth oldest building still standing on the UNC campus, constructed intermittently between 1822 and 1837. The building’s original design included a portico on the south side of the building, facing away from the center of campus but toward the road that led to the state capital, Raleigh. By about 1900, the portico had fallen into disrepair and was torn down. In 2006 Gerrard Hall underwent extensive renovation, and a new portico was constructed to restore the building’s exterior to its original appearance.
Prior to those renovations, archaeological investigations were undertaken to locate, expose, and document the original south portico foundations. UNC archaeologists exposed the eastern and east-central column foundations, the portico foundation between these two columns, and the east foundation trench from which the stones had previously been removed. These findings helped confirm the reconstruction design for the new portico and columns. Only a few other early nineteenth-century artifacts were recovered, and no intact soils were found that predated construction of Gerrard Hall.
3D model of excavation 
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