This photograph, from the mid-1920s, shows the enlisted men's library with officers quarters in the background (today known respectively as Studio B and Rains Hall). The small lattice structure to the right of the enlisted library is a well head house for the original arsenal well.

In June 2001, archaeological excavation revealed that the old well shaft still existed although the well house at the top of the shaft had been removed.  The photograph (right) shows a number of observers watching a TV monitor as technician lower a special TV camera through a small hole in the concrete closure and down the shaft.  This investigation resulted in a video tape of the well interior and showed that it is brick lined through out its entire depth.

Old maps show a well in this part of the quadrangle, now known as the President's Garden (just south of Rains Hall), but the well house has been gone long enough that it was not recollected by current site occupants.

This was likely the original Arsenal well which William White agreed to dig in 1828.  (click here to see the text of White's well proposal)  Until the summer of 2001, it was not known whether there were any archaeological remains of the well itself surviving. 

This is what the well looked like after a larger opening was made in the concrete closure cap. The pipe in the upper part of the picture apparently was a 20th century addition to mechanize

Here some of the archaeological team, harnessed for safety, obtain samples of the well bottom by lowering a device on ropes which permitted soil to be collected for later analysis in the laboratory. Interestingly, there were virtually no artifacts in the bottom sample.