The story is as obdurate and hard as Pennsylvania granite.

Looking down on the emerging foundations at the archaeological excavation of the President's House, you can see a drama that - as the site reveals - was well-developed at the birth of the nation and continues to this day.

It is the drama of slavery present at the heart of liberty, and, ultimately, the drama of race in America.

The drama is evoked by the symbolic potency of the findings unearthed at Sixth and Market Streets, site of the house where slave-holding George Washington and antislavery John Adams conducted their presidencies in the 1790s.

And now visitors and officials alike are raising the question: How long should this drama run?

"The truth is finally there to see," one black woman said as she gazed out thoughtfully over the welter of stone foundations. Here is where the first presidential family and its chattel slaves once lived in what can now be seen as walled-off but close parallel worlds.

"They should leave this," she murmured, almost to herself.

As thousands of visitors swarm across the platform erected in Independence National Historical Park to facilitate viewing of the dig, comments about race and power, black and white, slavery and freedom, history and identity are everywhere in the air.

(When the site - previously viewable only on weekdays - was opened last weekend, more than 1,000 people visited, stunning Park Service officials, who have opened it again this weekend from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.)

Because of this intensifying interest, city and Park Service officials are seriously reconsidering how to proceed with the site.

Should they stick with the goal of completing the dig this month and refilling the hole in time for July Fourth celebrations? Or should they devise some alternative that keeps the site open?

And what should be done about the ultimate plan to build a memorial to the house and its occupants, including Washington's nine slaves, over the filled-in excavation? Designers headed by Kelly/Maiello Architects & Planners are already well into the planning process. Should they change course?

These issues are being revisited, city officials said last week. And Karen Warrington, a member of an advisory committee overseeing site plans, said "there is a need for further discussions."

What has evoked this response to the two-month-old dig?

Toward the end of April, about 10 feet below street level, archaeologists uncovered the foundation for the back wall of the main house, which was demolished in 1832 and replaced by three commercial buildings fronting Market Street.

That was good news, but not much of a surprise.

What really energized archaeologists and the public was the discovery a few days later of the foundation and basement of the house's kitchen building, about 20 feet south of the main house. There had been no documentary evidence that the kitchen even had a basement, archaeologists said.

During Washington's presidency, his enslaved African chef, Hercules, well-known for his culinary artistry, presided over that kitchen, which other slaves and indentured servants staffed.

A day or two after that find, another stone foundation was discovered - remnants of an underground passageway from the kitchen basement to the main house's basement. The passage allowed slaves and servants to move back and forth unseen.