Builders Unearth a Mystery in Times Square

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December 21, 2009, 12:06 pm
Builders Unearth a Mystery in Times Square
By PATRICK MCGEEHAN



A stone wall was uncovered at a construction site on West 41st Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

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Midtown Manhattan has been overhauled so thoroughly in the last two decades that any structure not made of glass and steel looks old. In that realm, the tightly packed pile of stones that appeared at the base of 11 Times Square last week looked positively ancient.

Its sudden unveiling caused passers-by and neighbors to wonder how old it was and what purpose it had served.

Was it a furnace? A fireplace? A coal vault?

Inquiring minds — some belonging to reporters and editors at The New York Times whose desks practically overlooked it — demanded answers. The possibility of news happening mere feet away was both tantalizing and unusually convenient.

Who better to ask than the men in hardhats milling around the taped-off hole that contained the thing in question? Who better to express extreme disinterest in helping a reporter than those same men in hardhats?

According to them, it was part of something that was there before they built the nearly complete office tower at the corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.

Helpful.

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Time to call in an expert. Breaking away from holiday shopping, Joan H. Geismar rushes to the scene, as only a dedicated urban archaeologist would.

Upon hearing a rough description of this remnant, Dr. Geismar, president of the Professional Archaeologists of New York City, had guessed it was a vault that held coal to heat a long-gone building. But upon further review, Dr. Geismar was less certain.

“This isn’t typical,” she said, after leaning over the edge of the street to inspect the stones.

Normally, a coal vault would be made of bricks and open at the top. But this wall of stacked stone had a rectangular opening at the bottom that made it resemble a fireplace. She speculated that it could have been the foundation of a structure built in the 19th century and that the opening had been cut in more modern times to accommodate utility lines.

When Doug Allen, the executive overseeing construction of the tower for its developer, SJP Properties, arrived on the block, Dr. Geismar quizzed him. Mr. Allen revealed little of what he knew, but he said the workers planned to leave the stones in place and fill the space around them.

That cover-up plan (literally) pleased Dr. Geismar, who researched the history of the property and found that it had housed a theater built in the early 1890s and a row of three- and four-story buildings that stood into the 1910s.

She imagined aloud how thrilling it would be for future historians and archaeologists to stumble upon the stones again in 100 years when the lot is redeveloped.

“It makes perfect sense to leave it,” Dr. Geismar said. “It’s sort of a little secret of New York’s past.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/builders-unearth-a-mystery-in-times-square/