It’s one of the last vestiges of lost New York that lives in plain sight without an official plaque highlighting its existence.
And it’s become a popular treasure hunt for New York history enthusiasts and surveying hobbyists alike, a group of people who prefer not to divulge their knowledge of the 1810 relics' precise locations.
(Hint: New York City
N 40.769418 / W 73.973436)
Some interesting tidbits we gleaned:
- When most of the world's landmass was just one continent, dinosaurs walked from New Jersey to Africa, and the Jersey side of the Hudson is teeming with dinosaur footprints.
- The palisades are the edge of a lake that formed when Africa ripped away from North America.
- A beaver pond once stood in the area that is now Times Square. (This, and many other good facts, are courtesy of Eric Sanderson and the Mannahatta Project at the Wildlife Conservation Society.)
- Rebuen
Rose-Redwood, a geographer at Texas A&M and an expert on the 1811
survey that mapped Manhattan's grid, has found at least one original
survey pin in Central Park. (We are going to search for the pin when the
weather gets warmer and--if feasible--add it to one of our tours.)
You can also read this article about Rose-Redwood and how his discovery of the pin wasrecreated for the TV cameras.
- A 55-mile long pneumatic tube system that once delivered 200,000 pieces of mail per hour between the post office and downtown office buildings.
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