More Battery Wall Found

Workers digging to straighten the South Ferry subway station have discovered more colonial battery wall in their way:

This piece, about 105 feet long and 9 feet thick, is even larger than two other sections found under Battery Park in the last four months. The discoveries have left city officials with an embarrassment of historical riches and a problem: Where do you put several more tons of pre-Revolutionary stone and mortar in one of the most densely developed places on Earth?

They have cobbled together a three-part solution.

Once the construction of the terminal is finished, the City Department of Parks and Recreation plans to reassemble the first large section at ground level in Battery Park and to spread stones from the third one in other parks in Lower Manhattan. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering embedding part of the second section in a glass wall inside the new terminal.

. . .

After initially resisting, officials of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have embraced the idea of incorporating some of the stone in the South Ferry terminal. They plan to embed a section 20 feet long and a few feet high in the middle of a white glass wall in the mezzanine, said Sandra Bloodworth, director of the transportation authority’s Arts for Transit program.

The goal, Ms. Bloodworth said, is to “recreate the experience of discovering the wall.” The section the stones will be taken from is too “massive,” at 60 feet long and more than 8 feet thick, to be displayed as a whole, she said.

. . .

Still, some archaeologists would prefer to see the walls preserved in full.

“A piece of a wall I don’t think has much integrity,” said Nan Rothschild, a historical archaeologist who teaches at Barnard College. “It is just a wall. But it’s exciting when you see it. What it speaks to, to me, is the way the space in Lower Manhattan has been manipulated and how it’s developed. The city keeps being rebuilt.”