New Yorker: Unearthing the city grid that would have been in Central Park. Fascinating read about history right under our feet, in the form of 8.5″ square, three foot tall stone markers that were carefully placed across New York City to mark street intersections—including in the land that is now Central Park.
I did an archaeological dig in fifth grade—the site, a trash dump in the backyard of a commercial site, didn’t yield much—and another one summer in middle school in Colonial Williamsburg, which yielded foundations and fragments of pipes and glass. What I discovered didn’t change the world, but it changed me. I learned that sometimes the past is in the present, just a little out of reach—or maybe so covered that it’s not recognizable. Or put another way, history is garbage with context.