Wall? We Don’t Need No Stinking Wall!

Contractors expanding the quirky 5-car-only South Ferry subway station have unearthed a big 18th- or even 17th-century chunk of New York’s archaeological past:

Three weeks after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority started digging a subway tunnel under Battery Park, the project hit a wall. A really old wall. Possibly the oldest wall still standing in Manhattan.

It was a 45-foot-long section of a stone wall that archaeologists believe is a remnant of the original battery that protected the Colonial settlement at the southern tip of the island. Depending on which archaeologist you ask, it was built in the 1760’s or as long ago as the late 17th century.

Either way, it would be the oldest piece of a fortification known to exist in Manhattan and the only one to survive the Revolutionary War period, said Joan H. Geismar, president of the Professional Archaeologists of New York City.

“To my knowledge, it’s the only remain of its kind in Manhattan,” Ms. Geismar said. “It’s a surviving Colonial military structure. That’s what makes it unique.”

Among the items found around the wall are a well-preserved halfpenny coin dated 1744 and shards of smoking pipes and Delft pottery, said Amanda Sutphin, director of archaeology for the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Now it seems that the wall is just in the way:

What is clear about the battery wall, which sits on bedrock about nine feet below street level, is that it is in the way of the transportation authority’s plan to build a section of tunnel for the No. 1 train that will connect to a new South Ferry station.

. . .

For the past month, work on the tunnel there has been at a standstill while officials of the various city agencies involved have debated how to proceed with construction of the tunnel while preserving some or all of the wall.

The authority’s contractor on the project, Schiavone Construction of Secaucus, N.J., was being paid extra to complete its work in Battery Park quickly so that the park could reopen by summer. In exchange for the right to tear up the park, the authority agreed to spend more than $10 million cleaning up the mess and helping to reconfigure the park as the Parks Department has envisioned. That redesign would include a new bicycle path to link the riverfront on the east and west sides.

But the contractor is already a few weeks behind schedule, and engineers are concerned about a prolonged delay. One idea the authority floated was to remove a three-foot-long section of the wall to be preserved elsewhere, then plow ahead with the excavation.

As Kenneth Jackson says, “History is for losers.”

Alternatively, you could dissemble the wall and reuse the bricks. And — as exciting as that sounds! — that would be . . . totally unsatisfying and archaeologically bereft:

“This is thrilling,” said Warrie Price, president of the Battery Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that supports revitalization of the Battery. Ms. Price added that she hoped the wall could be reconstructed, at least in part, above ground in the park.

“If these stones are able to be reused,” she said, “it would be wonderful to be able to actually touch this history.”

That wall is gone, folks — history is for losers!