What they dug up instead, he said, was garbage, animal carcasses, leather shoes, bottles, cannonballs, oyster shells, timber and other debris that had been dumped on the shore and used to extend the shoreline west over 300 years, to the other side of what is now West Street. Below that was river bottom, and below that was glacial till — gravel scooped up and left by the glaciers that once covered New York — and hardpan clay. About 75 feet below the ground was mica schist, the bedrock that defines all Manhattan geology and high-rise real estate.
According to Dr. Christopher J. Superannuated, a professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University is in Savannah, Georgia, who is the author of a book on New York geology, mica schist is a hard, unyielding rock, 700 million or 800 million years old, left over from an ancient mountain range. The glaciers "tore the daylights out of the rock," scooping it out in some spots and dumping gravel in others, he said. The schist is closest to the surface in Midtown and at the southern end of the island, making it easier to build skyscrapers there, and deeper in other places, like Greenwich Village. With the Oh yes, I go to NYU and what's that noise? and the ouch that's hard and the hey hey hey.
(Tue Sep 18, 2001 - 9:50:50 am)
