Update 2:13 p.m! Confirmed by NYC Parks Department.
From Cristina DeLuca from NYC Parks Department Press Office:
Yes, I can confirm. Archaeologists and engineers are on the scene to make a preliminary report and nothing further is known at this time.
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A bit more information on the tombstone that may have been was uncovered on Friday, October 23rd at Washington Square Park during construction recently begun for WSP Redesign: Phase II.
Matt Kovary grew up in Greenwich Village, is working nearby and passes by the location every day. He contacted WSP Blog on Friday after walking by the Park that afternoon when he noticed that there was a large hole dug about 6 feet below the surface in the fenced-off construction area, right at the perimeter of the chain-link fence on the southern edge at Washington Square South and Sullivan Street.
According to Mr. Kovary, there were two people inside the fence, a man and a woman, poring over and dusting off what appeared to be a tombstone which he believed had been recovered from the hole. They were taking pictures of it, and, when he asked whether it was indeed a tombstone, the woman would only state that it was “sandstone,” admitting she was not authorized to talk about it.
Mr. Kovary said that the artifact looked like “a tombstone, not unlike those you’d see at Trinity Church – but in much better condition.” He wondered if it could have been “related to the original land owner” and questioned whether this came from a “family cemetery” from 200 years ago or more.
Although skeletons and human bones from the Park’s time period as a “potter’s field” (1797-1825) have been discovered as recently as last year (see WSP blog entry “The Skeletons of Washington Square Park“), there seems to be less information about – and discovery related to – private cemetery usage before the area was a New York City park.
In Emily Kies Folpe’s book “It Happened on Washington Square,” she writes:
To this day, the remains of more than 20,000 bodies rest under Washington Square. New Yorkers of a century ago told of a blue mist overhanging the park on hot summer mornings, said to be the vapors from the old bones below. From time to time, some of these old bones have resurfaced. …
More evidence was uncovered in 1890, when workmen digging the foundation for the Arch came upon headstones with German inscriptions dating to 1803, thought to be from a private German graveyard at the north side of the field.
I’ve contacted the NYC Parks Department to see what they have to say. I’ll report back.
October 27, 2009 at 8:54 am
[...] redesign entered Phase II, a tombstone was unearthed. Dun dun dun. An eagle-eyed reader of the WSP Blog wrote in to that website Friday after “he noticed that there was a large hole dug about 6 [...]
October 27, 2009 at 9:56 am
[...] a tipster informed the WSP blog yesterday that he noticed a six-foot hole dug at the location, with some suspicious people [...]
October 27, 2009 at 1:46 pm
[...] tombstone was unearthed during construction for Phase II of the Washington Square Park redesign. There is still much [...]
October 28, 2009 at 7:30 am
[...] park. (Passers-by have stopped to peer into the hole and ask workers about the find, one of whom called in news of the discovery to the Washington Square Park [...]