Toya Dubin, a conservator from the preservation firm Hudson Archival, shows off the waterlogged contents of a time capsule dug up in Brooklyn on Oct. 1. Photo credit: Jerry Iannelli/globalcitynyc.com
Gabrielle Schubert, director of the New York Transit Museum, watched along with a crowd of onlookers as a construction worker hammered away at a weathered lead box in front of the former headquarters of the New York City Transit Authority in downtown Brooklyn today.
Like the crowd, Schubert had no idea what was inside the container. She was hoping to use the box, a time capsule buried when the building at 370 Jay St. was erected 64 years ago, to jump-start a new exhibit about the historic building.
But after half a century, about all that was left inside the box was a single nickel and a whole lot of mud.
“I’m a little disappointed,” she said after the box was opened around 11:30 a.m. “I wish there were more stuff, more objects that were representative of the time period.”
In light of ongoing renovations to the building, the transit museum – in tandem with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New York University, which now owns the downtown complex – took the opportunity to crack open the capsule, which had lain under the building’s cornerstone since the structure was erected in 1950.
Until 2006, the 14-story building served as the headquarters of what was then called the New York City Board of Transportation (later renamed the New York City Transit Authority), a subdivision of the MTA that operates New York City’s subways and buses. The structure held the cash vaults for the city’s entire transit system until the MTA transitioned away from using tokens nine years ago. So-called “money trains” carried billions in cash to the complex each year. The main offices are now in Manhattan.
In 2012, New York University bought the 500,000-square-foot building, long labeled a drab, Modernist eyesore in the center of what is now Brooklyn’s bustling downtown. NYU is renovating the structure into a multipurpose academic center and entrepreneurial incubator set to open in 2017. The university operates an engineering school across the street.
According to a Brooklyn Eagle article from Oct. 26, 1949, transit officials used the box to store microfilm documents relating to the construction of the building. Little else was known about what the time capsule may have contained.
After a series of museum, MTA and university officials gave brief statements highlighting their excitement about opening the capsule, a team of construction workers hoisted the cornerstone into the air using a pulley and chain.
Construction workers remove the capstone covering a time capsule buried at 370 Jay St. Photo credit: Jerry Iannelli/globalcitynyc.com
“Downtown Brooklyn has grown up around this building,” MTA New York City Transit President Carmen Bianco said in a statement, mentioning that even he had no clue what else may have been buried underground. “I’m curious to see what’s been locked away.”
Lying in a square hole underneath the sidewalk was an unmarked, soiled metal box slightly larger than a briefcase.
As a construction worker pried open the capsule’s lid using a hammer and chisel, onlookers swarmed, jostling each other to get a better view of what they hoped would be an unfiltered glimpse into the past.
Everything inside, however, turned out to be caked in mud and rust.
Toya Dubin, a conservator from the private artifact restoration firm Hudson Archival, held up what had been a plastic-coated newspaper, unable to make out the date or masthead. A small, dark glass jar sat inside, but had been so ravaged by the elements that Dubin could not tell if it contained any microfilm. The sole recognizable artifact was a single nickel, which MTA officials said was the subway fare in 1950.
Schubert said the nickel and glass container might be used in an exhibit set to open in 2015.
“These were subway people,” she said. “You’d think they’d have known that anything you put underground is going to get water in it.”
