Michael Pappalardo meets with Professional Circle, discusses ship remains found at WTC site
Michael Pappalardo of AKRF, a leading consulting firm specializing in environmental, planning and engineering services, speaks at the Conservancy's Professional Circle Breakfast, Oct.13.
Professional Circle members recently filled the Conservancy’s conference room to hear archeologist Michael Pappalardo talk about his experience as lead archeologist involved in the astonishing discovery of a 200-year old ship at World Trade Center site. The find generated headlines around the world and continues to reveal new information about New York’s nautical history and the physical development of lower Manhattan.
“The discovery tapped into something exciting,” said Pappalardo, who headed the team of archaeologists from AKRF, a leading consulting firm specializing in environmental, planning and engineering services.
“There are a variety of sub-disciplines that we are drawing on to flesh out the picture of this ship—what it was doing there and what it can teach us about the history of Manhattan.”
The team carefully unearthed the remains of the ship, recorded their findings with photos and video and eventually transported the ship to a special conservation laboratory in Maryland.
“We worked well into the evenings with only a week to remove the ship. Food was lowered to workers at the site to keep energy levels up,” Pappalardo said. “Although the ship had been buried for over 200 years, the integrity of the ship was incredibly robust and it was very difficult to move the pieces.”
The ship is believed to have been a private, ocean-going vessel that may have been used for landfill when the Manhattan shoreline was extended in the late 1700s (click here to read recent New York Times story).
Historic maps indicate that the original shoreline in this area was located several blocks in-land from today’s shoreline, near present-day Greenwich Street. Evidence of landfilling west of Washington Street was first seen on maps dating to the late 1790s while the entire site was filled in by the 1830s.
“We are engaged in a variety of tasks—we removed the ship, we’ve got all these artifacts and we’ve got all these pieces of wood,” he said. “This process resulted in many many artifacts – cannonballs, musket balls, button from Revolutionary War from British officers.”
Once the pieces were moved, Pappalardo said each piece of the ship was carefully placed individually in containers to prevent rotting.
“The conservators who worked on site with us would keep the pieces of wood wet, wrapping them up in various materials where they were then loaded in two ten-yard containers and a crane was used to lift them off site. These two containers of the individual ship elements were brought to Maryland to MAC Lab where pieces were removed from containers, washed and put into water where they are being stabilized through other agents to stop the metal from rusting or corroding,” he said.
With much of the ship still undiscovered, Pappalardo talked of possible future plans to search areas near the WTC site where the rest of the ship likely remains.
“What we don’t know yet is how exceptional this ship is, but steps are being taken to set up a plan with regard to next steps,” he said.
The Landmarks Conservancy was invited by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to inspect the site in its capacity as an official consulting party to work at the World Trade Center under the Federal National Historic Preservation Act. Click here to learn read the full story.
