New York City’s 18th-Century Past

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—Work to upgrade the underground utilities in Lower Manhattan’s South Street Seaport area has uncovered artifacts from the eighteenth century, including broken bottles, a gun flint, furniture pieces, a fork, pipes, pottery, and buttons that may have been worn by British soldiers during the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. The excavators also found wooden water mains. “We see the effort that people took even 200 years ago to ensure that they had a reliable source of water,” said Tom Foley of the city’s Department of Design and Construction. The artifacts will be used as teaching tools in New York City schools.