Way back in the twenty-four hour period — like really right smart back , 400 million years ago — Manhattan was overcompensate in a dissimilar form of towering giant : spate , as marvellous as the Alps . And though those tip are long gone , it turn out that we owe a pile to them . In fact , they ’re the foot upon which NYC ’s skyscraper are build up .
Quite literally , as Untapped Citiesrecently reminded us : 450 million year ago , the landmass we know as Manhattan was part of Pangea , which would eventually break into the continents we know today . Back then , the East Coastcrunched into another mass , and the violence agitate a bunch of shale deep into the Earth .
That shale became schist , a super - strong bedrock that you ’d know if you ’ve ever spent any clock time in Central Park — all those huge boulders are all schist create by the pressure miles below the Earth ’s incrustation .
ikon : AP Photo / Mary Altaffer .
So how did it get back up to the surface ? Here ’s how Max Page excuse it inThe Creative Destruction of Manhattan , 1900 - 1940 :
Where we now talk of the peaks of Manhattan ’s skyscrapers , 400 million year ago stood a mountain range of “ alpine proportions ” frame of rock candy deposits laid down some 300 million years earlier at the bottom of the ocean ; these were push up by the volcanic activity beneath the surface of the sea .
For C of gazillion of years , Manhattan was home to a towering flock reach . Until , ever so easy , its peaks werewhittled away by erosion and glacier . What was left were the stub of mountains , the schist and other super - substantial rock that still pound up all over the metropolis , from the Bronx to the tip of Manhattan , like stubble on a whiskers .
All that easily - accessible bedrock made building skyscrapers — big , fragile skyscraper — particularly easy in New York . In fact , some geologist even claim that the deposits of fundamental principle across the city explain why Manhattan has two different leaf node of tall building . sure enough you ’ve noticed how between the grandiloquent buildings of Midtown and those of the Financial District , there ’s a morass of lowrise construction ?
double : Andrew Burton / Getty Images
Well , according to some geologists , that ’s because bedrock is closer to the control surface beneath those two neighborhoods — between them lies subdued , less rough primer coat . “ Geology totally controls the skyline of New York in that the high-pitched buildings are always retrieve where the rock ‘n’ roll is close to the surface , ” sound out Charles Merguerian , a professor of geology at Hofstra University , to the BBC .
But as you might expect , not everyone agrees about the serial publication of ancient events that leave to New York ’s ascendancy as a capital of magniloquent building . In 2012 , an economist name Jason Barr published a study in The Journal of Economic History that attempted to debunk that idea , claiming that New York ’s twofold poles of skyscrapers wasall about the socio - economic figure of urban migration , not easy access code to bedrock .
Whether or not we have bedrock to thank for the patterns in which New Yorkers built their construction , we know that this ancient fundamentals made it a whole lot easier across the table . Oddly enough , New York ’s future tense was correct in gesture much earlier than most of us would have ever remember .
Next sentence you find yourself clambering across a boulder in Central Park , think back : That rock began its Swedish mile - long journeying from inside the Earth , up to NYC today , almost half a billion years ago . [ New York Observer;Untapped Cities;NYC Parks;BBC ]
go image : nosha / Flickr .
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