Iron Coffin Lady documentary airing this week

From the NY Post:

On the afternoon of Oct. 4, 2011, a backhoe dug into an excavation pit in Elmhurst, Queens, and struck iron. Construction workers assumed they had hit a pipe. But when the claws of the backhoe emerged from the ground, it was dragging a body clothed in a white gown and knee-high socks.

Scott Warnasch, then a New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner forensic archaeologist, initially viewed the finding as a recent homicide. “It was recorded as a crime scene,” Warnasch, 52, told The Post. “A buried body on an abandoned lot sounds pretty straightforward.”

It turned out to be anything but. The almost perfectly preserved body was actually that of a woman born decades before the Civil War. She had been buried in what was once the grounds of a church founded in 1830 by the first generation of free African-Americans. Now a new documentary, “The Woman in the Iron Coffin,” premiering Wednesday on PBS, provides the woman’s identity.

The Post can reveal that researchers believe her to be Martha Peterson, who worked for a local white man with abolitionist leanings.

Historic fire tower in danger of collapse

From the Daily News:

The fire watchtower in the middle of Marcus Garvey Park — one of the city’s most spectacular and least-known landmarks — is deteriorating in danger of collapsing, the Daily News has learned.

Bits and pieces of the 47-foot, corroded cast-iron structure have already fallen to the ground — and a strip of sheet metal from the top of its observation deck flew off in 2012 and got stuck in the branches of a tree, residents say.

“We are seeing small pieces of it collapse and fall to the ground — right in front of our eyes,” says Angel Ayon, a local architect and preservationist who notes that urgent action to disassemble and restore the tower cannot be delayed.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/time-ticks-marcus-garvey-park-watchtower-article-1.1232753#ixzz2H2NOgRjb

Parks officials say the long-term solution is to dismantle, salvage, restore and reassemble the tower, a $4.5 million project for which no funds are budgeted.

Until cash for the major reconstruction is available, the city plans a $325,000 stabilization of the highest, most vulnerable level of the tower, an emergency stop-gap approach that will be put out to bid later this year.