CENTRAL PARK GUIDE XavierBurrell

Xavier Burrell
EESC. 7013T: Earth Science and the New York City Urban Environment
Brooklyn College
December 9, 2021
CENTRAL PARK GUIDE XavierBurrell

How did the New York City that we know and love come to be? In this guide, we will cover
Taconic Orogeny, evidence of glaciers being in NYC, and how their glacial erratics helped
influence the NYC of today by focusing on the evidence layered throughout Central Park.

If you were to go to Central Park today, as you head through

the park’s main entrance and start observing the statue from
the top portion of Monument of Battleship Maine, one will
notice that there are styolites, crinoids, and bryozoans present
in the limestone as seen in Fig 1.2.​​The texture of the
limestone is also granular, coarse grained and looks similar to
the building stone used in the construction of the J.P Morgan
building which leads to the conclusion of this being Tennessee
marble, a limestone and sedimentary rock. Furthermore, we
don’t see mud like particles which tells us that this rock was
formed under high energy in a shallow marine setting, in
warm clear water. The base is composed of Milford pink
granite as evinced by the quartz, feldspar,and biotite depicted
in Fig 1.2.

As we continue on to the building stone used at the restrooms (location 2 on the map) we see
spots of pink which is feldspar and spots of white which is the quartz, which is good evidence
that this is a gneiss or schist. However, as one observes more closely with a lens, one notices
layering and foliation along with crystalline and alignment to the mineral as seen in Fig. 2.1 and
2.2 which evinces that this is indeed a Gneiss. Gneiss is a coarse grained metamorphic rock
which tells us that it was formed under very high temperatures, even higher than the schist and
that it also was metamorphosed from a sedimentary rock such as granite. One can assume it was
metamorphosed from granite because of the foliation of the different minerals in alternating
layers.
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Then as you continue progressing through the park, you come upon an outcrop of bedrock as
seen in Fig. 4a that displays a lot of mica, muscovite, dark biotite, some feldspar, and some
quartz. After careful consideration, one can conclude that there is evidence for this being mica
schist which is a metamorphic rock. Metamorphic rocks were once igneous but changed as a
result of heat which causes them to metamorphose. There are also hints of garnet which is
evidence of the parent shale rock furthering that these same quartzites used to be shale. It was
probably a sedimentary rock that got squeezed perpendicularly.

This outcrop of bedrock is especially important because it tells a

history of glacial activity that happened in NYC. How do we
know Manhattan was once covered in all ice? What evidence
indicates the presence of glaciers? According to Jason King, an
archaeologist, geologist, and historian, “The New York Times
did a story on How the Ice Age Shaped New York with a tagline
‘Long ago, the region lay under an ice sheet thousands of feet
thick. It terminated abruptly in what are now the boroughs,
leaving the city with a unique landscape.’” (King) This stood out
to me because the evidence was clearly displayed all over
Central Park as the glacial activity from almost 18,000 years ago
melted and influenced the shifting of bedrock, the bisecting of
the local moraine, and the dumping of rubble and other rocks
from glacial erratics.

The outcropping of bedrock continues with fig. 4b

which displays another bedrock which begets the
question, how does one prove that it was from the same
bedrock and not some random rock/boulder that had
been displaced? This is proven by the fact that the
“boulders” are huge and the larger the exposure, the
less likely it is that this is a boulder because the
exposure would break it up a lot more. Also, the
orientation of layering is in the same direction. And
lastly because the deposits look the same, meaning they
have the same type of mineral composition. What are
the chances that a glacier deposited the same time of
“boulder” in the same orientation, and in the same area
repeatedly?

This opening, convergence and divergence of the plate

boundaries which causes the protrusion of bedrock, is
also the sign of taconic orogeny. Before we continue to
delve into this evidence, we have to first understand,
“what is Taconic orogeny?”. Taconic Orogeny is the
convergence of tectonic boundaries from plates moving around and converging, causing the birth
of continents.
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On one hand, the plates might converge or diverge and if two oceanic plates collide, then one
will eventually subduct because it has to give way. As it sinks, it eventually melts as it passes the
sedimentary layer of the lithosphere and the magma rises to the surface and explodes creating
volcanics, moreover, if they’re high enough, they’ll create more land/mountains all along the
plate boundary. As a result, it creates a volcanic island arc, which means there’s a lot of rocks
pushing down on each other causing friction which gives and releases energy causing
earthquakes as observed in the Caribbean.

On the other hand, when there’s tensile stress instead of compressive stress the plates will
diverge, meaning the continents begin to pull apart. As seen in figure below, when there’s a
tension acting on the lithosphere, it is pulled apart. It thins/breaks in the middle and creates a rift
valley. If we redraw with the effect of the divergence, the high areas (as represented by the “H” )
are formed with a basin in the middle. And those high locations will get eroded over time which
means sediments will begin to fill up the rivers in the basin. Additionally, because that rift-valley
is thinner, one may consider it a weak area in
which magma (represented in red) can begin to
come through the cracks (orange horizontal
lines). Those cracks are weaknesses that may
reach as far as the mantle and the lava flow will
come through the cracks and create
sills/intrusions if the lava flow gets trapped
below the surface. Eventually the land thins so
much from the magma and divergence that we
get new ocean plates which continue to push
the land apart over time. This evidence of
taconic orogeny is further evidence that this
outcrop of bedrock must’ve been a rock
formation that rose as a result of plate
boundaries shifting.

Further evidence to support the presence of glaciers

and glacial activity in NYC is seen in Fig 7. The
figure depicts a form which geologists note as a
roché moutonnée. It is a rock formation that evinces
the direction of glacial movement. As seen below,
the bedrock is asymmetrical with a gentle slope
which informs us of the direction of the glacier's
movement. In this case the glacier was moving to
the South/South East because the steep side is
aligned to the South/ South East direction.

Just 300 ft or so from the Roché Moutene there’s a

huge pegmatite boulder. It is also evidence for
glaciers being in NYC as glacial erratics such as this
pegmatite boulder was dumped along with many
other types of boulder, minerals, and rocks as the ice
melted. The presence of the many different and
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seemingly random boulders in the park , such as the basalt boulder and gabbro boulder from the
Palisades that have been rounded through transportation while the glacier was moving, is
evidence for glacial erratics as it displays rocks that were deposited as the ice melted.

However the most convincing piece of evidence for taconic orogeny and glacial activity is seen
in the sixth location on the Central Park Map, “Umpire Rock”. It is a mica schist with grooves in
the bed rock. The grooves most likely appeared as a result of differential weathering because
when the rock was struck with a hammer it removed some dirt but didn’t break the rock. This
tells us that the damage to the rock was caused over time due to chemical break down of the rock
with rain, and not in a single motion. There are also folds on the rock which is evidence of plate
convergence. In this example of regional metamorphism, we get evidence of two plate
boundaries that converged whereby the sandstone and shale were folded and metamorphosed.
One can literally check how much the rock had been compressed by measuring the distance of
when it was straight compared to how much it folded by walking around the fold in measured
steps. Similarly, evidence of the glacial activity can be found specifically in the striations cutting
across the hard and soft parts of the rock liely going from N/NW to S/SE. The Principle of
Crosscutting tells us that whatever was doing the cutting, which we now know to be a glacier or
glacial erratic, was younger.

The walkthrough has covered a lot of how the Ice Age has helped shape New York City and
explains the city as we know it today, as well as the Central Park we’ve come to enjoy. As
humans, we’ve done a lot to hide or keep that part of our history obscure but it is very present
and still a mitigating influence on how New York City will continue to develop in the future.
Sure, we don’t have glaciers still affecting our edifices and depositing glacial erratics, however,
the plate boundaries will continue to converge and diverge which will inevitably change the
landscape as we know it.
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Reference Page

King, Jason. “Ice Age: New York”. Hidden Hydrology. Accessed December 9th.
https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/ice-age-new-york/