New York City, Before the Pavement

A 1,000-ton rock, possibly deposited by a retreating glacier some 12,000 years ago, sits across from LaGuardia Airport in Queens. The lumpy behemoth has borne witness to LaGuardia's Cinderella story, going from worst to best among U.S. airports. But the rock has seen a lot more than that. Hundreds of years ago, much of the area was a serene marine habitat, full of bluefish and mullet swimming 40 feet below sea level. A new book by the ecologist Eric W. Sanderson, 'Before New York,' digs deep into the historical landscape of the airport and many other nooks and crannies — some 4,000 sites — in the five boroughs. As his 2009 book, 'Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City,' made clear, the metropolis was once a mess of wetlands, forests and waterways. Where LaGuardia stands, there were rocky oyster reefs and Lenape walking trails. Further inland: streams and frog hollows, where wolves once hunted their prey. Like the Lenape, the animals were pushed out when Dutch farmers grew territorial. By the latter half of the 19th century, the farms had been replaced by amusement parks and beer halls, which were soon razed to make way for cars and planes. By 1939, much of the bay and the wetlands had been filled in with more than 17 million cubic yards of cinders, ashes and trash. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.