i was living in harlem new york a few years ago, and we were out on the fire escape and i noticed that the stones in the building had cool fossils in them. limestone with lots of crinoid/blastoid things.
i just happened to have a pocket field guide to fossils, so i looked them up and got them down to the pennnsylvanian. then i had chanced to find an old stratigraphy text book, so i tried to see if i could find where this kind of rock might be found in the U.S. lo and behold the book mentioned the stratum of pennsylvanian limestone called the Bedford limestone in Indiana.
the next day i went to the internet to look up this bedford limestone and found a website for a quarry in it!
http://quarriesandbeyond.org/articles_and_books/stone_quarries_bedford.html
on the site was listed some famous buildings that were made from the stone in the quarry. one was called the Harlem Library from the '20s or something.
so i did more research and found out that our apartment building had actually been the Harlem Library back then!
this was immensely satisfying! i rarely get to do such fun detective work with biology and geology! i felt like sherlock holmes!
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33. Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church
32 West 123rd Street, southeast corner of Malcolm X Boulevard and W. 123rd Street - Designated New York City Historic Landmark
One of the oldest black churches in New York, the Greater Bethel A.M.E. was founded in Lower Manhattan in 1819 and moved into the Harlem Library building in the early twentieth century. Edgar K. Bourne, architect of this limestone and brick building constructed from 1891-1892, was also a member of the library's board of trustees. The church moved into the structure on West 123rd Street when the Harlem Library was moved to 9-11 West 124th Street after being added to the New York Public Library System in 1901.
