East River Promenade

You are walking along a stretch of the city where the foundation beneath your feet holds an unusual secret from the Second World War. During the construction of the East River Drive in the early nineteen forties, engineers required massive amounts of ballast to create landfill along the water. To solve this, they imported thousands of tons of masonry rubble from London, which had been reduced to ruins by German bombing raids. The remnants of those British homes were carried across the Atlantic in convoy ships and laid down here to form the base of the modern waterfront.