NEW YORK - The city halted excavation work at the site of a new Donald Trump condominium tower in SoHo after human bones apparently from a 19th-century church graveyard turned up, officials said Wednesday.

The city Buildings Department issued the stop-work order Tuesday after workers spotted the bones.

Spokeswoman Jennifer Givner said Buildings Department officials were meeting with the developer and an archaeologist from the city Landmarks Preservation Commission to discuss the next move.

Historic maps show there was a Presbyterian church on a corner of the site, said Julius Schwarz, an executive vice president with the Bayrock Group, managing partner for the developer. He added that the discovery of centuries-old human bones at a construction site is not unusual, saying, "It happens all the time."

"We are fully complying with the Department of Buildings and other agency requirements."

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, said her office had taken temporary custody of the bones. They are in the department's anthropology lab until a decision is made regarding what to do with them, she said.

The 45-story Trump SoHo Hotel Condominium New York is scheduled for completion in 2009.

A Poem by Sage Sweetwater posted in AD Poetry section on Sept. 23, 2005



Haunting account of modern-day truth, corporate men laying down shopping-mall parking lot asphalt over the graveyard...
Listen to my music

http://www.AuthorsDen.com/adstorage/29292/15 Track 15.wma Track 15.wma

music title Merlin by Kathy Mar

Displacing the Soul:
Selling the Bones

They're laying down parking lot
asphalt under the rainbow,
over the
graveyard

with no respect for the
lesbian
 bones

The gay graveyard caretaker
is replaced with a straight
shopping-mall security
guard

The corporate men buying up
the graveyard, displacing
the soul,
selling the
bones

Mummy Plaza Casino$$$,
the suits are eyeing a
black community
cemetery
and
Native American
burial
ground

Don't you wonder
when they're
coming
to your
town?

Do they even know
who was buried
inside
that
cave?

Could she have been
a 17th Century witch
burned in
the
forest,
staked
to
a
tree?

or Lady
Guenevere?

Could she have been
a 20th Century
lesbian
archaeologist
studying,
carefully
moving
the
bones,
preserving them,
transporting
the
bones
to
the
Smithsonian?

Now see
what
the
corporate men
have done to
HER
bones?

Copyright 2005 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist