Newark Downtown Redevelopment – Prudential Center

Located in the center of downtown Newark, the Prudential Center site previously included  the Four Corners Historic District and the Old First Presbyterian Church Cemetery, which was converted to a parking lot a parking lot in the 1950s. The project entailed historic research for the property to determine the usage of the property; submitting an Application for Project Authorization to demolish three buildings which were part of the Four Corners Historic District; conducting Historic American Building Surveys on these buildings as part of the resolution; monitoring for human remains during the demolition of the Central Railroad of NJ station as part of the resolution; and exploratory trenching in the former cemetery to determine if any human remains were still interred. Monitoring uncovered 2 sets of human remains and trenching uncovered an additional 40 sets of remains. This resulted in a Phase III Archaeological Data Recovery to remove all human remains still interred in the former cemetery. A group of 60 archaeologists, headed by Langan, worked for 9 weeks identifying and removing over 2,300 sets of remains and associated artifacts.