They found this big rock in Fort Greene while digging a sewer line on Vanderbilt Avenue. Here’s the story from the New York Times and a great pix by Richard Termine!

New York Times: The rock is jagged, seven feet tall, very roughly nose-shaped, and covered with a fine, tawny dust. A contractor digging a sewer line yanked it out of the street bed on Tuesday and plunked it down at the curbside near Park Avenue.

Since then, life on Vanderbilt Avenue has been subtly transformed. Adults study the rock. Children trace shapes in its dusty face. Its gravitational force seems to have slowed life a notch. For those who have come to love the rock, it is a reminder that under the crust of the city lies the entire planet.

“It’s really kind of a visceral thing,” said Christopher P. Moore, a member of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission who lives up the block from the rock. “You feel rocks, you feel the earth.”

Susan Raskin came home from work on Tuesday to find her dog barking at the rock in front of her house. Her cat seemed spooked by it, too. Ms. Raskin, a children’s social worker, was not scared. She thought the rock was one of the most lovely things she had ever seen.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if I lived in Colorado and there were mountains,” she said yesterday morning as she stood beaming at the rock. “But I live here. This is a big thing.”

That it is, said the man who brought up the rock in the maw of his big yellow excavator.

“It weighs about 10 tons,” said the equipment operator, a scruffy man in a green sweatshirt named John, who declined to give his last name because of possible union difficulties. “I had to break the street a little wider to dig it out.”