Would You Pick Up A Shovel to Dig for Treasure? Part 3

The Story of a Real Life, Secret Treasure Hunt

Not all treasure maps are drawn on parchment or sealed in bottles.

Some are hidden in plain sight.

Welcome to the Secret Treasure Hunt blog series, wherein I take you through the last three years of my life as a treasure hunter. There are secrets and discoveries below, but if this is your first time here (hello!) I recommend starting from the beginning.

THE SECRET JOURNAL—Heart-breaking revelation and update 6/17/23:

My information request has been turned in to the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation. I make a full document detailing my theory about Grace Playground being the location of the New York casque (see Part 2).

PREISS’S THE SECRET, VERSE #10:

In the shadow

Of the grey giant

Find the arm that

Extends over the slender path

In summer

You’ll often hear a whirring sound

Cars abound

Although the sign

Nearby Speaks of Indies native

The natives still speak

Of him of Hard word in 3 Vols.

Take twice as many east steps as the hour

Or more

From the middle of one branch

Of the v

Look down

And see simple roots

In rhapsodic mans soil

Or gaze north

Toward the isle of B.

PALENCAR’S THE SECRET, PAINTING #12:

My partner, D, worries that because the casque was buried in 1981, and Grace Playground was heavily renovated in 1994, that the actual tree the casque was under is now gone. I am not worried about this, as the tree I believe it’s under is still present, and looks old enough to have been around in 1981. My good friend M, who lives in Brooklyn, directs me toward a “Find a Tree” page on the NYC Parks & Rec website so I can confirm the diameter of the tree. By using this page, I can narrow down every tree in the park to just six trees with a diameter of 20” or more, which might suggest being around in 1981. I still like my current tree best.

I am hunting for archives of older photos of the area, as I want to see if the nearby doorway on Belmont Ave was once red as it appears in painting #12. M directs me to two more fantastic websites: 1940s.nyc, and 80s.nyc. These two sites contain thousands of photos taken for the 1940 census and 1980 census. I eagerly dive in… and am soon horrified.

The area of my search, where I believe the casque is buried, is essentially a slum in 1980. The entire south half of Grace Playground is not actually part of the playground yet. It was incorporated into the park as a baseball field, most likely in 1994 with the major playground renovation. In the 1980s photos, it’s just an empty lot with overgrown weeds and tons of trash.

[I later learn from Brooklyn local paper archives that the area was a little league baseball field in the 1940s and 1950s, but fell into disuse and became an empty lot in the 1970s. It was reincorporated back into the park in the 1990s.]

It’s also nearly impossible to figure out where I am from these photos, as there are only two or three census photos representing an entire block radius. By using the buildings that have survived and are present in the Google Maps-era photos, I am able to find a photo of the corner I think the casque is buried. The tree I like is there in the photo, but is massively overshadowed by another tree, which must have been later removed. Also, again, the tree isn’t connected to the park at this time. I am very disheartened, and for the first time since my Thursday epiphany, my confidence wavers and I wonder if my theory is completely wrong.      

I start to explore the area through these archives, going back and forth between the 1940 and 1980 photos. I see Gershwin’s birth home, once a gorgeous brickwork building in 1940… but then razed to absolutely nothing, an empty lot, by 1980. It was torn down around 1976-1978 as the surrounding neighborhood became abandoned, heavily looted and vandalized, and suffered devastating urban fires. I wonder if Preiss might’ve chosen this location to help people remember what it once was, what used to be here before.

The neighborhood around Grace Playground, which was first constructed in 1937, is dazzling and bustling in the 1940 census photos. I know Preiss grew up near this area and was born in 1953, and I wonder what the neighborhood might have looked like to him when he was a boy.

I check out the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church. I check out JHS 242 Margaret S. Douglas, which the playground was actually named for until the name changed to Grace Playground in the 1990s. My exploration returns again to the perimeter of Grace Playground. By incredible luck, I stumble across a photo of a giant tree in the playground at the north end, along Pitkin Ave. Something about this tree and its branch pattern seems familiar, though I cannot figure out exactly what it is.

I hold up the photo of the tree to Palencar’s Painting #12 and my jaw drops. The pattern of the branches is there in the left half of the Rusalki’s robe. I see the branches in her sleeve, along her shoulder, leading all the way down at the bottom of the main “v.” And just below the point of the tree’s trunk in the painting… is the topaz stone. This is the symbol of the treasure. The treasure could be buried just under this tree.

By now it is once again 1:00am. But this time, instead of euphoric, I am gutted. I know this tree was removed sometime between 1990 and 2010, but I don’t know when. I know that either the buried casque was likely destroyed in that tree’s stump and root removal, or that the stump was ground down and covered with concrete. There is probably no way I can discover the casque on my own.

THE SECRET JOURNAL—Doors and windows 6/18/23:

I spend Sunday afternoon and evening studying Palencar’s Painting #12 for additional clues, and I find more.

One aspect of the image eludes me, and it drives me crazy. I get a match up for the domes in the image and at that particular tree, but not for the red outlined door. It feels like it can be a reference to any rectangle anywhere in the city. So what I need to focus on for a match is not the shape, but the colors. My partner D shares another insightful observation: the rectangle looks a bit too tall to be a regular doorway.

On Sunday night, it occurs to me that my meanderings on Google Maps and the 1940 and 1980 census archives have been mostly contained to Gershwin’s birth house, the Holy Trinity church, and the exact perimeter of Grace Playground. I realize I have not even looked down nearby streets that would be visible from the treasure burial site.

I return to the place my tree would have been, make sure I can see the domes, then start to turn around in a slow circle via Google Maps. I can see the doorways along Pitkin Ave east of Vermont St. I start venturing down that block. I stop in front of one of the sections of the block.

Before me, at 2145 Pitkin Ave, is a red brick building facade with a white door. I am fascinated that the white door is nestled within a much taller white “doorway,” of unusual size. As Google Maps allows me to see this image from different years, I start to go back in time. When I reach the view from May 2012, I see that the lower brickwork was once painted white, with the edge around the doorway remaining the red exposed brick color. The door and doorway at this time were gray. Unusually tall gray doorway. Red outline. Whitewashed background.

I rush back over to my tree location and check my view. I can see both the domes and the doorway. It occurs to me that Preiss might have included these two features to help his readers in their search. Unless they saw the unusual branch pattern in the robe, which would not be visible in the summer months with leaves on the branches, they wouldn’t know which tree to look under. There is only one tree at Grace Playground where you can have a view of both the domes and the doorway—this tree.

I also note two houses on New Jersey Ave that are visible from this tree with animal statues out in the front yard. One has two lion statues. One has two eagle statues. So from the tree looking north, the door outline is visible, the three towers are visible, an eagle is visible, a lion is visible, and Liberty Ave is visible. Gershwin's birthplace home is just south of the tree down Belmont Ave. And up north is Belmont Island.

Image should say "views from theorized casque location"

By now it’s late at night again, though at least not yet midnight. I decide that my puzzle-solving duties are done and completed. I update my full solution with images and proper addresses. I make sure that every aspect of the verse has a clear solution. I check my sources to confirm the information I have, including the three “clues” beyond the verse and image:

1. The clue for Him of Hard word in 3 Vols. and Charles Dickens from the Japanese edition of The Secret: “A normal person would think that it was referring to some kind of writer, bit it’s difficult to find out who that it. Mr. Preiss said in order to arrive at this person, you must play with words and the start is ‘chicken.’ Eventually, you will end up at the name of the person who is referred to by Him.”

2. The evidence that Preiss greatly admired George Gershwin and in particular, “Rhapsody in Blue” from one of his interviews.

3) That Preiss did indeed tell his daughters they could see the features/landmarks of the image from the dig site, confirmed from their interview in an episode of Expedition Unknown.

After documenting my search process for the New York puzzle, I tell myself to let the treasure hunt go for now and return to other research avenues for my nonfiction book, perhaps start working on a YA romance project, or attend to one of the tens of ongoing projects around my house and yard.

But I do not do this.

…to be continued in Part 4…

Some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved, but experienced.