Time Capsule Discovered During Waldorf Astoria Demolition

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Michael Montano Jr. was cutting out duct work from old hotel rooms in the Waldorf Astoria when he spotted a manila envelope among the rubble. After seeing the envelope "getting kick around and around" he decided to pick it up and dust it off.

"You could tell it was stiff, that there was something it in," Montano, a resident of Freeport, Long Island, said. "On the envelope it said 'please open, do not discard.'"

When Montano looked inside he found a note written by Westhampton Beach resident Jennifer Boccagno on the day of her first wedding anniversary and photos of the woman's wedding. It was a discovery that would lead to an unlikely connection between the two strangers.

On that late February morning Montano messaged Boccagno after tracking down her Facebook page. It turns out, the envelope Montano had unearthed had managed to stay hidden for nearly 10 years.

Boccagno describes the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Park Avenue as a "second home" for her family. It's where she celebrated her wedding night, and where she returned exactly one year later to stay in the same exact suite. On that anniversary night she and her husband decided to leave their mark on the hotel, so they taped a manila envelope time capsule to the back of a canvas painting.

"The Waldorf has always been a special place for myself and my family," Boccagno said. "The walls have so many stories and I just kind of wanted to be a part of it. So we just had this whimsical, impromptu idea to leave that moment behind and hide it.

When Boccagno heard that hundreds of the Waldorf Astoria's rooms would be demolished to build condos, she figured the time capsule was lost forever — and by all accounts, it should have been.

When Montano found the envelope the Waldorf Astoria's rooms had already been gutted, he said. The painting that the envelope had initially been taped to was lone gone by the time Montano made the discovery.

"The Waldorf did their own work where they liquidated and sold everything," Montano said. "So for her little time capsule to go from the back of a picture frame to a pile of debris is kind of remarkable. You know, there's no reason why it should have made it that far. Somebody else should have found it at that point."

The improbability of the discovery isn't lost on Boccagno. When she saw Montano's Facebook message, complete with photos of the time capsule, Boccagno felt "complete shock," she said.

Her theory: The two are being connected by the universe.

After speaking, Boccagno and Montano found that they had more than the time capsule to connect them. Boccagno's wedding date of December 6, the night she stayed in and returned to the Waldorf, happens to be the same day as Montano's mother's birthday and the day he was returning home from a tour in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Montano is still in possession of the time capsule, but is working on sending it back to Boccagno and her husband, he said.

"We haven't come up with anything yet on exactly what we're going to do, but I would like to get it back to them before the hotel reopens so they can do what they want with it," Montano said.

The Waldorf Astoria closed its doors on March 1, 2017 to begin work on a project to convert about 75 percent of the hotel's rooms into condominiums. The Anbang Insurance Co., a Chinese company which purchased the hotel in 2014 for $1.95 billion, has predicted the conversion could take three years to complete.

Plans filed with the state this year revealed that Anbang expects about 352 condominiums to be built in the historic Park Avenue hotel. Ahead of the renovation project, the city Landmarks Preservation Commission designated several of the hotel's most iconic interior spaces as landmarks.

Lead photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images News/Getty Images. Other photos courtesy Jennifer Boccagno.