Sign up to receive alerts when articles like this are published. In a settlement reached in June with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, the museum permitted the tribal group to make ceremonial visits to the meteorite and agreed to install a plaque explaining its sacred meaning. Traffic congestion is such that ''crossing 81st Street on Central Park West is increasingly difficult,'' he said. It had been 24 years since the New York State Archives last permitted the Flushing Remonstrance to be on display in Flushing, Queens. Nevertheless, the priceless, fire-damaged Remonstrance was escorted back to Albany by state troopers.
Some scholars believe the document to be a forerunner of the First Amendment.
Right now the Remonstrance, legally the property of the State of New York, is in a laboratory in Philadelphia, where it was delivered six weeks ago to repair damage from moisture and from a fire in 1911. When the fragile document is returned next year, ''we definitely plan to put it on periodic display'' in Queens and elsewhere, said V. Chapman-Smith, the New York State archivist.