June 9, 2009 Page from the past found at Museum of Fine Arts Play video

(NECN: They were drilling and scraping in the dust and shadows where museum goers had once browsed among a collection of western and decorative arts.

Rick Brendemuehl was breaking down an old brick and terracotta wall to make a passageway.

It will lead into the museum's new 345 million dollar American wing and glass courtyard, due to open next year. That’s when he found the letter.

“I was chipping down the wall. It was probably sitting right about here in the brick as I peeled the brick away. And the envelope was just sort of sticking right out of the pile. -- And you pulled it out and read it said, open carefully, so opened it carefully, and there was another envelope inside it, yeah.”

A little envelope in a big envelope protecting a one-page letter dated July 21st, 1926 and addressed simply to "the finder of this envelope" who turned out to be.... Rick Brendemuehl.

The letter was a personal time capsule from 1926 from Thomas Fortune Crowley, who helped build the original museum wall.

He lived on Sawyer Avenue in Dorchester.

In 1926, Cal Coolidge was president, savage hurricanes were ripping through Florida, the Cardinals beat the Yankees in the World Series and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was adding that decorative arts wing to the 1909 original building with its rotunda and John Singer Sargent murals.

He worked for the contractor and he kept track of everyone's hours. Everyone who worked on the site and

That included hourly wages for laborers, carpenters, bricklayers and plasterers. They got paid a lot less than we do. But it's still never enough.

Laborers, according to Crowley, made .74 an hour in 1926.

And if you put that for inflation, that's about nine dollars an hour in today's market.

Museum archivist and historian Maureen Melton and I pulled on the purple rubber gloves and handled with great care this serendipitous new acquisition.

The letter was folded and then it was put into this smaller envelope which he made sure --"open with care" -- and that's actually an excellent envelope. It has a high linen content so it would hold up quite nicely. And then you put the whole thing in this much bigger, heavier envelope. With some interesting writing on it.

The first envelope announces that it contains data of this building built by L.P. Soule and son company contractors. John v. Riley, Supt.

And he mentions that it's the hottest day of the year, it's 95 degrees. Well, what he doesn't know is that's just the beginning of a killer heat wave. The next day in Boston, on July 22nd, the temperature is going to hit a hundred and three, which is second highest temperature Boston ever recorded.

Melton plans to learn more about Thomas Crowley. She says even officials time-capsules get lost or go undiscovered.

Tom Crowley took that chance.

“He knew he was putting them between two pieces of a wall that might never be pulled down.”

But it did come down. And a little piece of Boston history came tumbling out.