ROOSEVELT, N.Y. — The weathered copper box from 1929 was always meant to be opened sometime in the future, but too many years and failing memories had relegated it to a forgotten past.

So that copper box — a time capsule, really — stayed unopened year after year in its resting place behind the cornerstone of Centennial Avenue Elementary School here on Long Island as teachers and students rushed by unaware. It might still be there if not for the demolition of part of the original building last August to make way for an addition.

Workers trying to preserve the cornerstone ended up instead with handfuls of crumbled stone, and beyond that, a copper box the size of a briefcase. They set it aside for months while construction progressed. Then, in January, somebody decided to pry open the top and peek inside.

Out came a Bible with a ragged cover, and a folded, yellowed copy of the Nassau Daily Review, which long ago printed its last issue. On this day — Saturday, Nov. 23, 1929 — the top headline was Georges Clemenceau, wartime premier of France, planning his funeral as “attacks of uremia and colitis spread a poison through his system.”