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A roaring omnivore of a shredding truck was parked Monday morning on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, chewing through centuries’ worth of paper.

It was poised to make a meal of a rare, powerful trove of the history of working-class New York: the archives of the Bowery Savings Bank, which was founded in 1834 for the benefit of its depositors.

The papers were among the materials being cleaned out of the basement of a Capital One branch in Brooklyn that is closing next month.