A piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, has been discovered wedged between two lower Manhattan buildings, police said Friday.

A part of the landing gear, apparently from one of the commercial airliners destroyed on September 11, 2001, is seen wedged between two buildings in New York in this handout photo released by the NYPD on April 26, 2013. Nearly 12 years after the attack on the World Trade Center, the landing gear was discovered wedged between the rear of 51 Park Place and the rear of the building behind it at 50 Murray Street. [Photo: China Daily via Agencies]

The twisted metal part includes a clearly visible Boeing identification number, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne told reporters.

Browne said the discovery was made Wednesday by a construction crew inspecting the rear of the Park Place building.

Police have secured the area between the two buildings and are treating it as a potential crime scene, he said.

The piece was discovered two blocks from Ground Zero. It has cables and levers on it and is about 1.5 meters tall, 0.9 meters wide and 0.5 meters deep.

"The odds of this being wedged between there is amazing," Browne said, adding it was not surprising that it went undiscovered for more than a decade given the location. "It had to have fallen just the right way to make it into that space."

Nearly 12 years after two commercial airliners smashed into the two Manhattan skyscrapers, destroying them and killing nearly 3,000 people, city officials continue to turn up debris from the attack and identify human remains.