Can you imagine Manhattan without Central Park? Once upon a time, the island of Manhattan was not full of skyscrapers like it is today. It was mostly wooded with wild animals and lots of open space. Once the Dutch settlers arrived, and later on the British, and finally the Americans, the city of New Amsterdam became New York, and it grew and grew and never stopped growing.
By the 1800s, New York City was quickly expanding north, and soon the city leaders realized that they needed a park for the city’s residents before the island of Manhattan became covered by buildings and roads. There was just one obstacle, the village of Seneca which was mostly populated by free black people and a few immigrants from Ireland.
Little Africa, New Amsterdam
For many years New Amsterdam and later New York was developed mostly below what is today 23rd Street. It was also a segregated city, so the population of free blacks, who were mostly freed or escaped slaves, had to mostly live outside of the city’s limits. In the early 1820s, some black families bought land well north of the city so that they could live in peace. It was a sort of utopian village where they were far enough from the city to not be harassed by racists and had enough land to grow their own crops and live in peace with nature and with each other.
Slavery was outlawed in New York state in 1827, but newly freed black Americans were restricted in which jobs they could have, where they could socialize, and most importantly, where they could live. Options were limited for renting and buying property was out of the question for the majority of free black New Yorkers.
The majority of them lived in a neighborhood that was known as Little Africa in present-day Greenwich Village. With such limited options for where to live, the opportunity to live outside the city limits was tempting for many who didn’t want to live in a cramped apartment.
Seneca Village, an Obstacle for New York’s White Development
At the height of Seneca Village, over 200 people were living there, mostly free black Americans but also some Irish immigrants. There were three churches, two schools, and three cemeteries in Seneca Village. It was a thriving community that soon came under threat by the leaders of New York City, who saw Seneca Village as an impediment to their plans of expanding the city north.
At the time, free black men could only vote if they owned property worth over $250, and in 1845 about 13,000 black Americans were living in New York City. Of those, only about 100 of them were eligible to vote, and 1/10th of those lived in Seneca Village, which gave it considerable political power for the minority of the African-American population in the city.
Creating Central Park
By the late 1840s, the city had expanded north, and city leaders wanted to plan a large park to be designed before all of the land of Manhattan was completely urbanized. Years of debate, political maneuvering, votes, pushback, backroom deals, and plans finally resulted in Central Park being authorized in 1853. This meant that the residents of the area that would become Central Park had to either sell their land to the city or be forcefully evicted.
The residents of Seneca Village had no plan of moving or abandoning their community. The surrounding communities were also against the city’s attempts to buy them out or scare them off of their land. It became a David vs. Goliath situation.
New York Mayor Fernando Wood was desperate to get the people off of the land so that the project could begin, which would allow him to have a major project built during his administration. Mayor Wood got the press to support him, and in the pages of the city’s newspapers, the people of Seneca Village were called uneducated fools who lived in shanty towns which was not the truth.
The community was called stubborn and portrayed as halting the progress of the city and the development of the greatest park project in the world at the time. Public opinion turned against Seneca Village, and it seemed as if the whole city was against the 250 people who only wanted to stay in their homes and live alongside their neighbors.
Honoring the Lost Memory of Seneca Village
By the end of 1857, the city had successfully removed all of the residents and razed all of the homes, churches, schools, and other structures that made up the community of Seneca Village. The community was destroyed, and the people were scattered around the city. For over 100 years, New Yorkers forgot about the utopian village that once existed on the grounds of the now-beloved Central Park.
In the late 1970s, local historians came upon evidence of Seneca Village and began investigating the settlement using mainly city records to get a better idea of what had existed there and who lived there. By the 1990s, enough information was available to paint a picture of just what Seneca Village was and who had lived there.
Since the late 1990s, the city, especially the New York Historical Society, has held conferences and published books, and had museum exhibits dedicated to the forgotten village that almost stood in the way of Central Park. Today Seneca Village is no longer forgotten, and it now exists in the public’s memory of what New York City used to be and what it cost to complete Central Park.
