Founded in 1825, Seneca Village was once home to nearly 200 residents.
Some villagers were German and Irish American.
But most of them were Black
By 1855, nearly half of them owned their own homes. They had a school, churches, gardens and voting rights because they owned land.
But in 1857, Seneca Village was torn down when the city decided it wanted to create a park.
Villagers were essentially forced to leave.
Today, researchers are trying to figure out where they went and locate their descendants.
A lot of the original landscape can still be seen in the park today.
It stretches from 82nd Street to 89th Street and Central Park West.
“We know that they used some of the stone that you see out there now to build their houses,” Marie Warsh, a historian with the Central Park Conservancy, told NBC New York.
Signs erected by the Central Park Conservancy help to commemorate and tell the story of the village and its vibrant community.
“You can really start to imagine what it may have looked like,” said Warsh.
Talks to figure out a permanent way to commemorate Seneca Village, which is not a historical landmark, are ongoing.
Those interested in learning more about the history of Seneca Village can visit the MET’s “Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room” exhibition or www.centralparknyc.org.
Lets not get into how the Irish and the Black community was very close until the protestants had issues and we ended up w/ the klan.
/Fuck the klan.
This type of thing has been happening to poor people for centuries. I would like to believe that comparable land was found for them elsewhere but they were likely just run out. At least the land was used for Central Park and not a bunch of mansions. That park is essential to NYC and has millions of visitors a year.
Hey, Lemmy is finally rounding that corner and actually teaching me cool stuff like the anti-API site used to. This was really awesome to read! Let’s go Lemmy!
You can thank @itadakimasu@lemmy.world
Their comment on the linked post inspired this post.
I’ve been browsing All here almost exclusively because its not a bunch of nonsense crap pushed by an algorithm. Had to do a little pruning of certain content and users though, but just a little.
Funny to see a comment I made on another post lead to this post.
TIL for me too!
I had no idea until you posted that comment.
