Untapped History: Remembering Seneca Village

Seneca Village, a community of predominately Black property owners in what’s now Central Park, is being commemorated to mark the 200-year anniversary of its founding.

A vital part of New York City history is emerging from behind the curtain of obscurity.

Seneca Village, a once predominantly Black community in what’s now Central Park, is being commemorated to mark the 200-year anniversary since its founding.

The Central Park Conservancy will spend the next two years examining the legacy of the site, where a Black community flourished during the early- to mid-19th century.

Through a series of discussions and public programs funded by the Mellon Foundation, the Conservancy aims to explore the past while navigating complex conversations around the intersections of race, history and public spaces.

“Not every New Yorker knows about Seneca Village and that’s something we want to change,” said Jessica MacLean, Ph.D., a historian at the Central Park Conservancy. “We really want to permanently acknowledge the community’s existence, so the erasure and displacement that came as a result of building the park, we want to acknowledge this history and the importance.”

The goal, she said, is not only to help people better understand Seneca Village, but to gather input on how to best remember it through “permanent commemoration” outside of traditional memorials, such as a singular monument.

Founded in 1825, Seneca Village was an area where dozens of free Black citizens of New York City owned properties, according to The Conservancy. 

Though former New York Gov. John Jay signed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1799, slavery wasn’t fully abolished in New York City until 1827. In the wake of its eradication, Black New Yorkers still faced hurdles in finding a place to settle, with Manhattan’s downtown area being overcrowded and unwelcoming. 

“There was still a lot of discrimination built into the jobs that Black people could hold,” said MacLean. “So, men, you could see in census records were shiners, cartmen, working in hotels. And women were even more limited—there were a high number of Black women who worked as laundresses in addition to running their own households.”

Seneca Village emerged as a safe haven between the boundaries of West 82nd to 89th Street, where evidence shows households had gardens, barns and orchards, according to MacLean. Having these spaces offered a sense of autonomy.

Over the course of 30 years, the area was home to roughly 225 residents, according to the Conservancy. Two-thirds of the population were Black residents, mostly property owners; another third were Irish settlers and a “small number” of New Yorkers of German descent. 

Residing in the community often meant more than just having a place to live; many locals were also able to vote and read.

“In order to vote as a Black man, you had to own $250 worth of property, which doesn’t sound like much now but in the early 19th century, it represented a significant amount of money,” said MacLean. “One of the things that we see in Seneca Village is a high rate of literacy—three-quarters of school-aged children in Seneca Village were in school.”

Along with 50 homes occupied by the 1850s, there were other notable landmarks, including burial grounds and churches. The Hudson River was a source for fishing, and residents would collect fresh water from Tanner’s Spring.

However, other plans for the land would eventually disrupt the tenancy of Seneca villagers. 

The city passed the Central Park Act in 1853, designating the land spanning 59th and 106th Streets, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, as park space. It would become the first major landscaped park in the nation, according to the Conservancy. The process displaced 1,600 Seneca villagers, who had to leave their homes by the end of 1857.

More than a century later, there are still reminders of the former community. “The buildings are gone, but that is one of the least developed parts of the park,” said MacLean. “There are physical landscape features that transport you back to the time of Seneca Village.”

That includes “bedrock outcroppings, which [have] sort of been worked into the park and so you really get a sense of walking on the ground surface,” she added. “Which, in a place like New York City, which is constantly being remodeled, it’s very difficult to have these physical connections to the city even 10 years ago—let alone 200 years ago.”

Upcoming programs include guided tours of the site, as well as public conversations and community workshops that offer an “extraordinary” chance to memorialize the land and the people who lived in Seneca Village, the historian said.

A kickoff event will take place Thursday, March 13 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

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