1 Okt 1857 Jahr - Seneca Village Raises

Beschreibung:

Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of mostly African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within present-day Central Park.

Seneca Village was founded in 1825 by free blacks, the first such community in the city. At its peak, the community had 264 residents, three churches, a school, and two cemeteries. The settlement was later inhabited by several other minorities, including Irish and German immigrants. Seneca Village existed until 1857, when, through eminent domain, the villagers and other settlers in the area were ordered to leave and their houses were torn down for the construction of Central Park.

Clearing occurred as soon as the Central Park commission's report was released in October 1855. The city began enforcing little-known regulations and forcing Seneca Village residents to pay rent. Members of the community fought to retain their land. For two years, residents protested and filed lawsuits to halt the sale of their land. However, in mid-1856, Mayor Fernando Wood prevailed, and residents of Seneca Village were given final notices. In 1857, the city government acquired all private property within Seneca Village through eminent domain, and on October 1, city officials in New York reported that the last holdouts living on land that was to become Central Park had been removed.

Several vestiges of Seneca Village's existence have been found over the years, including two graves and a burial plot. The settlement was largely forgotten until the publication of Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar's book The Park and the People: A History of Central Park in 1992. The Seneca Village Project was formed in 1998 to raise awareness of the village, and several archeological digs have been conducted. In 2001, a historical plaque was unveiled, commemorating the site where Seneca Village once stood.

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