Seneca Village

Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of mostly African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within what would become present-day Central Park. The settlement was located near the current Upper West Side neighborhood, approximately bounded by Central Park West and the axes of 82nd Street, 89th Street, and Seventh Avenue, had they been constructed through the park.

Seneca Village was founded in 1825 by free Black Americans, the first such community in the city, although under Dutch rule there was a "half-free" community of African-owned farms north of New Amsterdam. At its peak, the community had approximately 225 residents, three churches, two schools, and three cemeteries. The settlement was later also inhabited by Irish and German immigrants. Seneca Village existed until 1857, when, through eminent domain, the villagers and other settlers in the area were forced to leave and their houses were torn down for the construction of Central Park. The entirety of the village was dispersed.

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. After a 1997 New-York Historical Society exhibition, the Seneca Village Project was formed in 1998 to raise awareness of the village, and several archaeological digs have been conducted. In 2001, a historical sign was unveiled, commemorating the site where Seneca Village once stood. In 2019, the Central Park Conservancy installed a temporary exhibit of signage in the park, marking the sites of the Village's churches, some houses, gardens, and natural features.

Etymology

The origin of Seneca Village's name is obscure, and was only recorded by Thomas McClure Peters, rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church; however, a number of theories have been advanced.

# One theory suggests that the word "Seneca" came from Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, whose ''Moral Epistles'' - particularly Letter 47 - were appreciated by African American activists and abolitionists. The scholar Leslie M. Alexander notes this as a possible influence of the African Free School.
# The village could have also been named after the Seneca nation of Native Americans. Although the presence of Seneca specifically would be unlikely as their territory was distant, Peters did mention "white and black and Indian" as among the diverse population at the site, as well as "white and black and all intermediate shades" worshiping at All Angels', and there is a later report of "aborigines and cross-breed Indians" at its Sunday school. After 1857, Peters was involved in a church mission to the multi-racial Ramapo Lenape of a nearby section of New Jersey by his friend Abram Hewitt's Ringwood Manor.
# According to Central Park Conservancy historian Sara Cedar Miller, "Seneca" could have been influenced by anti-Native American and anti-Black slurs.
# Another theory posits that Seneca Village could be named after the West African nation of Senegal, which may have been the origin country for some of the village's residents.
# The name could have also come from use as a code-word on the Underground Railroad, when fugitive slaves from the Southern United States were being hidden in nearby areas. In the socially active "burned-over district", there was a noted concentration of abolitionism around Rochester and Seneca Falls in the former Seneca territory of Western New York.

Existence

Development

Natural features on the Seneca Village landscape which still survive today are Summit Rock, then known as Goat Hill, the highest natural elevation in modern Central Park, and Tanner's Spring near its southern base. The settlement's main street was "Spring Street" as marked on an 1838 map, or as "old Lane" on an 1856 map, and it connected to "Stillwells Lane". Only Eighth Avenue and 86th Street were developed by 1856, although property lines generally followed the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. Seneca Village was in the city's 19th Ward, and was sometimes associated with Yorkville.

The previous landowner before African American settlement was a white farmer named John Whitehead, who purchased his property in 1824. One year later, Whitehead began selling off smaller lots from his property. At the time, the area was far from the core of New York City, which was centered south of 23rd Street in what is now Lower Manhattan. On September 27, 1825, a 25-year-old African American man named Andrew Williams, employed as a bootblack and later as a cartman, purchased three lots from the Whiteheads for $125. On the same day, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion Church) trustee Epiphany Davis, employed as a feed store clerk, bought twelve lots for $578. Both men were part of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, an organization whose members supported each other financially. The AME Zion Church bought six additional lots the same week, and by 1832, at least 24 lots had been sold to African Americans. Additional nearby development was centered around "York Hill", a plot bounded by where Sixth and Seventh Avenues would have been built, between 79th and 86th Streets. York Hill was mostly owned by the city, but were purchased by William Matthews, a young African American, in the late 1830s. Matthews's African Union Church also bought land in Seneca Village around that time.

More African Americans began moving to Seneca Village after slavery in New York state was outlawed in 1827. In the 1830s, people from York Hill were forced to move so that a basin for the Croton Distributing Reservoir could be built, so many of York Hill's residents migrated to Seneca Village. The reservoir's massive granite walls formed a prominent landmark, bordering Seneca Village on the east. Seneca Village provided a safe haven during the anti-abolitionist riot of 1834.

Later, during the Great Famine of Ireland, many Irish immigrants came to live in Seneca Village, swelling the village's population by 30 percent during this time. Both African Americans and Irish immigrants were marginalized and faced discrimination throughout the city. Despite their social and racial conflicts elsewhere, the African Americans and Irish in Seneca Village lived close to each other. By 1855, one-third of the village's population was Irish. George Washington Plunkitt, who later became a Tammany Hall politician, was born in 1842 to Pat and Sara Plunkitt, two of the first Irish settlers at the western edge of the village on Nanny Goat Hill. This location was in the vicinity of a cluster of Irish-American households led by John Gallagher. Richard Croker, who later became the leader of Tammany, was born in Ireland, but he came with his family to Seneca Village in 1846, and lived there until his father received a job that enabled them to move.

By 1855, there were 52 houses in Seneca Village. On maps of the area, most of the houses were identified as one-, two-, or three-story houses made out of wood. Archeological excavations uncovered stone foundations and roofing materials, indicating that they were well-built. Some of the houses were identified as shanties, meaning that they were less well-constructed. Land ownership among Black residents was much higher than that in the city as a whole: more than half owned property in 1850, five times the property ownership rate of all New York City residents at the time. Many of Seneca Village's Black residents were landowners and relatively economically secure compared to their downtown counterparts in the Little Africa neighborhood by Greenwich Village. Many African-Americans owned property in Seneca Village but lived downtown, perhaps seeing it as an investment.

Inhabitants

Based on analysis of various documents including census records, maps, and tax records, researchers have estimated that in 1855, approximately 225 people lived in Seneca Village. On average, the residents had lived there for 22 years. Three-quarters of these residents had lived in Seneca Village at least since 1840, and nearly all had lived there since 1850. The unusually high level of address stability gave a sense of permanence and security to the community. At this time in New York City's history, most of the city's population lived below 14th Street; the region above 59th Street was only sporadically developed and was semi-rural or rural in character.

Under a New York state law created in 1821, African American men in the state could vote only if they had $250 worth of property and had lived in the state for at least three years. Owning property was a way to gain political power, and the purchase of land by Black people likely had a significant effect on their political engagement. Of the 13,000 Black New Yorkers in 1845, either 100 or 91 were qualified to vote that year. Of the voting-eligible Black population, 10 lived in Seneca Village.

Nevertheless, many of the residents were still poor, since they worked in service industries such as construction, day labor, or food service. Only three residents could be considered middle-class as measured by occupation, of which two were grocers and the other was an innkeeper. Many Black women worked as domestic servants. However, historian Leslie M. Harris holds that the African-American middle class of the time should be judged by educational and social criteria that were different from that of the white middle class. Many residents boarded in homes they did not own, demonstrating that there was significant class stratification even with Seneca Village's high land ownership rate. Maps show that residents had gardens, likely to grow food for their own consumption. The residents likely also relied on the abundant natural resources nearby, such as fish from the nearby Hudson River, and the firewood from nearby forests, as well as driftwood. Some residents also had barns and raised livestock. Tanner's Spring likely supplied the Village with fresh water.

Community institutions

The economic and cultural stability of Seneca Village enabled the growth of several community institutions. The village had three churches, two schools, and three cemeteries; by 1855, approximately two-thirds of the inhabitants were regular churchgoers. Two of the churches, First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of Yorkville and African Union Church, were all-Black churches, while All Angels' Church was racially mixed.

The AME Zion Church
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