Seneca Village

Seneca Village was a small village in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, founded by free black people. Seneca Village existed from 1825 through 1857, when it was destroyed for the construction of Central Park.

The village was the first significant community of African American property owners on Manhattan, and also came to be inhabited by several other minorities, including Irish and German immigrants. The village was located on about 5 acres (2.0 ha) between where 82nd and 89th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues would now intersect, an area now covered by Central Park. A stone outcropping near the 85th Street entrance to Central Park is believed to be part of a foundation of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

The origin of Seneca Village's name is not exactly known; however, a number of theories have been advanced.

Blacks first came to the area in September 1825, when John Whitehead, a white real estate prospector, began selling off parcels of his farm. Andrew Williams, a young black man, first bought three lots for $125. By 1832, about 26 more lots were sold to African Americans. Epiphany Davis, a laborer and trustee of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, bought 12 lots for $578 the same day. The church itself then bought 6 lots. Between 1825 and 1832, real estate records show, the Whiteheads sold at least 24 land parcels to black families. Seneca Village became a gathering place after one main historical event: slavery's coming to an end in New York State on July 4, 1827. In addition to the disproportionate number of landowning African Americans in Seneca Village, many residents boarded in homes they did not own, demonstrating that even within the innovative activist community of Seneca Village, there was significant class stratification.

In the early 19th century, Seneca village attracted many other ethnic groups for different reasons. Seneca Village grew in the 1830s when people from a community called York Hill were forced to move after a government-enforced eviction; the York Hill land was used to build a basin for the Croton Distributing Reservoir.

Later, during the potato famine in Ireland, many Irish residents came to live in Seneca Village, swelling the village by 30 percent during this time. Both African Americans and Irish immigrants were marginalized and faced discrimination throughout the city. Remarkably, despite their social and racial conflicts elsewhere, the African Americans and Irish in Seneca Village chose to live in close proximity to each other.

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