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August 26, 2011
The Resurrection of Seneca Village
The Huffington Post
by Alan Singer
In 1857, Seneca Village, an African-American community in Manhattan was erased from history. About a century later in the 1950s, a Parks Department gardener found a graveyard around 85th Street. The New Yorker magazine reported it was "filled with the bones of tramps and squatters." Today, the village and its former inhabitants are being resurrected by a team of archaeologists from Barnard College-Columbia University and City College (CUNY).
...In 1853, the New York state legislature set aside land for the construction of Central Park and authorized the use of "eminent domain" to confiscate private property between 59th and 106th Streets (later extended to 110th Street) for public purposes. The residents of Seneca Village received final eviction notices during the summer of 1856. Although property holders were compensated, many protested in the courts. An article in the New York Times reported, "The policemen find it difficult to persuade them out of the idea which has possessed their simple minds, that the sole object of the authorities in making the Park is to procure their expulsion from the homes which they occupy." After eviction, the community was never reestablished.
...Madeline Landry (Barnard) examined the language used by the local press to justify eminent domain and expulsion of Seneca Village residents from their homes and reported that it was remarkably similar to language used to justify the demolition of homes and businesses in the recent Atlantic Yards controversy in Brooklyn.
NoLandGrab: The principal difference, of course, being that the former was razed for a public park, while the latter is all about Bruce Ratner's private profit.
Posted by eric at August 26, 2011 10:58 AM