The Ghost of Seneca Village

Here's a classy piece of history I just stumbled upon. Seneca Village was settled in an (at that time) rural stretch of Manhattan by freed blacks in the 1820s. Twenty years later it had grown to become a community of working class African Americans, Irish, Germans, and Native Americans, supporting their own churches, schools, and cemeteries. The village was located roughly between 7th and 8th Avenues, in the west 80s, taking up nearly five acres. Those familiar with Manhattan will recognize this land is now a slice of Central Park. That's probably all the information you need to know to draw the right conclusions, but I'll continue.

Fernando Wood was one of Tammany Hall's most corrupt members, and there was stiff competition for that distinction. In 1857 he was re-elected as Mayor of New York, mostly with the help of the dead. Residents of the local cemeteries were probably as surprised as any to find their names on his list of supporters, courtesy of the Dead Rabbits gang who were in cahoots. Wood achieved notoriety for his part in the police riots of 1857, when he was dragged forcibly from City Hall during a clash between rival police forces.

Manhattan at that time was expanding northwards at a frantic pace, chewing up farmland and spitting out concrete. Since many of the parks of the time were private and hidden behind locked gates, New Yorkers seeking refuge from the frenzy of the city often found it in graveyards. Some, like Evening Post editor William Cullen Bryant, urged for something a little less morbid, such as a great public park. Mayor Wood was convinced. He summoned up the rule of eminent domain and had Seneca Village razed to make way for Olmsted and Vaux's masterpiece of landscaping. There were no bulldozers to lay in front of in those days, and overnight the entire community gave up the ghost.

What became of the residents of Seneca Village? Good question. No descendants have ever been found. But contemporary archaeologists are scouring the site looking for clues as to what they must have been like. Funny how beneath the foundations of our great monuments of beauty and grandeur one can usually find the ashes of something a little more modest in scope that didn't stand a chance. We've almost come to expect it.

Oh Well

Penniless in NYC

"Shelby is extraordinarily fond of museums and galleries and has become something of an art expert. Vagrants are rarely molested in New York museums and galleries. Shelby is apt to smile and say this is because the guards can never distinguish between a legitimate bum and an artistic one. They never disturb a person like him because they never know when they are trying to eject an artist who is holding a one-man show on the third floor."

-From Subways Are For Sleeping, by Edmund G Love

Make Believe