In the 1820s, the land above 59th Street in Manhattan was semi-rural -- scattered farms, rocky outcroppings, forests. Most of the city's population lived below 14th Street. A white farmer named John Whitehead had purchased a parcel near what would become Central Park West in 1824, and when he began selling smaller lots the following year, Andrew Williams was among the first buyers. The purchase was no small act. In New York, property ownership was tied to political power: Black men needed to own at least $250 in property to qualify to vote, a restriction not imposed on white voters. Buying land in Seneca Village was a path to the ballot box. After slavery was officially abolished in New York State in 1827, more African Americans moved uptown. When residents of a nearby community called York Hill were displaced in the 1830s to make way for a Croton Reservoir basin, many migrated to Seneca Village, strengthening the settlement further. By the 1840s, Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine also settled in the village, eventually comprising a third of its population.

Seneca Village was no shantytown, despite what hostile newspaper accounts would later claim. The community supported three churches: the AME Zion Church, the African Union Church (which purchased lots in 1837), and All Angels' Church, founded in 1846 as an affiliate of St. Michael's Episcopal Church. Two schools operated in the village, one led by teacher Caroline W. Simpson. Three cemeteries served the community's dead. Maps from the 1850s show most structures as one-, two-, or three-story wooden houses, and archaeological excavations have uncovered stone foundations and roofing materials indicating substantial, well-built homes. Residents kept gardens to grow food and likely supplemented their diets with fish from the nearby Hudson River and firewood from surrounding forests. Tanner's Spring provided fresh water. Some families had barns and raised livestock. The unusually high rate of address stability -- people staying put year after year -- gave the community a sense of permanence rare among Black New Yorkers of the era.

In the 1840s, wealthy New Yorkers began agitating for a grand public park. William Cullen Bryant, editor of the New York Evening Post, and landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing led the campaign. After an attempt to acquire Jones's Wood on the Upper East Side failed -- the wealthy families there successfully blocked the seizure in court -- the city turned its attention to a swath of land between 59th and 106th Streets. The New York State Legislature passed the Central Park Act in 1853, authorizing the acquisition by eminent domain. What followed was a campaign of delegitimization. Newspapers described Seneca Village's residents as squatters, "stubborn insects," and worse. In reality, most residents had formal agreements with landlords, and a significant minority owned their land outright -- only a few were actual squatters. The Central Park commissioners completed their assessments by July 1855. Andrew Williams was paid $2,335 for his house and three lots; he had asked for $3,500, though the settlement still represented a vast increase over his original $125 purchase. But only about twenty percent of Seneca Village's residents owned land. The rest received nothing.

For two years, residents protested and filed lawsuits. It was futile. In 1857, the city's demolition crews moved in and tore down every structure. The entirety of Seneca Village was dispersed. The only institution to survive was All Angels' Church, which relocated a couple of blocks away -- though with an entirely new congregation. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's winning design for Central Park transformed the land into rolling meadows, wooded paths, and a reservoir. No marker acknowledged what had been there before. A half-century later, a park gardener named Gilhooley accidentally unearthed a graveyard while turning soil, but even that discovery faded from memory. The village remained buried -- physically and historically -- for more than 130 years.

In 1992, historians Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar published "The Park and the People: A History of Central Park," which described Seneca Village in detail for the first time. A 1997 exhibition at the New-York Historical Society reignited public interest, and the Seneca Village Project was formed in 1998 to organize research and education. In 2005, ground-penetrating radar located traces of the village beneath the park's surface. Archaeological excavations in 2011 uncovered the foundation walls of William Godfrey Wilson's home -- Wilson had been a sexton at All Angels' Church -- along with artifacts from neighboring households. Archaeologists filled more than 250 bags with objects: the bone handle of a toothbrush, the leather sole of a child's shoe, fragments of everyday life from a community the city had tried to erase. In 2019, the Central Park Conservancy installed temporary historical markers across the village's former landscape. A plaque near the Mariners Playground at 85th Street and Central Park West now commemorates the site. Walk through that stretch of park today, and you walk through someone's front yard.