[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.All that isleft today are the cornerstones of one of the churches.How Seneca Village came to be is one of the most interestingstories in the park.Beginning in 1825, John and Elizabeth Whitehead started sell-ing parts of their farm to black New Yorkers.The first buyer wasAndrew Williams, a twenty-five-year-old bootblack, who boughtthree lots for $125.Williams was followed by members of theAfrican Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church, Mother Zion, from downtown.By 1829 there were nine houses on the side.The building of the now-demolished old reservoir (not the newone that s still there), which was part of the Croton Aqueduct sys-tem at the center of the park from 1825 to 1832 displaced anotherblack community known as York Hill, and many of its residentsmoved to Seneca Village.With increased European immigration toNew York in the 1840s and 1850s, Seneca Village also became thehome to German and Irish immigrants.The two most famous wereGeorge Washington Plunkitt and Richard Croker, both of whomwent on to fame in the Tammany Hall Democratic machine.Contrary to mid-nineteenth-century accounts that demonizedresidents of the park as vagabonds or squatters, the tax andhousing records of Seneca Village tell a different story.Assessorsmaps show several two- and three-story buildings, one even with awraparound porch on three sides.Land ownership provided not only homes and income for blackNew Yorkers but voting rights.In 1821, New York revised its state 200 CENTRAL PARK | New York City s Largest Work of Artconstitution to allow universal white male suffrage but requiredfree blacks to own $250 worth of property to vote.In 1855 therewere twelve thousand black residents in New York but only onehundred black voters, and ten of these lived in Seneca Village.In-deed, black Seneca Village residents were far more likely to ownproperty than whites elsewhere in the city.About three-quarters of Seneca Village residents regularly at-tended one of its three churches.The African Methodist UnionChurch was established by black migrants from York Hill.All An-gels Church was built in 1849 by the white Reverend Thomas Pe-ters, with money he raised and other funds he donated.It held ablack and German congregation, including members of AME ZionChurch from downtown, until AME Zion moved into Seneca Villagein 1853.Peters described his congregation as white, black and In-dian, American, German and Irish practitioners in monogamy andthose who troubled themselves about no gamy at all; gentle folkdeteriorated and rough lovers of free and easy life, saints the mostexalted and sinners most abandoned. All Angels also housed Colored School No.3, whose blackteacher struck a blow for equality a century before Rosa Parks.In July 1854, teacher Elizabeth Jennings, twenty-four, boarded aThird Avenue streetcar downtown at Chatham and Pearl Streetson the way to church.The car did not have a sign saying ColoredPeople Allowed in This Car, as others did.When Jennings re-fused to get off, she was forcibly removed by the conductor anda policeman.Jennings sued the Third Avenue Railway Companyand was represented at her 1855 trial by twenty-four-year-old fu-ture U.S.president Chester A.Arthur.A jury decided that, ac-cording to a state law, the railway company was a common car-rier, bound to carry all respectable people and that colored per-sons, if sober, well-behaved, and free from disease, had the samerights as others. The third church was the oldest black church in New York butthe last to erect a home in Seneca Village.AME Zion was foundedin 1796 by black members of the John Street Methodist Episcopal New York City s Largest Work of Art | CENTRAL PARK 201Church because no white church would ordain blacks.Its membershave included Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Dou-glass, and Thomas Fortune, who founded the Freeman, the Globe,and the Age.Alas, not even churches were enough to preserve the commu-nity when it came time to build the park.A city commission sur-veyed and assessed the value of all lots in and around the park.Those inside the park s future limits were taken from their ownersby right of eminent domain, which means the government forcibly,but with pay, takes your land for what it declares is the commongood
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
