Seneca Village Walking Tour

Please join LANDMARK WEST! and friends for

Reconstructing Seneca Village

“Manhattan’s First Significant African American Community”

A Walking Tour with Cynthia Copeland, Nan Rothschild and Diana Wall

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 (rain or shine)

6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

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Meet at 6pm sharp at the Mariner's Gate, southside of 85th Street and Central Park West. There will be a reception following the tour hosted by Halstead Properties, 408 Columbus Avenue, corner of 79th Street.

To make sure we start on time, tickets must be purchased in advance. Please send a check for $25 to LANDMARK WEST!, 45 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023 no later than Friday, July 20. For information, you may also email us at landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org. Space is limited.

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Unbeknownst to many who frequent Central Park, an African American community called Seneca Village once existed in the Park between 82nd and 89th streets. The fascinating story of how African Americans came to acquire property in the area as early as 1825 will be told by accomplished urban archaeologists. Our guides will take us back in time to help us imagine how Seneca Village functioned, how it looked and how it evolved from undeveloped property to a vital multi-ethnic community of 264 people by 1855. We will be able to picture, in our minds’ eye, the homes, churches, cemeteries and the school that served the community before the Village was razed in 1856 to make way for the construction of Central Park.

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Cynthia Copeland, curator at the New York Historical Society, Nan Rothschild, Director of Museum Studies at Columbia and Diana Wall, Professor of Anthropology at City College, have worked together to determine the feasibility of conducting an archaeological dig of an area in Central Park that was once Seneca Village.