Seneca Village had the merit of being several miles outside the hostile city center, on the western edge of what is now Central Park, between 83rd and 89th Streets. In addition to allowing black property owners to vote, the settlement placed citizens of color within a welcome distance of lower Manhattan.
The new settlement also provided an ideal setting for fugitives from slavery to pause and refresh as they headed north on the Underground Railroad. Among the escapees who passed through the city during the Seneca Village period was the strikingly handsome Frederick Douglass, a Baltimore fugitive who would soon become one of the greatest orators of his day.
One of the early buyers, the biblical name Epiphany Davis, underlined the settlement’s relationship with the fight against slavery when he left his daughter a framed print of a slave ship as “a reminder that however comfortable life might be for hard-working black Americans, the evil of slavery would never be forgotten.”
The story of Seneca Village is often told through the lens of tragedy and misery, but historian Sara Cedar Miller tells a more nuanced tale in her forthcoming book, “Before Central Park.” In this narration, land ownership in the village is seen as an engine of empowerment and even enrichment for African Americans who exploited the real estate boom and cashed in at the right time.
Early buyers typically bought between one and three lots for an average of $40 each. This would have required caution and diligent savings from manual laborers, gardeners and porters who made only about $69 a year. Those who sold out during the real estate boom of the mid-1830s likely made more money than they had in their entire working life. While these sellers were making a nice profit, a new cohort of African Americans arrived on the scene looking for security, financial assets and, of course, the right to vote.
Several of the families who owned properties in Seneca Village were members of an African-American elite who lived, attended church and ran businesses in the downtown area. These families bought lots in the village, in part to support black people’s self-determination, but they also viewed real estate as an investment that would increase in value over time. Ms. Miller writes that the “black elites held onto their land or gave it to their heirs until it was bought by the city for Central Park.”
African-American businesswoman and abolitionist Elizabeth Gloucester stands out in this story. It has long been clear that by the end of her life she had amassed considerable wealth. “Before Central Park” makes clear that Mrs. Gloucester’s famous real estate empire began with the Seneca Village lot that she bought in 1849 for $100 – and for which the city awarded her $460 in 1856 when it bought the lot to build the park. .