A tour of Seneca Village.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission has created an interactive map of important sites from Black history, and there are two locations in the neighborhood.
One is Seneca Village, a neighborhood in what is now Central Park that was the site of a middle class community where Black people were community leaders and owned land. Seneca Village thrived in the early 19th Century but was destroyed to make way for the park. It’s on the west side of Central Park, between 81st and 89th Streets. We wrote about it more here.
The other historic site is James Baldwin’s former home at 137 West 71st Street. The celebrated essayist and novelist lived there off and on from 1966 to 1987. It was designated a landmark in 2019.
See the whole map here.
