The Race & Podcast: American Architecture as a Settler Colonial Project: Central Park's Lost Village
Description
Today we explore the Seneca Village- one of Manhattan's first predominantly Black neighborhoods….. Started in 1825, Seneca Village was settled by freed African-Americans when parcels of land in the area were subdivided and sold off. Over the next few years, it would grow to become a thriving, heterogeneous community of over 220 residents, 50 homes, 3 churches. However, starting in the 1850s, the residents of Seneca Village and the territory of what would become Central Park were faced with eminent domain actions by the city of New York. The erasure of Seneca Village and surrounding neighborhoods gave way to Olmsted’s reassertion of the space as a “natural” terrain. The dominant narrative of Central Park’s transformation from an untamed tabula rasa wilderness to the tamed, domesticated urban park is an unacknowledged story of settler colonialism.
Show Notes available at:
https://www.sahraah.com/race-podcast
United States
