Team
of Researchers and Students to Use High-tech Instruments
to Survey Central Park for Evidence of Seneca Village
- Early African-American and Irish-American Settlement
June
16, 2000, New York, N.Y. -- Using special radar
and other instruments to peer under Central Park,
a team of researchers and students will search for
the remains of Seneca Village - one of the earliest
settlements in New York City of African-American
and Irish immigrants that may have been an early
center of political activism. The remote sense testing
will start as early as this week and will continue
for a period of two to three weeks.
From
1825 to 1857, Seneca Village was one of the first
significant communities of African-American property
owners, and included several hundred residents living
in simple houses, three churches and a school. Approximately
two-thirds of those who lived there were of African
descent, while the remainder were Europeans, mostly
Irish who had emigrated to escape the potato famine.
The
houses in the Village were purchased and demolished
by the City of New York under eminent domain laws
in order to permit the building of Central Park.
At
the time, newspapers described the houses as "shanties,"
but they were, in fact, homes built in one of the
few places African-Americans were permitted to buy
land. Since the right to vote was only permitted
to property owners, the landowners may have bought
the land in order to vote. The prospect of better
understanding life at Seneca Village interests the
research team.
The
team is headed by Cynthia Copeland, intermediate
and high school programs coordinator for the New-York
Historical Society, Nan Rothschild, professor of
anthropology at Barnard College, and Diana Wall,
professor of anthropology at The City College of
New York; and includes Roelof Versteeg, a geophysicist
from Lamont-Doherty Earth Institute, Herbert Seignoret
of City College, and undergraduates from seven local
colleges.
With
funding from the National Science Foundation to
City College, as well as grants from Columbia University's
Institute for Social and Economic Theory and Research
and The City University of New York, the teams will
use historical documents along with ground-penetrating
radar and a device to measure the electrical resistance
of the soil to look for underground anomalies that,
according to the documents, could be man-made structures.
This
is the first thorough survey of Seneca Village using
this equipment, and if it discloses evidence of
foundations, the team may seek permission from New
York City to conduct an actual archeological dig.
But
this summer, in what is an increasingly common archaeological
practice, the team will not turn over a grain of
soil in the "sacred space of the park," but instead
rely totally on instruments placed above the ground,
the equivalent of a doctor's non-invasive procedure.
"It's
becoming more important in archeology to find out
as much as you can before digging, because digging
destroys archaeological sites; the information from
the radar will pinpoint the most promising places
to excavate," Rothschild noted.
In
preparation for the survey, the team has been examining
hundreds of tax records, death records, deeds and
old newspapers, to map out precisely where they
expect the foundations to be - in the area of 82nd
Street to 87th Street on the west side of the park.
The team also hopes to document the location of
several cemeteries - not to dig them up but to commemorate
them. The research was begun in conjunction with
a 1997 exhibit at the New-York Historical Society
co-curated by Cynthia Copeland. The students on
the team include two each from The City College
of New York and Hunter College, and one each from
Barnard College, Columbia College, Borough of Manhattan
Community College, New York University and Lehman
College.
The research team is excited about the project.
As Wall says, "It's a particularly interesting community.
If we can actually do some archaeology we will be
able to say something about how people were living
there that cannot be discovered in any other way."
Contacts: Petra Tuomi, Public Affairs Office, Barnard
College, 212-854-7907; Charles DeCicco, Public Relations
Office, City College, 212-650-5310.
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