Before Central Park / / Sara Cedar Miller.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• VerfasserIn: Miller, Sara Cedar,
• MitwirkendeR: Smith, Elizabeth W.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 170 color figures

With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds—and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers.This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART I: TOPOGRAPHY -- Introduction -- 1 The First Settlers, 1625–1664 -- 2 Along the Kingsbridge Road, 1683–1845 -- 3 The Enslaved Bensons, 1754–1846 -- 4 The War at McGowan’s Pass, 1776–1784 -- 5 Valentine Nutter, 1760–1814 -- 6 The War of 1812, 1805–1814 -- PART II: REAL ESTATE -- Introduction -- 7 Dividing Bloomingdale, 1667–1790s -- 8 Dividing Bloomingdale, 1790–1824 -- 9 Dividing Bloomingdale, Seneca Village: The Residents, 1825–1857 -- 10 Dividing Bloomingdale, Seneca Village: The Black Leaders, 1825–1857 -- 11 Dividing Harlem, 1825–1843 -- 12 Dividing Yorkville, 1785–1835 -- 13 The Receiving Reservoir, 1835–1842 -- 14 A Changing Land, 1845–1853 -- PART III: THE IDEA OF A PARK -- Introduction -- 15 The Battle of the Parks, 1844–1852 -- 16 Becoming Central Park, 1853–1856 -- 17 The First Commission, 1855–1857 -- 18 Designing Central Park, 1857–1858 -- 19 Extending the Park, 1859–1863 -- Epilogue: America’s Park -- Afterword -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index