The Village New York City Erased

The hidden history beneath Central Park

If you stand near the West 85th Street entrance to Central Park, on the slope above the ballfields, you will be on top of a town that New York City tried to erase. Before the famous green lawn, there were houses, three churches, a school, garden plots, and more than 200 residents, most of them free Black New Yorkers who owned that very land. The land wo…