In 1825, a small group of Black New Yorkers purchased land and founded Seneca Village, an intentional activist community in upper Manhattan built on the ideals of their shared social, political, and religious organizations. For three decades the neighborhood grew to include multiple schools, churches, and cemeteries. Many established lives that redefined the meaning of freedom —owning their homes, supporting organizations, voting, tending gardens, and establishing businesses. The community thrived and eventually became home to immigrants from Ireland and Germany. In the 1850s, however, New York City began to displace the residents, seize their land, and destroy their homes to make way for the construction of Central Park. With their settlement razed, residents scattered and researchers have been unable to locate most of them after Seneca Village. Until now.

Many former Seneca Villagers resettled in nearby Yorkville as early as 1860, trying to recapture some elements of what they lost. Their local stories provide insight into their goals and their challenges, revealing how the transformation of freedom and property reshaped life in the city for a diverse array of residents The racial, economic, and geographic inequities former Seneca Villagers experienced then provide insight into similar and ongoing processes today. Using the history of Seneca Village as a starting point, Dominique Jean-Louis and Alexander Manevitz will engage in a conversation with each other and the audience about how New York City remembers its past, shapes its present, and what redefining the meaning of urban progress might mean for its future.

Dominique Jean-Louis is an Assistant Curator of History Exhibitions at New-York Historical Society, where she has worked on Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow (2018), and the ongoing exhibition Meet the Presidents. She is a doctoral candidate in US History at New York University, where she is completing a dissertation on race, education, and youth culture in post-Civil Rights Era New York City. She received her B.A. in Comparative Ethnic studies from Columbia University. Prior to her work at New-York Historical, she served as a Public Humanities Fellow at New York Humanities, and as an Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York, where she also contributed to their flagship exhibition, New York at its Core. Dominique regularly writes and lectures on Black history, schools and education, and New York City.

Alexander Manevitz is a scholar, public historian, consultant, and educator focusing on the transformations of race, urban space, and capitalism in the nineteenth-century United States. His current book project—under contract with Cornell University Press—focuses on the founding, life, destruction, and memory of Seneca Village, a predominantly Black political community destroyed to build Central Park before the Civil War. He has also published essays in a wide variety of venues, from The Journal of Urban History to The Washington Post.
Currently, Manevitz teaches history at an independent secondary school. Previously, he was a Bernard and Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and The Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at the New School, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Trinity College before that. He received his Ph.D. in U.S. History from New York University in 2016, with additional support as a pre-doctoral fellow from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

1014: Past and Future comprises a weekend of architecture, culture and community. The program will feature an exhibition and talks at 1014 5th Avenue and guided walking tours in the Upper East Side neighborhood.

Accessibility Statement:
Unfortunately, 1014 Fifth Avenue needs to be refurbished and is not fully accessible in its current stage. We apologize to our guests and kindly ask you to contact j.stubbs@1014.nyc if you need further information or assistance. We will do our best to enable everyone to join us.

COVID Protocols:
For everyone’s health and safety, proof of COVID-19 vaccination (age 12+)  -- either in digital or hard-copy form -- and masks (age 2+) are required for all visitors to 1014 5th Avenue. Hand sanitizer will be offered upon arrival.

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