Moot Court: Central Park on Trial

It is 1856 and the area that would become Central Park is about to be cleared. The newspaper editiorialists, William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878 ) of the New York Evening Post foremost among them, are all lined up in support of this "public improvement." Republican reformers favor the creation of a park as a means of "improving the poor, " Democratic machine politicians see the possibility of patronage in park construction jobs, and merchant boosters see a new park as a means of competing with the great cities of Europe.

But the residents of Seneca Village, a mixed neighborhood composed mostly of African American and Irish American residents, have a problem. They like living where they are, which is right in the area slated for demolition.

In 1853 Andrew Williams, an African American "boot black" and Seneca Village property owner, filed an "Affidavit of Petition to the Commissioners of Central Park" in the State Supreme Court of New York expressing his disappointed at the valuation of his land. In the end, the decision did not go in his favor, but we are imagining a court hearing in 1856 in which the New York State Supreme Court is considering his case. As we know little about Williams' experience, and even less about the residents of Seneca Village, we will create characters that permit us to conduct the hearing. (The characters marked with a * are drawn from historical characters, but the information on them is often quite thin and you will have to be creative in establishing their perspectives on the issues at hand. For some of the historical characters, especially the residents of Seneca Village, there is not even a birth or death date)

Please choose a character below and prepare to contribute to a hearing in which the jury will decide whether the State may exercise its power of eminent domain to take Andrew Williams' land (and the land of the other Seneca Villagers) to create the Central Park and, if so, what is fair compensation. The jurors will have to do some research on what might constitute "fair compensation" in 1856 by determining the cost of living and the going rate for comparable real estate.

Cast of Characters

Judge Hubert Sitzfleisch, the presiding judge, a Republican friend of Horace Greeley's and William Cullen Bryant

Josiah Ashcroft, the ambitious State Attorney General who seeks to affirm and expand the State's power to exercise eminent domain.

Andrew Williams (1800-??) *, an African American "boot black" and Seneca Village property owner who is protesting the taking of his land. (see DBQ)

Peter Populist, Andrew Wiliams' attorney who seeks to make this case a referendum on the displacement of the poor and working class by the city's elites.

Epiphany Davis *, a black shipping merchant who was a trustee of AME Zion Church and controlled a good deal of land in Seneca Village

Charles Treadwell (1801- ??) *, an AME Zion Church trustee and leader

Reverend Leven J. Smith,*, AME Zion Pastor, trustee and Seneca Village landowner

Margaret Geery *, an Irish American midwife in Seneca Village

Catherine Thompson *, teacher at Colored School #3 and village resident

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878 ) *, publisher of the New York Evening Post. (see DBQ)

Fernando Wood (1812-81) * , Mayor of New York from 1855-58 and leader of the Mozart Hall Democratic machine. He also owned property on what would become Central Park West.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), * and Calvert Vaux (1824-95) *, creators of the "Greensward Plan" that would become the design for Central Park (see DBQ)

John H. Rauch, M.D. (1828-1894 ) *, author of Public Parks: Their Effects upon the Moral, Physical and Sanitary Condition of the Inhabitants of Large Cities, 1869 and Secretary of the Illinois State Board of Health (1877-1891) and Supervising Inspector to the United States National Board of Health (see DBQ)

J.P. Whatsitworth, a merchant and friend of William Cullen Bryant who would like New York to join the rank of world cities with great urban parks, such and London and Paris

Henry David Thoreau (1817-62 )*, transcendentalist author of Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)

Andrew Haswell Green (1820-1903 )*, known as the "father of Greater New York" for his work in bringing about municipal consolidation, Green was become president and comptroller of the Central Park Commission between 1857 and 1871

Dr. John H. Griscom (1809-1874) *, a leading New York City public health reformer and sanitarian who founded the Committee on Public Health at the Academy of Medicine. In 1842 Dr. Griscom became New York’s CityHealth Inspector. (see DBQ for Jackson Lecture #3)

Reverend Louis M. Pease *, a Methodist missionary who established the Five Points Mission in 1850 (And the the Five Points House of Industry in 1851) to counter the problems of intemperance and poor behavior that were viewed as the source of unemployment, poverty and crime in the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.

Jurors

The students testifying also double as jurors, so each student "witness" will have to learn much more than their specific role and the jurors will be more than passive actors in the simulation. All jurors will write a paper justifying their vote on the hearing.

NB. If the class has more than nineteen students, create additional roles such as newspaper reporters or have some students double up in the more difficult roles.

Bibliography:

Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham, A History of New York City to 1898 ((New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),

Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig's The Park and the People (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1992)

Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven, Ct. : Yale University Press, 1995)

Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform:  American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War.  (New York, Harper and Row, 1957).

Carroll Smith Rosenberg,  Religion and the Rise of the American City.  Ithaca, N.Y.:  Cornell University Press, 1971.

Ian Tyrrell,.  Sobering Up:  From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-1860.  Westport, Conn.:  Greenwood Books, 1979.

Andrew Meyers, "Columbia Online DBQ: Whose Park Is It Anyway? - The Contested Terrain of Central Park" for Kenneth T. Jackson Lecture #4

Andrew Meyers, "Columbia Online DBQ: Cholera and the Crisis of Poverty in New York's Five Points? - The Contested Terrain of Central Park" for Kenneth T. Jackson Lecture #3

Websites:

Readings for Eric Homberger's Course: "The American City" at the Univerisyt of East Anglia

http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/People/homberger/crse/The%20American%20City/readingwk5.htm

The New-York Historical Society School Programs Site: Before Central Park

http://www.nyhistory.org/education/teachers/beforepark.html

if sources are not accessible from this site, please try the link below:

http://www.nyhistory.org/beforepark.html

Centralpark.org:

http://www.centralpark.org/history/

The New-York Historical Society Seneca Village Website:

http://www.nyhistory.org/seneca/

if sources are not accessible from this site, please try the link below:

http://projects.ilt.columbia.edu/seneca/frame.html

The New-York Historical Society Seneca Village Website- Andrew Williams Documents

http://projects.ilt.columbia.edu/seneca/Williams1.html

The New-York Historical Society Seneca Village Website- Churches, Cemeteries and Schools

http://projects.ilt.columbia.edu/seneca/village2c.html

Harlemlive.org A Village Vanished: Seneca Village

http://www.harlemlive.org/community/parks/senecavillage/seneca.html