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. But before it became a model for city parks worldwide, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds – and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers.

We invite you to join FRIENDS for a virtual talk with Sara Cedar Miller, historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy, and author of Before Central Park. In her book, Sara chronicles two and 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.

Join us on Tuesday, July 26th, to learn how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.