Once there weren’t greenfields.

“Black inhabitants of the ‘neat little settlement,’ the [1856] article said, ‘present a pleasing contrast in their habits and the appearance of their dwellings to the Celtic occupants, in common with hogs and goats, of the shanties in the lower part of the Park…The policemen find it difficult to persuade them out of the idea which has possessed their simple minds, that the sole object of the authorities in making the Park is to procure their expulsion from the homes which they occupy. It is to be hoped that their removal will be effected with as much gentleness as possible.'” A team of archaeologists from Barnard and City College use ground-penetrating radar to probe under Central Park for remains of Seneca Village, a 19th century settlement displaced to make way for Olmstead & Vaux’s grand refuge and left forgotten for over a century.