Free Musical Brings Seneca Village to Life in Central Park

This Juneteenth, a musical in Central Park commemorated a community of predominantly Black landowners who called the land home decades before the Emancipation Proclamation announced the end of slavery nationwide. The production incorporated the latest findings from ongoing research on Seneca Village, the community that was eventually displaced to make room for Central Park.

Written by DeWitt Fleming, Jr. and directed by Ben Harney, the free show started at 1 p.m. on the Seneca Village Landscape between 82nd and 89th streets on the West side. It offered an artistic retelling of the village’s history, beginning in 1825, when a free Black man called Andrew Williams became the first person to purchase land in the area.

Seneca Village was also home to European immigrants, mainly of Irish descent, and had an integrated church as well as multiple integrated schools. Supporting about 50 families, it was a refuge from some of the racism, violence, and poor sanitary conditions minorities faced downtown.

The city gave little notice when it raised the village in 1857 to construct the now world-famous Central Park, compelling the community to disperse to other urban areas. The government used eminent domain, a power that allows it to take property for public use without the owner’s consent. Several landowners objected to the low price the city offered them for land that is now widely recognized as invaluable. Their petitions were unsuccessful.

Seneca Village was lost to public memory until the 1990s, when archival work and archeology began to unearth its history. Research is ongoing.

This event was the Central Park Conservancy’s fifth annual Juneteenth in Seneca Village celebration and the second since the conservancy launched a multiyear programming series last year, which aims to establish a permanent commemoration of the village.

Friday’s performance featured DeWitt Fleming, Jr., Jennie Harney Fleming, Alphonso Horne, Mikumari Caiyhe, Markeisha Ensley, Kahlil Kwame Bell, and students from the Harlem School of the Arts and the Christian Cultural Center. It was interactive; spectators played tambourines and sang along to gospel tunes. The set was both real and recalled; rocks and trees that existed in the 19th century have held their ground, but the homes, churches, and schools that were long ago demolished had to be reimagined through music, dance, and spoken word.

The event drew locals and tourists, who settled on picnic blankets and sloping rocks, forming a sizable crowd that almost entirely encircled the performance. Cyclists and a pedicab pulled over to watch.

Although the history of Seneca Village ends in displacement, the show finished on an optimistic note: “I am Seneca Village; I am resilient,” declared a young performer.

This was not the first show about Seneca Village for DeWitt Fleming, Jr., an acclaimed tap dancer and actor who most recently appeared on Broadway in A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical. He has been working on projects about the village since the inaugural Juneteenth in Seneca Village event in 2022. That work was a 20-minute monologue from the perspective of property owner Andrew Williams, peppered with tap dance and song.

That experience got Fleming hooked on researching the history of the land. He met Williams’ descendants, Mariah Williams and Andrew Williams, the only known living descendants of the village, and kept in touch to learn more.

“ I was so overwhelmed and inspired by Seneca Village because I hadn’t heard about it before” he said, adding, “ When you start researching a certain era, you start to feel the spirit of that time and it takes over you in a way—if you allow it.”

Fleming was so inspired by the entrepreneurial women who owned land and businesses in the village that he developed another work, Mary’s Teapot, which he staged at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn in 2025. The piece imagined a young, modern-day woman who moves near to Central Park and gets transported back to the 1800s, where she discovers her relative who lived in Seneca Village.

Last fall, the Central Park Conservancy invited Fleming to create another show from Andrew Williams’ perspective. Before, there was Seneca Village!, which featured Fleming, trumper Alfonso Horne, and poet Mikumari Caiyhe, came together in a month and was such a success it inspired the Park to tackle a more ambitious musical production for the spring.

Research has generated new discoveries even since that October performance. “What I knew about Seneca Village six months ago is different from what I know now,” said Fleming. As he refined the script for this Juneteenth, he continually received new information from the Park about who the residents were and what they did.

The Envisioning Seneca Village website was also a key resource for character development. When the site first launched, Fleming said, it mentioned a person called Landon who had animals and land. Fleming at first imagined him as a farmer who raised animals for milk and meat.

“ Then months later, I found out that Landon actually owned an ornamental shrub business,” he said. “The animals he had were the horses he needed to transport the shrubs; he was a cart man.” Fleming integrated this information into the latest version, in which Landon appeared as a main character.

Fleming said that he has been inspired by the villagers’ ability to embrace change and welcome others. Even though Black people had very few places to own land and live peacefully in the city at the time, they integrated with the European immigrants who moved in as the community expanded.

“Juneteenth is not just about African Americans; it’s about everybody,” he said. “ It’s an opportunity for us to come together as a community and experience each other’s brilliance—and each other’s humanity.”

To learn more about Seneca Village, New Yorkers can access a digital exhibit of artifacts from the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, peruse an interactive 3D model produced by the Envisioning Seneca Village project, take a guided tour with the Central Park Conservancy, or even simply walk to the peak of Summit Rock—the park’s highest natural point that looks out on the landscape of the former community.

Anyone with questions or information about Seneca Village should contact the Park at senecavillage@centralparknyc.org.

As researchers continue to discover more about the village, recovered memories can once again take up space in Central Park.