The area that New York City’s Central Park now occupies used to be the site of several small settlements including the villages of Seneca and Pigtown. Most of the residents were Irish and German immigrants, and Free Blacks. Emminent domain was declared on the future park land in 1857, and about 1,600 people were evicted before construction started.

Central Park was a triumph when it was completed in the 1870s, but under the control of a succession of corrupt city administrations backed by Tammany Hall it went into a steep decline almost immediately. The now iconic greenspace became a weed choked wasteland into the 20th Century, until the 1930s when it was resurrected to its former splendor by none other than Parks Commisioner Robert Moses.