Pre-Central Park Shanties

Reporters of the 1850s described the inhabitants of the pre-Central Park site in highly pejorative terms. For instance on March 5, 1856, a Times reporter described the residents as principally Irish families living in rickety little one story shanties inhabited by four or five persons, not including the pig and the goats.(21) An even more disturbing account of the site was offered by an Evening Post reporter who noted that the duties of the new Central Park police would be arduous, since the park is the scene of plunder and depredations, the headquarters of vagabonds and scoundrels of every description, and the location of gambling dens, the lowest type of drinking houses.(22) Similar accounts were given by the parks first engineer, Egbert Viele, who described the region as the refuge of about five thousand squatters.(23)

While no personal accounts have been left behind by the pre-Central Park site residents, evidence compiled from census records, tax registries, land records, etc. offer a different interpretation. These records reveal that the residents worked in unskilled jobs, skilled trades, and some even ran small businesses. In addition, while many of these families lived in crowed conditions, generally, their conditions were often healthier than the thousands of poor immigrant and black families living in the overcrowded tenements of the Lower East Side.(24)