Rezoning a Block in Harlem, Respecting an African Burial Ground
For not quite two centuries starting in the mid-1660s, when a Dutch village was established under the name Nieuw Haarlem, a church in Upper Manhattan had separate cemeteries, one for white parishioners, the other for descendants of Africans.
When the church moved, the remains of the white people were moved to a cemetery in the Bronx. The graves of the blacks were left where they were as the land was given over to a beer garden, a movie studio and, eventually, a block-square depot for streetcars and buses.
On Wednesday, the City Council will vote on a zoning framework to put the same land to yet another use, a million-square-foot development with about 730 apartments, half of which would be rented to low-income families. . .