The Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons will welcome historian, author and Hampton Bays resident Sara Cedar Miller to the Bridgehampton Community House on Sunday, March 12, at 2 p.m. to deliver an illustrated lecture on what existed in the middle of Manhattan Island before Central Park.
Miller has spent nearly 40 years uncovering the secrets and stories of the most celebrated 843 acres in New York City, according to the Horticultural Alliance. In this talk, she will explain the geologic history and more than 250 years of social history, from the clash of Indigenous and Dutch culture, the first European family’s tobacco farm, colonial roads and taverns, a secret Revolutionary War meeting, the butchers who helped to build the War of 1812 forts, epidemics, slavery, immigration, canal and reservoir building, real estate speculation, the Black community of Seneca Village, Jewish burial grounds, Irish Sisters of Charity, German bone-boiling factories, women’s property rights (or lack thereof), and the many schools, farms, piggeries, churches, orchards and gardens. Characters in this history include con men, greedy speculators, corrupt officials, strong women, heroes, activists, dreamers and many extraordinary New Yorkers that history had almost forgotten, the lecture synopsis states.
Miller is the author of “Central Park: An American Masterpiece,” “Strawberry Fields, Central Park’s Memorial to John Lennon,” “Seeing Central Park: The Official Guidebook: Updated and Expanded” and most recently, “Before Central Park.” She is the historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy since 2017, and in 2020, she was honored with the “Preservation Hero” award by the Library of American Landscape History.
Admission to Miller’s talk is $10, or free for Horticultural Alliance members. Visit hahgarden.org for more information. Learn more about Miller and her work at beforecentralpark.com.
Staff Writer on Mar 8, 2023