From 1825 to 1857, the land between West 82nd and West 89th Streets in what is now Central Park was home to Seneca Village, Manhattan's first significant community of Black property owners and one of the earliest free Black settlements in the city. At its peak the village had about 225 residents, roughly two-thirds of them African American, along with three churches, two schools, and several cemeteries. Because New York law required men to own $250 in property to vote, land ownership here carried the added weight of political enfranchisement. In 1857 the city used eminent domain to clear the land for Central Park, displacing all residents and erasing the settlement so thoroughly that no photographs of it are known to survive.