The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It

Audubon Park’s journey from farmland to cityscape

The study of Audubon Park’s origins, maturation, and disappearance is at root the study of a rural society evolving into an urban community, an examination of the relationship between people and the land they inhabit. When John James Audubon bought fourteen acres of northern Manhattan farmland in 1841, he set in motion a chain of events that moved forward inexorably to the streetscape that emerged seven decades later. The story of how that ha...