from addisleigh park to seneca village: commemorating communities, vanished and preserved
Saturday, December 6th, 2–4pm at Yeh Art Gallery
Date: Saturday, December 6th, 2–4pm Location: Yeh Art Gallery
RSVP to warshm@stjohns.edu
In conjunction with the exhibition Olney Marie Ryland: Urbane Facades, Yeh Art Gallery and Central Park Conservancy present a conversation exploring creative approaches to the preservation and commemoration of historic African American communities through architectural form. Artist Olney Marie Ryland and Addisleigh Park Historian Lisa Wade will join historical archaeologist Meredith B. Linn (Bard Graduate Center) and cartographer/architect Leah Meisterlin (Barnard College) from the Envisioning Seneca Village team. The talk will be moderated by historian John Reddick of the Central Park
Ryland’s practice includes both the reconstruction of facades from historically Black neighborhoods such as Weeksville, Brooklyn, and her longstanding work as a property owner and preservation advocate in the postwar African American community of Addisleigh Park, Queens. In contrast, the Envisioning Seneca Village project draws on written descriptions as there is no photographic record of what the neighborhood looked like, to imagine the 19th-century built environment of a predominantly African American settlement once located in what is now Central Park.
This discussion will consider the different means by which present-day artists, historians, and residents work to preserve community legacies—whether through physical structures, research, or reimagined representations. Together, the speakers will reflect on the challenges of maintaining living neighborhoods, the responsibilities of commemoration, and the evolving definitions of preservation in both material and cultural terms.
Images
Left: Gergo Baics, Meredith B. Linn, Leah Meisterlin, and Myles Zhang. "The Wilson House," Envisioning Seneca Village (ESV), 2025, Digital rendering. Courtesy of ESV (https://envisioningsenecavillage.github.io/).
Right: Olney Marie Ryland, 1700 Weeksville Collection, 2022, Cabinet-grade plywood, acrylic paint & stucco, 10.5 × 18 x 26 inches. Courtesy of the artist and the Weeksville Heritage Center.