In New York City’s bustling canyons of steel, an unlikely vest-pocket park could often bring a passerby to an inquisitive halt. So it had been with the African Burial Ground National Monument in lower Manhattan, which comprised a rare, secluded patch of green that was both a secular and sacred space.

Last weekend, the National Park Service heightened the potency of the site,at the corners of Duane and Elk Streets, by opening a long-awaited new interpretive center for visitors to the African Burial Ground National Monument.

Vestige of colonial graveyard

The African Burial Ground site is the tiny vestige of a formerly 6.6-acre colonial-era graveyard. An estimated 10,000 to 20,000 blacks—both free and enslaved Africans—were once relegated to this area for burial. The terrain lay then outside the city frontier at Wall Street, in proximity to where some blacks had once owned land.

The graveyard was active for roughly a century, from about the 1690s until 1794. City expansion, land filling and building development contributed to obscuring traces of the burial grounds for nearly two centuries. But in 1991, construction teams at work on building a new federal office tower for the General Services Administration unwittingly unearthed some human skeletal remains.

Then they dug up some more. And then more after that.

The ultimate excavation of 419 skeletal remains from the site revealed evidence of the 17th- and 18th-century “Negro Burying Ground” or “African Burial Ground.” The rediscovery also constituted one of the most important urban archeological finds in America. In 1993 the United States government awarded the site protective status as a National Historic Landmark and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated it as the African Burial Ground and Commons Historic District.

African Burial Ground’s wider significance

The rediscovery of the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan became a catalyst for avid curiosity and scholarship in the roles of blacks and of slavery in New York City’s history. Its wider significance is continually evident. In upper Manhattan the site of the contemporary Elmendorf Reformed Church African Burial Ground, established in 1660 in the Dutch colonial village of New Haarlem (now East Harlem), is now the active subject of a community task force.

New center features and access

In lower Manhattan the new interpretive center of the African Burial Ground National Monument is located on the first floor of the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway, which is between the easy to remember Duane- and Reade Streets (two blocks north of Chambers Street). The new center houses four exhibit spaces, a 40-person theater and a museum shop. Visitors are advised that an electronic security screening is required for admittance to the building.

In compliance to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations the center offers audio components for sight and/or hearing impaired visitors.

The new visitor center is open to the public Tuesdays through Sundays, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., except for federal holidays. However, the Memorial—located at the corner of Duane Street and African Burial Ground Way (Elk Street)—is open during the same hours seven days a week, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. The NPS website indicates a 4 p.m. closing of the Memorial during the winter, so for schedule confirmation or other information it is advisable to call Visitor Information at
(212) 637-2019.