Homeless Shelter Considered For Inwood African Burial Ground

INWOOD, NY — A new homeless shelter is being proposed for a piece of land in Inwood formerly used as the Dyckman cemetery for enslaved Africans, a person familiar with the situation told Patch.

The Bowery Residents' Committee, a nonprofit that provides housing services to vulnerable New Yorkers, began the process of purchasing the plot of land at 10th Avenue and 212th Street with plans to develop the shelter.

However, the space is currently an auto parts lot and the nonprofit had no knowledge of its historical and cultural significance, the source said.

After Upper Manhattan community stakeholders informed the group of the history of the address, the Bowery Residents' Committee put a pause on its purchase and filed an extension to allow more time for education and consideration on if it will go through with development plans.

The extension lasts until the fall of 2021.

Part of this effort was organizing three co-sponsored listening sessions with the Manhattan Borough President's Office and the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum to hear more from the community about the subject.

The third and final conversation around the possible new homeless shelter is set for Saturday at 1 p.m. The meeting is open to the public and will take place virtually, you can sign up here. It will also be translated simultaneously into Spanish.

Marking this former site of the cemetery for enslaved Africans in Inwood has been a longtime priority for Community Board 12 and was one of the conditions on Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer's response to the Inwood Rezoning plan.

During this extension period, the Bowery Residents' Committee plans to bring in archeologists to examine the area, but it's unclear how far into the earth they'd be allowed to dig. The archeologist topic is expected to be a major point of conversation in Saturday's listening session.

Bowery Residents' Committee did not immediately respond to Patch's request for comment.

In the first two sessions, the conversation centered around what the Upper Manhattan community would like to see in the space, and how the Bowery Residents' Committee could incorporate a tribute within its shelter development if it was built.

You can learn more about the Dyckman cemetery for enslaved Africans at 10th Avenue and 212th Street in a video from Upper Manhattan historian Cole Thompson.

Again, you can sign up for the Zoom meeting here.