Fred Samuel Playground

Lenox Ave., W. 139 St. To W. 140 St.

Manhattan

Directions via Google Maps

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

What was here before?
In 1658 Peter Stuyvesant established the village of Nieuw Haarlem north of New Amsterdam along what was then the Post Road, a former Lenape trail. The area remained farmland and country estates for the next century. This parcel was located along the property lines of two prominent Loyalist families, the Delanceys and Coldens, whose members played important roles in New York politics. In the nineteenth century, when Harlem development boomed, their heirs divided and sold their properties and by the early 1900s several buildings occupied this lot, which bordered the new P.S. 139 school building.

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