To mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, we welcome Sara Cedar Miller, historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy for an online discussion of the connection between tobacco and what is today Greenwich Village, Central Park, Harlem, and the famed Village residents, the DeForest family. Once known as “Sapokanikan,” today’s Village was New Amsterdam’s first downtown tobacco bouwerie (“farm” in Dutch), soon followed by Hendrick and Isaac DeForest and their brother-in-law Johannes de la Montagne, who established the first uptown bouwerie in what is today Central Park and Harlem. The famed DeForests of Greenwich Village all descend from the Park’s first farming family.

About the author – Sara Cedar Miller is the historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy, which she first joined as a photographer in 1984. Her books include Central Park: An American Masterpiece (2003), Strawberry Fields: Central Park’s Memorial to John Lennon (2011), Seeing Central Park: The Official Guide, and Before Central Park – Winner of the 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes.