African Burial Ground

Last Wednesday I set out for a brief winter sojourn in the neighborhood. We had just had a couchsurfing couple stay for a visit, and they had stopped to visit an attraction nearby, which I had always wanted to see but could never seem to find on a map of the city. Finally, finally, I made plans to visit the African Burial Ground. On this crispy cold and breezy day, I walked over toward City Hall Park in search of the site.

The couchsurfers said it was right behind City Hall, and they were right. Just behind City Hall, across Chambers Street, I took a jog down little Elk Street- and there it was.

It's a small area of about an acre, set next to 290 Broadway, a Federal office building built in 1991. When the ground was excavated for the building's basement, the African burial ground was discovered there. Doubtless the architectural plans were then altered to leave room for the park at the lot's edge. Except for some office workers on lunch, and two small groups of curious photographers like myself, the site was quiet.

I really liked the marble, and the white symbols carved into its sleek surface. Rodney Leon's spiral design brings you down into the earth itself, so you are "buried" below street level, seemingly in sympathy with the entombed slaves. And the soaring chamber, with its narrow opening for the sky, brought to mind the soaring of spirits heavenward. The memorial is a delight.

But I was disappointed that there was nothing to read, to teach us what the the burial ground was all about. I found out everything I wanted to know, but only after trudging home again, and looking up the information on its website. History-buff that I am, I was frustrated by the lack of information on the ground at the site. And I wondered how many curious tourists, like our couchsurfers, came away from the African Burial Ground less educated and more confused about its history than when they arrived in New York.