Much of the land depicted on the Dripps map of 1851 was unsettled, with just under 6 percent of city’s dwellers living in hamlets north of 50th Street with often bucolic names like Manhattanville, Bloomingdale Village, Villemont, and Spring Valley. The rugged topography served as a framework for these villages, providing natural building sites on its promontories and in the protection of its valleys and dales. Interspersed are the estates of prominent families (many named on the map), hotels, spiritual retreat centers, and asylums. On the Dripps map, the future site of Central Park is gridded but only sparsely dotted with structures. Contrary to popular belief, these structures were built by tax-paying citizens, not squatters. One such settlement is a well-documented, early freed African-American community called Seneca Village, immediately west of the Croton Aqueduct Receiving Reservoir. MK