#central park

Vote 2026: Entering Week 2 of the Wild Card Round of the 2026 Battle of the Week Voting Tournament with only eleven candidates left standing in the race, with one Quarterfinal match already set, and it won't be long until we have our second Quarterfinal match set up. The spotlight shifts to the Bravo Party with the 6-vs-3-seed, and this one should be as competitive as it looks, in comparison to last week's match.

It's the third playoff appearance for the Amphibia fandom, but the first with Anne Boonchuy (Amphibia) as the candidate. A win for Amphibia would set up a deep and improbable playoff run as the 6-seed, and it would be the first playoff win for the fandom since 2022, when Marcy Wu was the candidate. And if Cole wins, it would set up yet another deep playoff run for the Central Park fandom after a strong 2025 season that saw them make it to the Semifinals. Hoping for the fandom to finish the job once and for all to get their hands on the nomination and, hopefully, a championship title.

The winner of this matchup will advance to the Quarterfinals to meet the 1-seed Louise Belcher (Bob's Burgers) in September. Who will win? You decide! Vote today!

In 1856 there were houses on the west side of what is now Central Park, near Eighty-Fifth Street, and surveyor's stakes going in around them. A man was told to leave. He held out.

His land was worth two hundred and fifty dollars. Under the 1821 Constitution of the State of New York, a Black man could vote only if he had been a citizen of the state three years, held a freehold estate worth $250 over and above all debts, and had been rated for tax and paid it. Five conditions. All five, or no ballot. A white man in New York after 1826 needed none of them.

In 1845 there were about 13,000 Black New Yorkers in the city. Either 91 or 100 of them qualified to vote. Ten of that hundred lived on this one hillside, a settlement of about 225 people with three churches and two schools that the city called Seneca Village.

In 1853 the legislature authorised the taking of 750 acres for a public park. Every parcel was valued, every owner served, every award paid, and some were argued upward. There is no illegal act anywhere in the file.

A man holding $250 of freehold could vote in the state of New York. A man holding the cash award for that same freehold could not. Money is not a freehold. Paying a man the market value of his qualification does not leave him qualified. It leaves him paid.

By the end of 1857 the hillside was empty. The qualification stayed in the constitution for another thirteen years and ended only when the Fifteenth Amendment made it unenforceable.

New York Street

Artist: Childe Hassam (American, 1859–1935)

Date: 1902

Medium: Oil on canvas