NEW YORK (AP) — A newly identified Underground Railroad passageway once used by enslaved people fleeing to freedom is putting the spotlight on a New York City museum and its struggle against a proposed neighboring development.
Staff at the Merchant's House Museum — an upper crust family home built in 1832 in Manhattan’s NoHo district — last month revealed that researchers can now explain the passageway's historical purpose because they recently discovered
that the home's original owner was an abolitionist. Historians and Black activists hail it as the first “intact” Underground Railroad site found in New York in over 160 years.
The discovery has substantially raised the museum's foot traffic, along with hopes of staving off a possible nine-story mixed-use building next door because building it could damage the walls and foundation of the adjacent historic site.
“What our engineers are saying is that there really is no way that a building of that size is built immediately next door to the museum without causing significant structural damage to our historic building,” said Emily Hill-Wright, the museum’s director of operations.
The New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has been weighing whether to approve the development. Consultants and architects working on the project say the museum should not be heavily impacted.
Revelations about the newly explained passageway come as an executive order by President Donald Trump is being used to remove references and imagery of slavery from the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks.
New York-based civil rights activist Al Sharpton has cast the fate of the Merchant's Museum House as a fight for Black and American history.
“When engineers tell me that an African American heritage site is in danger of structural compromise or any other sort of irreversible damage, I listen,” Sharpton said in a statement last week.
The Merchant's House Underground Railroad passageway lies beneath a 2-foot-by-2-foot wooden hatch hidden under a dresser drawer in the second floor hallway. It goes down a 15-foot (4.5 meters) shaft with a built-in ladder. The passageway was first found in the 1930s as the home was being turned into a museum, but it wasn't until 2024 that it came to light the home's first owner, Joseph Brewster, was an abolitionist.
“It’s not a dumbwaiter. It’s not a laundry chute,” Hill-Wright said. “We’re able to sort of cross off all of these other theories about what this might have possibly been used for.”
The findings have drawn preservationists, history buffs and the general public.
“February was our highest month for visitors in over a year,” Hill-Wright said. “You almost get choked up because it is a very visceral experience to see it with your own eyes.”
The Underground Railroad network was established by Harriet Tubman, who herself escaped slavery in 1849 and ended up living in Philadelphia. The operation is credited with facilitating the escape of numerous enslaved Black men and women. Tubman used her experiences as a scout, spy and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War and personally guided 150 Black soldiers on a gunboat raid in South Carolina.
At the time the Brewster home was built, assisting someone through the Underground Railroad was against the law in New York City. There would have been “severe penalties,” said Jacob Morris, director of the Harlem Historical Society. There are documented cases of abolitionists getting attacked for protecting enslaved escapees.
“Bounty hunters were all over the place in New York City. They made their living on catching freedom-seeking Blacks,” Morris said. “If you got caught helping Blacks escape from slavery, a mob could come and burn down your house and beat you up. And maybe even tar and feather you or worse.”
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Tang reported from Phoenix.
