Recently Discovered: an NYC Underground Railroad Stop

The Merchant’s House Museum was NYC’s first landmarked building, but until this year, the function of a small hidden passageway in the house was unknown. When historians and preservationists examined it in detail, they found that it was built by the first owner of the house, abolitionist Joseph Brewster, as a hiding place for enslaved people escaping from the South.

But when visitors head upstairs to the bedrooms on the second floor, there’s something strategically hidden within the walls of Manhattan’s first landmarked building: a link to the Underground Railroad.

“We knew it was here, but didn’t really know what we were looking at,” Camille Czerkowicz, the curator for the Merchant’s House Museum, said.

Now they know that the Merchant’s House was also a “safe house” for enslaved Africans who escaped bondage in the South.

Architects and preservationists recently investigated the building’s hidden vertical passageway along the west wall and examined it for themselves.

“I’ve been practicing historical preservation law for 30 years, and this is a generational find. This is the most significant find in historic preservation in my career, and it’s very important that we preserve this,” Michael Hiller, a preservation attorney and professor at Pratt Institute, said.

Underneath those built-in drawers is the path to freedom.

• architecture
• Merchant’s House Museum
• NYC
• slavery
• Underground Railroad
• video