A historic museum in Manhattan, New York has been discovered to have a safe house that protected formerly enslaved people on the Underground Railroad.
According to local outlet NY1, Merchant’s House Museum, which was established for public visitation in 1936, was secretly home to a “safe house” that helped passengers on the Underground Railroad during the 1800s. The movement was among abolitionists and “conductors” that helped transport enslaved people from Southern colonies to the North through a network of safe homes.
The Merchant’s House Museum, located at East Fourth Street in Manhattan, was built by late abolitionist Joseph Brewster and owned by The Treadwell family from 1835 to 1933. On the second floor, visitors can now find a secret dwelling where “passengers” on the Underground Railroad temporarily resided on their escape to freedom. The space is beneath a “heavy bottom drawer,” where a rectangular opening is visible in the floorboards. An enclosed space of 2-by-2 then leads to a ladder, which presumably took passengers to a private area on the ground floor.
“Being an abolitionist was incredibly rare among white New Yorkers, especially wealthy white New Yorkers,” architectural historian Patrick Ciccone told NY1. “[Joseph Brewster] was the builder of the house, and he was able to make these choices and design it.”
The home was sold to the Treadwell family in 1835, although it isn’t known whether they were aware of the Underground Railroad passageway.
“Many New Yorkers forget that we were part of the abolitionist movement, but this is physical evidence of what happened in the South [during] the Civil War, and what’s happening today,” Manhattan Councilman Christopher Marte said.