Enslaved Africans with dreams of being free found safety in the heart of NYC.
To the naked eye, the 4-story brick row house on East 4th Street is just another of the 19th-century buildings on a block adorned with dark shutters and time-worn character.
Spectrum News NY1 anchor Cheryl Wills peers down the trap door to the Underground Railroad in a historic 19th-century home in Manhattan. Spectrum News NY1But, to the brave men and women who escaped bondage in the South during the 1800s, that seemingly unremarkable structure served as a “safe house” for runaways of the Underground Railroad.
A secret passageway, hidden beneath the weighty bottom drawer of a dresser that was built into the west wall of the house, is the 2-by-2-foot threshold through which former captives achieved emancipation.
“We knew it was here, but didn’t really know what we were looking at,” Camille Czerkowicz, curator of the property — now revered as the Merchant’s House Museum — told Spectrum News, referring to the recent subsurface discovery.
The find coincides with Black History Month, an annual celebration of African American culture, torchbearers and global contributions. It, too, spotlights an unsung slice of New York’s legacy that often goes unacknowledged, Manhattan Councilman Christopher Marte said.
This Underground Railroad passage is the first of its kind to be discovered in Manhattan in over a century. Merchant's House Museum“Many New Yorkers forget that we were part of the abolitionist movement,” Marte said of the Empire State’s push to end slavery. “But this is physical evidence of what happened in the South [during] the Civil War, and what’s happening today.”
Patrick Ciccone, an architectural historian, agreed.
“Being an abolitionist was incredibly rare among white New Yorkers, especially wealthy white New Yorkers,” Ciccone said. “[Joseph Brewster] was the builder of the house, and he was able to make these choices and design it.”
Brewster, a white abolitionist, built the house in 1832. He then sold it to the Tredwell family, upper-middle-class merchants, in 1835. The residence was ultimately transformed into a museum, granting visitors an exclusive glimpse at domestic life during centuries past. It became Manhattan’s first landmarked building in 1965.
The trap door is accessed through a built-in dresser door and leads to a 2-by-2-foot tunnel down to the ground floor that connects to the subterranean pathway. Spectrum News NY1However, it’s unknown whether the Tredwells were aware of their home’s significant ties to black history.
Experts have reportedly praised Brewster’s handiwork as “a masterwork in deliberate concealment,” owing to its strategic design, meant to be undetectable to the slave-hunters and city marshals of yore.
Upon removing the heavy bottom dresser drawer, stationed in a bedroom on the second floor of the house, there is a crudely cut rectangular opening in the floorboards. The small hole leads to a 2-by-2-foot enclosed, vertical space. A ladder then leads down to the ground floor.
Brewster’s construction has left architects and preservationists agog.
The Merchant’s House museum was built in 1832 by white abolitionist Joseph Brewster. NY Post Brian Zak“I’ve been practicing historical preservation law for 30 years, and this is a generational find,” gushed Michael Hiller, a preservation attorney and professor at Pratt Institute. “This is the most significant find in historic preservation in my career, and it’s very important that we preserve this.”
Manhattan Councilman Harvey Epstein echoed similar sentiments.
“It’s a critical piece of the overall struggle for freedom and justice.”
