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For those who have spent careers fighting to protect historic structures, the Merchant’s House Museum on East 4th Street in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood needs no introduction.
It became Manhattan’s first landmarked building in 1965 and has operated as a museum preserving 19th-century New York life since 1936. Its brick-and-mortar integrity is virtually unmatched among surviving residential structures of its era.
Now, a discovery within its walls has elevated its significance to an entirely new level.
A hidden passageway linked to the Underground Railroad has now been discovered inside the historic home. Experts say the find provides rare physical evidence of New York City’s role in helping enslaved people escape to freedom.
NY1 was first to report the find.
The Architecture of Concealment
What makes this discovery remarkable — and what will resonate deeply with anyone who has studied adaptive building techniques or concealment architecture — is the sophistication of what was built into the home’s original structure.
The hidden space was discovered beneath built-in dresser drawers in a second-floor bedroom/hallway. It leads through a small opening in the floor measuring about 2 feet by 2 feet.
That opening connects to a vertical shaft or enclosed space that runs down to the lower level of the house. A ladder provided access between floors.
The concealment was described as highly sophisticated and intentionally invisible to slave catchers or authorities.
This was not a rough crawlspace or a hastily boarded-over closet. It was architecture designed with dual purpose from the outset — to serve as a functioning home on its surface while harboring a means of escape within its structure.
The landmark building was built in 1832 by Joseph Brewster, who is believed to have been an abolitionist, per NY1.
Brewster was not a subsequent occupant retrofitting someone else’s floor plan. He was the builder himself, with full command over the design and construction decisions embedded in the home’s framework.
“Being an abolitionist was incredibly rare among white New Yorkers, especially wealthy white New Yorkers,” Patrick Ciccone, an architectural historian, told NY1. “[Joseph Brewster] was the builder of the house, and he was able to make these choices and design it.”
A ‘Generational Find’ for Preservation Law
For preservation professionals, the legal and policy implications of this discovery may be just as significant as the architectural ones.
“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, told the outlet.
Hiller’s use of the word “generational” carries specific weight in preservation circles. It signals not merely rarity but a category of significance that reshapes how a building is understood, studied, and protected going forward.
Physical evidence of Underground Railroad activity in New York City is rare, and preservation experts have called this one of the most significant historic preservation discoveries in decades.
The discovery reinforces that New York played a larger role in the abolitionist movement than many people realize.
For advocates who have long argued that the built environment contains irreplaceable evidence of social history, this find is a powerful case study. It’s a reminder that the walls, floors, and structural cavities of historic buildings can hold truths that no written record preserves.
A Building’s Layered History
The property was later owned by the Tredwell family, who lived there for about a century. It is unclear whether the Tredwells knew about the hidden passage.
That ambiguity itself is telling: the concealment was effective enough to potentially go undetected by the home’s own long-term occupants.
“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, told NY1.
Czerkowicz’s remark speaks to a familiar challenge in preservation work — the gap between sensing that something is architecturally unusual and understanding its full historical meaning.
The museum has operated on this site since 1936. The building received its landmark designation in 1965. And yet the shaft’s true significance is only now being fully recognized.
The home was likely used as a safe house for enslaved people fleeing the South.
Even in northern states like New York, escapees faced danger due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed bounty hunters to capture them. The discovery highlights the risks taken by both those seeking freedom and those who helped them.
What This Means for Preservation Going Forward
For anyone engaged in preservation advocacy, the questions that follow this discovery are as important as the find itself.
What happens next to protect and study the space? How will the museum balance public access with the integrity of a fragile, newly revealed feature? What additional investigation — structural, archaeological, archival — will be undertaken?
The timing of the announcement during Black History Month adds to its historical relevance, but the preservation responsibilities extend far beyond any single month.
“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.
“It’s a critical piece of the overall struggle for freedom and justice,” Manhattan Councilman Harvey Epstein said.
Their words underscore a principle that preservation advocates know well: buildings are not merely aesthetic objects. They are evidence. They are witnesses.
And when a structure like the Merchant’s House Museum reveals a hidden shaft built nearly two centuries ago to protect people fleeing enslavement, it demands the highest standard of care that the preservation community can bring to bear.