Hidden inside a historic 19th century house on East Fourth Street in Manhattan is a secret sanctuary.<\/p>\n
Ever since the Merchant\u2019s House Museum opened its doors to the public in 1936, visitors have lined up to get a taste of \u201cold New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Ever since the Merchant\u2019s House Museum opened its doors to the public in 1936, visitors have lined up to get a taste of residential life in “old New York”
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The Merchant’s House is the first landmarked building in Manhattan. Built by Joseph Brewster on East 4th Street, he was a noted abolitionist. This powerful architectural time capsule, dating back to the 1830s reveals its most dramatic secret: the high-stakes, dangerous work of aiding enslaved people seeking freedom
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Historians call this passageway a masterwork of deliberate concealment, designed to be absolutely invisible to slave catchers or city marshals during the 19th century. It\u2019s groundbreaking discovery, a testament to the courage of the abolitionist movement in New York City
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The Merchant House Museum plans to integrate this discovery into its public narrative and allow unprecedented access to the property
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The Treadwell family lived there from 1835 until 1933. Their residence is frozen in time, from a ruby-red front parlor complete with its original piano to the kitchen with its cast-iron coal-burning stove. \u00a0<\/p>\n
But when visitors head upstairs to the bedrooms on the second floor, there\u2019s something strategically hidden within the walls of Manhattan\u2019s first landmarked building\u00a0is a link to the Underground Railroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew it was here but didn\u2019t really know what we were looking at,\u201d Camille Czerkowicz, the curator for the Merchant\u2019s House Museum, said.<\/p>\n
Now they know that the Merchant\u2019s House was also a \u201csafe house\u201d\u00a0for enslaved Africans who escaped bondage in the South.<\/p>\n
Architects and preservationists recently investigated the building\u2019s hidden vertical passageway along the west wall and examined it for themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve 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\u2019s very important that we preserve this,\u201d Michael Hiller, a preservation attorney and professor at Pratt Institute, said.<\/p>\n
Underneath those built-in drawers is the path to freedom.<\/p>\n
When you remove the heavy bottom drawer, you can see a rectangular opening cut into the floorboards,\u00a0which leads to an enclosed space about 2-by-2-feet. It then reveals a ladder that leads down to the ground floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing an abolitionist was incredibly rare among white New Yorkers, especially wealthy white New Yorkers,\u201d Patrick Ciccone, an architectural historian, said. \u201c[Joseph Brewster] was the builder of the house, and he was able to make these choices and design it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brewster sold the building to the Treadwell family in 1835. It\u2019s unclear if the Treadwell family used or even knew the passageway was there.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany 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\u2019s happening today,\u201d Manhattan Councilman Christopher Marte said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a critical piece of the overall struggle for freedom and justice,\u201d Manhattan Councilman Harvey Epstein said.<\/p>\n
Historians call the passageway a masterwork of deliberate concealment, designed to be absolutely invisible to slave catchers or city marshals during the 19th century. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a groundbreaking discovery \u2014 a testament to the courage of the abolitionist movement in New York City.<\/p>\n
The Merchant\u2019s House is no longer just a relic of domestic life in the village. Its identity now includes a powerful, emotionally charged monument to the American struggle for liberty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hidden inside a historic 19th century house on East Fourth Street in Manhattan is a secret sanctuary. Ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[25,7490,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,27,200],"class_list":["post-129669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-top-stories","tag-cheryl-wills","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}