A landmark house in Manhattan preserved as a museum to New York\u2019s 19th-century history has revealed an even more intriguing secret: its previously unknown status as a refuge for people who escaped slavery before and during the civil war.<\/p>\n
The Merchant\u2019s House Museum\u2019s link to the Underground Railroad<\/a>, a network of abolitionists who secured the safe passage of enslaved people to freedom, was discovered when archaeologists looked beneath the drawers of a built-in dresser in the wall of a hallway leading to bedrooms on the building\u2019s second floor.<\/p>\n They found a small rectangular opening cut into the floorboards, an enclosed space about 2ft by 2ft, and a ladder leading to the ground floor.<\/p>\n Experts told NY1, which first reported the find<\/a>, that it was an indication that the house, in Manhattan\u2019s residential NoHo (north of Houston) neighborhood, was probably used as a \u201csafe house\u201d for enslaved people who had fled bondage in the south. They said the space and ladder would have provided an emergency hideout and quick escape.<\/p>\n In the run up to the civil war, gangs of slave hunters, assisted by sympathetic local residents and law enforcement, would seek bounties for capturing people who fled their enslavers authorized by the Fugitive Slave Act<\/a> of 1850.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew it was here, but didn\u2019t really know what we were looking at,\u201d Camille Czerkowicz, the museum\u2019s curator, told the outlet.<\/p>\n Michael Hiller, a preservation attorney and professor at Pratt Institute, said it was the most remarkable discovery he had seen in more than 30 years. \u201cThis 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 he said.<\/p>\n