A newly identified Underground Railroad passageway once used by enslaved people fleeing to freedom is putting the spotlight on a New York City museum and its struggle against a proposed neighboring development.
Staff at the Merchant's House Museum — an upper crust family home built in 1832 in Manhattan’s NoHo district — last month revealed that researchers can now explain the passageway's historical purpose because they recently discovered that the home's original owner was an abolitionist. Historians and Black activists hail it as the first “intact” Underground Railroad site found in New York in over 160 years.
