Buried for nearly 200 years, experts stunned as they discover a secret anti-slavery shaft in a NYC home

A narrow opening hidden beneath a bedroom dresser in a Manhattan row house is now being described as rare physical evidence of New York City’s ties to the Underground Railroad.

The discovery was made inside the Merchant’s House Museum on East Fourth Street, a four-story brick home that, from the outside, blends in with the surrounding 19th-century buildings lined with dark shutters and aged façades. But historians now say the property once functioned as a “safe house” for enslaved people fleeing the South in the 1800s.

The concealed feature, described as “completely invisible,” was found beneath the heavy bottom drawer of a built-in dresser along the west wall of the second floor.

“We knew it was here, but didn’t really know what we were looking at,” Camille Czerkowicz, curator of the Merchant’s House Museum, told Spectrum News.

After removing the weighty drawer, researchers uncovered a roughly cut rectangular opening in the floorboards. The two-by-two-foot shaft leads into a tight vertical space, with a ladder descending to the ground floor.

Experts say the design was meant to avoid detection by slave hunters and city marshals at a time when assisting escaped enslaved people carried significant legal risk.

Architectural historian Patrick Ciccone told Spectrum News: “Being an abolitionist was incredibly rare among white New Yorkers, especially wealthy white New Yorkers.

“[Joseph Brewster] was the builder of the house, and he was able to make these choices and design it.”

Joseph Brewster, a white abolitionist, constructed the house in 1832 before selling it to the Tredwell family, upper-middle-class merchants, in 1835. It remains unclear whether the Tredwells were aware of the concealed passageway or its possible use.

Preservation attorney and Pratt Institute professor Michael Hiller described the discovery in striking terms.

“I’ve been practicing historical preservation law for 30 years, and this is a generational find,” Hiller said. “This is the most significant find in historic preservation in my career, and it’s very important that we preserve this.”

The Merchant’s House later became a museum offering insight into 19th-century domestic life. It was designated Manhattan’s first landmarked building in 1965.

City officials say the hidden structure underscores New York’s role in the broader fight against slavery, a chapter often overshadowed by events in the South.

“Many New Yorkers forget that we were part of the abolitionist movement,” Manhattan Councilman Christopher Marte told Spectrum News. “But this is physical evidence of what happened in the South [during] the Civil War, and what’s happening today.”

Councilman Harvey Epstein added: “It’s a critical piece of the overall struggle for freedom and justice.”