When historians opened a built-in chest of drawers inside a second-floor closet at Manhattan’s Merchant’s House Museum, they found more than antique woodwork. Beneath the bottom drawer was a secret hatch leading to a narrow vertical passageway, a concealed channel with wax drippings still clinging to its walls. The space, long known but poorly understood, is now believed to have functioned as part of the Underground Railroad, making it the first intact site of its kind discovered in Manhattan in more than 160 years.
Built in 1832 by merchant and abolitionist Joseph Brewster, the red-brick townhouse was originally his residence before being sold to the Tredwell family in 1835. Remarkably preserved, the house still contains its original plasterwork, furnishings, and architectural details. Now a museum, it has long been considered a cornerstone of the city’s preservation movement, even before the safe passageway added a new chapter to its history.
For Visiting Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation Michael Hiller, a preservation attorney who has represented the Merchant’s House Museum for nearly a decade, the discovery by Ann Haddad, the museum’s historian, is nothing short of extraordinary.
“This is a generational find,” Hiller said, who brought students from his Preservation Law & Policy class to view the passageway this past fall. “You don’t find something like this very often.”
Yet even as historians work to study the passageway and better understand its history, the site faces potential risks from proposed adjacent construction. “It should be a slam dunk in favor of preservation, but it isn’t,” Hiller said. “You would think an African American Heritage Site, the first Underground Railroad site found intact in over 160 years, would be prioritized over commercial development, but it has become a very close call. That must change. Merchant’s House deserves gold standard treatment.”
In the conversation below, Hiller discusses the architectural and historical significance of the Merchant’s House, the newly revealed details surrounding the concealed passageway, and why he believes this moment represents both a critical preservation effort and a powerful opportunity for students of historic preservation.
Why is the Merchant’s House such a significant landmark, even before this discovery?
Merchant’s House is the quintessential property for which the Landmarks Law was enacted.
No one really thinks for a second that developers are going to reconfigure the Empire State Building or Central Park. Those are iconic landmarks. But Merchant’s House is iconic and not as well known. That’s why we have the Landmarks Law. If we didn’t have the Landmarks Law, Merchant’s House would be gone already, and we would never have known about this Underground Railroad site. It was the first landmark building designated in Manhattan—the very first one. It’s a National Historic Landmark. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places. It has literally every landmark distinction that exists.
And all of that was before we even knew about the Underground Railroad site. I don’t know how much higher on the historic preservation food chain you could possibly place this property.
What makes this house architecturally extraordinary?
When you walk in, everything is pretty much original. The furniture sitting out there, that’s the furniture that was there in 1832. The furnishings are the Tredwell family’s furniture. If you open up the drawers, the clothes are still in there. The chamber pots are still in the rooms. They’ve been cleaned, but they’re still there.
On the walls there are bells, and each bell had a particular tone which told a particular servant to respond to it and go to a particular room. It gives you a 19th-century tableau of what it was like to live in 1832. I don’t know of any other property in New York City that does that.
And the plaster medallions on the ceiling are among the most impressive examples of Greek Revival architecture you will see in the city. It’s magnificent.
What new information has come to light about the passageway?
What is known is that the passageway is located in a built-in chest of drawers. If you open the bottom drawer on the left, there’s a bottom. If you open the bottom drawer on the right, there’s no bottom. There’s a secret hatch. It goes down about 15 feet in a very narrow corridor. There are wax drippings from the people who actually traversed this passageway.
The museum knew about the passageway for almost 100 years, but they didn’t know what it was for. I’ve been inside the passageway. I found a 19th-century newspaper clipping down there. The Landmarks Preservation Commission seems to be under the misimpression that the passageway was created in order to maintain the pocket doors on the first floor. But I genuinely believe that whoever came up with that theory has never been inside the passageway. There’s nowhere on the first floor to stand to repair anything. And if it were for the pocket doors, why doesn’t the passageway stop on the first floor? Instead, it goes down to what is now the modern kitchen, where there was a partition wall that blocked anyone from seeing who exited.
Do you believe there may be more to discover?
Yes. The foundation wall of Merchant’s House does not go to the property line. It’s built approximately five feet inside the property line. I’ve been doing historic preservation work my entire career—I’ve never heard of a foundation wall being built inside the property line to create an underground chamber like that, particularly under the circumstances present here. If you take the passageway all the way to the basement, you’re outside the foundation wall.
You’re basically in a secret chamber down there. This has to be studied.
What are some of the biggest challenges ahead in preserving the hidden passageway and its surrounding architecture?
The passageway comprising the Underground Railroad Site is directly adjacent to where a developer seeks to construct a new building next door to Merchant’s House. If Merchant’s House were to be destabilized in any way—and that is the expected outcome to those who have actually studied the subterranean conditions next door—the passageway would be destroyed.
Geotechnical conditions and studies aren’t ordinarily associated with historic preservation; however, in this instance, these studies are paramount. We have arranged for two geotechnical assessments, both of which concluded that the soil beneath the property adjacent to Merchant’s House would compress (and thus sink) as a result of the proposed construction by at least a quarter inch and will likely be compressed from between .62” to 1.16”.
That may not seem like a lot, but in the world of geotechnical engineering and construction impacts adjacent to historic properties, it means everything. An engineering firm with a sub-specialty in the preservation of historic plaster has confirmed that, if the property adjacent to Merchant’s House were to sink by just 1/4”, the historic and original 1832 plaster in Merchant’s House would largely be destroyed. Worse, a nationally recognized structural engineering firm has separately concluded that if the adjacent soil were to compress by ¾”, then Merchant’s House would be at risk for structural compromise.
This project touches on histories of resistance, injustice, and remembrance. How does the Historic Preservation program at Pratt prepare students to engage with complex legacies like this?
The Historic Preservation program’s studio courses serve as the intellectual and civic core of our pedagogy, functioning as the primary vehicles for preservation advocacy and community engagement. Grounded in the program’s founding ethos, these studios emphasize the responsibility of preservation practice to advocate for and provide meaningful resources to underrepresented and marginalized communities. Through this framework, students are encouraged to engage critically, ethically, and collaboratively with the social, cultural, and spatial dimensions of the built environment.
I would encourage Pratt students to make it a practice to observe Commission hearings and meetings; become engaged with respect to pending applications of public significance, and fight for preservation. Buildings and other historic properties do not protect themselves, preservationists, including those whose master’s degrees have not yet been obtained, need to engage and fight for the city they long to preserve.
For students considering a path in historic preservation, what lessons does this project offer about the kinds of stories architecture can reveal and how preservationists bring them to light?
In order to be successful in the preservation of historic properties and neighborhoods, preservationists must be relentless and creative in their advocacy.
In 1965, preservation was identified by the City Council as critically important to New York City. And the City Council was right. Only through the lessons of the past can we be inspired to create a better present and future.
This is exactly why we have historic preservation laws and regulations—so that we can learn from the lessons of history. If our history, however, were to be erased, it would be far more difficult to appreciate who we once were. Indeed, that nearly happened. If Merchant’s House had not been preserved under the Landmarks Law, we would never have heard about the Underground Railroad Site because it would have been destroyed, as have so many others throughout the city. Because of the importance of historic preservation, preservationists must be relentless in their preservation of historic properties.
Preservationists must also be creative, because the solution to problems associated with historic properties isn’t always found in the NYC Landmarks Law. Sometimes the solution is found under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, the City Environmental Quality Review, the Zoning Resolution, principles underlying geotechnical or structural engineering, or sometimes the solution is found in general principles of real property law. I have used each of these tools in my efforts to preserve historic properties over the last 30+ years.