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Secret New York City Passage Linked to Underground Railroad
Hidden under a built-in dresser in a former home in the East Village is a narrow crawlspace, which historians have recently linked to the Underground Railroad.
A person could access the passage here by removing the bottom drawer. There’s a built-in ladder inside the wall. And so you could catch your foot on that top rung and then lower yourself down into the ladder. The passage here at the merchant’s house was built when this house was built in 1832. It’s a secret space and meant to be hidden, but also very purposefully designed. Institutional archives tell us that the passageway itself was discovered in the 1930s, when the house was being converted into a museum, but we didn’t know its significance. Slavery was abolished in New York State in 1827, but New York’s economy was deeply entrenched with the slave economy. A passage like this could have been used to hide a person, really, for a very short period of time, perhaps while they were waiting for transport to their next destination. This passage is completely unlike any other house in this neighborhood. Any other house that we have seen that the architectural historians that we have worked with have seen. It’s really quite a remarkable find.
Hidden under a built-in dresser in a former home in the East Village is a narrow crawlspace, which historians have recently linked to the Underground Railroad.
By Jamie Leventhal, Remy Tumin, Christina Kelso and Dave Sanders
February 15, 2026
