Earlier this year, the Merchant’s House Museum in New York made a remarkable discovery. A passageway that had been nestled into a set of drawers was once used to hide enslaved people seeking freedom and braving the Underground Railroad. Now, this monumental find, one of less than two dozen Underground Railroad sites in New York, faces a new threat—real estate development.

The Merchant’s House Museum teaches guests about its 194-year-old NoHo home. Originally built to house the hatter Joseph Brewster, it is the only 19th-century residence to retain its original Greek Revival interior and Federal Style exterior in Manhattan.

The Merchant’s House. Photo by the Merchant’s House Museum

For many years, the Merchant’s House Museum has remained one of New York’s hidden gems. That changed when news of its association with the Underground Railroad broke last month. “February was our highest month for visitors in over a year,” the museum’s director of operations Emily Hill-Wright told the AP. “You almost get choked up because it is a very visceral experience to see it with your own eyes.”

The passageway is hidden in the last place most authorities would look for a person—within a set a drawers near the bedroom, on the second floor. There, a two by two-foot hatch opens onto a 15-foot shaft with a makeshift ladder extending towards the basement pantry. The museum has known about this anomaly since the 1930s, when the Tredwell family that bought this home from Brewster vacated the property, enabling it to become a museum. The passageway’s purpose remained a mystery, though. One by one, museum staff ruled out possibilities, from a laundry chute to a dumbwaiter. Two years ago, its historian Ann Haddad finally found a promising lead in Brewster—who turned out to be an abolitionist, with two antislavery petitions and three antislavery churches to his name.

Joseph Brewster. Photo by the Merchant’s House Museum

Over email, Hill-Wright named several reasons that Brewster’s activism went overlooked for so long. First, ongoing archival digitizations have empowered formerly impossible research. Second, the museum had long devoted its limited resources to studying the Tredwells, who lived at the site nine decades longer than Brewster. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Brewster had to cover his tracks, because hiding slaves was illegal.

“His ability to remain ‘under the radar’ likely was an asset both to him and to those he might have helped,” Hill-Wright told me. “It also makes discovering the nature of his work more difficult.” The passageway, which is now on public view, has already attracted further academic inquiry.

Inside the chest of drawers. Photo by Max Touhey, courtesy of the Merchant’s House Museum

The revelation of its existence lends enhanced urgency to the museum’s 14-year battle against the owner of the 80-year-old garage and repair shop to its left. In 2023, New York’s Landmark Preservation Committee (LPC) approved that owner’s plan to build an office building, so long as they conducted a study on how to preserve the museum’s delicate plaster details. Experts working for the property owner versus the museum disagree regarding whether vibrations from construction could damage such elements.

The newfound passageway abuts that property. “Its position in the house could not be more perilous,” Hill-Wright told me. “Given the expected damage to the plaster walls and ceiling, it is unlikely the passage would survive construction.”

The makeshift ladder. Photo by Max Touhey, courtesy of the Merchant’s House Museum

The developer still hasn’t conducted its prescribed study. In January, it presented the LPC with plans for another, larger building. In February, Community Board 2 recommended that the city buy the lot for the museum. The LPC fielded input from officials, engineers, museum staff, and more about the developer’s updated proposal last week. At a yet-unspecified date, the LPC will hold a public meeting where the developer responds.

In the meantime, the museum has drafted a letter supporters can send to Mayor Zohran Mamdani—and started a legal fund to offset the $1 million this fight has cost so far.