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June 1, 2007
Historian gives credence to underground Railroad claims
Courier-Life Publications
By Stephen Witt
For those of you who are keeping track of Brooklyn's other land grab, here's the latest news:
A key city historian offered his views last week on the Duffield Street abolitionist houses and appears to have landed on the side of preservationists.
Christopher Moore, a curator at Harlem’s Schomburg Center, and regarded as one of the city’s foremost African-American historians, is also a member of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC).
His name reportedly came up at the May 1 City Council hearing regarding the city’s plans to condemn and demolish the Duffield Houses and replace it with 1.5-acres of open space and underground parking for 750 cars.
Preservationists have argued that the houses, located at 225, 231, 235, 223, 227 and 233 Duffield and 436 Gold streets, are linked to the Underground Railroad and Abolitionist Movement, and should be preserved.
The city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) hired the consulting firm, AKRF, to research the accuracy of these arguments.
...
AKRF reportedly said Moore was one of the people they interviewed in preparing the report, which included a 12-person peer review committee, oral histories, architectural surveys, outreach to more than 230 individuals, and research into hundreds of documents at institutions, agencies, and organizations.However, at the City Council hearing, AKRF reportedly backtracked and said they never actually spoke with Moore.
Here's what Moore says:
“Finding six houses on Duffield Street [one owned by anti-slavery activist Harriet Truesdale], all connected by an exterior front-yard trench that could have provided passage from house to house [a use asserted by the oral traditions of those who lived in the homes], in a neighborhood where Walt Whitman once published an abolitionist newspaper; an African American church (Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Church), served as a known Underground Railroad station; a college (Polytechnic University) was founded by abolitionist John Howard Raymond; in a city (Brooklyn) which was one of the nation’s most important hubs of the Abolitionist and Underground Railroad movements—and not conclude the likelihood of historic value of these houses—is a manner of historic reasoning that I do not share,” said Moore.
Posted by lumi at June 1, 2007 8:42 AM