![]() ![]() Overall, he suspects some 1,000 slaves annually escaped the South via any route. In that book, Foner estimates some 100 slaves came through New York City each year in their quest for freedom, or 3,000 in all in the three decades prior to the Civil War. “There isn’t any fully satisfactory estimate of the number of slaves who passed through New York City,” notes Eric Foner, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, a Pulitzer Prize-winning authority on slavery, and author of Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. Precise details on Underground Railroad activities and participants are sketchy by necessity. Harris’ sugar refinery in downtown Manhattan had been a busy and documented station on the Underground Railroad, and accounts suggest he extended those efforts uptown, providing shelter to runaway slaves at the new refinery and the Riverside home, and safe passage in the steamboat to points north, aiding those in their journey to freedom in Canada. As Harris bought up more parcels of land to sell to a wave of new residents, they built the New Congress Sugar Refinery (a major local employer) along the Hudson River, founded the Washington Heights Congregationalist Church, and operated the Jenny Lind steamboat, which provided passenger ferry service from Lower Manhattan to West 158th St. Greeted by rambling fields and orchards, they altered the landscape. Newhouse and his descendants would occupy the home for some 50 years. Though Harris never lived in the home, residing with his family in the Kingsland mansion nearby, he maintained the property, eventually selling it in 1854 to his friend and business partner John Newhouse, a judge who shared Harris’ anti-slavery sentiment. Harris purchased the land (situated just north of what is now the Audubon Park Historic District) from Ambrose Kingsland shortly before Kingsland became mayor of New York. Together, he and Newhouse enriched the life of the nearby Audubon Park and Carmansville neighborhoods, exerting an impact on the economic, social and spiritual life of the area that was both significant and historic. Harris was a leading activist in the fight for racial justice and an ally of suffragists, befriending such luminaries as Elizabeth Blackwell and Lucy Stone. ![]() Sites related to abolitionists and the Underground Railroad are rare in New York, and this Greek Revival–Italianate house is arguably the only one known to survive north of 96th Street in Manhattan. Both men were ardent abolitionists, civic-minded entrepreneurs, and pivotal figures in the growth of Washington Heights. It is also known for its extensive selection of multiethnic, small, and relatively inexpensive restaurants, delicatessens, bodegas, bars, and associated nightlife.Nestled on a diagonal plot along a narrow, curving stretch of Riverside Drive lies a two-story wood-frame house built in 1851, once owned by Dennis Harris, a hero of the Underground Railroad, and Judge John Newhouse, his friend and colleague. The area provides transport, medical, and warehouse-infrastructure support to the business district of Manhattan. It is patrolled by the 10th and Midtown North Precincts of the New York City Police Department. Hell's Kitchen is part of Manhattan Community District 4. Today, the area has a large LGBTQ population and is home to a large number of LGBTQ bars and businesses. Home of the Actors Studio training school, and adjacent to Broadway theatres, Hell's Kitchen has long been a home to fledgling and working actors. Since the early 1980s, the area has been gentrifying, and rents have risen rapidly. Though its gritty reputation had long held real-estate prices below those of most other areas of Manhattan, by 1969, the City Planning Commission's Plan for New York City reported that development pressures related to its Midtown location were driving people of modest means from the area. ![]() ![]() Until the 1970s, Hell's Kitchen was a bastion of poor and working-class Irish Americans. ![]()
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