Petition Started To Save Historic Brooklyn Abolitionist House

DOWNTOWN, BROOKLYN — Activists are racing against the clock to save a historic Downtown Brooklyn house that was once a the home of two prominent abolitionists.

More than 1,000 people have signed onto a petition started last week to save 227 Duffield Street, which was granted a demolition permit last month. The petition calls on the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the home as a landmark to save it from being torn down.

227 Duffield street was once the home of abolitionists Thomas and Harriet Truesdell, who were friends with and hosted the more well-known William Lloyd Garrison, the Brooklyn Eagle reports.

"The property embodies the role Brooklyn and New York City played in the Abolitionist movement at a time when the Fugitive Slave Act was the law of the land," the petition says. "We cannot allow such an invaluable piece of our history to be erased."

The petition touts the home as the "last known standing historic site in Brooklyn where well-known abolitionists lived and where people found freedom through the Underground Railroad." The Eagle reports that the late owner of the home, Joy Chatel, believed the house was used on the Underground Railroad when she found a tunnel inside a neighboring home and a sealed archway in her sub-basement.

A firm hired by the city didn’t find “conclusive proof” of Underground Railroad usage of the homes on Duffield back in 2007, but didn’t do any excavation to examine the tunnel, the New York Times reported at the time.

This is far from the first time the house has been threatened with demolition, or that activists or its owners have worked to have it preserved.

Back in 2007, the city settled a lawsuit Chatel had filed to protect her home from being taken by eminent domain as part of a redevelopment plan for Downtown Brooklyn. The plan would have taken over the property to make room for Willoughby Park, which just opened a pop-up version of the green space this week, according to Brownstoner.

Brownstoner reports that the current owner of the house is Samuel Hanasab, who has been buying the property in stages over the years. Chatel had signed the deed to her mother, who sold a 50 percent interest in the building to an investor to avoid foreclosure. That investor then sold part of the house in 2015 and Chatel's mother sold her piece in 2017.

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