Hearing on Underground Railroad Homes Delayed

A City Council committee hearing on historic downtown Brooklyn buildings that are said to have been part of the Underground Railroad, has been postponed from Tuesday (3/20) until April 11. A recent report by consultants AKRF (hired by the city) found no conclusive evidence that buildings on Duffield and Gold Streets were Underground Railroad sites. The city wants to take two of the properties by eminent domain for use as a parking lot for a hotel. The owners said in a statement posted by No Land Grab that the consultants are ignoring local history:

AKRF released its most recent scurrilous report, and nobody seems to care. They want to deny that Downtown Brooklyn was not home to important Abolitionists. They say that there are no reports in any published accounts of the period that there were escaped slaves in Downtown Brooklyn. They said that they studied the entire public record. I guess they didn't read Leaves of Grass, where Walt Whitman talks about a slave coming to his house- and he lived two blocks from Duffield Street.

Joy Chatel, the owner of 227 Duffield Street, and Lewis Greenstein of 223 Duffield have been fighting the development plans. They held a rally last summer.