134-136 Bowery

The twin Federal-era houses at 144/136 Bowery are linked to the Underground Railroad and Abolitionist Movement preceding the Civil War. Among the oldest structures in Manhattan, they were built by the Delaplaine family, with 134 built in the 1790s and 136 built to match it in 1828. They retain their steeply pitched roofs and twin gable dormers. A devout Quaker, Samuel Delaplaine's 1793 manifesto proclaimed:"...may servitude abolish'd be, As well as Negro-Slavery, To make one LAND of LIBERTY!"
Reverend Spencer H. Cone, as abolitionist who lived here in the 1820s, was quoted in The Liberator, an influential anti-slavery newspaper: "I would proclaim liberty throughout the land to all there inhabitants thereof."
Booksellers and circulating libraries published and distributed anti-slavery literature in these buildings, which also served as boarding houses and possible fugitive-slave safe houses in the 1830s to the 1860s.
In 1872, 134 Bowery became the first of four YMCAs on the Bowery. Partnering with the New York Mission Society, a reading room and the Carmel Chapel were opened, and beds, lodgings and baths were provided to "all persons, without respect to country, creed, color, sex or age."
Famed sculptor Eva Hesse occupied the attic of 134-136 from 1965 until her death in 1970.
-Sally



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