Underground Railroad stop on 29th Street between 8th & 9th Avenues.

The house is known as the “Hopper-Gibbons House” and is located at 339 West 29th Street. On this page is a shot of the house and neighboring houses from 1932.

Built in the 1840s and owned by Quaker abolitionists Abigail Hopper Gibbons and James Sloan Gibbons, slaves on the way to Canada stayed in the basement of the house in the 1850s and 1860s.

A mob set fire to the house during the Draft Riots of 1863, which were the result of anger from working-class New Yorkers over perceived inequities in the draft to the Civil War. Two of the Gibbons daughters narrowly escaped through the roof and fled to safety across the rooftops of neighboring houses.

In 2017, the current owner lost a battle with city preservationists over the construction of a rooftop addition to the house (https://www.amny.com/news/preservationists-win-hopper-gibbons-house-owner-ordered-to-subtract-addition/).