DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN, Brooklyn (WABC) A home in Brooklyn linked to the Underground Railroad was granted landmark status Tuesday, the culmination of a decades-long battle we profiled last year during Black History Month.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission s decided to preserve 227 Duffield Street, the last remaining original structure on a block co-named Abolitionist Place due to several anti-slavery activists who lived there during the mid-1800s, as a historical landmark.
Since her time on the New York City Council, Attorney General Letitia James has worked to preserve this historic site. In 2007, she passed legislation to rename the block of Duffield Street Abolitionist Place and successfully stopped the city from tearing down the structure for new development.
The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has released a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for development teams to transform a City-owned vacant Flatbush site, formerly Public School 90 (P.S. 90), into affordable housing and community development space.
Roughly 100 critically needed affordable homes will be part of the development, in addition to a community center with youth programming at the vacant 2286 Church Avenue site.
The 29,000 square foot development site formerly contained a historic 19th-century school building, which later became P.S. 90 and the private school Beth Rivka. The school was demolished in 2015 due to hazardous structural conditions.
“This Administration is deeply committed to putting the City’s dwindling supply of vacant land to use as affordable housing coupled with community resources,” said HPD Commissioner Louise Carroll.