Save Riverside

A wonderful Juneteenth celebration was had at 857 RSD this weekend! A new beginning. Special thanks to all the candidates, to the great Historian, Author and true Harlem Renaissance man, keynote speaker Michael Henry Adams, our wonderful NYS Senator Robert Jackson who has supported and brought public attention to Save Riverside's efforts to gain landmark status for 857 Riverside since the beginning, and to the Washington Heights Community for coming out in solidarity for the need to preserve the Dennis Harris house and expand the Audubon Park Historic District! Saveriverside.org!

See you tomorrow at 857 RSD for JUNETEENTH!

Juneteenth is Tomorrow!
From New-York Daily Tribune,
August 11, 1854.
Dennis Harris in Washington Heights
Among the many anti-slavery speakers who appeared in the Washington Heights Presbyterian Church pulpit were brothers and former slaves James W. C. Pennington and Stephen Pembroke. (Portrait of James Pennington).

Juneteenth Countdown
The comparative isolation of Harris’s Washington Heights properties argues for their utility as a protected, easily guarded waystation for fugitives who needed to be gotten quickly out of lower Manhattan.
Harris’s ownership of a steamboat strongly suggests that this vessel could well have been used, as others were, to ferry fugitive slaves, since river boats were the primary means to move freedom-seekers northward.
Fergus Bordewich,
Author of Road to Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America

COUNTDOWN TO JUNETEENTH
Dennis Harris builds a house!
Here, at what would eventually be 857 Riverside Drive, near West 159th Street, atop a bluff that tumbled down to the Hudson, a charming Greek Revival–Italianate home rose up in the Eden of surrounding dogwoods, pines and ancient oaks.

Reached by a winding carriage lane, it featured a wraparound veranda,
glass-windowed cupola and a
grand river view. 857 RSD is area’s only surviving house from the mid-19th Century…

Check out our profile Linktree! Saveriverside.org

COUNTDOWN TO JUNETEENTH!
Abolitionist, Clergyman and sugar refiner, Dennis Harris moved north and built a new sugar refinery, house and ran a steamship that went from Lower Manhattan to his wharf at 158th Street and then up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie. Harris also built a house at what is now 857 RSD – now, the last surviving Harris property. (Yale Art Gallery, ca. 1853).

Save the house and save the history!

In 1848, Dennis Harris began buying up land in Washington Heights just north of the farm of America’s first great naturalist, the ornithologist John James Audubon. This sparsely populated area overlooking the Hudson River was still largely countryside and far above the crowded and bustling streets of lower Manhattan.

857 RSD. Save the house and save the history. Countdown to Juneteenth!

JUNETEENTH COUNTDOWN - The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the weight of federal power behind the rendition process, provided additional administrative facilities to slaveholders for reclamation, and stiffened penalties for harboring, concealing, aiding and abetting fugitive slaves, or in any way obstructing the law.
Lower Manhattan was densely populated, and it became increasingly dangerous to help and harbor freedom seekers. Dennis Harris cast his gaze northward. In 1851, Upper Manhattan was far outside the “city” and was still mostly countryside.

Save the house & Save the history
Saveriverside.org

“A SLAVE HUNT IN New York AND A RESCUE BY THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD”

Dennis Harris’ efforts to assist freedom-seekers in Lower Manhattan earned him unexpected newspaper attention - even decades after the fact. The above headline, about the attempted rescue of George Kirk, appeared 39 years later in a retrospective article in the New-York Tribune, which ran in 1885.

Four years after the George Kirk incident, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed…
COUNTDOWN TO JUNETEENTH - SAVERIVERSIDE.ORG
SAVE 857 RIVERSIDE DRIVE

Countdown to Juneteenth! The Arrest of George Kirk (1846)

Countdown to Juneteenth! This chapter, Sydney Howard Gay...

Thursday, June 10
Join candidates for City Council and Borough President to support preserving the Abolitionist House at 857 Riverside Drive and enlarging the Audubon Park Historic District.
10:30 am in front of 857 RSD