<p>David Ruggles was the leading, and possibly the most hated, abolitionist in New York City. His courage, activism, and writings made the city a safer place for fugitives and free blacks. Ruggles sheltered runaway Frederick Douglass here at 36 Lispenard Street.&nbsp;</p><p>Ruggles also ran a boarding house at 67 Lispenard that was NYC's 1st Black Reading Room and an antislavery bookstore. It was also a meeting place for abolitionists, until it was destroyed by a mob. He wrote hundreds of articles and bought a printing press and published his own pamphlets and a magazine called Mirror of Liberty. It was the first periodical published by a black American.</p>

 On September 3, 1838, human-rights activist Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland by disguising himself as a sailor and traveling North by carriage, train and boat. A few days later he arrived at 36 Lispenard Street, then a small brick building and a "Station" on the Underground Railroad. A network of secret "Conductors" and safe houses for fugitive slaves. Here, African-American abolitionist David Ruggles kept a reading room and operated a printing press where he published anti-slavery material, including "Mirror of Liberty," an abolitionist newspaper. The site also served as headquarters of the New York Vigilance Committee, on of the Nation's most active anti-slavery campaigns, which aided more than 1,000 freedom-seeking man, women and children.  

David Ruggles Home and Boarding House