Activists rallied against the city’s plan to put a dog run as part of a larger park atop a site believed to have been part of the Underground Railroad in Downtown Brooklyn.
The city has started building the long-delayed 1.15-acre greenspace known as Abolitionist Place on a lot at Willoughby and Duffield streets with a dog run planned next to 227 Duffield Street, a city-owned, landmarked row house that once belonged to 19th-century slavery abolitionists Thomas and Harriet Lee Truesdell.
The small group of demonstrators gathered on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and included family of former occupants of the now-decayed building and advocates for Brooklyn’s abolitionist history, and they passed out flyers about the project led by the city’s quasi-public Economic Development Corporation.