Exclusive | NYC Council: Mamdani must seize private property to save Manhattan Underground Railroad site

A bipartisan majority of NYC Council members is demanding Mayor Zohran Mamdani seize privately owned property in order to save a piece of Manhattan history tied to the Underground Railroad, The Post has learned.Councilman Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan) fired off a letter Tuesday to Mamdani signed by 31 other members urging the mayor to work with the Council to use the city’s eminent domain powers to block a proposal to build a 100-foot-high commercial building next door to the Merchant’s House Museum in NoHo, where a secret passageway used to smuggle slaves to freedom was discovered in February.Experts say construction of the planned building will cause irreparable damage to the adjacent city-owned, three-and-a-half-story site—which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the earliest known location of Underground Railroad activity in NYC.“The city should, as it has done in the past, take the steps necessary to continue preservation of this historic property, especially given its recent discovery as an African American Heritage Site,” said the pols, which also included Speaker and Manhattan Dem Julie Menin and Queens Republican Joann Ariola.The seized property would become NYC’s first “Underground Railroad Memorial Learning Center,” the pols propose.NYC and the state have used eminent domain —the government’s right to seize private property for what is considers a public benefit —to drive large-scale infrastructure and economic development like highways, Central Park, Hudson Yards and the Atlantic Yards project that included Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.Mamdani is already facing heavy criticism from real estate groups and conservative lawmakers for his Marxist “Fix the City” plan, which proposes seizing derelict buildings from negligent landlords and transferring ownership to favored “community land trusts” or tenants.Ariola defended the Council’s plan to use eminent domain.“This is American history being preserv...