Coexistence sought for Underground Railroad site and townhouses
Updated: MAY 9, 2016 — 1:08 AM EDT
by Kristin E. Holmes, Staff Writer
When the enemies of slavery were turned away from community meeting places, farmer and lime merchant George Corson gave them a sanctuary where they could rail loud and long against what was known as "the peculiar institution."
Cobbled together in 1856 from a carriage shed and a stone barn at Germantown and Butler Pikes, Abolition Hall became a locus for the antislavery movement in a neighborhood that already was an Underground Railroad station as significant as any in the United States.
Many of its buildings, humble monuments to a turning point in the nation's history, still stand in what are today Whitemarsh and Plymouth Townships in Montgomery County, and a group of residents has mobilized to protect them.
Abolition Hall, Corson's home next door, and a Civil War-era general store occupy a 101/2-acre tract that they soon could be sharing with a development of 48 townhouses.
The parcel, which includes about eight acres of open space, is the subject of a sales agreement negotiated between three descendants of George and Martha Corson and K. Hovnanian Homes of Red Bank, N.J.
The sketch plans for the proposed development preserve the buildings, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are part of a federally designated historic district. However, residents worry about the loss of open space - farmed until recently - and the possibility that the structures would be squeezed onto such a small piece of land that they could not be repurposed.
"This is a place where people risked their lives," said one of the protesting residents, Dave Miller of Conshohocken. He attends the historic Plymouth Monthly Meeting of Friends across the street from the site. "You can stand on the spot and tell the story."
Read more at
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20...r5mZHKmBqCF.99
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