NEW YORK (AP) -- Residents of New York's Chelsea district are urging the city to rescue a 19th century building from development that would obliterate its historic role as a station on the ``Underground Railroad.''
Local elected officials, neighborhood activists, students and others rallied on Friday to urge the Landmarks Commission to preserve the so-called Hopper Gibbons house. It is named for an abolitionist Quaker family that lived there and saved many runaway slaves.
The pre-Civil War conduit was used by slaves fleeing southern masters to gain safe passage to sanctuary in northern states and Canada.
Opponents contend that alterations being made on the four-story rowhouse are not only ``illegal'' but threaten to destroy its historic features.
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