Other Historical Sites

• Bigham House on Mt. Washington

  Chatham Village, Olympia Rd, Mt. Washington PA 15211

  Built in 1849, a stop on the Underground Railroad, located within Chatham Village. Bigham was the editor of The Commercial Journal Anti-Slavery Newspaper. Tradition states that Bigham’s black family nurse, Lucinda, faithfully watched from the tower of the Bigham home for fugitive slaves or professional slave hunters. Not a visitor attraction, but available for group tours upon request.

• Charles Brewer's home

  Abolitionist Charles Brewer’s home was a reported stop on the Underground Railroad.

• City Baths

  Barbershop and safehouse located on Third Street between Market and Ferry Streets in downtown Pittsburgh. Slaves received a new appearance and a start on their escape to Canada. Historians have compared lists of prominent hotel guests with ads placed by people looking for escaped slaves to confirm the hotel’s place in abolitionist history. By day, a business, social and political club for the city’s white leaders, by night, a station on the Underground Railroad.

• Freedom Road Cemetery

  Mercer County Historical Society
  119 South Pitt Street
  Mercer, PA 16137
  724.662.3490

  This cemetery is located on the right across from the main gate at Stoneboro Fairgrounds. The cemetery is all that remains of Liberia, a fugitive slave town established by the Travis family, free African-Americans. For years, this community offered sanctuary to weary travelers. It was also the site of frequent raids by slave catchers. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1849/50, most of the population fled to Canada to become legal free citizens. A few stayed in this area, one an entrepreneur who sold cigars and whiskey to his neighbors. Another person who stayed was "Auntie Strange". She was a runaway who was persistent enough to flee from the South twice. The first time she was captured, beaten and the fingers on her left hand were chopped off. The second time, she gained her freedom.

• Gibson House (Mark Twain Manor)

  Jamestown Future Foundation
  210 Liberty Street
  Jamestown, PA 16134
  724.932.5455

  Dr. William Gibson, a prominent Jamestown physician, traveled with Samuel Clemens to Russia. Clemens wrote a book on their travels called Innocents Abroad. The house has been rumored to be a stop on the Underground Railroad. In the basement, there is evidence of a small room used in the Underground Railroad. Other rooms in the house, espeically in the room between the second and third floors, also have rumored Underground Railroad heritage. There is now a restaurant in this building. The Gibson House is on the National Register of Historic Places.

• Historical marker commemorating Martin R. Delany (1812-1885)

  5 PPG Place, 3rd Ave. + Market St.

  Memorial dedicated May 11, 1991. A promoter of African-American nationalism, Delaney published a Black newspaper, The Mystery, at an office near here. He attended Harvard Medical School, practiced medicine in Pittsburgh, and was commissioned as a major in the Civil War.

• John C. Peck Oyster House

  Fourth Street between Wood and Market, downtown Pittsburgh

  An Underground Railroad station stop.

• Merchant Hotel

  An Underground Railroad station stop.

• Plaque Honoring Jane Gray Swisshelm

  600 Grant Street, downtown Pittsburgh

  Located at the Heinz headquarters on Sixth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh. Jane Grey Swisshelm witnessed slavery firsthand and became dedicated to the abolition movement for the Underground Railroad. Her abolitionist weekly, the Pittsburgh Saturday Visitor, first appeared in 1848.

• Point View Hotel

  3720 Brownsville Road, Pittsburgh PA 15227

  Family-owned historic bar and restaurant that once served as a stop along the Underground RR. Runaway slaves stayed in basement. Restaurant, not visitor attraction; tours not offered.

• Private homes in Arthurville and Hayti

  Lower Hill District, Pittsburgh

  Fugitives were secreted in private homes in the predominantly black section of Arthurville and Hayti and were aided by agents and conductors including the Rev. Lewis Woodson, Samuel Bruce, George Gardner and Bishop Benjamin Tanner, the father of the noted black artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, who is portrayed on a U.S. postage stamp.

• St. Matthew's A.M.E. Church in Sewickley

  345 Thorn Street, Sewickley

  Built in 1857 in Sewickley, served as operators on the Underground Railroad. One frequently-used method for delivering food to fugitive slaves in the Pittsburgh area was for conductors to dress as hunters at night with a game bag filled with provisions.

• Wylie A.M.E. Church

  2200 Wylie Avenue, Hill District

  July 11, 1850, a group of African-American citizens met at the church and passed resolutions condemning the recently proposed fugitive slave bill. Members of this gathering called for total consolidation of their associations to ensure protection from slave catchers coming into Pittsburgh seeking fugitives.

Demolished Sites

• Allegheny Institute and Mission Church

  demolished

  Later known as Avery College, then as Avery Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church at Nash and Avery Streets. Charles A. Avery came to Pittsburgh in 1812. His interest in the cotton industry took him on buying trips to the South, and he was drawn to the plight of the Negro slaves. Joining the abolitionist forces, he aided the escape of slaves from the South to Canada in the underground railroad.

  The Allegheny Institute and Mission Church, later known as Avery College, built with funds from Mr. Avery's fortune, was a three-story structure heavily influenced by the Greek Revival architecture being used in many eastern cities at that time. The basement, accessible by hidden trap doors, was most probably a "station" (hiding place) in the secret Underground Railroad. A tunnel from the church’s basement led to a former canal nearby, permitting fugitive slaves to be dropped by boat from the Allegheny River. A rowboat was used to secretly move them up the canal at night to the tunnel entrance. The first and second floors were used for education, and the third floor for religious purposes. The congregation that met on the third floor called their church the Allegheny Mission Church.

  When Avery died, his fortune was estimated at $800,000. Among the bequests was $20,000 for Oberlin College, the first college in the United States to admit Blacks. Workmen demolished the red brick building of Avery College in Old Allegheny's Dutchtown to make way for the much disputed highway through the East Street Valley. Outside of a few sentimental old-timers, nobody noticed the demolition of the old structure. But to the old-timers, the passing of the building meant the end of a prominent Alleghenian's dream.

• Crawford Grill

  demolished

  A center of Black social life where musicians such as Art Blakey, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane drew a racially mixed, international clientele. Owned by William "Gus" Greenlee, a powerful figure politics and sports in Pittsburgh's African-American community, who owned the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the city's Negro League baseball team.

• Monongahela House

  demolished

  Demolished hotel, once located at the corner of Water and Smithfield Streets. One of the city’s finest hotels and a center of anti-slavery activity. Its staff included 300 free blacks that had daily contact with a flow of wealthy Southern businessmen who came north and east.