Huntoon and Van Rensalier Underground Railroad Historic Site

The site is an excellent example of widespread community involvement and activism to preserve, recognize and protect Paterson’s places of cultural significance. The City of Paterson elected leadership, the City of Paterson Parking Authority, the Passaic County Board of County Commissioners, the Passaic County Community College, the City of Paterson Historic Preservation Commission, the Underground Railroad Coalition and the Huntoon–Van Rensalier UGRR Foundation are among the many individuals, institutions and organizations that have pursued public recognition and fostered the preservation of this site since the 1990s. 

 

These all lent their dedicated support to the work of public historian Jimmy Richardson and Dr Flavia Alaya, former chair of the Paterson Historic Preservation Commission and co-author with Dolores Van Rensalier of Bridge Street to Freedom, an early defense of the site published by Ramapo College in 1996. Both Alaya and Richardson had long committed themselves to the research and writing that would lead to the recognition of the site, and, with the dedicated support of Gianfranco Archimede and the Paterson Historic Preservation Commission, the two scholars drafted the final successful application to the National Park Service’s National Network to Freedom in March 2022.