21. Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church: 85 S. Oxford St., Fort Greene

Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, possible stop on the Underground Railroad in New York City

Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, located in Fort Greene, may have served as a stop on the New York Underground Railroad. The congregation was established in 1857 as Park Presbyterian Church, during which time it served as a “temple of abolition.” The church’s first pastor, Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, pressured Abraham Lincoln to put an end to slavery. Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman may have spoken there.

Little is known about the church’s involvement with the Underground Railroad, though the church was well ahead of its time by welcoming women as preachers during the 1860s. Temperance advocate Susannah Evans, Quaker evangelist Sarah Smiley, and freed slave Amanda Berry Smith all took to the pulpit. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, an African American a cappella ensemble from Fisk University, performed a concert in 1871.