Time out boston7/21/2023 ![]() "It's a feeling I've really tried to keep alive by keeping pictures, images of people close, but sometimes, you enter a space, and the presence of those people becomes just palpable. "You know, there have been times along this journey when the history, the presence of the people in the story, feels so real," Woo said. The visit had finally and fully brought the Crafts to life. "It's overwhelming to be in the space, really. And they were here, and they were fortified here, and they were sheltered by these incredible heroes," she said. There are all these people waiting to capture the Crafts. Seeing inside the time capsule, into the home where the Crafts lived during their time in Boston, left Woo flooded with emotions. "A second door led out from the basement while a secret tunnel, a dark crawl through space accessible only from the sub-basement, allowed other visitors to enter and exit the house unseen," the passage reads. This show is Boston’s first opportunity to check out a selection of work from sculptor and video artist Simon Leigh’s presentation at the 2022 Venice Biennale. "We know it went as far as West Cedar Street, the next street down."Īnd it was just as Woo described in her book. "It's about four feet wide and eight feet - we have eight feet of it or so," Mary Grier said. ![]() Mary and John Gier have owned the home since the 1970s and were eager to show Woo all of its well-preserved corners, including a hidden tunnel. "I'll start with the house being about 1835, and everything's original," says Mary Gier. Time Out Market Boston spreads out across more than 29,000 square feet of prime Fenway real estate. Then, on an early spring day, in the middle of our interview, the door opened at the Hayden House, and the current owners - the Giers - invited us in. It's privately owned, but I hear that there are underground tunnels there." They had set up a prominent safe house along the Underground Railroad on what's now Phillips Street. ![]() Lewis and Harriet Hayden were themselves newly freed from slavery in Kentucky. The Hayden House on Beacon Hill is where Ellen and William lived for two years and were married. In her decade's worth of research, Woo combed through thousands of documents, visiting numerous historic sites, but a central part of the Crafts' time in Boston eluded her. Ellen disguised herself as a sickly, wealthy white gentleman, and William as her servant. It details the story of the escape of Ellen and William Craft from slavery in Georgia to find freedom in Boston. Ellen and William Craft escaped the South and found freedom in Boston 175 years later, local author Ilyon Woo is telling their story.
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