The first African American bookstore and printshop which became a temporary haven for Frederick Douglas and a stop on the Underground Railroad by anti-slavery activist. By the early 1830s, Ruggles became involved in the growing anti-slavery movement in New York. White radicals, disenchanted by reform measures, now joined blacks demanding the immediate end of slavery. His grocery shop at 1 Cortlandt Street was the nation’s first black bookstore until a mob destroyed it.