At nearly a step for every day of the year, this was part of the original path for students to get from Main Street to the Jacob Tome Institute on the bluff.
The stairs originally went straight up to the top of the hill, and had an option for veering off to the right and taking a narrow, meandering path of a more gradual incline to the summit.
It is rumored that during Winter months, Tome schoolboys would remove drain caps from the street, and use them as makeshift sleds to descended the icy and snow covered stairs to the street! That is speculated to be one of the reasons the "Steps to Liberty" (as they have since been named) were constructed, and in the shape they are (so as to avoid future shenanigans of that ilk).
Only the base of the stairs remain to this day, and the railings and bridges that made travel possible along the meandering path are long gone. What remains of the stairs, and the entire hillside that held the path, are all private property by one of the homeowners here.
