$3.9M To Preserve One Of U.S.’s Oldest Black Communities
October 6, 2024
Weeksville was founded in 1838 and is one of the oldest and first Black communities in America.
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the NYC Department of Design and Construction are collaborating on a $3.9 million restoration project for the Hunterfly Road Houses at the Weeksville Heritage Center. Weeksville, located in the Crown Heights district of Brooklyn, was founded in 1838 and is one of the oldest and first Black communities in America.
As Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo told PIX 11, “Weeksville Heritage Center tells such an important story in our city’s history and preserves the legacy of Black talent and community that have been so integral to the fabric of New York across generations.”
Raymond Codrington, the president and CEO of the Weeksville Heritage Center, told the outlet that it’s important work to honor the original founders of Weeksville.
“These houses embody the distinct history of freedom and self-determination that the founders of Weeksville used to build this community. Today we honor the people and effort it took to build and then preserve these houses while we also look forward to the future of Weeksville Heritage Center and our community,” Codrington said.
Weeksville draws its name from James Weeks, a former enslaved person from Virginia who purchased the tract of land in 1838.
Predating Weeks’ purchase, however, was the abolition of slavery in New York state in 1827, which allowed the area to become a beacon for Black Americans from all around the East Coast.
In 1970, New York City designated the houses as landmarks and in 1971, they were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Families continued to live on the grounds of Weeksville up until the 1960s, when the preservation process of the houses in the neighborhood began. The current renovations are expected to run through spring 2026, following which, tours of the homes will continue.
According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the houses anchor Brooklyn’s present to its storied past.
Zulmilena Then, who oversees the maintenance and restoration of houses in her role as the Preservation manager at the Weeksville Heritage Center, told the trust that the houses are important to Black Brooklyn.
“Growing up in Brooklyn, I didn’t know about Weeksville until I was an adult,” Then said. “These buildings are an anchor to our people and connection to … our past. [They] add to the pride that one feels about the neighborhood itself.”
According to Prithi Kanakamedala, a historian and professor at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, “Weeksville is not an exception,” Kanakamedala said. “It’s a symbol of what was possible for free Black communities in the 19th-century United States, specifically in the city of Brooklyn. Black men in early 19th-century Brooklyn were seizing freedom for themselves and not waiting to see which way things were going to go in terms of legislation, in terms of legal rights.”
Kanakamedala continued, “It is an intentional free Black community that is self-determined. It intentionally has its own schools, newspapers, churches, businesses.”
The late Joan Maynard, a Brooklyn resident and the first Black trustee of the National Trust, led the campaign to preserve the houses of Weeksville, eventually becoming the first executive director of the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History, now the Weeksville Heritage Center.
Maynard’s work laid the groundwork for the present work on the houses, which she encapsulated in a 2001 interview for The New York Times, telling the outlet, “The Weeksville houses were a source of hope to the people who once lived here and they can be hope for the people who live in this community now.”
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