Hunterfly Road Houses
Brooklyn, NY
The Hunterfly Road Houses, restored and revitalized under the sponsorship of the NYCDDC and with a grant from Save America’s Treasures, are four dwellings that represent the long-gone, 19th-century, African-American community of Weeksville in what is now Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section. The tenanted houses, built in a vernacular style, were erected by a German immigrant and were initially home to families headed by a seaman, a hostler, a teacher, a musician, and a cook.
First explored archaeologically by City University archaeological field schools in the late 1970s and early 1980s, archaeology again became a factor in a master plan to renovate the buildings and create a museum and learning center. The revitalization, and the archaeological potential, was part of the vision of Joan B. Maynard, among the first to recognize the contribution that archaeology could make to an urban revitalization program.
The artifacts collected more that 30 years ago, combined with those newly recovered, along with the research carried out to analyze urban archaeological sites, established a post-Civil War date for the structures and provided unique information about the Weeksville community in general.
Award: Joan H. Geismar, Ph.D., LLC, Excellence in Historic Preservation. The Preservation League of New York State 2006