Weeksville is a historic
neighborhood
A neighbourhood (British English, Irish English, Australian English and Canadian English) or neighborhood (American English; see spelling differences) is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town, suburb or rural area, ...
founded by free
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
s in what is now
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
,
New York
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* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Today it is part of the present-day neighborhood of
Crown Heights.
History
Weeksville was named after James Weeks, an African-American
stevedore
A stevedore (), also called a longshoreman, a docker or a dockworker, is a waterfront manual laborer who is involved in loading and unloading ships, trucks, trains or airplanes.
After the shipping container revolution of the 1960s, the number o ...
from
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
. In 1838 (11 years after the final abolition of slavery in New York State)
Weeks bought a plot of land from Henry C. Thompson, a free African American and land investor, in the Ninth Ward of central Brooklyn. Thompson had acquired the land from Edward Copeland, a politically minded European American and Brooklyn grocer, in 1835.
Previously Copeland bought the land from an heir of
John Lefferts
John Lefferts (December 17, 1785 – September 18, 1829) was a member of the Thirteenth United States Congress as a Democratic-Republican Representative from New York. He was also a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention o ...
, a member of one of the most prominent and land-holding families in Brooklyn.
There was ample opportunity for land acquisition during this time, as many prominent land-holding families sold off their properties during an intense era of land speculation.
Many African Americans saw land acquisition as their opportunity to gain economic and political freedom by building their own communities.
The village itself was established by a group of African-American land investors and political activists, and covered an area in the borough's eastern Bedford Hills area, bounded by present-day
Fulton Street, East New York Avenue, Ralph Avenue and Troy Avenue.
A 1906 article in the ''New York Age'' recalling the earlier period noted that James Weeks "owned a handsome dwelling at Schenectady and Atlantic Avenues."
By the 1850s, Weeksville had more than 500 residents from all over the
East Coast
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Entertainment
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* East Coast (ASAP Ferg song), "East Coast" (ASAP Ferg song), 2017
* East Coast (Saves the Day song), "East Coast" (Saves the Day song), 2004
* East Coast FM, a ra ...
(as well as two people born in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
). Almost 40 percent of residents were southern-born. Nearly one-third of the men over 21 owned land; in antebellum New York, unlike in New England, non-white men had to own real property (to the value of $250) and pay taxes on it to qualify as voters. The village had its own churches (including
Bethel Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church and the
Berean Missionary Baptist Church), a school ("Colored School no. 2", now P.S. 243), a cemetery, and an old age home.
Weeksville had one of the first African-American newspapers, the ''Freedman's Torchlight'', and in the 1860s became the national headquarters of the
African Civilization Society
The African Civilization Society was an emigration organization founded in 1858 by several prominent members of the historic African-American Weeksville community located in central Brooklyn, New York.
Following the Civil War and emancipation o ...
and the
Howard Colored Orphan Asylum
The Howard Colored Orphan Asylum was one of the few orphanages to be led by and for African Americans. It was located on Troy Avenue and Dean Street in Weeksville, a historically black settlement in what is now Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New Yor ...
. In addition, the Colored School was the first such school in the U.S. to integrate both its staff and its students.
During the violent
New York Draft Riots
The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of white working-cl ...
of 1863, the community served as a refuge for many African-Americans who fled from
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
.
After the completion of the
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/ suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East River ...
and as
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
grew and expanded, Weeksville gradually became part of
Crown Heights, and memory of the village was largely forgotten.
Rediscovery of Weeksville and the Hunterfly Road Houses
The search for Historic Weeksville began in 1968 in a
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...
workshop on Brooklyn and New York City neighborhoods led by historian James Hurley. After reading of Weeksville in ''The Eastern District of Brooklyn'', a 1912 book by Brooklyn historian
Eugene Armbruster
Eugene L. Armbruster (1865–1943) was a New York City photographer, illustrator, writer, and historian born in Baden-Baden, Germany and based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where he died. His work includes many buildings, roads, and neighborhoods in ar ...
, Hurley and Joseph Haynes, a local resident and pilot, consulted old maps and flew over the area in an airplane in search of surviving evidence of the village.
Four historic houses (now known as the ''Hunterfly Road Houses'') were discovered off Bergen Street between Buffalo and Rochester Avenues, facing an old lane—a remnant of Hunterfly Road, which was at the eastern edge of the 19th century village.
Weeksville today
Weeksville is currently a working-class neighborhood with African-American and Hispanic residents as well as Caribbean immigrants from
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
,
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...
,
St. Vincent & the Grenadines,
Grenada
Grenada ( ; Grenadian Creole French: ) is an island country in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. Grenada consists of the island of Grenada itself, two smaller islands, Carriacou and Pe ...
, among others.
Weeksville Heritage Center
The 1968 discovery of the Hunterfly Road Houses led to the formation of The Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History (now the
Weeksville Heritage Center
The Weeksville Heritage Center is a historic site on Buffalo Avenue between St. Marks Avenue and Bergen Street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City. It is dedicated to the preservation of Weeksville, one of America's first free black commu ...
).
Joan Maynard was a founding member and executive director for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History. The preservation of the Hunterfly Road Houses became her life's work.
[
]
In 1970 the houses were declared
New York City Landmark
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) is the New York City agency charged with administering the city's Landmarks Preservation Law. The LPC is responsible for protecting New York City's architecturally, historically, and cu ...
s, and in 1972 were placed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
as the Hunterfly Road Historic District.
[ ''See also:'' ] The houses were purchased by the Society in 1973,
and in 2005, following a $3 million restoration, the houses reopened to the public as the Weeksville Heritage Center, with each house showcasing a different era of Weeksville history.
Construction of an education and cultural center adjacent to the houses was completed in 2014.
References
External links
Weeksville Heritage CenterVideo profile of Weeksville, Brooklyn
{{Brooklyn
African-American history in New York City
Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Culture of New York City
Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Populated places in New York established by African Americans