Brooklyn · Kings County
Weeksville Heritage Center Gardens
NYC Parks
- Location
- 1698 Bergen Street, Crown Heights
- Size
- 1.5 acres
- Hours
- Center hours: Tue-Sat 10 AM - 5 PM
- Type
- NYC Parks
Weeksville Heritage Center Gardens surround the historic Hunterfly Road Houses, four preserved wooden houses from the 1840s that are among the oldest African American structures in New York City, remnants of the free black community of Weeksville.
Weeksville was founded around 1838 by James Weeks, a free African American longshoreman who purchased land in what is now Crown Heights. The community grew to over 500 residents and included its own schools, churches, newspaper, orphanage, and elderly home.
The four surviving Hunterfly Road Houses were rediscovered in 1968 by historian James Hurley and pilot Joseph Haynes, who spotted the structures from the air. Their preservation launched one of the most important African American heritage projects in New York.
The heritage center's gardens include historically appropriate plantings, a community garden, and outdoor gathering spaces that connect visitors to the agricultural practices of the 19th-century free black community.
Weeksville Heritage Center Gardens preserve the landscape of one of the most significant free African American communities in pre-Civil War America, a place where black self-determination flourished in the decades before emancipation.