Weeksville Heritage Center

Scope: Interpretive Landscape Design
Status: Completed 2014
Owner: Weeksville Heritage Center
Client Agency: NYC Department of Design & Construction/NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
Contact: Jeremy Lockard, Cultural Unit NYC Department of Design & Construction; 718.391.2831

The Weeksville Heritage Center is the only institution in New York State teaching post-enslavement African American history. The Center’s dominant feature is a landscape that depicts the open agricultural fields and small landholdings of 19th c. Kings County, and the path of the original Hunterfly Road. The centerpieces of the Center’s collection, the Hunterfly Road Houses, were restored in 2006; EKLA’s simple design for the surround- ing site transports the visitor to another time, and creates a spatial framework for interpreting Weeksville’s history.

Stormwater management played a key role in the landscape design. A series of berms and swales planted with native woodland trees, shrubs, ferns and other ground covers separate the contemporary and historic precincts, and offset the landscape’s main visual characteristic: a large pasture of native grasses and clovers. The swales, pasture and a low boardwalk are configured to illustrate the 19th c. farm grid that was subsumed in Brooklyn’s urbanization.

Project Honors

• Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design 2014 American Architecture Award

• New York State AIA 2014 Award of Excellence

• New York State AIA 2014 Best in New York State Award

• Historic Districts Council 2014 Award for Design

• Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce 2014 Building Brooklyn Award for Civic Design

• MASterworks 2014 Award for Excellence in Design, Best New Building

• Architect Magazine 2013 Annual Design Review Citation

• National Organization of Minority Architects 2013 Honor Award

• Art Commission of the City of New York 2005 Award for Excellence in Design