2023 Year in Review: Lefferts Historic House (Brooklyn, NY)
wrkSHap kiloWatt’s 2023 Year in Review continues with:
Lefferts Historic House in Brooklyn, NY (Prospect Park) (also on Instagram) and LinkedIn)
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In 2023, wrkShap kiloWatt prepared a “Phase I: Feasibility Study” for The Lefferts Historic House (452 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn) in the Olmsted and Vaux-designed Prospect Park of Brooklyn, NY. The Feasibility Study outlined the following for Phase II: Preservation and Interpretation Planning of its North Kitchen Wing:
(1) Consultant Team Development that included Request for Proposals Development
(2) Scope of Work Development
(3) Total Project Budget Estimate
(4) Total Project Schedule
(5) Case Studies of Three Similar Heritage Sites of Similar Scope of Work and Scale
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From research completed by its ReImagine Lefferts Team, led by Dylan Yeats, PhD, Project Coordinator, and Maria Carrasco, Vice President of Programs at the Prospect Park Alliance, they have documentation that confirms that the Lefferts, a prominent Dutch family of Flatbush enslaved people.
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The Lefferts family enslaved at least 25 Africans and people of African origin, and maybe people Indigenous to the land they exploited for their prosperity, in the house and at its former 240-acre location on south Flatbush Ave., between ca. 1783 and 1827.
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In 1918, Brooklynites moved the house from its Flatbush and Maple location to its current location in Prospect Park.
“It’s been a pleasure collaborating with Lefferts Historic House staff, consultants, and other community members in its preservation and next life in the ReImagine Lefferts Initiative. The staff has welcomed members of the surrounding Black and Caribbean communities of Flatbush and beyond, making every visit at the house feel like a homecoming for members of the Black diaspora and non-Black supporters.”
- k. kennedy Whiters, AIA, Founder of wrkSHap kiloWatt
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wrkSHap kiloWatt is a Black woman-owned and operated historic preservation studio in NYC, the unceded ancestral land of the Lenape. It is home to racial equity programs: @blackinhistpres, @unredacthefacts, and @beyond.integrity.
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Its principal + founder, k. kennedy Whiters, AIA (@iamkennedyw) hails from the “Land of Lincoln”, the “city of DuSable,” + the unceded ancestral land of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. In 2017, she went on a self-designed + guided scavenger hunt for shipping houses (Dutch: “schippers huis”) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and early Europeans enslaved her African ancestors, making this project all the more special.