Wyckoff House: New York City's Oldest Structure
Sean Sawyer, Executive Director of the Wyckoff House & Association, led an engrossing mobile workshop through the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House, a historic house museum in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and New York City's oldest structure. Sean began with an overview of the site, its history and its management structure. Originally built in 1652 on fertile farmland, the farmhouse currently sits on just over an acre of parkland. The Wyckoff House & Association, a non-profit organization of mostly Wyckoff family descendants, coordinates the daily operation of the site (staffing, programming and fundraising). The City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation owns the house and the land. The Historic House Trust of New York City, a non-profit arm of the Parks Department, oversees the site's preservation and promotion.

Connecting with the Modern Community
During the tour, Sean Sawyer noted that the Wyckoff House has made efforts to connect with the modern community by going beyond the site's history. They are using the site as a forum for discussion of the following very contemporaneous themes:

• Ecology/Recycling
• Changing Landscape of Brooklyn
• Social Mobility
  
• Assimilation and Retention of Cultural Identity
  
• Farming/Community Gardens

When Sean Sawyer arrived at the site in January of 2001, the Wyckoff House and surrounding park had been closed to the public for three years. The Wyckoff House & Association, the Historic House Trust and the Parks Department charged Sawyer with the mission of turning the Wyckoff House into a community asset. Because it had been closed for so long, Sawyer was starting from scratch. He reached out to local politicians and asked them to identify civic-minded people in their districts. At the same time, an article in a New York City paper was written about Sean, as the new director for the Wyckoff House, which spurred other interested community members to contact him. After getting a sense of the community, Sawyer created an Advisory Board to help integrate interested community members into the museum's operations.

The Advisory Board Grows in Importance
The Advisory Board, created in 2002, formalized the involvement of the site's principal constituents. The Board includes both local community members and other interested parties (Historic House Trust, Parks Department, other Brooklyn historic site directors, Brooklyn Borough Historian) While the Advisory Board's approximately 25 members are not a decision making group, it does provide the Wyckoff House & Association's national Board of Directors critical input on local community desires and politics. One former member of the Advisory board who is part of the local community is now a member of the national decision-making Board. The Advisory Board has been particularly important in developing regular and special event programming at the site.

Keys to Wyckoff House Success
Through the course of the morning, Sean identified some key ingredients to the recent success of the Wyckoff House:

• Overcoming the East Flatbush, Brooklyn location as a tough sell to typical New York City tourists through the enthusiasm that the local community has shown visitors
• Knowing the community and its needs
• Having realistic expectations of volunteers who may commit to more than they are able to do
• Always following up with phone calls

Q & A
The question and answer session furthered the group's understanding of how the Wyckoff House was able to revive as a viable historic destination.

One member of the group asked Sean Sawyer how he, as Executive Director, was able to integrate the functions of the national Board of Directors with the community based advisory group? He explained that he was fortunate,
the Board recognized that they were out of touch with the neighborhood and did not have a strong tie-in to it. They had, therefore, decided from the outset of his service as Executive Director that community involvement was the best way to ensure the viability of the site for the future.

Another participant asked how the relationship with the community affects programming and interpretation at the site? The site has strong ties to Dutch, Irish and African history. Programming decisions are made with input from all three groups.

There was a lively discussion of how the Wyckoff house might interpret slavery at the site. Sean told the group that the site is doing the research needed to have a thoughtful dialogue on the subject. He said that the site does not want to jump into the issue without more background. It will be a challenge to do. Workshop attendees listened as two members of the advisory group in an impromptu discussion voiced different philosophies on slavery and how it should be interpreted at the site.

To learn more about the Wyckoff House and its programs, visit:

http://www.wyckoffassociation.org/

Last Updated: October 21, 2004