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Wyckoff House To Get A New Look
Remarking on her association with the historic landmark Wyckoff Farm-house Museum, Assemblywoman Hel-ene Weinstein told a group gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday, April 22 that she lived near the site when she was a child. "I used to pass it frequently with my mother and I would laugh when she told me it was the state’s oldest house because it had a clothes line out back and a TV antenna on the roof." Speaking to local dignitaries, includ-ing Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, House Trust of New York Executive Director Therese Brad-dick and others, Weinstein was on hand to join in breaking ground for a $753,000 project that will bring an apple orchard, garden, paths and a stone sitting wall to the 350-year-old farmstead. Sean Sawyer, director of the museum, said the grounds will receive many improvements to convert its existing park into "an interpretive farmstead and allow visitors to experience what life was like in the city centuries ago." Funding for the project was allocated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the City Council and State DOT, as well as monies directed to it by Weinstein. It includes the planting of heirloom variety apples, a kitchen and berry garden, a clamshell pathway and stone sitting wall — all complementing the indigenous museum that has sat at the corner of what is now Clarendon Road and Ralph Avenue for centuries. One of the dignitaries on hand was James Wyckoff, one of some 50,000 descendants of the original dwellers of the family, according to Commissioner Benepe, who said Pieter Claesen Wyc-koff built the house after having worked off his debt from being an indentured servant to the Van Rensselaer family of Albany. Wyckoff and his wife raised 11 children, who, along with their descendants, worked the land until 1901, when it was sold to a developer. Caretakers lived in the house after that time, thus explaining the clothes line, TV antenna and other relatively modern articles on the inside. The house became a historic landmark in 1968 and began receiving res-torations in the early 1980s. Sawyer told the visitors at the ground-breaking ceremony, including a group of second grade students from nearby P.S. 172 there will also be a visitor and education center, with an 1820s Dutch- American barn, to be erected beginning in June. Some funding for that project was also secured by Assembly-woman Weinstein. "The Wyckoff House is a treasure today," Weinstein said. "It will be-come a beautiful gem tomorrow — a true gem right here in the heart of East Flatbush."
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