The Lefferts Historic House is located inside of Prospect Park right next to the Prospect Park Zoo and is the only historic house left in Brooklyn from the late 1600’s. It’s a very interesting place because almost all of the items at the house were left behind from many centuries ago. The Lefferts Historic House is a museum of family life in Brooklyn in the 1820s. According to Historichousetrust.com, “Period rooms furnished to reflect daily life, demonstration gardens and fields, and hands-on American craft activities help visitors understand the changes in Brooklyn’s landscape since the 18th-century”.
The house was originally known as Lefferts Homestead but is now known as Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The Lefferts family was one of the earliest European settlers in Brooklyn. Being that they were one of the earlier settlers, they were able to start up businesses and make a lot of money in Kings County, which is known as Brooklyn. According to Prospectpark.org, “An Interpretive and Exhibition Master Plan were designed by James Czajka, Architect, and Christopher Clark, PhD, Exhibition Developer and Consulting Historian. The Lefferts Historic House has now been thoroughly re-imagined as a family-oriented environmental history museum, interpreting Brooklyn’s changing environment through the eyes of its Dutch, African, and Native-American inhabitants”. Many of the pieces at the museum were re constructed so they wouldn’t fall apart when visitors would visit. The activities at the house are candle making, sewing, butter churning, and making fire with flint and steel. Special weekend programs follow the seasonal patterns of rural life: springtime’s Flax & Fleece Fest, Summer Songs & Stories, fall’s Harvest Days, the Winter Festival, and the Annual Quilt Show”.
The Lefferts Historic House is a great landmark left in Brooklyn for people to explore and learn about the history of a old time family through primary sources left there and secondary sources.
