Three Brooklyn projects have been announced as winners of the New York Landmarks Conservancy 2023 Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards. Lefferts Historic House at 452 Flatbush Ave., The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew at 520 Clinton Ave. and Asia Art Archive in America at 23 Cranberry St. are among the projects that will be recognized at the Awards Ceremony on April 19th at 6:00pm at Saint Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan.
The Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards are the Conservancy’s highest honors for excellence in preservation.
“The Lucys are always a joyous celebration of excellent preservation projects and people. It is always wonderful to see the range of great work throughout the City,” said Peg Breen, President of The New York Landmarks Conservancy.
Lefferts Historic House, Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Lefferts Historic House is an 18th-century farmhouse within Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Prospect Park Alliance and the Historic House Trust jointly operate and preserve this remnant of the Village of Flatbush. The Alliance received $2.5 million from the Speaker and the Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council to fund this capital restoration project. Lefferts House is now set to welcome some 30,000 visitors a year.
Lefferts House is of a typical Dutch-American rural style, with distinctive flared eaves on a gambrel roof. It was constructed by hired laborers and enslaved Africans in 1783, who used timbers and nails salvaged from an earlier structure and from other houses destroyed during the Revolutionary War. The Lefferts family donated the house to New York City to preserve it. The house was moved to Prospect Park in 1917, relocated about four blocks from its original location. Throughout these changes, the original floor plan and timber frame remain unaltered.
The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn
The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn was designed in the Italian Romanesque Revival style and completed in 1891. It is a masterpiece of polychromy employing seven unique stone types. This restoration project has stabilized and restored the monumental facade and shows how preservation and new construction can work in tandem to revitalize New York’s communities.
Asia Art Archive in America
The Asia Art Archive in America’s restoration and reuse of 23 Cranberry Street marks a new phase in the long life of this Brooklyn Heights carriage house. In 2015, the Asia Art Archive in America discovered the property, and it is the first overseas extension of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong.
Architects Baxt Ingui converted the building into a public space for the study of post-war Asian Art and two apartments for the organization’s use. The lower levels were adapted for offices and public programs. A Buddhist prayer table, a teak railroad tie from Indonesia, and pieces of hardware and cast iron, brass, and bronze have been incorporated into the rooms.
