The Conservation of an Early Twentieth Century Wedding Dress from the Weeksville Heritage Center
[Thesis]
McPartlin, Kristine
Monetgut, Denyse
Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York
2020
107
M.A.
Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York
2020
This qualifying paper presents the historical significance, conservation, and exhibition of an early twentieth century wedding dress from the Weeksville Heritage Center's Costume Collection in Brooklyn, New York. The community known as Weeksville was founded in 1838 by James Weeks, a free black man, just eleven years after the abolition of slavery in New York States. The land Weeks purchased would one day become one of the most prominent free black communities in pre-Civil War America. Though a prosperous and successful community throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, today it is the challenge of the dedicated team of historians to make sure that people today know the history of Weeksville.