01 · Full tour
The facility tour.
A complete 360 virtual tour that lets a viewer navigate the entire site on their own, from the historic homes to the grounds, without a scheduled visit.
Case study · Brooklyn historic site
Weeksville
Heritage
Center
A 360 virtual tour and photography production for a roughly 20,000 square foot historic site in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This was our first client. We made two 360 tours, shot interior and documentation photography of the artifacts, and published the result to Google Street View, where it has passed 47,000 views.
Section 01The landmark
One of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America.
Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Founded 1838.
Founded 1838.
Weeksville was an independent free Black community in what are now the Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods of Brooklyn. It was named for James Weeks, who bought the land in 1838 with other African American investors to build an intentional landowning community.
Weeksville grew into one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America. Its history was rediscovered in 1968, when urbanization threatened the few historic homes that remained. A grassroots preservation effort led by James Hurley, Dewey Harley, Dolores McCullough, Patricia Johnson, and the artist and activist Joan Maynard preserved the Hunterfly Road Houses and the memory of historic Weeksville.
Today the Weeksville Heritage Center is a historic site and cultural center on Buffalo Avenue between St. Marks Avenue and Bergen Street in Central Brooklyn. It uses education, the arts, and a social-justice lens to preserve and document the history of Weeksville and the Historic Hunterfly Road Houses. When the center asked us to record the site, the work carried a responsibility. We were photographing a place that a community fought to save.
Section 02The process
We started with meetings, not a camera.
Consult, visit, quote.
Then production.
Then production.
We started with meetings to discuss the history of the space and the solutions we could provide. That consultation time mattered. It is how we gathered what we needed to execute, and how we came to understand what the center meant to the people who run it.
From there we visited in person. Walking the site is how we read the real scale of a property, the light in each room, and the route a shoot has to follow. Once we understood the footprint, we provided a quote and a proposal and worked out the production logistics. A historic site is not a single listing. It is a set of buildings, artifacts, and outdoor spaces that have to hold together as one record, so the planning came before the production.
How the project ran
- Meetings to learn the history and scope the solution.
- An in-person visit to read the scale and the light.
- A written quote and proposal for the production.
- Production logistics worked out before the shoot.
- About two days on site for the full capture.
Section 03What we produced
Two 360 tours, documentation photography, and a public Street View tour.
About two days on site.
One record of the site.
One record of the site.
Production took about two days. We worked around the weather for the outside shots and documented the artifacts inside the historic homes. The result was a set built for two audiences: visitors who wanted to walk the whole site, and grade-school classes learning its history. See more of this kind of work in our 360 virtual tours and across the portfolio.
02 · School tour
A tour for the classroom.
A second 360 tour built for grade-school children. Teachers used it to teach the history of Weeksville, so a class could walk the site from a classroom.
03 · Documentation
Interior and artifact photography.
With so many historical artifacts on site, we shot interior photography and documented specific areas to link inside the 360 tour, adding interactivity and more to see.
04 · Street View
Published to Google Street View.
We added the tour to Google Street View. As a public space, the center reaches people searching the map who may never have found it otherwise.
Section 04The result
47,000+ views, and visits that followed.
A public space.
Found on the map.
Found on the map.
Since we posted a portion of the tour to Google Street View, the photos have passed 47,000 views. For a public space, that reach matters. People who search the map find the center, and some of those views turn into in-person visits.
This was the project that set the standard for how we approach large space. Plan the route, manage mixed light across many rooms, and deliver a set that reads as one place. We carried that same standard into our commercial work later, on bigger footprints. If you run a historic site, a museum, a school, or any large property and want it documented with the same care, this is the kind of work we do. Read more on our commercial real estate photography page.
There is a preservation angle too. A 360 virtual tour is a dated record of the site as it stood, room by room, useful for a place built around documenting and protecting history. It also widens access. A class that cannot travel to Crown Heights can still walk the Hunterfly Road Houses, and a researcher far away can study the layout before planning a visit. The work outlives the shoot.
What the project delivered
- A full 360 tour of the roughly 20,000 sq ft site.
- A second 360 tour built for grade-school classes.
- Interior and artifact documentation photography.
- A Google Street View tour with 47,000+ views.
- Our first client, and the start of our large-space work.
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