William Wyckoff, who died Sunday at 90, was the guiding force behind the land marking and restoration of the Peter Claeson Wyckoff House, built some 350 years ago, and originally the home of his direct ancestor.

It is the oldest house in New York, built around 1652. In October 1965, it became the city’s first historic district under the New York City Landmarks Law, signed earlier that year by Mayor Wagner at least in part in reaction to the demolition of Penn Station.

The Wyckoff House itself was under threat several times, and in the early 1950s was slated to be demolished to make room for an extension of Canarsie Lane, in Brooklyn.

Pressure by the Kings County Clerk and borough historian James Kelly, and letters from Wyckoff family descendents saved it at that time, but the place was dilapidated. The Municipal Art Society recommended at the time that the house be rebuilt on the grounds of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Wyckoff family members had lived in the house for generations, but sold it around 1900. In 1961, the Wyckoff Association, a group of Peter Claeson’s descendents, bought the house back for $30,000.

Wyckoff then lobbied city officials to designate it a landmark. He negotiated a deal to donate the house to the city in return for funding its restoration. Wyckoff then guided the Wyckoff House restoration project through swathes of red tape that left it a boarded-up wreck in the mid-1970s, when a fire almost destroyed it. The city finally allocated funds, and the project was completed in 1982.

Peter Claeson was a Dutch settler who came to America to work on the giant Van Rensselaer estate, near the modern city of Albany, in 1637. He moved to New Amsterdam in 1649, and in 1655 signed a contract to raise cattle for Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of New Netherland. Claeson moved at that time into a nearly new house in Flatlands, and later became a judge. The last name Wyckoff, meaning something like town judge, was added after the English took over, in 1674.

Two hundred forty one years later, William Wyckoff was born into a family that ran the A.B. Wyckoff Department Store, located in downtown Stroudsberg, Pa. He joined the family business, and may have been present in 1937 at the old Sherman Square Hotel in Manhattan when 200 descendents of Claeson gathered on the 300th anniversary of his arrival in the New World to form the Wyckoff Association in America. Among the association’s aims was to “perpetuate ancient landmarks associated with the family.”

As the association grew – membership is estimated at 1,500 – it became apparent something had to be done with the Wyckoff House, which was deteriorating and threatened by development. The roofline was sagging and the shingles were loose. The old half-timber walls had been papered over, and there was a television aerial on the roof. The house sat on a muddy lane amid junkyards and factories, and, proof that neighbors noticed it was old, the Landmark Car Wash.

In 1961, the association bought the house for $30,000 from its owner, an old man who claimed to have invented the ice cream cone. There was little money left over for renovations, but a new family was installed anyway, a young pastor at the nearby Church of the Evangel.

The Reverend George Frobig, today a resident of Niles, Me., remembers the house as “a little drafty, not too bad. The bedroom where the babies slept would get pretty cool.” He added, “It was an honor to live with the history.”

William Wyckoff married, had three children, and worked at the A.B. Wyckoff Company, mainstay of Stroudsberg, near the Delaware Water Gap. The store was among the early adopters of cellophane-wrapped shirts. It closed in the early 1970s.

Wyckoff spent increasing amounts of time in New York, lobbying officials for landmark status and restoration money, and eventually moved to Manhattan, in part to avoid charges that he was a carpetbagger. In 1970, Mayor Lindsay and a large number of Wyckoffs gathered at the house to celebrate the restoration agreement, which included a commitment to acquire the surrounding land, much of it an unlicensed dump, for a park. It was not until 11 years later that Mayor Koch came out to Flatlands again to mark re-inauguration of the restoration, which was finally completed in 1982. The house opened as a museum of Dutch History. Recent plans call for an antique barn from a New Jersey branch of the Wyckoff family to be brought in to support a learning center and the raising of heirloom crops.

When work was complete, Wyckoff declared, “The Wyckoff Family has not led the battle to establish a memorial to itself, but to honor the great contribution the Dutch have made to the city, state, and nation.”

Wyckoff kept pushing when things were at their darkest, through the fire and when it looked like the house might collapse if it had to go through another winter without structural repairs. Wyckoff soldiered on. An optimist, he remarried at age 85.

William Wyckoff

Born June 8, 1915, in Stroudsberg, Pa.; died March 26 in Montpelier, Vt.; survived by his son, Amzi Wyckoff, daughters Gretchen Rigol and Sarah Ferris, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren; each of his wives predeceased him, Elizabeth Stackhouse and Kathleen Rector.