Civil rights are human rights. They’re also the main focus of a great new photo exhibition at the Queens Historical Society.
Remonstrance! A History of Social Justice in Queens is on view until June 2025.
About 30 images – all from QHS archives; mostly black and white – are on display in the first floor’s 1,350-square-foot space along with Moving Kingsland, an exhibition depicting how QHS’s headquarters, Kingsland Homestead, was relocated twice.
General admission is $10.
Curated by QHS Executive Director Jason Antos, Remonstrance! A History of Social Justice in Queens depicts local residents protesting against eminent domain and for women’s rights and better wages. One section is dedicated to the Flushing Remonstrance, which historians consider the model for parts of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
The 1657 petition to New Netherlands Director-General Peter Stuyvesant – often wrongly referred to as mayor – requesting freedom for Quaker worship. At the time, the Dutch Reformed Church was the only permitted religion in New York City.
Upon hearing about the document, which had 30 signatures, Stuyvesant arrested the ringleader, Flushing resident and prominent Quaker John Bowne, and exiled him to Holland in 1662. The plan backfired, though, as Bowne filed appeals to the agency that really ran the city, the Dutch West India Company, which ordered Stuyvesant, an employee, to allow religious freedom there.
After checking out Remonstrance! and Moving, the rest of Kingsland Homestead is also wonderful.
Located at 143-35 37th Ave., the two-story Long Island half house (wide side hall with double parlors off to one side) dates to the late 1700s. It has a gambrel roof, a crescent-shaped window in a side gable, a Federal-period chimney piece with an iron Franklin stove, and a Dutch-style, two-level front door.
On the second floor, the Victorian Room features a melodeon, lacework, and items such as family notebooks. Everything is arranged to reflect life in 1870, when 10 people – two young couples and their children – lived in the dwelling.
For a spectacular, multi-tour afternoon, leave Kingsland Homestead and walk about 200 yards to the Bowne House, which the previously mentioned John Bowne built in 1661. Nine generations of his descendants then lived in the wooden-frame English Colonial saltbox until 1945, when the family donated the property to the Bowne House Historical Society for use as a museum. A New York City landmark that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the house is the oldest remaining domicile in Queens.
It’s also where the Flushing Remonstrance was debated, created, and signed.
Images: QHS