#InTheLoop | Tour Five Majestic Queens Houses and Estates on May 22
BY QEDC It's In Queens
Here’s a chance to visit beautiful gardens, marvel at inspiring architecture, and explore charming interiors.
Five historic Queens venues — King Manor Museum, Kingsland Homestead, Onderdonk House, Poppenhusen Institute, and The Castle at Fort Totten – will offer a live-stream tour on Saturday, May 22, at 1 pm.
First, the program.
King Manor guides will talk about the women who founded and ran the Jamaica property. They’ll also look at 19th century feminism, anti-slavery movements, and the Federal dwelling’s leopard-pattern-carpeted library, tea parlor, and 1820s bedroom.
Kingsland Homestead is Queens Historical Society’s headquarters. On Saturday, QHS Board Member Maria Becce will discuss the Flushing property’s gardens with a special emphasis on historic trees (Yes, historic trees).
Greater Ridgewood Historical Society members will talk about the families who lived in the Onderdonk House and other area farmers. Using photographs, objects, and stories, they’ll provide an intimate look at the estate and the area surrounding it.
Poppenhusen Institute offers music lessons, martial arts training, and other enrichment programs these days. But the College Point community center once ran the first free kindergarten in the United States. On Saturday, guides will explore the neighborhood’s history, going from the earliest Native American settlements to the bustling multiethnic area of today.
Bayside Historical Society members will discuss their agency, which maintains the Castle, and share some of the former officer club’s details and anecdotes.
General admission is $5. The tour will be on YouTube.
Now, the history.
Rufus King and his descendants lived in King Manor from 1805 to 1896. The three-story, three-chimney mansion is the second-longest-running historic house museum in New York City. It’s also the main attraction in Rufus King Park, an 11-acre NYC Parks Department property in Jamaica.
Kingsland Homestead — which features 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 — was built by a well-established Quaker in around 1785. Currently, it is the only surviving example of 18th century architecture in Flushing.
Onderdonk is the oldest Dutch Colonial stone house in New York City. The abode features heavy fieldstone walls, a wooden-shingle gambrel roof, large brick chimneys, double Dutch doors, and shuttered windows. Abandoned in the 1970s, the house was almost destroyed by a fire in 1975. This led to the forming of the Greater Ridgewood Historical Society, which took over and opened the estate to the public as a museum in 1982.
German immigrant Conrad Poppenhusen obtained a license to vulcanize rubber in 1852. He then became wealthy by manufacturing everything from caster wheels to brushes. He eventually built a factory, mansion, vocational high school, courthouse, jail, bank, library, and grand ballroom in College Point. He also donated the money to build and endow the Poppenhusen Institute.
The Castle was called “The Officers’ Mess Hall and Club” when it was constructed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1887. The Gothic Revival structure is inside Fort Totten Park in Bayside. The three-story, wood-framed mansion features an uncommon U-shaped layout with a central entrance between octagonal corner pavilions.
Top image: The Castle; bottom image: Onderdonk House