Flushing was established by Dutch settlers in 1645 as the town of "Vlissingen," part of the larger New Netherland colony. The town's development was strongly influenced by its Quaker community, with freedom of religion as one of its founding principles. How many of these historic sites of Flushing have you visited?

James A. Renwick House. James A. Renwick was a lawyer and the nephew of James Renwick, the famous architect.

Though Flushing is well known as being a cultural hub, many might not be aware of its integral part in the establishment of religious freedom in New York

Built c. 1661, the Bowne House is a microcosm of social, cultural, and political history. It is one of the oldest surviving structures in New York City and the oldest in Queens.

Flushing High School, April 8, 1921. Flushing High School was founded in 1875 and is the oldest public high school in New York City. The school began with seven students and six of them graduating in 1878! The original building was three stories, had only two official classrooms, and the janitor and his family lived in the basement. By the turn of the century, the student population of the school had grown and a large addition was constructed onto the original building. In 1907 a Board of Education member and Flushing resident began the fight for a larger, modern school in Flushing. That fight would last nine years. In 1915 the new C.B.J. Snyder designed school opened for students. The imposing Neo-Gothic (sometimes called Collegiate Gothic) style building features a five-story tower, buff-colored brick, turrets, and gargoyles, all reminiscent of British medieval universities.

Lewis H. Latimer House Museum Designated: March 21, 1995 34-41 137th St, Queens 34-41 137th Street was the home of the African-American inventor, Lewis H. Latimer, renowned for his work in the field of electric lighting. In 1881, Latimer received a patent for an improved method for the production of carbon filaments used in lightbulbs. The house was built in a Queen Anne style frame house, and it offered a comfortable meeting place for prominent African-American civic and cultural leaders. Watch the virtual tour of Latimer House

Captain John Aspinwall built this house in 1760. John Aspinwall was of the most renowned captains of the New York merchant mariners in pre-Revolutionary times. The Captain owned a large amount of real estate in the city, including this house in Flushing. A famous and bizarre anecdote: a law in 1761 was passed to disallow buildings south of Duane street (then Fresh Water) to be constructed out of wood. This was a preventative measure in case of fires. The legislation was met with absolute disagreement and a petition was created to reverse this law. The document claimed stone and brick would be a financial burden, and "useful members of society will be unable to pay their just debts, the wives and families of many will become burdensome to the city, and jails will be filled with objects of the greatest compassion." Whose name was at the top of the petition? None other than Captain John Aspinwall himself. The law was successfully reversed. As fate would have it, the area would see its first fire two years later. Trinity Church, which Aspinwall had been a vestryman of, and 500 other buildings were ravaged. The Captain settled in this house in the 1770s. He assisted in the construction of a church in the neighborhood. His home was later owned by his son-in-law, Colonel Richard Platt.

John Bowne House, May 1918. John Bowne was an English immigrant to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, who settled in Flushing (originally called Vlissingen) in the early 1660s. He and his first wife converted to Quakerism after marriage, and their move to Flushing was motivated by a desire to join the English-speaking Society of Friends there. In 1662, Bowne was arrested on the orders of Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for having a Quaker meeting in his home. Stuyvesant had long persecuted the Quaker communities of New York. Bowne was sent to the Netherlands, and despite not speaking any Dutch, appealed to the Dutch West India Company for freedom. With his release, a new precedent was set for religious tolerance and freedom in the colony. The home where Bowne was arrested still stands. Likely built in 1661 (a year before his arrest), it is a wood-frame home of Dutch design but constructed with English building techniques. The home was altered, unsurprisingly, a number of times in the centuries since it was built. Members of the Bowne family continued to live in the home until 1945 when they sold it to the newly-created Bowne House Historical Society, which opened it as a museum in 1947 and continues to operate it today.

Viola Van Nostrand Woodruff House, 1927. In 1913 a number of events in Viola Woodruff's life conspired to push her into a new direction. Both her husband and father had died earlier that year. She and her mother were left with a large house in Flushing to maintain themselves. And, while visiting a friend, Viola met a woman who as making money selling salted peanuts in Vermont. Learning all she could, she started her own business in the kitchen of her home. By 1920 Woodruff (who is listed in some places as Wood) had two factories, earned $200,000 (gross), and had added other salted nuts and meats to her roster. A 1921 article in The Peanut Promoter (billed as "the most unique publication in the world"), told Woodruff's story, though at various points she notes that she would easily give it all up. She stated that her time might be better used in "service to herself and the community, as well as in social service work." She was still in business in 1928 when she was once again written up, this time in the "National Nuts News." It is unclear whether the popular business survived until her death in 1953. The large house at the northwest corner of Northern Boulevard and 147th is long gone.

Weeping Beech Tree, undated photo. Unbeknownst to the throngs of present day Flushing denizens, the town of Flushing was once the "cradle of America's horticultural business." The Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nursery was founded in 1737 by Robert Prince and provided maple trees to Jefferson's Monticello, among other influential customers. In the late 1830s, Samuel Parsons, a local Quaker, established his own nursery business, which would go on to provide the original trees and shrubs for both Central Park and Prospect Park. His business became America's most celebrated commercial nursery. Parsons was a pioneering horticulturalist who introduced a number of plant species to North America. In 1847 he returned from a trip to Belgium with a four-inch-tall cutting of a weeping beach tree. He planted it near the John Bowne House (his wife was a Bowne descendant) and it grew... and grew. By the middle of the 20th century the tree was massive: 60-feet-tall, with a 14-foot trunk, and an 85-foot-wide umbrella of branches. This tree was considered the mother of all other weeping beech trees in the United States. In 1966 the tree was designated a living landmark, along with the 1885-planted magnolia grandiflora on Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Despite more than a century of hardy growth, the weeping beech began to deteriorate in the 1970s. Even with serious efforts, including fertilizer injections and cables to keep it standing, the tree was pronounced dead in 1998. Following a brief funeral, the landmark tree was chopped down from its spot behind Kingsland Homestead, the home to the Queens Historical Society. A considerable stump and a number of weeping beech offspring remain. The younger beech trees have thrived since the loss of their progenitor, growing to considerable height themselves.

Lomax Littlejohn (who has, perhaps, the best name ever) moved to the United States from Liverpool, England in 1851 at age ten. His father worked as an importer of iron and metals, and Lomax became one the city's largest handlers of East India goods in the early 20th century. This home was demolished sometime after the photograph was taken in 1922 and when the Flushing YMCA building broke ground in 1924. The Flushing YMCA, which still stands, was completed in March 1926. It is well known for its swimming program which has produced a number of Olympians.

In 1931 Rex Cole, the appliance showman commissioned the architect of the black and gold American Radiator Building, Raymond Hood, to design a series of showrooms to display his General Electric refrigerators. This showroom in Flushing was built to look like the product it sold. Set among the then wood-frame residential buildings of the neighborhood, this modern structure was eye-catching. The three-story white cube with large, nearly full high central windows, even included a decorative feature at the top to mimic the monitor top of a refrigerator.

A 1924 view of the Bowne House depicts some of the trees and landscaping that have been a part of the Bowne House plot since at least the early 19th century. Flushing was well known in the 1800s as the home of a number of nurseries. The most famous was the Parsons Nursery, where proprietor Samuel Parsons traveled the world to find new and exotic plants. By the early 1800s members of the Parsons family had married into the Bowne family and were living in the house. It is believed that most of the gardens and large trees that surround the house date to that time period.

Flushing Armory, ca. 1910. Designed by George Heins (known best for his early subway station architecture with partner Christopher LaFarge), and completed in 1905, the Flushing Armory was originally the home of the 17th Separate Company. The crenelated building was nearly identical to Hein's designs for three other armories in upstate New York. While this design did not break the mold of New York City armory styles (nearly all of the 19th and early 20th century armories in the five boroughs are castle-like), Heins did prefer octagonal towers to round ones. The 17th Separate Company was founded in 1876, and between 1894 and 1905 occupied a wood and brick armory on Roosevelt Avenue. The 17th Separate became Company 1 after the First World War and moved to Brooklyn’s 14th Regiment. Other military units were housed here throughout the 20th century. Eventually turned over to the city, the old armory served as a homeless shelter (a common reprogramming of these large spaces) and a gymnastics center. Today it is the headquarters of the NYPD’s Queens North Taskforce.

BOWNE STREET COMMUNITY CHURCH, QUEENS Address: 143-11 Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing Constructed: 1891-2 The Bowne Street Community Church stands out as a shining star in Flushing, a neighborhood that has changed dramatically over the years. The church was originally built for the Reformed Dutch Church of Flushing, established in 1842. To accommodate the congregation’s rapid growth, this new church building was completed in 1892, designed in the Romanesque Revival style of red brick, with arches topping each of the windows and intricate brickwork and terra cotta details. The church is adorned with stained glass windows manufactured by the Tiffany Glass Company of Corona and designed by Agnes Fairchild Northrup, a colleague of Louis Comfort Tiffany and a life-long member of the church. The eastern annex, designed to match the existing architecture, was added in 1925. In 1974, the congregation merged with the First Congregational Church of Flushing to form the Bowne Street Community Church. The Bowne Street Community Church is home to the combined congregations of the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church of Flushing (1842) and the First Congregational Church of Flushing (1851). The two churches merged in 1970, but, tragically, the 1856 Congregational Church burned on Christmas Eve that year, even as the two congregations were at a dinner celebrating their union. Dedicated in 1892, the Bowne Street Community Church is a Romanesque Revival Style, red brick edifice, with arches topping each of the windows and intricate brickwork and terra cotta tile details contributing to the handsome appearance. The Romanesque style is carried out in the bell tower spire which dominates the corner. In 1925 a red brick addition provided room for classrooms, offices, and a social hall. What makes this church particularly worthy is the set of original stained glass windows created by the Louis Tiffany Glass Company in Corona. They were designed by Agnes Fairchild Northrup (1857-1953), a long time Tiffany artist and a life-long member of the congregation. This unique and exceptional church deserves to be experienced with sunlight illuminating the Tiffany windows.

John Bowne’s House John Bowne’s house became a landmark in American Quaker history and a symbol of the early struggle for religious freedom in New Netherland. One of the city’s few surviving 17th-century buildings, the house is now a museum. This postcard is modeled on an 1825 lithograph by Charles Etienne Pierre Motte. Image Info: Artvue Post Card Co., ca. 1955 CREDIT: Museum of the City of New York, Postcard Collection, F2011.33.1467

Kingsland Homestead ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1774 STYLE: Dutch Colonial This is Flushing’s only remaining 18th Century dwelling, and its second oldest house. The Kingsland Homestead is a wooden two-story building with a basement and an attic, and represents the country’s Dutch Colonial Style of architecture, and the typical house of Revolutionary War period.

Not all New York City landmarks are made of stone or steel or glass. Here is a list of some of the city's famous topiary, both long gone and still standing. Much like buildings, these trees 🌳 🌳 dominated streetscapes, provided community gathering places, and witnessed history.

Flushing High School 35-01 Union Street, Flushing, Queens 1915 Founded in 1875, Flushing High School is the oldest public high school in New York City. Its distinctive Neo-Gothic style building, built of buff-colored brick, terra cotta, and granite was constructed between 1912 and 1915, with another wing added in 1954. The most dominant feature is the entrance: a five story, square central tower, which is an element closely associated with Gothic architecture. One of her most famous alumni is fictional character, Archie Bunker. It was designated as a New York City Landmark in 1991 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

Flushing High School ARCHITECT: C.B.J. Snyder DATE: 1912-15 STYLE: Collegiate Gothic Built between 1912 and 1915, this is the oldest public high school in New York City. It was designed by C.B.J. Snyder, a prominent architect who designed several schools in the five boroughs. It is an example of the Collegiate Gothic style, and it features a monumental square entrance tower, a picturesque auditorium wing, and Gothic-inspired ornament.

The Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church is the third oldest church in Flushing (a neighborhood with quite a few old churches). The congregation was established in 1811 by a community of freed slaves, American Indians, and whites. The community first met in a series of homes, but the first church building was completed in 1837 near to the current church site. The building seen in this 1927 photograph was constructed around the turn of the 20th century. The pastor at the time, Rev. Charles J. Lawton, had big plans for the church as part of the Flushing community and the congregation was very involved in the construction of the new church. Male church members worked to build the brick foundation, while female members cleaned each individual recycled brick that was used in the construction. That building was razed in the early 1930s for a new structure, dedicated in 1932, that can be seen today behind the 1950s community center addition at the corner

Weeping Beech Weeping Beech tree. The tree stood in the Kingsland Homestead until 1998.