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.

The 1862 Flushing Town Hall is a Romanesque Revival style building. Popular during the Civil War, this style can be seen in hundreds of other buildings throughout the city. The two story building has a grand triple-arched portico for an entrance. It served as the seat of government of the village of Flushing until the consolidation of Greater New York City in 1898. Early photographs of the building, including this one from 1922, show a light colored building. The building facade had long been painted— layer upon layer—with white paint. During the 1990s renovation, the original brown and beige stone and brick were revealed and deemed safer for continued preservation.

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.

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.

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.

Opened on Christmas Day 1928 and designed by noted theatre architect Thomas Lamb, the RKO Keith's Theatre was a vaudeville and movie house. Some early live performers included Bob Hope, Mae West, and the Marx Brothers. Though the exterior of the building was designed plainly, the interior was quite extravagant, with a grand lobby and a Spanish Baroque Revival style auditorium. The theatre closed in 1986 and has lived a very hard life since then (as is evident from its current exterior). Despite the lobby and foyer being landmarked the owner of the building (after the theatre's closure) removed features, did nothing to prevent theft, and actively destroyed the interior, admitting during a trial to leaking 200 gallons of oil from the theatre’s furnace into the basement. Despite an active preservation community interested in the building, it has changed ownership a number of times in recent years and its future remains in question.

Listen to the Gotham Center and Micheal Hutton's podcast on the history of the Quaker Meeting House, one of the important sites of religious freedom in the US, while examining these related archival images!

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.

The Quaker Meeting House sits adjacent to the Quaker cemetery. Both are situated on land purchased and donated by prominent Flushing citizen and Quaker, John Bowne (who was once arrested for having a Quaker meeting in his home). This 1925 photograph captures a view of the cemetery and the meeting house. During the early years after the founding of the Meeting House, an unknown number of Quakers were buried here without headstones, as was the custom of the time. During the 18th century burials began to be accompanied by simple stones that usually only noted a name or initials.

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 Old Quaker Meeting House is one of the oldest houses of worship in New York State. At least one-third of the current building (the section closest to Union Street) dated to 1694 when the wood-frame structure was constructed on land purchased by John Bowne and John Rodman. The building was expanded in 1716 and 1719. The particularly steep roof is evocative of medieval Dutch architecture, and the interiors remain in the simple style of the Society of Friends: dark floorboards and plain benches. The building continues to be the place of worship for the Flushing Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. It has served this purpose for more than 300 years.

Linden Place, west side at 34th Avenue, 1932.

At this address once sat a house referred to as Innerwyck. It was the second-oldest residential building in Queens after the Bowne House. It stood at the corner of Union Street and Bayside Avenue. Built around 1670, the home played an important role during the American Revolution. Burned in a fire on Christmas 1779 that was blamed on local patriots, its loyalist owner, Colonel Archibald Hamilton, quickly reconstructed the home. The building gets its name from Hamilton’s his Scottish roots: Hamilton was born near Innerwick Castle in the East Lothian region of Scotland. The Mitchell family purchased the home in 1804. The current Mitchell-Linden Gardens apartments across the street from where the mansion stood are named for them. The homes' final owners were the architect and philatelist Clarence Wilson Brazer and his wife Esther, an interior decorator. The couple painstakingly restored the structure together, but upon his death in 1956 (Esther had passed in 1945), the house was soon after demolished and replaced with a no style, two-story medical office. Some small trace of Innerwyck still exists today. At the property's northeastern corner on Bayside Avenue, a remnant of the Innerwyck's gate stands.