The John Bowne House in Flushing

The Bowne House. The John Bowne House is a wood-frame Anglo-Dutch Colonial saltbox historic home located at 37-01 Bowne Street, Flushing, Queens, New York. Built around 1661, it was the location of a Quaker meeting in 1662 that resulted in the arrest of its owner, John Bowne, by Peter Stuyvesant. Bowne appealed his arrest successfully to the Dutch West India Company and established a precedent for religious tolerance and freedom in the colony. His appeal helped to serve as the basis for the later guarantees of freedom of religion, speech and right of assembly in the Constitution. The Bowne House became a museum in 1947. Several generations of the Bowne family lived in the house until 1945, when the family deeded the property to the Bowne Historical Society. The Bowne House reportedly served as a stop on the Underground Railroad prior to the American Civil War.