St. Joseph's Home for Girls, 1927 In the middle of the 19th century the Sisters of St. Joseph moved their mother-house, novitiate, and boarding school from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to Flushing, Queens. A new wing was added in the late 1870s. The building, which became more of an orphanage in its later history, was lost to a fire in the 1960s and replaced by a department store.