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?

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

In celebration of the Municipal Art Society's 125th Anniversary, we've compiled a list of landmarks older than MAS.

This is a collection of the smaller burial places that dot the landscape of the five boroughs. They are family burial plots and church graveyards, some full of 300-year-old grave markers and some with no monuments at all, some squished between storefronts and major thoroughfares and others hidden behind homes and walls. While most remain extant (if not always accessible), some have been lost to time and development.

Join Adelaide, as she traverses through Queens and discovers its many historical and hidden secrets!

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!

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.

Queens is such an integral part of the metropolis that is hard for us to think of it as rural and agricultural. But when New York was New Amsterdam, Queens was no more than a series of remote villages scattered between the Dutch Brooklyn (Breukelen) and the English eastern Long Island settlements. As Dutch and English settlers moved closer to one another, they began to assimilate in what would later become Queens County. The Dutch colonial government of New Amsterdam exercised political and military control of this area, but permitted, even welcomed English settlement. The Dutch chartered Hempstead (Heemstede) in 1644, Flushing (Vlissingen) in 1645, Newtown (Middelburgh) in 1652, and Jamaica (Rustdorp) in 1656. These were predominately English towns, but they differed from the settlements at the eastern end of Long Island, not only in their recognition of the Dutch government and their accommodation of Dutch settlers but also in harboring many religious dissenters. These towns proved to be a comfortable place for Quakers in particular. Nowhere more so than Flushing was this religious welcoming evident. When the colonial government forbade the entertaining of Quakers, thirty inhabitants issued the Flushing Remonstrance objecting to the order on December 27, 1657. Today this document is considered instrumental to the concept of religious liberty. The tradition of acceptance and diversity is continued in Flushing, which is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Queens County with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Afghan, and Indonesian communities.

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.