Kingsland Homestead at the original location, 1923. Photo Eugene L. Armbruster, Queens Public Library Archives
Photo by Dacia Metes, 2023
Kingsland Homestead is the former home of Captain Joseph King (1757-1843), a British sea merchant and commercial farmer who settled in Queens. Located in Flushing, the two-story home with attic was dubbed “Kingsland” by Captain King when he purchased the property in 1801 from his father-in-law. The Dutch Colonial style farmhouse consists of twelve rooms, and it is considered one of the earliest examples of the residential style of construction common in Long Island in the 18th and 19th centuries. Kingsland Homestead was designated as a historic landmark in 1965.
The home was originally built around 1785 for Charles Doughty, himself the son of Benjamin Doughty, a wealthy Quaker who purchased the land in Flushing. King married Charles Doughty’s daughter and bought the farmhouse from him, settling there to raise livestock and to grow corn and wheat for sale. Together with his wife, the couple had two children, Mary Ann and Joseph.
King’s family and his descendants continued to live in the farmhouse until the 1930s when hardships of the Great Depression forced them to sell. In 1965, the home was declared a New York City historic landmark, the first structure in Queens to receive this honor. Three years later, when plans for a shopping center put the home at risk of demolition, it was moved from its original site (at 40-25 155th Street near Northern Boulevard) to its current location about one mile west at Weeping Beech Park in Flushing (at 143-35 37th Avenue). The structure now serves as the home of the Queens Historical Society.
“KINGSLAND HOMESTEAD,” Landmarks Preservation Commission, October 14, 1965, (amended June 30, 2020), accessed via NYC.gov, June 12, 2025
“Kingsland Homestead Now a Museum,” The New York Times, March 25, 1973
“Kingsland Homestead,” Queens Historical Society website, accessed June 12, 2025
“Kingsland Homestead, Weeping Beech Park,” New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, accessed via Internet Archive, June 12, 2025