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IT'S HARD TO believe that the thriving industrial and residential metropolis we know as Queens was once bucolic farmland, but such was the case until about 100 years ago.
On this tour, we'll journey back to a time before Shea Stadium or LaGuardia Airport could even have been imagined. We'll visit the home of a signer of the Constitution, see a 19th-Century Gothic Revival church, and ramble about the city's only working historic farm. King Manor
Rufus King was, above all, a man of principle. He served as a major during the Revolutionary War, helped write and sign the U.S. Constitution, was a member of the U.S. Senate and ran unsuccessfully for president as a Federalist in 1816. A staunch opponent of slavery, he fought eloquently against the Missouri Compromise as a senator.
Born in 1755, King began his career in Massachusetts and moved to New York in 1788. In an era when most men of wealth owned slaves, King paid a staff of servants to care for his country estate.
Today, we can visit that estate, which is nestled into a verdant 11-acre park amid the bustle of downtown Jamaica. King Manor is one of the oldest historic-house museums in the country, open to the public since 1900. Far from being stuffy, however, it is an eminently user-friendly attraction run by a high-spirited staff.
Visitors are first seated in the emerald-green parlor, dominated by a portrait of King (a reproduction of the Gilbert Stuart original). Here, you can view a brief video about King Manor, originally a working farm, where King lived with his wife, Mary, and their two sons, one of whom, John Alsop King, went on to become governor of New York from 1857 to 1859.
The video, as well as the tour to follow, invites interaction on the part of the tourist. At King Manor, there are no ropes cordoning off sacred spaces; the public is welcome to browse respectfully.
The structure of King Manor, although completed in 1811, 16 years before King's death, dates to the 1750s, when it was just a small farmhouse. It had already been enlarged somewhat when King moved in, about 1806, and, over the next few years, nearly doubled in size. Throughout the tour, your...