Queens County Farm Museum

In keeping with the newest blog craze, started by our pal, Travis Erwin, this post is part of the My Town Monday series.

New York City. A place full of glitz and glamour. We got Times Square. We got the Empire State Building. We got Yankee Stadium. We got the Queens County Farm Museum. That’s not a typo. In the city of skyscrapers and yellow taxis, we have a forty-seven acre working farm museum.

New York is a big city, covering 321.8 square miles in a very lopsided way. The borough of Manhattan, which has been called The Island at the Center of the World, is not at the center of the City. It is a narrow island bound on the west by the Hudson River and across that river is our neighboring state of New Jersey. The other boroughs, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, all spread out to the north, the east and the south.

Long before the American Revolution, the Adriance family owned and farmed a parcel of land about twenty miles east of Manhattan. The farm passed out of the family in 1806 and for the next 120 years was farmed by these families: Bennum, Lent, Cox and, finally, Stattel. By the time Daniel Stattel died in 1926, the surrounding area of the Borough of Queens was being rapidly developed into one-family homes and garden apartments. A real-estate investor named Pauline Reisman bought the farm and in less than six months sold it to New York State for use by the patients of nearby Creedmoor State Hospital. The staff and patients operated the farm for many years, and then the State offered the land for sale as surplus in the 1970s. A local civic leader, James A. Trent, brought experts to view the house and farm land and it was soon discovered that the original rooms of the house were built by the Adriance family in 1772, with rooms added by the Cox family in 1855.

Today the farm is owned by the New York City Parks Department and operated by the Colonial Farmhouse Restoration Society. The staff tends to a variety of animals and also plants, harvests and sells crops. Farm fresh eggs and raw honey are for sale every day. The grounds are open to the public daily and free of charge unless one of the specially sponsored events is scheduled, such as the recent Barnyard Easter Egg Hunt, which included games, a hayride, and hunting for those colorful eggs. Upcoming events include the Thirtieth Annual Antique Auto Show, to be followed by Farm Fest, which includes sheep shearing, cultural exhibits and pony rides.

If you want to rent the orchard, or the pavilion in the planting fields , or even the barn for a private event, give a call and your farm party is a go. And yes, I’m sure. My son and daughter-in-law held their wedding reception and the Christening parties for each of their children in the barn pictured here.

The information and picture in this post came from the Queens County Farm Museum website and from the website of the Historical House Trust an organization that works with the Parks Department and supports twenty two historical houses in New York City.

Terrie