Herman A. and Malvina Schleicher House
11-41 123rd Street | also 11-41 13th Avenue | College Point | built 1857
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1857
Morris Gescheidt designs a red brick house for the Schleichers, topped by one of the city's earliest mansard roofs
German-born painter and architect Morris A. Gescheidt, who also built a factory for industrialist Conrad Poppenhusen, designed this two-and-a-half-story house in College Point, mixing Italianate details with a Second Empire mansard roof, segmental arched windows and quoins. The Flushing Journal praised it as another gem of a residence. The Landmarks Preservation Commission counts it among the oldest houses in College Point and among the earliest surviving buildings in New York City with a mansard roof.
- 1866
Merchant Herman Schleicher dies suddenly at 39, leaving neighbor Conrad Poppenhusen as an executor of his will
Herman A. Schleicher, born in New York to Prussian immigrants, traded in hardware, stationery and coal, was a partner in the dry goods importer Schleicher, Walkinshaw & Co. and sat on the boards of the St. Nicholas Bank and two insurance companies. He and Poppenhusen served together on Flushing's first board of education from 1858. He died in July 1866, aged 39; that November his firm sent a collection of European and American paintings to the Leeds Art Galleries for sale.
- 1892
Former family coachman John Jockers runs the old Schleicher house as the Grand View Hotel
John Jockers, born in Germany in 1836, had worked briefly for Conrad Poppenhusen before Schleicher hired him; census takers recorded him as a gardener in 1870 and a coachman in 1880. When the house became the Grand View Hotel he managed it, advertising eleven bright sleeping rooms and ample dining. What was left of the estate served as a park where guests played lawn tennis and croquet, in a town that drew crowds of weekend excursionists.
- 1908
The Schleicher house goes to auction stranded on a perfectly round lot after new streets cut through its estate
One hundred lots from the estate went up for sale in 1893, but most of the lots, about 11 acres, did not sell until 1906. As the street grid was cut through the grounds, the house was left at the center of four streets. When it came up for auction in 1908, it was described as standing on an exactly circular plot 110 feet across, at North Fourteenth Street and Schleicher Court. By 1910 a city record described it as badly decayed and long occupied by poor immigrants.
- 2009
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Schleicher House over its owner's objection
At the February 2009 hearing, ten witnesses supported landmark status, among them Council Member Tony Avella, the Poppenhusen Institute, the Queens Historical Society and two people who rented apartments in the house; the owner spoke against it. The Commission voted to designate the house on October 20, 2009. It had been converted to apartments after alterations approved in 1923 and held seven units at the time.
“Ten witnesses spoke in favor of designation ... Prior to the Commission's vote, the owner spoke in opposition to designation.”
Nearby
- Poppenhusen Branch, Queens Public Library121-23 14th Avenue | 4 entries
- Poppenhusen Institute114-04 14th Road | 7 entries