Poppenhusen Branch, Queens Public Library
121-23 14th Avenue | also 121-19 217th Street | College Point | built 1904
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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.
- 1903
College Point raises money for a library site as the Poppenhusen Institute hands over its 3,250 books
Once Andrew Carnegie's library gift was announced, more than 400 College Point residents chipped in to buy a site: schoolchildren gave up candy money and every India Rubber Company worker contributed a dollar. The Funke estate sold the 100-by-100-foot corner lot to the library at a discount. In 1903 the Poppenhusen Institute transferred its 3,250-volume collection to the Queens Borough Library, on condition that the branch keep the Poppenhusen name.
“Schoolchildren gave up their candy money for the library and every employee of the India Rubber Company gave a dollar to the fund.”
- 1904
The Poppenhusen Branch opens as one of the first Carnegie libraries in Queens
Speakers at the opening included Philip Frank, who chaired the Queens Carnegie Committee, and Borough President Joseph Cassidy, along with Corporation Counsel John Delany and Arthur Bostwick of the New York Public Library. The building and its equipment cost $30,114. Three Queens Carnegie branches opened in 1904; Astoria came first, Poppenhusen second and Far Rockaway third.
“The library opened on October 5, 1904 with a ceremony that included presentations by Philip Frank…”
- 1904
Heins & LaFarge, architects of the first subway stations, design their only Carnegie library in College Point
The firm best known for the first New York City subway stations, the earliest section of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, plus seven buildings at the Bronx Zoo, designed this branch, the only Carnegie library it built. It follows the suburban Carnegie type: a freestanding building on a corner lot, with a projecting arched entrance under a broken pediment, a flight of stairs and tall windows lighting the reading rooms. It is one of five Carnegie branches still standing in the Queens system.
“The respected architectural firm of Heins & LaFarge designed the Poppenhusen Branch, their only Carnegie library.”
- 1937
A WPA-funded rear addition gives the Poppenhusen Branch a new children's reading room
Every Carnegie branch in Queens was renovated with Works Progress Administration money in the 1930s. At Poppenhusen, a one-story brick addition built in 1937 to match the original building extended the library at the rear, its main feature a new reading room for children. The front lawn was chosen as the site of College Point's World War II monument, a granite slab set at an angle to the building.
Nearby
- Herman A. and Malvina Schleicher House11-41 123rd Street | 5 entries
- Poppenhusen Institute114-04 14th Road | 7 entries