Voelker Orth Museum
149-19 38th Avenue | Murray Hill | built 1920
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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.
- 1890
Flushing merchant James Bouton buys corner lots in new Murray Hill and builds a house
Four corner lots at Lincoln and Wilson, in the Murray Hill section that Frederick Dunton was developing near its new railroad station, were sold in April 1890 to James Bouton, who kept a store in Flushing. Bouton had this picturesque house built soon after; it already appears on an 1891 map. He appears to have lived here until 1899, and the designer is unknown.
- 1899
German-language newspaper publisher Conrad Voelker buys the house and moves in
Conrad Voelker, born in Edenkoben, Germany, in 1861, ran a printing and publishing business that put out a widely read German-language newspaper and later established the Bayonne Journal. In 1899 he moved here from Manhattan with his wife Elizabeth and their one-year-old daughter Theresa. He enlarged the house in 1909, adding the flat-roofed room with a balustrade nearest 149th Place, and he died in 1930.
“They first lived in Manhattan before moving to this house on Lincoln Avenue in 1899.”
- 1930
Police surgeon Rudolph Orth and Theresa Orth move in and add a rear wing
After Conrad Voelker died, his daughter Theresa returned to the house she grew up in with her husband, Dr. Rudolph Orth, a World War I veteran who became a surgeon for the New York City police department. In 1930 the Orths added the two-story section reaching back into the garden, and its airy rear room appears to have served as Dr. Orth's study.
- 1995
Teacher Elizabetha Orth dies and wills the house to become a Queens museum and bird sanctuary
Elizabetha Orth, Voelker's granddaughter and a Queens teacher, lived here until her death in 1995 at 69. With no descendants, she left house and garden to the Queens Botanical Society, the Queens Historical Society and the Audubon Society, on condition they form a board to run a museum of Queens history and environment. The building has since been restored, and the garden replanted as a Victorian garden that doubles as a bird sanctuary.
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