Willets Point Farmhouse
211 Murray Avenue | also 423 Abbott Road | Fort Totten
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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.
- 1829
Nurseryman Charles A. Willets buys the peninsula, renames it Willets Point and builds a house
In 1829 Charles A. Willets (1781-1832), a nurseryman from the area, bought the Wilkins farmland and renamed the peninsula Willets Point. He may have hoped to sell it to the Army, whose Board of Engineers had urged fortifying the point in 1821. When no sale came, he started a nursery and built a Greek Revival house near the north end of the peninsula, the building now known as Building 211.
- 1832
Charles Willets dies and is buried on his land below the house
Charles Willets died in 1832, three years after buying the peninsula, and was buried on his property downhill from where the house first stood. His simple granite grave marker survives near Bayside Street and Totten Avenue. His heirs kept the land until 1857, when they sold it to George Irving, a New York land speculator and broker.
“Charles Willets died in 1832 and was buried on the property down the slope from the original site of the house.”
- 1867
The Army moves the old farmhouse and remakes it as a Gothic Revival home for the fort's commander
After taking over the land, the Army used the Willets house as an engineers' office while building the fort's battery. In 1867 General Duane was ordered to relocate it within the post and fit it out for the officer in charge, and it was moved to its current site, enlarged and remodeled as a single-family house in the fashionable Gothic Revival style. Maj. Henry L. Abbot, the post's engineer and commander and later a brigadier general, then moved in with his family. The house stayed the home of Fort Totten's commanding officers until Building 422 took over that role in 1909.
“In 1867, General Duane was ordered "to remove the house used as an Engineers Office [sic] to another part of the post…”
- 1940
The commanders' former house is split into a two-family home
In 1940 the house was divided into two units for two families, a change that altered its exterior. The Landmarks Preservation Commission later recorded asbestos shingles over the original wood clapboards and a two-story addition on the north side that encloses a stairway.
- 1974
The Army leaves the farmhouse and the city takes over a building that slides into ruin
The Army abandoned the house in 1974 and handed the property to the City of New York. The building then deteriorated and was vandalized, even after the Fort Totten Historic District was established in 1999. Plans to renovate and stabilize it were drawn up in 2012, but as of 2018 it still stood abandoned.
“The building was abandoned by the Army in 1974 and the property was handed over to the City of New York.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Willets Point FarmhouseWikipedia
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