Daniel and Abbie B. Eldridge House
87-61 111th Street | Richmond Hill | built 1870
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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.
- 1870
Daniel Eldridge, a Water Department clerk later tied to the Tweed Ring, has his Italianate villa finished
Daniel Eldridge of Brooklyn bought six lots on Greenwood Avenue, now 111th Street, in 1867 and 1869, and his 40-by-60-foot house was finished by 1870. The 1870 census lists him as a clerk in the city Water Department, then a patronage post under boss William Marcy Tweed. Described as a member of the Tweed Ring, the Maine-born Eldridge was arrested for embezzlement, and it is unclear how long he and his wife Abbie lived here.
- 1875
Jane M. Fowler, wife of a Richmond Hill founder, buys the house as an investment
After an 1873 auction sale to George Fuller of Morrisania, the property passed in 1875 to Jane M. Fowler, wife of Oliver B. Fowler, who helped lay out and manage Richmond Hill after Edmund Richmond died. The couple lived elsewhere, in the Farm Cottage on Jamaica Avenue; Mrs. Fowler helped establish the Church of the Resurrection. She sold the house in 1882 to Englishman Alexander Steel, who enlarged the parcel into one of Clarenceville's biggest.
- 1947
New owners turn the old villa's ground floor into a nursery school
The Karrmann family, who had bought the house in 1917, lived there until 1947, when new owners converted its ground floor into a nursery school. Owners who bought it in 1986 turned the whole building into a childcare center and a school for the arts, teaching children dance, music and acting. A stuccoed rear addition was built around 2002.
- 2011
The Eldridge House becomes a landmark as a rare surviving Italianate villa in Queens
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the 2.5-story frame house on December 20, 2011. Its report notes the cubic form, hipped roof, glazed square cupola, arched entrance with a bracketed doorhood and four angled bay windows. The unknown designer may have known Andrew Jackson Downing's pattern-book plan for a suburban Italian cottage, though the house is built of wood and is no exact copy.
Nearby
- Richmond Hill High School89-30 114th Street | 4 entries
- RKO Keith's Theater117-09 Hillside Avenue | 3 entries
- Saint Benedict Joseph Labre Parish94-40 118th Street | 1 entry
- Richmond Hill Republican Club86-15 Lefferts Boulevard | 4 entries
- Church of the Resurrection85-09 118th Street | 4 entries
- P.S. 66, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School85-11 102nd Street | 5 entries