Mayor Fiorello La Guardia lived here in the summer of 1936, when an unusually bad heat wave drove him out of City Hall. He directed the city’s business from the basement until the weather cooled off.
It might not be your vision of Wayne Manor, but the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage is Batman’s real birthplace. His creators thought up the caped crusader while sitting on a bench outside the cottage.
The Lefferts family gave this house to the city in 1917, when they realized that similar family farms in Brooklyn were rapidly disappearing.
During the Battle of Brooklyn, 260 Maryland troops held off more than 2,000 British soldiers so that the rest of the Continental Army could retreat over the Gowanus. Less than a dozen survived.
In 1801, Alexander Hamilton called a meeting of fellow Federalists here, in order to raise money to publish the newspaper now known as the New York Post.
The lighthouse was set to be demolished in 1951 until a nationwide campaign saved it, powered by thousands of children who loved the book The Little Red Lighthouse.
Aaron Burr, best known for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, lived here during his brief marriage to Eliza Jumel, who ended it when she realized he was losing her money in land speculations.
The Theater was shipped over from Sweden as part of that nation’s exhibit for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
In the late 1920’s the farm was sold to a local hospital that used it to provide occupational therapy for patients and to grow food for the hospital's meals.
Alice Austen was not your typical Victorian woman. She traveled through NYC taking street photos, was Staten Island’s first female car owner, and lived with another woman for more then fifty years.
The buildings and actors here portray the area through several eras, beginning with a 1690s Dutch house that shows what life was like for the region’s earliest settlers, and going through the 1860s.
Get a look at how the city’s rich were living in the 19th century. James Seguine, the house’s first owner, made his fortune in oyster harvesting and helped create the Staten Island Railroad Company.
In 1776 British Admiral Howe called a peace conference here in an effort to end the revolution. The talks failed when Howe couldn’t offer independence, and the war lasted seven more years.
Lewis Latimer was the son of escaped slaves, and went on to become an important inventor and the only African-American member of Thomas Edison’s engineering division at the Edison Company.
Rufus King, the house’s original inhabitant, was one of New York’s first senators, and used his political position to fight against the expansion of slavery.
In 1662, this house was the setting for the first indoor meeting of the Quakers at a time when their religion was still prohibited by law.
An exhibit on the first floor displays a trove of thousands of Revolutionary War artifacts found by a small group of amateur archaeologists in Northern Manhattan during the early 20th century.
This house was built in the 1650s by Pieter Wyckoff, an immigrant who served for six years as an indentured servant to pay off his transport from Europe.
George Washington stayed in this house at least twice during the American Revolution.
During the American Revolution, the Valentine-Varian House was so close to a series of battles that at various points it wound up occupied by Hessian, British, and American troops.
Gertrude Tredwell lived her whole life here until her death at the age of 93, and her work to keep it and its furnishings preserved are the reason it offers such a perfect look at 19th century NYC.
Among the Kingsland Homestead exhibits is one showcasing the impact of slavery on Queens and Long Island during the 19th century.
