From Days Gone By

The Onderdonk House has been updated over the years, but maintains its 1713 structure. Photo: Ira Cohen

B y Ellen Thompson

A man in dark breeches and a fitted waistcoat strolls from room to room, over creaking wooden floors. Under a wooden-shingle gambrel roof, behind heavy Dutch doors, earthenware, an inkwell and glass toys sit inside the field stone house.

“The home isn’t exactly as it was in the 18th century. Yes the interior wall space is the same, but the moldings, fireplace and furniture bring you into the Victorian period,” Ridgewood Historical Society Historian George Miller said of the Onderdonk House, where artisan Arthur Kirmss guides tours in authentic costume. “The house is now a mixture. With each part of the home there is a different time period to be seen.”

The Onderdonk house, nestled in the bustling blue-collar neighborhood of Ridgewood, was built roughly around 1713 by Dutch colonial farmer Paulus Vander Ende. With his own two hands, Vander Ende provided shelter for the Vander Ende family and Onderdonk families as the new and unfamiliar borough around them began to take shape in the early 1800s.

The house, which once served as a stable and farmhouse, quietly transformed into a speakeasy by the 1920s. Stepping into the background of the flourishing German and Italian neighborhood, the main house became offices while a men’s social club rented the back edition. Sitting around tables, puffing cigars, the men laughed and joked as the best whiskey in town flowed into their glasses.

By the 1960s the stone house, with its brick chimneys, became a key component in the Apollo space mission. A small factory building was built towards the back of the property where people inside pieced together the instrument panels for space capsules.

Today the Onderdonk House is one of the oldest structures in Queens, housing the Ridgewood Historical Society, which was formed in 1977 to preserve the house after a fire nearly destroyed the structure.

Looking beyond Ridgewood’s bustling streets filled with the newer Eastern European and Latin American immigrants, Kirmss can be found in dark breeches and a fitted waistcoat handing out pressed apples to children and visitors as they step through the wooden doors, back into today.