Bartending School in College Point, NY

College Point was named for St. Paul’s College, an Episcopalian seminary founded in 1835 by the Rev. William Augustus Muhlenberg. The college closed around 1850, but the name remained. Former names include Lawrence’s Neck, Tew’s Neck, Flammersberg, and Strattonsport.

The original European settler of this area was Captain William Lawrence. He was also the largest landholder of the original incorporators of the Town of Flushing, now in Queens. He arrived in America on the sailing ship Planter in the 1630s. Lawrence married the oldest daughter of Richard “Bull Rider” Smith, who founded Smithtown on Long Island. He and his wife had a son, William Jr., who married the Richard Smiths’ youngest granddaughter.

In 1854 the German-American industrialist Conrad Poppenhusen arrived; he was already a prosperous manufacturer in Brooklyn of hard rubber goods and expanded his operation to this small farming community. College Point became a factory town primarily for his workers, most of them also German immigrants, and the tycoon became a philanthropist, contributing to churches, libraries, and the Poppenhusen Institute, an educational beacon of College Point. Poppenhusen is responsible for the first free kindergarten in America. He connected College Point to Flushing by the Whitestone Branch of the Flushing and North Side Railroad. A monument on College Point Boulevard, one of the main streets in College Point, stands testament to Poppenhusen.