Chimney Sweeps in Richmond Hill, NY

The hill referred to as Richmond Hill is a moraine created by debris and rocks collected while glaciers advanced down North America during the Wisconsin glaciation. Before European colonization the land was occupied by the Rockaway Native American group, for which the Rockaways were named. In 1660, the Welling family purchased land in what was then the western portion of the colonial town of Rustdorp. The land would become the Welling Farm, while Rustdorp would be renamed Jamaica under British rule in 1664. The Battle of Long Island, one of the bloodiest battles of the Revolutionary War, was fought in 1776 along the ridge in present-day Forest Park, near what is now the golf course clubhouse. Protected by its thickly-wooded area, American riflemen used guerrilla warfare tactics to attack and defeat the advancing Hessians. One of the sites that would make up modern Richmond Hill, Lefferts Farm, was said to be the site of a Revolutionary War battle. Clarenceville, a farming community, was established in January 1853 on the south side of Jamaica Avenue between 110th and 112th Streets on land purchased from the Welling estate.

Richmond Hill’s name was inspired either by a suburban town near London or by Edward Richmond, a landscape architect in the mid-19th century who designed much of the neighborhood. In 1868, Albon Platt Man, a successful Manhattan lawyer, purchased the Lefferts, Welling, and Bergen farms along with other plots amounting to 400 acres of land, and hired Richmond to lay out the community. The tract extended as far north as White Pot Road (now Kew Gardens Road) near modern Queens Boulevard. The area reminded Man of the London suburb, where his family resided. Man’s sons would later found the nearby Kew Gardens neighborhood from the northern portion of the land.

Streets, schools, a church, and a railroad were built in Richmond Hill over the next decade, thus making the area one of the earliest residential communities on Long Island. The streets were laid down to match the geography of the area. The development of area was facilitated by the opening of two railroad stations. These were the Clarenceville station on the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad, at Atlantic Avenue and Greenwood Avenue (now 111th Street); and the Richmond Hill station at Park Street (now Hillside Avenue) near Jamaica and Lefferts Avenues on the Montauk railroad line between Long Island City and eastern Long Island. By 1872, a post office was established in the neighborhood, while the Clarenceville neighborhood was merged into Richmond Hill. Richmond Hill was incorporated as an independent village in 1894, by which time it had also absorbed the Morris Park neighborhood, which had been established in 1885. In 1898, Richmond Hill and the rest of Queens county were consolidated into the City of Greater New York.