Taken from the Robert Friedrich Collection
Daily Star – March 24, 1926
“The Village of C.P. in 1876,” muses, Mr. Hunold was serenely innocent and ignorant of crime waves & their nature and the machinery or police system and devious court procedure was to them also unknown. The bar of justice in our village, as I suppose in most other hamlets of the land, was a place where local bad boys were lectured in a paternal manner by the Justice of the Peace, who knew them all from childhood, and was the neighborhood and friend of their families. Criminal actions were very rare and even minor offenses were very seldom recorded against College Pointers, but the four marshals appointed for local duty found their police duties, which called them in times of stress from their daily employment in a rubber shop or on a farm, concerned largely with visitors from NY who would in the summer time flock to the local picnic grounds or resort hotels. Those merry gatherings often became unruly and free-for-all fights were not uncommon. “Disturbing the Peace” was the most common charge on the local dockets…
Prisoners, mostly drunk or disorderly persons were sometimes held overnight in two cells in the basement of the Poppenhusen Institute.( message from the present day director- we’re always glad to accommodate anyone who think should spend some time there) The court sat upstairs in the same building. A marshal took prisoners given a longer term to the county jail in LIC. College Point was snugly (sic) content with itself and though most of Queens favored consolidation with the City of NY in the years preceding 1898, the Point was one of the few communities where opposition was at all manifested (note from the editor – oh! that the community would have held fast to that stance.)
The education of its children was always a matter of prime importance to the early residents of this community and the village was noted for its fine schools . . . .
The Institute itself was a school of high classic standing in the state and the Point had besides two other fashionable academics and college preparatory schools.
The greatest civic agitation experienced by the Village was the campaign waged by the public – spirited worker (sic) to obtain for College Point a modern and adequate water system. Though normally a healthy community, illness had broken out in 1870, traceable to impure water drawn by its residents from wells and cisterns. Three times a bond issue was voted upon before it was successfully passed by the local council and money secured for the construction of a modern system of water with conduits from reservoirs in upper Flushing (near Kissena Park)
(note from the present-day director- that is not the pond that exists at Kissena Park today.
The College Point Water Works office operated out of Poppenhusen Institute. In fact, evidence of that municipal office and others can be seen in the old village vault which is in the director’s office at the Institute).
When things open up once again we’ll bring those interested on a tour to the secret places of the Institute)