Built in 1720, the Hendrick I. Lott House was by 1800 called "the finest country house in Kings County." Its exterior is a traditional Dutch-American farmhouse, while its interior is much grander. The Lott property stretched from Kings Highway to Jamaica Bay, and its farm fields were worked by the Lott family, enslaved and freed Africans, and European immigrants. The house later became a stop on the Underground Railroad, and ritual objects placed by the enslaved were found within. The last farm crops were harvested in 1925, and the land was sold to developers. Ella Suydam, the last Lott descendant to live there, remained in the house until her death in 1989. The City of New York purchased the house from her estate in 2002.
