College Place and 9th Road, unknown date.
The Poppenhusen Institute was founded by Conrad Poppenhusen of College Point. Poppenhusen, a German immigrant who arrived in America in 1843, made a fortune, lost it, and then made another. His early business training was acquired in Germany, where his father owned a concern that manufactured numerous small articles out of whalebone. Upon his arrival in America, with considerable means, he went into a partnership and continued the same type of manufacture. The whalebone was becoming a Scarce commodity at about this time and when Conrad made the acquaintance of Charles Goodyear he turned his attention to the development of rubber. Not a scientist by any means, but a good businessman, Possenhusen eventually established a factory in College Point, manufacturing small articles out of hard rubber. We might say that hard rubber articles were the plastics of one hundred years ago.
In 1898 several of the hard rubber firms were consolidated and became the American Hard Rubber Company, still in existence and still in College Point.
After attaining marked financial success through his application to business, he turned that success to the lasting benefit of the community. He took a deep interest in many fields, such as town planning, providing homes for his employees in whose welfare he took a personal interest, and other aid projects. At one time he gave 330,000 for the building of the College Point Dutch Reformed Church and in celebration of his 50th birthday he made a gift of one hundred thousand dollars to the people of College Point for the erection and maintenance of what became the Poppenhusen Institute, designed a century ago to provide free instruction in the Arts and Crafts and also commercial and industrial subjects. College Point gets its name from the fact that the Rev. W. A. Kuhlenberg founded St. Paul's College there in 1835. The college is long since gone but the community holds it name; College Point. The institute, built in 1868, dominates the landscape above the factory near the homes of his workers and played a most important role in the life of the community. It served as a bank, school, town office, library, Jail, and youth center. The building expresses the tastes of the times between 1854 and 1880.
A historical room has recently been undertaken, and here, may be seen any old maps, photographs, and antiques of the past, and attempts to recreate the town of the past, to revive the flavor of life a century ago.
