This NYC Landmark Saloon Was Once The Oldest Restaurant In Queens

New York City is no slouch when it comes to historic eateries. Manhattan boasts Fraunces Tavern, which first opened in 1762 and served George Washington. Queens could once lay claim to its own long-running restaurant, the oldest on all of Long Island, known for many years as Niederstein's Restaurant. It first opened in 1854, when a Manhattan saloon keeper named Henry Schumacher launched Schumacher's Beer Saloon and Hotel in what was then a rural hamlet in Queens County, New York, called Middle Village (Queens became a borough of New York City in 1898). Located on what was then the Brooklyn-Jamaica Turnpike (now Metropolitan Avenue), it was a way station for farmers traveling to Brooklyn and Manhattan to sell their produce.

Later, the saloon and hotel served visitors who would spend Sundays at the nearby cemeteries — a popular pastime in the 19th century. Lutheran Cemetery (now All Faiths Cemetery) was established in 1852, and St. John's Cemetery opened in 1879. Schumacher was able to expand to serve his growing customer base until his own death. In 1888, John Niederstein bought the business from the late Schumacher's wife, and it was under the name Niederstein's Restaurant that this landmark would gain widespread fame. The restaurant would stay in the extended Niederstein family until 1969 and would continue under different owners until 2005, when it finally shut down for good and was demolished.

While Niederstein's Restaurant couldn't measure up to some of the oldest restaurants in the world, it was old enough to earn accolades dating back to 1926, when even then it was hailed as the oldest restaurant on Long Island. "The place is a landmark well known to thousands living in New York and on Long Island," The Chat newspaper reported in 1926. "For more than sixty years, it has been serving its patrons excellent food at moderate prices." Back then, you could get dinner for a dollar, which included soup, roast meat and vegetables, dessert, and coffee, and the restaurant could seat 600 patrons at a time.

It became famous for its German food and, in its prime, served more than 130,000 dinners a year, including a whopping 330,000 pounds of sauerbraten. After the Niederstein family sold the restaurant in 1969, it underwent renovations but still retained a sense of its 19th-century origins, with a dark wood interior and a facade reminiscent of an old roadside tavern. Niederstein's may have opened the same year as New York's oldest ale house, McSorley's Ale House in Manhattan, but only the latter remains. The historic restaurant was consequently replaced by an Arby's, but an etched stone nearby commemorates its legacy.