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The Voorlezer's House is a historic clapboard frame house in Historic Richmond Town in Staten Island, New York. It is widely believed to be the oldest known schoolhouse in America, although the sole inhabitant to hold the title of voorlezer, Hendrick Kroesen, only lived on the property from 1696 until 1701. The present structure became a private residence for more than a century and is now owned and operated by the Staten Island Historical Society. Despite being traditionally dated to before 1696 and sitting on land patented in 1680, it is more likely to have been constructed in the mid-eighteenth century, probably in the 1760s by Jacob Rezeau, whose family came into possession of the property in 1705.
Though well-maintained for many years, by 1936 the building had fallen into disrepair and was threatened with demolition. It was acquired by the museum in 1939 and then restored to how it was believed to have appeared around the turn of the eighteenth century.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.