A house on this site was built before 1859 as a tenant house on the 74-acre property of John R. Schenck, whose grand temple-front Greek Revival mansion stood from the 1820s until around 1960 on the east side of East Broadway at its intersection with the Flushing-North Hempstead Turnpike (Old Northern Boulevard). The present house may represent a major remodeling circa 1887 of the original structure, or it may be a replacement building on the old foundation. Except for a 22-year period in the late-19th century, the tenant house was associated with the mansion house from the time it was built until 1914. Although the house has a rubble foundation, typical of pre-1860 Roslyn buildings, no early-19th-century fabric has been observed above grade.

John and William Schenck purchased the land on which both mansion and tenant house stood on May 1,1820 from Daniel Bogart, formerly a New York City shoemaker [Queens County Registry of Deeds, Liber 57, Page 76]. The mansion house may have been built by 1823, as Schenck, in a financial crisis, conveyed title to it in that year to Samuel R. Jackson of New York City. The deed mentions a mortgage affecting the tenant house. [Liber 57, Page 213].