A Queens house rumored to have been the home of Yankees icon Babe Ruth in his retirement may be spared the fate of the House that Ruth Built in the Bronx.
The city Landmarks Preservation Commission is checking whether the Yankees slugger lived at a house in the ritzy St. Albans enclave of Addisleigh Park - and mulling whether the city should protect the Colonial Revival home as part of an historic district.
City researchers are combing buildings, finance and tax records to see if reports linking Ruth to 114-07 175th St. are true, said commission spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon.
"We will nail down for certain through primary sources whether he lived there," she said.
Ruth's grandson, Tom Stevens, 55, of Las Vegas, said he always knew Ruth lived in a Riverside Drive apartment in Manhattan, but he never heard of his famous grandfather residing in Queens.
Ron Marzlock, the vice president of the Central Queens Historical Association, said he found newspaper articles reporting Ruth rented space in the Queens home in the early 1940s to be near his favorite golf course.
"He wasn't going to take the train back and forth and back and forth to Manhattan, so in the months of June, July, August, he stayed in the [Queens] house," Marzlock said.
The three-story brick home was built in 1929 with dormer windows, a portico and Corinthian columns - and those posh elements all remain, according to the Historic Districts Council.
Simeon Bankoff, the council's executive director, said the home keys into a lost period in Queens history.
"Here's this major celebrity who decided to live near the golf course, and you look at the neighborhood now and it's very charming, but you don't think of it as a suburban resort," Bankoff said.
Many historians think the city should preserve the neighborhood even if Ruth never set foot there.
"They should landmark based on the architecture of the houses themselves," said Jim Driscoll, president of the Queens Historical Society.
