Leon Schoonmaker

Leon Schoonmaker competed in both foil and épée at the 1920 Antwerpen Olympics. He represented the Fencers Club of New York and served as a President of the Amateur Fencers League of America. Schoonmaker was a descendant of Captain Hendrick Jochemsen Schoonmaker, who commanded a Dutch West Indies company vessel that landed at New Amsterdam in 1652.

Schoonmaker attended the Montclair Military Academy and then graduated from Princeton in 1903 with a degree in chemical engineering. In 1911 he began work with the Topological Bureau in Queens, New York. During World War I he served in France as a captain in the Engineers Corps, and he later became a major in the Engineers Reserve Corps.

From 1928-31 Schoonmaker was an engineering consultant to the Long Island Chamber of Commerce. In 1931 he joined the Queens Planning Commission and designed a number of highways in Queens, including Horace Harding Boulevard.