Sunnyside Gardens is a community within Sunnyside, a neighborhood in the

New York City borough The boroughs of New York City are the five major governmental districts that comprise New York City. They are the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of the State of New ...

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

. The area was the first development in the United States patterned after the ideas of the

garden city movement The garden city movement was a 20th century urban planning movement promoting satellite communities surrounding the central city and separated with Green belt, greenbelts. These Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, i ...

initiated in England in the first decades of the twentieth century by

Ebenezer Howard Sir Ebenezer Howard (29 January 1850 – 1 May 1928) was an English urban planner and founder of the garden city movement, known for his publication '' To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform'' (1898), the description of a utopian city in wh ...

and

Raymond Unwin Sir Raymond Unwin (2 November 1863 – 29 June 1940) was a prominent and influential English engineer, architect and town planner, with an emphasis on improvements in working class housing. Early years Raymond Unwin was born in Rotherham, Yor ...

, specifically

Hampstead Garden Suburb Hampstead Garden Suburb is a suburb of London, north of Hampstead, west of Highgate and east of Golders Green. It is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations. It is an example of early twentieth-century ...

and

Letchworth Garden City Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is noted for being the first Garden city movement, garden city. The population at the time of the 2021 United Kin ...

. Covering between

Queens Boulevard Queens Boulevard is a major thoroughfare connecting Midtown Manhattan, via the Queensboro Bridge, to Jamaica in Queens, New York City, United States. It is long and forms part of New York State Route 25. Queens Boulevard runs northwest to ...

and

Sunnyside Yard Sunnyside Yard is a large coach yard, a railroad yard for passenger cars in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Queens in New York City. The yard is owned by Amtrak and is also used by New Jersey Transit. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) complet ...

, Sunnyside Gardens was constructed between 1924 and 1928 by the City Housing Corporation, founded by developer Alexander Bing, and architects

Clarence Stein Clarence Samuel Stein (June 19, 1882 – February 7, 1975) was an American urban planner, architect, and writer, a major proponent of the garden city movement in the United States known for the Radburn concept. Biography Stein was born in Roche ...

and Henry Wright. The project grew out of discussions in the early 1920s about housing and planning;

Lewis Mumford Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a ...

was a leading participant. It is among the first

planned communities A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve ...

in the U.S. Sunnyside Gardens is listed as a historic district on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

. The

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) is the Government of New York City, New York City agency charged with administering the city's Historic preservation, Landmarks Preservation Law. The LPC is responsible for protecting Ne ...

has also designated it as an official city landmark district.

Description

Sunnyside Gardens was built between 1924 and 1928, roughly taking up 16 blocks, with more than 600 buildings. It has 12 courts, which are known as Carolin Gardens, Colonial Court, Hamilton Court, Hamilton Court Apartments, Harrison Place, Jefferson Court, Lincoln Court, Madison Court North and South, Monroe Court Apartments,

Phipps Garden Apartments Phipps Garden Apartments is an apartment complex in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, New York City. It was built in by Phipps Houses, a philanthropic organization of the Phipps family to build Show house, model tenements for working-class families, al ...

I, Phipps Garden Apartments II, Roosevelt Court, Washington Court, and the Wilson Court. Sunnyside Gardens is in the northwestern part of Queens.

and Henry Wright served as the primary architects and planners for this development ( Frederick L. Ackerman designed some of the mews houses), and the landscape architect was

Marjorie Sewell Cautley Marjorie Sewell Cautley (1891–1954) was an American landscape architect who played an influential yet often overlooked part in the conception and development of some early, visionary twentieth-century American communities. Early life Cautley ...

.Community and Library History

Queens Public Library The Queens Public Library (QPL), also known as the Queens Borough Public Library and Queens Library (QL), is the public library for the borough of Queens, and one of three public library systems serving New York City. It is one of the largest li ...

. Accessed February 14, 2008. Sunnyside Gardens includes one-, two-, and three-family homes, and a few apartment buildings, all made of Hudson brick. Each private residence has a small front garden facing the street and a private garden in the rear. The rental units in the two- and three-family houses enjoy private terraces overlooking the gardens. There are two configurations: the courtyard condition and the mews condition; at the edges of the community some homes simply line the street, with a common walkway running the length of the row. Homes in the courtyard blocks enclose an inner courtyard that was designated a common, landscaped but not used for recreation. Each homeowner actually owned, and paid taxes on, the part of the common in the block and lot, even if it was not used. The mews houses face a common front court and back on alleys; each mews house also has a private rear yard. This model allowed for denser residential development, while also providing ample open/green-space amenities. As an amenity for the residents, the City Housing Corporation reserved lots on the northern edge of the development (abutting the Sunnyside Yard) for one of only two private parks in the city, the other being

Gramercy Park Gramercy ParkSometimes misspelled as Grammercy () is the name of both a small, fenced-in private park, and the surrounding neighborhood (which is also referred to as Gramercy), in Manhattan in New York City. The approximately park, located ...

History

The area was the first development in the United States patterned after the ideas of the

initiated in England in the first decades of the twentieth century by

and

, specifically

and

. Covering 77 acres between

and the Sunnyside Railroad Yards, Sunnyside Gardens was constructed between 1924 and 1928 by the City Housing Corporation, founded by developer Alexander Bing, and architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright. The project grew out of discussions in the early 1920s about housing and planning; social critic

and economist Richard T. Ely were leading participants. In the early years of the Great Depression, nearly 60 percent of the residents lost their homes to foreclosure. Those difficult years saw organized resistance by residents who forcefully resisted efforts by city marshals to evict families. The character of Sunnyside Gardens was protected by 40-year easements which protected the integrity of the courtyards and common walkways and controlled changes to the exterior of every property, extending to even paint color. Those covenants lapsed in the mid-1960s, and some homeowners rushed to claim their property, erecting fences into the middle of some courtyards. In response, in 1974 the Department of City Planning designated Sunnyside Gardens a special planned community preservation district, together with Fresh Meadows, Parkchester, and the

Harlem River Houses The Harlem River Houses is a New York City Housing Authority public housing complex between 151st Street, 153rd Street, Macombs Place, and the Harlem River Drive in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The complex, which cov ...

. With that designation came rules protecting the inner courts and landscaping, and prohibiting driveways and curbcuts, rear sheds, and additions.

Landmark designations

The Sunnyside Gardens Historic District is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

that includes 66 contributing buildings and 12 contributing sites. See also: It was listed on the

in 1984 and as a city historic district in 2007. In 2003, a grassroots movement started to request designation as a New York City Historic District, in response to lack of protection for the historic character of the homes in the neighborhood. The campaign was contentious and garnered publicity in major news outlets, including WNYC and the New York Times. On April 17, 2007, the

(NYCLPC) held a public hearing on the neighborhood, which was controversial, with 60 people speaking in favor and 25 against the designation. This was documented on

New York Public Radio New York Public Radio (NYPR) is a New York City-based independent, publicly supported, Nonprofit organization, not-for-profit media organization incorporated in 1979. Its stated mission is "To make the mind more curious, the heart more open and t ...

in a segment called "Cloud Over Sunnyside?". On June 26, 2007, the NYCLPC voted to designate the community. The designation prevents most major work from being done without consultation with the NYCLPC.

References

External links

A Fact Sheet for Residents from the NYC Department of City Planning, Queens Office dated June 2002July 23, 2003 Article about Landmarks MeetingQueens Buzz Sunnyside Queens cultural web magazine
{{Queens Neighborhoods in Queens, New York Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Queens, New York New York City designated historic districts New York City Designated Landmarks in Queens, New York Historic districts in Queens, New York Planned communities in the United States Sunnyside, Queens