Sunnyside Gardens needs your helps!

On June 26th the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously voted landmark Sunnyside Gardens. With 624 architecturally and culturally distinctive residential buildings, Sunnyside Gardens is the largest historic district in Queens. Its designation pushes the number of properties landmarked by the Commission during fiscal year 2007 over 1,000 (1,160 to be exact – the highest number in two decades).

Yet despite the LPC's designation, the district still must pass through City Council. The matter has already come before the Landmarks subcommittee and additional public hearings will be held in front of the Land Use committee and full council.

Specific information regarding these public hearings at City Council is forthcoming. Please continue to write letters of support to your local elected officials. Sample letters may be found here.

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE GARDENS
Built between 1924-1928, Sunnyside Gardens consists of a series of nine “courts” or rows of townhouses and nine small apartment buildings (four to six stories tall), a total of more than 600 buildings. This huge complex is one of the most significant planned residential communities in New York City and has achieved international recognition for its low-rise, low density housing arranged around landscaped open courtyards. The first development created according to the ideas espoused by the Regional Planning Association of America, the program behind Sunnyside Gardens led to new state and national planning and housing policies and laws that encouraged greater equity in housing production, location and design.

At Sunnyside Gardens, the first American adaptation of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City, the buildings covered only 28% of the land, allowing for a particularly large amount of open space to integrate elements of rural and urban living. The houses were built in rows, usually near the perimeter of the block, allowing for central open courts for recreation and community use. They were designed in a simplified Colonial Revival or Art Deco style with a variety of rooflines and arrangements for visual interest. The physical arrangement and amenities as well as the community organizational system fostered the developers’ goal of creating a neighborhood that would meet the social as well as physical needs of its residents. In addition to the buildings, many elements of the original landscape, including large street trees and some courtyard plantings are still extant. Long-time resident Lewis Mumford called Sunnyside Gardens “an exceptional community laid out by people who were deeply human and who gave the place a permanent expression of that humanness.”