Sunnyside, Queens

Pre-1909

The area was farmed in colonial times by the Bragaw family, French Huguenot settlers who acquired land at Dutch Kills in 1690. During the Revolution, British forces occupied the Sunnyside area from 1776 to 1783, billeting troops in the colonial farmhouses along old Middleburgh Avenue (now 39th Avenue) to control the strategic "Narrow Passage" at the junction of present-day Northern Boulevard, Woodside Avenue, and Newtown Avenue.^[7] According to the local historian Vincent F. Seyfried, Richard Bragaw built a gambrel-roofed house "in the English style atop Sunnyside Hill" in 1790, on the line of present-day 32nd Place between Northern Boulevard and Skillman Avenue; the house was demolished in July 1903 after the Pennsylvania Railroad acquired the property as part of the land assembly for the Sunnyside Yards.^[7] The railroad's acquisitions and demolitions continued through 1905, after which it undertook a major reshaping of local topography: between 1907 and 1908 it leveled an approximately 200-acre hill at 34th and 35th Streets and used the earth to fill some 250 acres of tidal marsh at the headwaters of Dutch Kills, and the Sunnyside Yards opened to rail traffic in November 1910.^[7] The Encyclopedia of New York City traces the modern neighborhood's name to a roadhouse built on Jackson Avenue in the 1850s and 1860s for visitors to the Fashion Race Course in Corona.^[8] South of Jackson Avenue, the Fitting, Gosman, Heiser, Lowery, and Van Buren families owned farms that were subdivided in the 1880s and 1890s, and a small hamlet built between Northern and Queens Boulevards came to be known as Sunnyside.^[8] The area was incorporated into Long Island City in 1870 and into the City of Greater New York when Long Island City was consolidated into the city in 1898.^[9]

The Pennsylvania Railroad adopted a plan in 1901 for a large rail yard in the area, and between 1902 and 1905 it acquired the land south of Northern Boulevard between 21st and 43rd Streets, much of which was low-lying marshland.^[8] The area was leveled and the swamps filled in between 1907 and 1908, and Sunnyside Yard opened in November 1910, occupying 192 acres (78 ha), containing 25.7 miles of track, and at its opening the largest coach yard in the world.^[6][8]

1909–1924

The opening of the Queensboro Bridge in 1909 and the extension of the Flushing Line subway across Queens Boulevard in 1917 made Sunnyside accessible to Manhattan and triggered apartment construction.^[9] Through the 1920s, much of the area was built up with rows of six-story brick apartment houses, particularly south of Queens Boulevard, and the neighborhood became a bedroom community for middle-class workers commuting to Manhattan.^[5]

Industrial development accompanied the residential boom on land adjoining the new Sunnyside Yards: by 1912 the Degnon Terminal, a rail-served industrial complex developed by Michael J. Degnon's Degnon Terminal & Realty Company, was largely built out, with early tenants including the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company (later Sunshine Biscuits), the Packard Motor Car Company, the American Ever Ready Co., and the American Chicle Company.^[10] In 1922 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company broke ground on the Metropolitan Houses, an early Sunnyside multi-family apartment complex on the blocks bounded by Queens Boulevard, 48th Avenue, 48th Street, and 49th Street; the complex was later renamed Cosmopolitan Houses after Met Life sold the property, and portions remain federally subsidized.^[11]

In 1901, the Irish-American Athletic Club established Celtic Park near 48th Avenue and 43rd Street as a venue for Gaelic games and other Irish-American sporting events. The athletic field closed in the 1930s and the Celtic Park Apartments were built on the site.^[12] The athletic club's symbol, the Winged Fist, is commemorated in the city's co-naming of the intersection of 43rd Street and 48th Avenue as "Winged Fist Way".^[13][14]

1924–1928

Between 1924 and 1928, the City Housing Corporation, a limited-dividend organization led by developer Alexander Bing, built Sunnyside Gardens on a 77-acre site of about 16 blocks north of Queens Boulevard, between 43rd and 51st Streets. Architects Clarence Stein, Henry Wright, and Frederick L. Ackerman, working with landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley, designed the development as a garden city–inspired community of low-rise attached brick houses arranged around shared interior courts. The development comprised 1,202 housing units and was the first major American application of the principles of Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin. It was promoted by the Regional Planning Association of America, whose members included Lewis Mumford.^[15][8][16]

1929–1960

In 1931, the philanthropic Phipps Houses organization, founded by the family of steel industrialist Henry Phipps Jr., opened the Phipps Garden Apartments at 39th Avenue and 50th Street, on land adjoining Sunnyside Gardens. Designed by Clarence Stein, the original 1931 complex consisted of 22 connected four- and six-story buildings housing 344 families, arranged around a landscaped interior courtyard.^[17][18] A second group of thirteen four-story buildings was added on the northern portion of the superblock in 1935.^[19][20]

The Depression brought heavy losses to the new homeowners of Sunnyside Gardens; about half lost their homes to foreclosure during the 1930s, and marshals attempting evictions were sometimes met with organized resistance.^[8] The remainder of Sunnyside's prewar apartment stock was completed during the 1930s and 1940s, much of it as middle-income rental housing. From the late 1940s onward, many of these buildings were converted to housing cooperative ownership, a tenure form that came to characterize much of the area south of Queens Boulevard.^[18] In the 1940s and 1950s, the apartments of Sunnyside attracted artists and writers from lower Manhattan in such numbers that the neighborhood became known as the "maternity ward of Greenwich Village".^[8]

Sunnyside Garden Arena, at 44-11 Queens Boulevard, operated as a boxing and wrestling venue from the mid-1940s until June 24, 1977. The arena seated about 2,500 spectators and hosted bouts featuring Floyd Patterson, Emile Griffith, José Torres, and Gerry Cooney, as well as Golden Gloves tournaments; under owner Michael Rosenberg in the 1970s the venue's programming also extended to karate, dancing, and bingo. John F. Kennedy delivered a campaign address at the venue on October 27, 1960, less than two weeks before the presidential election,^[21] and the DuMont Television Network broadcast a weekly program, Boxing From Sunnyside Gardens, from the venue from 1949 to 1950.^[22][23] The arena was demolished in late 1977; a memorial monument was installed at the former site (now a Wendy's restaurant) in October 2012, and a portion of 45th Street was co-named in its honor in 2014.^[22][24] On August 6, 1931, the jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke died in his apartment at 43-30 46th Street.^[25]

1960s–1990s

Beginning in the 1960s and accelerating after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, successive waves of immigrants settled in Sunnyside. In July 1977, The New York Times reported that Armenian refugees fleeing the civil war in Lebanon were resettling in the neighborhood, describing how "the exotic sounds of spoken Armenian have been spreading in the homey sidestreets of Sunnyside, Queens."^[26][27] Korean, Turkish, and Romanian immigrants arrived in the 1980s, and Mexican immigrants in growing numbers in the 1990s and 2000s.^[8] A 1994 New York Times real-estate feature reported that over the previous fifteen years the neighborhood's population had grown from about 22,000 to nearly 30,000, attributing the increase to young professional families seeking proximity to Manhattan in a suburban setting.^[28] Through the 1990s, Sunnyside also saw a resurgence of its Irish community alongside the existing Korean, Spanish, Romanian, German, and Greek populations, with several Irish pubs opening on or near Queens Boulevard as gathering places for a younger generation of Irish residents.^[29] Subsequent immigration also drew significant numbers of arrivals from the Andean countries of Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, and from Bangladesh and Nepal, joining established Irish, Italian, Greek, German, and Polish residents.^[9] Cooperative apartment ownership and stable rental tenancies in the prewar housing stock contributed to the area's demographic continuity through the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s and the disinvestment that affected many neighboring areas.^[9]

According to Ultimate Classic Rock and contemporaneous reporting, the rock band Kiss played its first concert on January 30, 1973, at the Coventry (formerly the Popcorn Pub), a small live-music venue at 47-03 Queens Boulevard near 47th Street; the Ramones also played early shows at the venue.^[30][31]

In 1974 the New York City Department of City Planning designated Sunnyside Gardens a Special Planned Community Preservation District (together with Fresh Meadows, Parkchester, and the Harlem River Houses) to protect the original design.^[8] The Sunnyside Gardens Conservancy was formed in 1981 to restore the neighborhood, and through its advocacy the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 7, 1984.^[8][32] A further preservation campaign by neighborhood residents culminated in the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation of Sunnyside Gardens (including Phipps Garden Apartments) as a New York City historic district on June 26, 2007.^[20][8]

2000s–present

The Sunnyside Shines business improvement district was authorized by the New York City Council and signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on September 5, 2007, covering 92 properties along Queens Boulevard, Greenpoint Avenue, and South Roosevelt Avenue.^[33]

In 2018, after several years of debate touched off by the death of cyclist Gelacio Reyes the previous year, the New York City Department of Transportation installed parking-protected bicycle lanes on Skillman and 43rd Avenues. The project was opposed by some local merchants and by Queens Community Board 2, which voted against it, but was directed to proceed by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer.^[34]

In 2017 the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Amtrak began a feasibility study for residential development above Sunnyside Yard. A master plan released in March 2020 proposed a 12,000-unit deck of affordable housing above the active rail yard along with 60 acres of new public open space; the plan was not advanced to construction during the de Blasio administration.^[35] Mayor Zohran Mamdani revived the proposal in March 2026.^[36]

In December 2020, Queens Community Board 2 voted 28 to 12 to support a Phipps Houses application to rezone a parking lot at 50-25 Barnett Avenue, on the campus of the existing Phipps Garden Apartments, to permit a seven-story, 167-unit affordable housing building. Twenty-five units were reserved for formerly homeless families at 40 percent of the area median income, with the balance offered at 90 percent of AMI. The proposal drew opposition from some Phipps Garden Apartments tenants and from State Senator Michael Gianaris and Assembly Member Brian Barnwell, who cited concerns about Phipps Houses's management of its existing properties and the affordability of the proposed rents.^[37] The completed building's housing lottery launched in April 2026.^[38]

Sunnyside Gardens

Sunnyside Gardens, built between 1924 and 1928 by the City Housing Corporation, applied the principles of the British garden-city movement at city scale. The development covers 77 acres across about 16 blocks between 43rd and 51st Streets, north of Queens Boulevard.^[15][8] Architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, working with Frederick L. Ackerman and the landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley, designed the development "according to ideals of 'health, open space, greenery, and idyllic community living for all'".^[8] The buildings consist of one-, two-, and three-family attached brick houses with slate roofs, gables, and porches, arranged around open center courts with tree-lined pathways and private and communal flower gardens. Cautley, who designed the gardens, was one of the first female landscape architects in the United States.^[8] The site comprised 1,202 housing units in a mix of cooperative, rental, and limited-dividend tenures.^[15] Within the development, Sunnyside Gardens Park, a privately owned three-acre common space opened in 1926 and maintained by member-residents, is one of only two private residential parks in New York City, alongside Manhattan's Gramercy Park.^[39]

During the Depression of the 1930s, about half the homeowners of Sunnyside Gardens lost their homes to foreclosure; eviction attempts by city marshals were sometimes met with organized resistance.^[8] The 40-year covenants that had governed the development's open spaces expired in 1966, after which some residents fenced their rear yards, plastered over brick facades, or built driveways, breaking up several of the original courts.^[8][28]

In 1974 the New York City Department of City Planning designated Sunnyside Gardens a Special Planned Community Preservation District in order to protect the original design.^[8] The Sunnyside Gardens Conservancy was formed in 1981, and through its advocacy the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 7, 1984.^[32][8] The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Sunnyside Gardens (including Phipps Garden Apartments) a New York City historic district on June 26, 2007.^[20]

Phipps Garden Apartments

Adjacent to Sunnyside Gardens, on 39th Avenue between 50th and 52nd Streets, the Phipps Garden Apartments complex was built in two phases by Phipps Houses, the philanthropic real-estate organization established by the family of Henry Phipps Jr. The first phase, designed by Clarence Stein, opened on September 1, 1931, and consisted of 22 connected four- and six-story buildings housing 344 families arranged around a landscaped interior courtyard.^[17] A second northern group of thirteen four-story buildings was completed in 1935.^[19] Half of the buildings are six-story elevator houses; half are four-story walk-ups. Original rents in 1931 ranged from $31 to $80 per month.^[17] Phipps Garden Apartments is a contributing property within the Sunnyside Gardens Historic District.^[20]

Apartment houses south of Queens Boulevard

The area south of Queens Boulevard was built up with prewar six-story brick apartment houses in walk-up and elevator forms between roughly 1917 and the early 1940s. The 1917 extension of the Flushing Line subway across Queens Boulevard made the area accessible to commuters from Manhattan.^[5] Architectural treatments include Tudor Revival, Renaissance Revival, Colonial Revival, and Art Deco elements, with brick and limestone facades, ornamented entryways, and interior courts.^[18]

Beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, many of the rental apartment buildings in this area were converted to housing cooperative ownership.^[18]

Adaptive reuse and other notable buildings

The former Knickerbocker Laundry Factory at 43-23 37th Avenue, an Art Deco structure built in 1932, was converted to use as the New York Presbyterian Church in the late 1990s. The conversion was reviewed by Herbert Muschamp in The New York Times.^[40] The Celtic Park Apartments, on the site of the former Irish-American Athletic Club athletic field, were built starting in 1933. The nine-acre, 756-unit complex spans 42nd to 44th Streets between 48th and 50th Avenues, straddling the boundary between Sunnyside and adjacent Woodside, and was converted to cooperative ownership in May 1986.^[12][41]

Sunnyside Arch

A steel gantry over 46th Street at its intersection with Queens Boulevard, spelling out "Sunnyside" in metal letters and backlit by neon and later LED lighting, was erected in 1983 as a gateway marker for the neighborhood's principal commercial corridor.^[42] Its lighting has been intermittent in subsequent years and was the subject of a $15,000 LED retrofit announced in 2017.^[43]

Schools

Sunnyside contains public schools in two New York City Department of Education community school districts: District 30 north of Queens Boulevard and District 24 south of Queens Boulevard.^[58]

• PS 150 Sunnyside (grades PK-5)^[59]
• PS 199 Maurice A Fitzgerald (grades PK-5)^[60]
• IS 429 (grades 6–8)
• IS 125 Thomas J McCann Woodside (grades 6–8)^[61]
• Robert F Wagner Junior Secondary School-Arts and Technology (grades 6–12)
• PS 343 The Children's Lab School (grades K-5)
• Academy of Finance and Enterprise (grades 9–12)
• Aviation Career & Technical Education High School (grades 9–12)
• Queens Vocational and Technical High School (grades 9–12)

Library

The Queens Public Library's Sunnyside branch is located at 43-06 Greenpoint Avenue.^[62]

Houses of worship

There are numerous churches and temples in Sunnyside that support its diverse religious communities.^[63]

• New York Presbyterian Church, located at 43-23 37th Avenue, is historically notable; the original structure was built in 1932 as the Knickerbocker Laundry Factory.^[64]
• Mosaic West Church and Community Center is located at 46-01 43rd Avenue. During the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, local business owner Sofia Moncayo led a volunteer-run food pantry at the church.^[65]
• Islamic Institute of New York, located at 55-11 Queens Boulevard
• Sunnyside Muslim Center, located at 39-18 47th Ave
• Queen of Angels Church, located at 44-04 Skillman Avenue.
• Sunnyside Reformed Church, 48-03 Skillman Avenue, organized in July 1896.^[66]
• Mimar Sinan Mosque, Sunnyside, located at 45-06 Skillman Ave.

Subway and bus

Sunnyside is served by the 7 train on the New York City Subway's IRT Flushing Line at three local-only stations: 33rd Street–Rawson Street, 40th Street–Lowery Street, and 46th Street–Bliss Street. Express service on the line runs in the peak direction during rush hours between Queensboro Plaza and Mets–Willets Point; express trains pass through the three Sunnyside stations without stopping. The nearest express stop is 61st Street–Woodside, one stop east of the neighborhood.^[75]

The Q32, Q39, Q60, Q104 and B24 buses operate within Sunnyside, with the Q32 and Q60 running along Queens Boulevard.

Roads

The neighborhood is connected to Manhattan via the Long Island Expressway and the Queens–Midtown Tunnel and to Brooklyn via the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway. Queens Boulevard, a wide multi-lane arterial, runs through the middle of the neighborhood.

Bicycle infrastructure

In 2018 the New York City Department of Transportation installed parking-protected bicycle lanes on Skillman and 43rd Avenues, replacing curbside parking with separated bike lanes between approximately 43rd Street and 50th Street. The project followed the November 2017 death of cyclist Gelacio Reyes, who was struck by a driver on 43rd Avenue. After several years of public hearings in which Queens Community Board 2 voted against the proposal and Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer initially withheld support, Mayor Bill de Blasio directed the Department of Transportation to proceed and construction began in August 2018.^[34]

Citi Bike docking stations were installed across Sunnyside and adjacent Woodside in spring 2022 as part of the system's expansion into western Queens, with about 71 stations planned for the two neighborhoods.^[76]

Rail and ferry

Sunnyside Yard, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad and now owned by Amtrak, occupies the northern edge of the neighborhood and serves as a staging facility for Amtrak and NJ Transit trains using Pennsylvania Station.^[6]

A passenger station at Sunnyside has been a long-standing proposal. The East Side Access project's 2001 environmental impact statement contemplated a Long Island Rail Road station at Queens Boulevard and Skillman Avenue, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 2025–2044 20-year needs assessment included a cost evaluation for a station at the same location to be served by both the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad following completion of the Penn Station Access project.^[77] A Sunnyside station is not part of the funded scope of Penn Station Access, which provides four new Metro-North stations in the East Bronx; that project is currently expected to be substantially complete in 2030.^[78]

The nearest NYC Ferry landing is at Hunters Point South in Long Island City, approximately one mile west of southern Sunnyside.^[79]