Neighborhood
Sunnyside Gardens
Today, the 55 acres of Sunnyside Gardens are contained within 17 city blocks, with 563 row houses, 32 co-ops, and hundreds of rental apartments—all adjoined by garden spaces. Sunnyside Park, an original amenity of the neighborhood, is New York City’s largest private park. Parking garages and commercial shops are located around the edges of the community.
Blocks within the street grid are known as Courts, with buildings enclosing interior garden commons. Lanes and walkways lead through each block to divide the interior space into three of four smaller garden areas.
Send us a picture of something exemplary about Sunnyside Gardens (flora, fauna, you name it), and we’ll thank you by posting the best images to the Web. E-mail us at Neighborhood@SunnysideGardens.us.
Present and Passing Distinctions
These three sugar maples, planted as memorial trees in the 1980s, bring the fall colors of Vermont to Sunnyside Park, sometimes in a simultaneous array of green, yellow, and hot orange. Photo ©2004 JFA Associates.
Late October ushers in this display across from the entrance to Sunnyside Park. Two sorrel trees (Oxydendrum arboreum, also called sourwood) were grown by Dominic Taranto, remembered as a chef at Delmonico’s, when he owned the house at the corner of 39th Avenue and 49th Street. This tree, near the corner, is the larger, its salmon red backed by the maroon of its companion to the south. Thanks to Ed Leonick.
In Lincoln and Washington Courts where the lanes through the block divide the interior court gardens, Marjorie Cautley selected groves of ginkgo trees that become towers of yellow in early November. Photo taken from Washington's south court by Savery Moore, Nov. 6, 2005, with a Canon EOS.
Sunnyside Park shows a festive face in mid December, when its front hedge of barberries blushes at the thought of wintry weather.
The pride of Colonial Court, this crabapple is the most bountiful in a mini-orchard of the fruit trees paralleling the 48th Street sidewalk. Photographed on October 29, 2015; thanks to arborist Wayne Morris
Set your expectations on the skies where Hamilton Court’s center lane nears 46th Street. This maple (Acer palmatum), planted by Ruth and Irving Kappel in their private garden after the Second World War, is one of the treasures in our garden environment, a kaleidoscopic canopy in November. Taken November 22, 2014, ©2014 JFA Associates; thanks to Wayne Morris.
A September sunset erupts like billows of smoke and flame from a street lined with London planes.
''Wait for it,'' a wintertime surprise is documented by an alert photographer. ©2015 Ronald Bradford
A Sunnyside Gardens snowscape.
A consolation in the coldest months is our visitor from Upstate and Canada, the Dark-Eyed Junco, "slate-colored" above like Sunnyside Gardens rooftops, below as white as a fresh snowfall, sometimes with a hint of buff on its flanks.
Sunnysiders’ dreams of spring sometimes include tall bearded irises floating above a front garden.
Are we an arboretum? Here, the catkins of a sweet birch frame a saucer magnolia, near sunset in April; ©2015 JFA Associates. Tell us your favorite Sunnyside Gardens tree and let’s celebrate it as a neighborhood jewel.
The best appreciated and most rewarding single element in Phipps’ historic landscape is Marjorie Sewell Cautley’s Cherry Court at the northeast corner of the center garden, flanked by buildings M through R. It overcasts its purple haze late in April and early May.
On the west side of Sunnyside Park, a Japanese cherry (Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan') spins a cotton-candy bower above the 48th Street sidewalk. Photographed May 7, 2014, ©2014 JFA Associates; thanks to Wayne Morris.
April on Skillman Avenue. To experience the garden aspects of Sunnyside Gardens, April and May are an unparalleled time to visit.
Every spring, parts of Sunnyside Gardens roll out carpets of fig buttercup (Ficaria verna) in glossy yellow and green, which vanish below ground at the approach of summer. Formerly classified as Ranunculus ficaria and also known as lesser celandine, this plant is sometimes confused with native marsh marigolds. But it is non-native and a potential threat that gardeners must police from time to time.
The finest Japanese dissectum maple in Sunnyside Gardens? Seen in May 2014, this contender was planted by Tony Shulsk in the early 1980s and embellishes the deep front gardens in the 51-00 block of 39th Avenue. Thanks to Mary Beth Maye.
Around 1970, Vera Brennan bought a small crape myrtle at Woolworth’s on Greenpoint Avenue. Everybody told her it would succumb to our cold winters, but they underestimated the gardening skills of Vera and her husband James: It’s the finest Lagerstroemia in the Gardens, its raspberry clusters arching out toward 48th Street north of 39th Avenue.
Sabine Heinlein took this artful photo in July 2009 with a Canon PowerShot G10 and inspired a Flora and Fauna feature. House Sparrows aren't rare, having overpopulated North America since being introduced from Europe in 1850. But indoors? This female seems at ease in the garb of native European ancestors—Sabine's mother's dirdl, hanging on the wall in her Colonial Court home.
Clear blue is such an uncommon hue in the garden that while an American jay is hardly an uncommon sight, it invariably makes a singular impression.
A fringe benefit of life in Sunnyside Gardens is sharing one’s habitat with expectant parents and new generations of nature lovers. This robin’s nest, balanced in a front garden, was photographed on film using a 50mm Nikon lens in spring 1990.
Child-rearing the Gardens over: “Mama, where’s dinner?” A robin mother baby-sits while the whole family wonders when father will bring home the bacon. July 13, 2014, ©2014 JFA Associates.
Having fled its nest, a juvenile robin toddles about, characterized by its spotted, not yet orange breast.
A Great Egret perches at dusk on Hamilton Court's north wall, facing 39th Avenue and Sunnyside Towers. (Ornithological note: yellow bill, black legs and feet.) This magnificent visitor was photographed with an iPhone just before 8 pm on August 15, 2013, by Amy FitzGerald.
Hawks hover about the treetops in Sunnyside Gardens but rarely station themselves at ground level. On patrol for rodents? Michele Sullivan grabbed this shot with an iPhone on July 23, 2013, under the 52 St/Lincoln elevated stop in John V. Daniels Jr. Park. Its rufous tail feathers and white breast mark it as a Red-Tailed Hawk.
This resident kept a stealthful watch on the south end of Lincoln Court's grand center court, until John Dermody spotted and identified it as a Great Horned Owl, and Amy FitzGerald captured it with a Nikon D5000 in December 2011. See its "horns" (ears), white "bib," and underparts streaked, or barred, horizontally.
Neighbors have reported seeing a pheasant on the outskirts of Sunnyside Park, but the rarest bird we can document is this American Woodcock, sunning in the middle of a shared walkway through a Sunnyside Gardens block
A young starling stands sentinel from its nest within a knothole high in the bough of a planetree. This fun sighting carries with it a hard lesson, as adaptable congregations of these European birds rob our native species of nesting sites like this. Photo © 2015 JFA Associates.
While robins aren't truly the first sign of spring, because they winter over in our climes, you can set your seasonal calendar when every Goldfinch male starts to sport his yellow waistcoat. Photo © 2021 Herbert Reynolds.
Historically, its call suggested a wail of lamentation, but the peaceful and whimsical appearance of a mourning dove is surpassed only by a companionate pair. Photo © 2021 JFA Associates.
For years, neighbors in Lincoln Court have launched winged majesty in Sunnyside Gardens by raising butterflies. These two black swallowtail caterpillars, after feasting on fennel (right), enter their chrysalis stage (left). See the result in the next image. Photographed with a Canon SD700 IS by Lawrence Lipnik in June 2006.
Emergent as an adult, an Eastern Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) in a Lincoln Court garden, July 2004. Photo by Lawrence Lipnik, using a Canon PowerShot S400.
A male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) alights on English ivy, July 2014.
Most (Un) Wanted: The dangerously invasive spotted lanternfly needs to be eradicated, and it offers a reward for its elimination. If you swat it deftly, it opens its spotted outer wings in a defense gesture to flash red and black underneath.
While there’s no quick recovery from the havoc of Superstorm Sandy at the end of October 2012, all sidewalks were replaced and street-tree pits replanted within weeks of the destruction. The northeast of our neighborhood suffered the severest tree losses; this London plane had graced the east side of 48th St., flanking Jefferson Court.
When City contractors trenched 47th Street in 2012 to lay new drainage pipes, their temporary protective fence became a playground for this visitor, whether practicing its balancing act or just "playing 'possum." A Roosevelt Court façade adds the lush backdrop to this telescopic photo, ©2012 Ronald Bradford.
In the early 2000s, some commercial truckers developed a bad habit, trimming their travel times by ignoring lawful truck routes, much to the detriment of 48th Street, 39th Avenue, and other streets where only local deliveries are permitted. A coalition of neighbors rallied to protest and brought the attention needed for additional traffic signs and police enforcement that steered trucks away from local streets.
In 2005 and 2006, volunteers from Harrison Place rejuvenated Sunnyside Park’s front planting beds, laying an edging of Belgian block and planting rows of purple barberry, a historic variety Marjorie Sewell Cautley chose for colorful hedges in her landscape design for Phipps Garden Apartments. Troweling in the foreground is Logan Sullivan, a 5th generation Sunnyside Gardener. Photo by Arthur Pearson.
A Thanksgiving Day tradition over many years was the noontime singing of “Happy Birthday” to our esteemed eldest neighbor, Ethel Plimack, a Sunnyside Gardener since 1941, who lived to be weeks shy of 108 years young. Here’s a panorama from the 2015 street party.
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer presents a City Council Proclamation to honor dance therapist Elizabeth Polk at the 2013 National Register plaque dedication. (See details on the History page.)
David Hartman, Barry Lewis, and James Nicoloro film an interior court garden for the PBS/Channel 13 documentary "A Walk Around Queens." Photo ©2004 JFA Associates.
Our biggest splash in recent years on the international scene was in Japan, where NHK, the national TV network, presented the borough of Queens on its popular travel show “The World City Walk” (also known as “Somewhere Street”). Selecting Sunnyside Gardens along with Long Island City, Astoria, and Jackson Heights, NHK’s crew (led by director Hiroshi Serita, at left), shot in May 2015 in Hamilton and Lincoln Courts. Thanks to Masako Uetani.
Enduring Charms
Early in 2017, a Sunnyside window on 49th Street reflects what’s best about the neighborhood. While our planners did not open doors to all prospective newcomers in the 1920s, they were more liberal than most developers of the period, and in the decades since, residents have set a very high standard for inclusion.
Flying colors for our City’s dedicated professionals who sustained lives and hope through the grimmest months of the Covid pandemic.
Historic rows of London planes grace most streetscapes, like these three blocks of 39th Avenue in Harrison Place, at the entrance to Sunnyside Park. Photo by JFA Associates.
The interplay of roof lines, handsomely crafted brick facades, porches and front gardens along 44th Street in Lincoln Court. The actor Judy Holliday grew up in the house at right, with its typical sun porch tiered in window panes. Photo ©2004 JFA Associates.
Lincoln Court’s 45th Street side boasts a unique Sunnyside Gardens house, beloved for its whimsically asymmetrical roofline that swoops low on one side, reminding us of a ski slope. The inventor Nat Horwitt, who designed the numberless wristwatch now marketed as the “Museum Watch,” lived in the house beneath most of the gable.
Original iron porches afford garden balconies for upper floor apartments, and if there’s competition among second-story residents, this one in Hamilton Court is a winner. Cascading from surrounding walls, so-called Boston ivy was an early landscape feature, chosen to soften brick façades (Parthenocissus tricuspidata, it is actually native to China and Japan). Taken by Sunnyside Gardens photographer Ronald Bradford, using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Summer 2013.
Front doors open to a shared garden in the north court of Madison Court North. Photo by JFA Associates.
Most of Jefferson Court dates from 1927, when open front porches were a standard of design, but the south court in Jefferson was built in 1926, and its houses incorporate the wooden front porches characteristic of that year. Its landscape is distinctive, too, with maples to bring autumn reds along with the usual yellows. Photo ©2014 JFA Associates.
Private rear gardens reward passersby through the south center lane in Jefferson Court.
The centerpiece of Hamilton Court’s north garden is a towering stand of evergreen bamboo, surprising viewers while providing residents with a privacy screen almost year-round. (Heavy snows all but flatten it.) This summer 2013 view is by Ronald Bradford.
Exemplifying the contrasts within Sunnyside Gardens' common gardens, Hamilton Court's south court now displays a classic border garden, its specimen trees and perennials beautifully replacing a grove of maples lost in the 1990s to an infestation of Asian longhorned beetles. Photo by JFA Associates.
As Sunnyside’s gardens extend indoors, they enliven window sills, where even a small pot might glow with purple shamrocks (Oxalis triangularis). Photo © 2022 by Işılay Çabuk.
This jewel among jewels is the Sunnyside Community Garden along the north border of the Park. Started by Rod Trounson and Paul Vitolo in the mid 1970s, the garden has been expanded by Peter Coyne and dozens of artful volunteers who have intergrated found objects into the most lovingly tended garden anywhere around. Thanks to Christina Vega.
Exfoliating bark on mature London planes adds tones of brown, green, and manilla, contributing to our affection for them. Some evidence suggests that planes were planted in Sunnyside Gardens before New York City made them the preferred street tree and the leaf became the symbol of the Parks Department.
Every apartment building is decorated in brick, but Phipps Garden Apartments takes the cake, as our leafless winters reveal best. At the top of its front elevation, grilles add to an exuberance that architect Clarence Stein credited to the insistence of the Phipps family, who were his generous clients.
