New bike parking in LIC! [Streetsblog]
Ireland lives in Butcher Block
in Sunnyside. [Let's Meet Up in Queens]
The HDC rates the landmarking of Sunnyside Gardens one of the best in 2007. [Historic Districts Council Newsstand]
Tales of the X68 Express Bus From Midtown to Floral Park, Queens . [NY Times]
Muss project gets OK from state on remediation
. [Times Ledger]
Photo credit: Vidiot
on Flickr via a Creative Commons license
Springfield Gardens homeowners hope to lock out prison [NY Daily News]
Garbage in NYC [Gotham Gazette]
Listen up Queens: today is “the deadline for residents and business owners who suffered damages during last summer’s severe storm to file for federal assistance.” [NY1]
Zoning rules worry Sunnyside Gardens. [Times Ledger]
Preservationists Mark 10 Yrs. In Richmond Hill [Queens Chronicle]
Photo credit: Meg Cotner
Monday evening, in a 49-0 vote, the City Council voted unanimously to make Sunnyside Gardens a landmarked historic district. It’s also now the largest historic district in Queens, all 77 acres of it. In Eric Gioia’s words “This shows you don’t have to have a mansion to be landmarked”.
Related:
Sunnyside Gardens Landmarked [amNY]
Sunnyside Gardens named landmark by city [Times Ledger]
Action on Development in Brooklyn and Queens [NY Times]
The Times Ledger reports that the City Council’s subcommittee on Landmarks voted unanimously on Tuesday to recommend landmark status for Sunnyside Gardens. Next Monday the 29th the proposal will go for a final vote before the City Council.
Sunnyside Gardens landmarking goes to Council vote
[Times Ledger]
Once again, some in Fresh Meadows, Queens look backwards and away concerning pedestrian and bicycle safety. [Streetsblog]
Save the Elmhust Public Library! [Historic Districts Council Newsstand]
Storm damage in Queens is overlooked. [City Room]
There are ice sculptors in Long Island City. [LICNYC]
Sunnyside Gardens is getting a facelift; too bad the Queens Tribune can’t get some of their facts right. [Historic Districts Council Newsstand]
The 11434 gets new green buses. [The Progressive Southside]
It’s move-in day at 2 Court Square [Long Island City]
Jamaica rezoning - development foes Weprin, Genaro and Avella wish really hard that it wouldn’t happen, but admit it’s inevitable. [Queens Chronicle]
Kevin Walsh took some snaps in LIC, found a lot of old buildings to indicate that LIC isn’t going to hell in a handbasket after all. [Forgotten NY via LICNYC]
Photo credit: Meg Cotner
From the Historic Districts Council Newsstand comes this annoucement for an upcoming lecture on new historic districts in NYC, including Sunnyside Gardens!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Our Latest Landmarks: Recent New York City Historic Districts
HDC’s Executive Director Simeon Bankoff will present an overview of recently designated and calendared historic districts throughout New York City. His lecture will be augmented by a question and answer session featuring some of the city’s most hard-working preservation activists, including Fred Baer of the Fiske Terrace Association, Denise Brown of the Crown Heights North Association, architect Laura Heim of the Sunnyside Gardens Preservation Alliance and Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.Lectures are free of charge, but reservations are required. Reception to follow. All events take place at 6:00pm at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, 232 East 11th Street, Manhattan. RSVP at 212-614-9107 or lbelfer@hdc.org
Related:
HDC Summer Lecture Series [HDC Newsstand]
The NY Times brings us an article about the flip side of the rosy view of the landmarking of Sunnyside Gardens. Turns out there were some very vocal opponents in the neighborhood to the landmarking, so vocal that their dissenting opinions have led to mutual intolerance among the neighbors. One guy, who was one of the most vocal opponents to landmarking, is convinced that a neighbor ratted on his attic extension, resulting in a stop work order on his house. Because of this, he is forced to rent an apartment while his house stands there empty. Another guy was reported to the Department of Buildings for a deck he built. This is craziness!
I did find this interesting:
Sunnyside Gardens has a history of tortuous debate over preservation. In the 1920s, its designers, Clarence Stein, Henry Wright and Frederick Lee Ackerman, rejected many of the conventions of single-family homes. They banned driveways and garages and replaced individual yards with open courtyards running down the centers of blocks — an approach they thought would encourage neighbors to mingle and share space.
I’m sure the SUV-loving Sunnyside Gardens residents would not stand for having their driveways and garages taken away from them.
Related:
A Pocket of Queens Brimming With History, and Now Resentment [NY Times]
Sunnyside Gardens - Newest Historic District in NYC [previously on OuterB]
Gothamist brings us some other POVs on the Sunnyside Gardens landmarking of yesterday. The article is linktastic!
See:
Preservationists Win Sunnyside Gardens Landmarking [Gothamist]
And the largest at that!
The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted on it this morning. Sunnyside Gardens is now the seventh historic district in Queens, bringing the total number of historic districts in NYC to 88. A nice description of the neighborhood comes from the Historic Districts Council:
Constructed between 1924 and 1928 on barren land in western Queens, the new historic district consists of a series of nine “courts” or rows of townhouses and nine small apartment buildings (four to six stories tall), built on all or part of 16 blocks, a total of 624 buildings. The district also includes the Phipps Garden Apartment buildings (two courtyard apartment buildings constructed in 1932 and 1935) and Sunnyside Park, one of only two private parks in New York City.
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. Built by the City Housing Corporation following the tenets of the Regional Plan Association of America, the development’s architects Clarence Stein, Henry Wright and Frederick Ackerman set to work creating a neighborhood that would uphold the ideal of “health, open space, greenery, and idyllic living for all.”
It’s important to note that there were a number of residents that opposed the landmarking. This is mainly because employees of the LPC, during their canvassing of the streets of Sunnyside Gardens to record descriptions of the houses, made a fair number of errors in their recording. This could impact future work on these houses and make for the process to be a royal PIA.
Related:
Sunnyside Gardens Designated as NYC’s Newest Historic District [Historic Districts Council Newsstand]
Sunnyside Gardens named a historic district [The Real Deal]
Who’s Calling That a Peaked Roof? [NY Times]
Neighborhood at Risk: Sunnyside Gardens [Historic Districts Council]
Sunnyside Gardens [queens.about.com]
Broker for Modern Spaces A Full Service Real Estate Company, Based out of Long Island City. A Real Estate Obssessed Broker / Blogger, Native New Yorker and resident of Long Island City. Lover of Architecture both old and new, Dedicated to giving good service, feel free to email me anytime
