Sunnyside, Queens

Sunnyside
—  Neighborhoods of New York City  —
The arch over 46th Street at Queens Blvd is located in the heart of Sunnyside
Country United States
State New York
County Queens
Named for Sunnyside Hill Farms
ZIP code 11104
Area code(s) 718, 347, 917

Sunnyside is a neighborhood in the western portion of the New York City borough of Queens, in New York state, in the United States. It shares borders with Hunters Point and Long Island City to the west, Astoria to the north, Woodside to the east and Maspeth to the south. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 2.[1]

Contents

Ethnic community

Ethnicities of Sunnyside's residents include Latin American (Colombians, Ecuadorians, Dominican, and Puerto Rican), Jewish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan, Nepali, Indian, Albanian, Bengali, Greek, Irish, Italian, Turkish and Romanian. Sunnyside is 48.0% White, 28.0% Hispanic/Latino(of any race), 24.0% Asian.

History

Sunnyside, a rural hamlet mostly consisting of small farms and marshland, was incorporated into Long Island City in 1870, and developed into a bedroom community after the Queensboro Bridge was completed in 1909. A large portion of the neighborhood is six-story apartment buildings constructed during the 1920s and '30s. The land was originally owned by French settlers in the 1800s. Sunnyside is derived from Sunnyside Hill Farms, so named by the Bragraws family who owned the land.[2]

The area is known for one of America's first planned communities, Sunnyside Gardens. Constructed from 1924 to 1929, Sunnyside Gardens was one of the first developments to incorporate the "superblock" model in the United States. The residential area has brick row houses of two and a half stories, with front and rear gardens and a landscaped central court shared by all.

This model allowed for denser residential development, while also providing ample open/green-space amenities. Clarence Stein and Henry Wright served as the architects and planners for this development, and the landscape architect was Marjorie Sewell Cautley. These well-planned garden homes are now listed as a historic district and are also home to one of only two private parks in New York City, Gramercy Park being the other.[2]

Famous residents

Sunnyside has produced or nurtured such talents as Ethel Merman, Perry Como, Nancy Walker, Judy Holliday,[3] Joe Spinell, James Caan and Rudy Vallee;[4] artist Raphael Soyer, and writers and social activists such as Lewis Mumford and Suze Rotolo. The Queens-grown punk rock group The Ramones played some of their earliest gigs in Sunnyside pubs during the 1970s. In the years before World War II New York Giants star Hap Moran coached a youth football team, the Mustangs, in Sunnyside Park.

Legendary jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke, "the remote and mysterious jazz cornettist... died in obscurity" in an apartment building at 43–30, 46th Street, in Sunnyside.[5] On the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Greater Astoria Historical Society joined with a number community groups to erect a plaque in his honor.

Films shot in the area

Railyard

Sunnyside is also known for the former Pennsylvania Railroad (now Amtrak) railyard known as Sunnyside Yard. These are a staging area for both Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains leaving from Penn Station.

The proposed East Side Access project will include a new Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train station in Sunnyside at Queens Boulevard along the LIRR's Main Line (into Penn Station) will provide one-stop access for area residents to Midtown Manhattan.[6]

Transportation

Subway – Sunnyside is served by the 7 Train. The following stops are in the Sunnyside area:

Bus – Multiple bus lines run through Sunnyside:

Other – The area has easy access to Manhattan via the Long Island Expressway & Queens Midtown Tunnel and to Brooklyn via the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Schools and Public Services

Elementary Schools

Intermediate Schools

Public Services

Parks

References

  1. ^ Queens Community Boards, New York City. Accessed September 3, 2007.
  2. ^ a b Community and Library History, Queens Borough Public Library. Accessed February 14, 2008.
  3. ^ Shepard, Richard F. "Memories of My Queens", The New York Times, September 3, 1995. Accessed October 19, 2007. "My earliest memories are of Sunnyside, about 1929 and 1930, when my family moved to Queens and bought a house in Sunnyside Gardens, on what was then called Locust Street. Our next-door neighbors were a family by the name of Tuvim, whose daughter was to become a star of Broadway and Hollywood named Judy Holliday, although as a younger-than-teen-age Queens girl she gave little evidence of such talent."
  4. ^ "Spare Times", The New York Times, October 12, 2001. Accessed October 19, 2007. "Hometown NYC: Sunnyside, Queens. A tour of the area that was once home to Rudy Vallee, led by Saul Bennett, a poet who was raised in the neighborhood."
  5. ^ "Solo in Sunnyside; Frank Gray travels through Queens, New York, in search of the late Bix Beiderbecke." The Guardian, April 30, 2005.
  6. ^ Vandam, Jeff. "An Enclave at Once Snug and Inclusive", The New York Times, February 4, 2007. Accessed February 14, 2008. "When the Long Island Rail Road's East Side Access project is completed in 2013, its trains, too, will go to Grand Central. Sunnyside's new station in the system will create a nonstop commute to Midtown."

External links