Sunnyside
Neighborhood Intelligence

Sunnyside is best known for Sunnyside Gardens, one of the nation's earliest planned garden communities. The City Housing Corporation built it in the 1920s on a site north of Queens Boulevard between 43rd and 52nd Streets, with architects Clarence Stein, Henry Wright, and Frederick Ackerman and landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley designing low-rise attached brick houses around shared interior courtyards. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and designated a New York City historic district in 2007.

Sunnyside Gardens Park, set aside by the developer at the eastern edge of the site, is the largest privately held park in the city and, with Gramercy Park, one of only two members-only parks. The Phipps Garden Apartments, begun in 1931 by the Phipps Houses philanthropy at 39th Avenue and 50th Street, adjoin the district. The Sunnyside Arch spans 46th Street just south of Queens Boulevard, the Thalia Spanish Theatre on Greenpoint Avenue presents bilingual Spanish and Latin American theater, music, and dance, and the Queens Public Library's Sunnyside branch serves the neighborhood. Skillman Avenue and Queens Boulevard are its main commercial corridors.