You can see Ad for the Hotel; bar at the Hotel; both circa 1890

Photo of the Sunnyside Hotel from the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce

In 1875, the White Line (the Newtown and Flushing Railroad) of the LIRR opened its ‘Sunnyside Station’ across the street from the Hotel. Unsuccessful, the White Line was abandoned in 1876 and replaced with horsecar service in 1877. Transportation took a step backwards, and development of the surrounding lands was hampered for a while.

In 1902, The Pennsylvania Railroad started buying up property south of Northern Boulevard, leveled the land and filled in the ponds and swamps. In 1909, the Queensboro Bridge was opened. In 1910, the Sunnyside Railyard was built, shifting the community to its present location.

Today, the Sunnyside Railyard is sometimes mentioned as the potential site of a new stadium, but it is currently being used jointly by Amtrak, LIRR and freight lines as a storage and maintenance facility. 

The turn-of-the-century English Garden City movement of Sir Ebenezer Howard and Sir Raymond Unwin served as the inspiration for Sunnyside Gardens, built from 1924-1928. This housing experiment was aimed at showing civic leaders that they could solve social problems and beautify the city, all while making a small profit. The City Housing Corporation, whose founders were then-schoolteacher and future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, ethicist Felix Adler, attorney and housing developer Alexander Bing, urban planner Lewis Mumford, architects Clarence S. Stein, Henry Wright, and Frederick Lee Ackerman and landscape architect Marjorie S. Cautley, was responsible for the project.

The design of the Gardens was novel in that large areas of open space were included in the plan. Construction costs were minimized, which allowed those with limited means the opportunity to afford their own homes. Rows of one- to three-family private houses with co-op and rental apartment buildings were mixed together and arranged around common gardens, with stores and garages placed around the edges of the neighborhood. Just about every interior window in the Gardens offers a view of a landscaped commons.