In 1924, Calvin Coolidge was president, a silent film called “The Sea Hawk” was the biggest grossing movie in the U.S., and a subway ride cost five cents.
In that same year, Colonial Court, the first residential section of Sunnyside Gardens, was completed.
Celebrate this 100th anniversary with historians, architects, writers, residents, and preservationists at Sunnyside Reformed Church on Saturday, Oct. 12, at 2 pm.
Attendance is free.
Native daughter Lucy Beecher Wright Cooney, who wrote a 2024 memoir on growing up there called “The Game,” leads a group of speakers who plan to present on Colonial Court, which is encompassed by Skillman and 43rd avenues and 47th and 48th streets.
Other scheduled presenters include Hannah Jeanne Baghuis, a Dutch scholar of Europe’s early Garden City movement; landscape historian and preservationist Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, who founded the Central Park Conservancy; and Rick Hampson, who lives in Radburn, a sister community in New Jersey.
The public will be encouraged to share stories.
The event kicks off several century celebrations organized by the Sunnyside Gardens Preservation Alliance — and funded in part by the Clarence S. Stein Institute — that will honor the openings of the other sections.
Patterned after the Garden City movement, Sunnyside Gardens was constructed between 1924 and 1928. It spans 16 blocks of mostly one- and two-family houses with common courtyards. An official NYC landmarked district since 2007, the area is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sunnyside Reformed Church is at the corner of 48th Street and Skillman Avenue.
Editor’s note: The Sunnyside Gardens Oral History Program records interviews with past and present residents. They are accessible at Cornell University Rare and Manuscript Collections and the Archives at Queens Library. Plus, the Sunnyside Gardens Digital Archive makes copies of local photos and artifacts. To share historic items, send an e-mail to [email protected].
Top image: Sunnyside Gardens Preservation Alliance;
bottom image: Rob MacKay