39-14 44th Street

Sunnyside | built 1927

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1927
Easements filed on May 2, 1927 bind this house's block to shared gardens for forty years
Every buyer at Sunnyside Gardens signed covenants with the deed, and the copy for Block 182, the Madison Court block where this house stands, is dated May 2, 1927. The mortgage banks insisted that most of the easements last only forty years, generally to 1966. A few were permanent, such as utility rights and the rule that light and air to homes not be blocked, and at Madison Court the walks through some common gardens were covered too.
“At the insistence of the banks that were granting the mortgages, most easements were not made permanent but were intended to last for forty years…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
2007
Surveyors find a garage door cut into this house's basement and its back yard paved over
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The 2007 landmark survey describes 39-14 as a Type B house with aluminum windows, a newer wood door and a concrete stoop that still carried its historic metal railing. A historic window and spigot survived at the front basement. In back the basement had been stuccoed and fitted with a garage door, through-wall air conditioners projected from the first and second floors, and the whole rear yard had been paved with a raised brick and concrete patio.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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