39-80 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
The house is built sideways to 44th Street, facing a shared garden instead of the sidewalk
Completed in 1927 on the westernmost block of Sunnyside Gardens, 39-80 44th Street belongs to a row set at right angles to the street, its front door opening onto a hedged central garden. Clarence Stein, quoted in the 2007 landmark report, explained that the plan turned as few houses as possible toward the repetitive rows that outside builders were putting up nearby, giving residents a sense of enclosure. The land slopes down toward 43rd Street, and the houses are reached by brick steps from 44th Street up to a raised garden behind a brick retaining wall.
“Built at the edge of the property in 1927, with the “purpose to front as few houses as possible toward the outside builders’ monotonous rows”…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
2007
A landmark survey finds the house's facade cleaned and half its front yard paved in bluestone
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When the Landmarks Preservation Commission surveyed the Madison Court North row in 2007, it recorded that the brick front of 39-80 44th Street had been cleaned and that half of its small front yard was paved with bluestone set in concrete. Its windows were one-over-one aluminum sashes, while the concrete stoop kept its historic metal railing. Out back, the rear yard had been raised and paved, with a chain-link fence and metal gate.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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