Phipps Garden Apartments I

51-01 39th Avenue | also 50-01 39th Avenue | Sunnyside | built 1931

Open on the map3 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1931

    Phipps Houses builds garden apartments for white-collar workers on land bought from Sunnyside's developer

    Read more

    The Society of Phipps Houses, the model-tenement group started by steel magnate Henry Phipps, bought the blocks between 50th and 52nd Streets and 39th and Barnett Avenues from the City Housing Corporation, the company behind neighboring Sunnyside Gardens. Phipps meant this complex for white-collar clerical workers, not the poorer factory workers of its earlier Manhattan projects. Clarence Stein drew the plans, the City Housing Corporation's construction company built it, and it was limited-dividend "social housing" expected to return 6 percent.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1931

    Stein closes 51st Street and wraps 344 apartments around one landscaped courtyard

    Because the developers could close 51st Street, then Stone Street, the first Phipps campaign of 1931-32 had one building site 460 feet wide and 400 feet deep. Six six-story elevator buildings and sixteen four-story walk-ups were joined in a hollow square housing 344 families along the whole 39th Avenue blockfront. Landscape designer Marjorie S. Cautley laid out the courtyard, meant as a park rather than a playground, with a sprinkler system fed by a private well, and the Phipps family gave six full-grown elms for it.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1931

    Phipps tenants get a social hall, a nursery school, roof terraces and a playground across the avenue

    Stein reserved basement rooms for a Social Hall, a Community Room and a Nursery School, and covered the roofs in slate, with shelters and pergolas, so tenants could use them as extra outdoor space. Residents were allowed to join the Sunnyside Park Association and take part in its activities, and Phipps Houses bought a lot on the far side of Middleburg Avenue, now 39th Avenue, to serve as a playground for young children.

    “Stein set aside spaces in the basement for a Social Hall, Community Room and Nursery School.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 613 buildings with stories in Sunnyside