Читать книгу Sunnyside Gardens - Jeffrey A. Kroessler - Страница 6

THIS BOOK HAS HAD a very long gestation period. As an undergraduate history major at Hobart College, I developed an interest in utopias and dystopias, and then I was fortunate to later take Frank E. Manuel’s course in utopian thought while pursuing an MA at New York University. I first researched Sunnyside Gardens when I was studying with Richard C. Wade at the CUNY Graduate School, and it formed a chapter in my dissertation on the urbanization of Queens. How do utopian aspirations play out in practice? Historically, not well.

While a graduate student researching Queens, I became involved with local historical societies and preservation groups. In that way I met the individuals who had formed the Sunnyside Foundation to bring Sunnyside Gardens back to the form its designers intended. I have remained active in citywide preservation organizations—the Historic Districts Council, the Municipal Art Society, the City Club of New York—and have sought to bring a historian’s insights into preservation controversies of the moment. That experience certainly contributed to the making of this book.

After history and preservation, architecture is the third dimension. Many of my observations and insights were facilitated by architect Laura Heim, my wife. We bought a house in Sunnyside Gardens in 2004, just in time for the fight over whether it should be designated a historic district. During the sometimes unpleasant disputes that ensued, we countered the inaccurate statements of the opponents of designation, I with historical facts, and she with architectural analysis. We had fun. At a key moment of the struggle, she put together images of what could happen to the little brick houses under the present rules—vinyl siding and stucco affixed to facades, Palladian windows, garish paint schemes. It was a turning point. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Sunnyside Gardens and Phipps Garden Apartments a historic district in 2007. I shudder to think what could have happened to this historic planned community had it not been designated, and worse, what would have been the fate of the landmarks law had misinformation and unwarranted fears torpedoed this designation.

Since opening her practice here in 2006, Laura has worked on dozens of homes in Sunnyside, bringing a contemporary sensibility into the protected brick buildings. Her process has involved analyzing the surprisingly numerous housing types, which revealed how they evolved over the five years of construction. She drafted plans for each court to highlight key features and generated drawings of each block. This book proves the benefits of a marriage of history and architecture, each incomplete without the other.

Sunnyside Gardens: Planning and Preservation in a Historic Garden Suburb brought together the many strands of my life, and in a sense it was inevitable: I grew up on Long Island, in Garden City.