MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens: A Garden City in the Village?
Landmarked on August 2nd, 1967, the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District, is the one of the City’s oldest. Comprised of only 22 buildings, it is one of the City’s smallest historic districts, but also one of its most unique.
Encompassing two rows of houses, twelve facing MacDougal Street and ten on Sullivan Street, they were originally built in the Greek Revival style during the 19th century. The rows were developed by merchant Nicholas Low, who built the MacDougal Street houses in 1844 and the Sullivan Street houses in 1850. Their current appearances are from ca. 1920 alterations which added colorful neo-Federal style facades to the houses. But these striking facades are hardly their most distinctive feature. The same renovations which gave us the facades, designed by architects Francis Y. Joannes and Maxwell Hyde, also combined the backyards, creating a communal garden space between the rows.
Their design is considered an innovative city planning concept completed following the purchase of the rows by a company known as “Hearth and Home.” Headed by William Sloane Coffin, who intended the houses to be an “alternative to the apartment house problem,” meaning the then-frequent practice of developing middle class housing by replacing older rowhouses with apartment houses.
The plan for this row of houses inspired other developments around the city. In Manhattan these include the Turtle Bay Gardens on East 48th and East 49th Street, and the Bleecker Gardens, just a few blocks away on Bleecker and West 10th.
In Queens, similar ideas were used on a much larger scale. Entire neighborhoods like Jackson Heights, Forest Hills Gardens and Sunnyside Gardens followed a similar approach, creating planned communities featuring housing that surrounded communal green space. These developments took direct inspiration from the Garden City Movement, an English City Planning Concept conceived by planner Ebenezer Howard in 1898. The theory sought to incorporate housing with communal green spaces and aimed to reap the benefits of living in both the countryside and the city by developing Garden Communities surrounding a central urban downtown. In New York City, these developments intended to create housing for middle- and lower-income New Yorkers and avoid the issues of overcrowded tenements.
The earliest of Queens’ “Garden City’s” is Forest Hills Gardens. Begun in 1912-1913, it was modeled after the Hampstead Garden Suburb on the outskirts of London. Designed by architect Grosvenor Atterbury and landscape Architect Frederick Law Olmstead, they intended to create housing for all income levels. Ultimately, however, the costly construction of the nearly 800 free standing homes and apartment houses resulted in the area only being affordable for wealthier residents.
The thoroughly planned community includes a mix of neo-Georgian, American Arts and Crafts, and Tudor style buildings, all situated around winding tree-lined streets.
By the mid-1910s, another Queens community would follow a similar development path. Built primarily by the Queensboro Corporation, which had begun erecting buildings and a few smaller rowhouses early in the decade, they turned to the Garden City Movement to create the innovative garden apartments of Jackson Heights by 1915.
The first of these were Willow Court (1915) and the Plymouth Apartments (1916), both constructed with reduced lot coverage (only 50% of the land is developed, while the legal limit was 70%), allowing for the creation of communal garden spaces between the buildings. The Queensboro Corporation would continue to build garden apartments around the neighborhood, and rowhouses with manicured gardens in front.
Also nearby in western Queens, Sunnyside Gardens was built between 1924 and 1928, developed by the city Housing Corporation led by Alexander Bing. Designed by architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, the community includes houses and small apartment buildings covering 16 different blocks. This includes twelve courts, with two to three story homes that overlook shared garden space. The community was developed in part by the Regional Planning Association of America, which had sought toand successfully created quality housing for low-income workers.
It is unknown if William Sloane Coffin, and his company “Hearth and Home” took direct inspiration from the Garden City Movement. The twenty-two houses share similarities to the garden cities in Queens: an emphasis on open space with desire to create respectable housing for the middle class.
To learn more about the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District read the district’s Designation Report HERE. To learn more about sites connected to our neighborhoods, explore our Beyond the Village and Back Maps; Manhattan Below 72nd Street and Upper Manhattan and Other Boroughs.