An empty corner lot at 50th Street and 39th Avenue in the Sunnyside Gardens historic district could be headed for development, but a group of park-loving neighbors wants to stop this. Queens Crap shared a notice from the group, Cautley Garden, which included a rendering of the proposed structure and issued a call to preservationist action to turn the lot into a public park. Unfortunately for us, the notice is light on the project deets, only calling it a "post-modern housing development," but there is an interesting architectural twist. The new low-rise building would be joined by the historic Aluminaire House, an all-metal prefabricated home built in 1931 by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey as a case study for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
The property in question was once the playground of the Phipps Garden Apartment complex, and in 2007, it was sold to a private developer after years of neglect and disuse. It's unclear who the developer or architect is, but the full plans will be unveiled at Community Board 2's land use committee meeting this Wednesday. The Department of Buildings database shows new building applications from 2011 for the site, with CAS Architects as the architect of record. We've reached out to the firm to confirm if they are still involved with the site, but it seems likely that they are?two of the firms principals were tasked with relocating and restoring the Aluminaire House in the early aughts.
If you have any other intel on the proposal, please do hit up the tipline.
· Proposal to plop aluminum house into Sunnyside Gardens [Queens Crap]
· Cautley Garden [official]
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