Sunnyside Gardens will soon remember one of the women who envisioned the landscape and architecture that make up the neighborhood today.
The City Council unanimously passed a bill last week that would co-name streets throughout the city, including 45th Street between Skillman and 39th avenues, which will be named in honor of Marjorie Sewell Cautley as “Marjorie Sewell Cautley Way.”
Cautley, who died in 1954, was an American landscape architect who was known for her interest in the design of communal spaces and is remembered as being influential in the design of Sunnyside Gardens, along with other neighborhoods – such as Phipps Garden Apartments, Hillside Homes and Radburn in New Jersey.
“From her efforts to help build Sunnyside Gardens – one of our city’s first affordable housing developments – to developing the Phipps Garden Apartments, Ms. Cautley has established herself as one of America’s premier landscape architects,” Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer said. “It is important that we commemorate her work here in Sunnyside while celebrating the lasting impact she has had on our community.”
Cautley has been credited for the design of Sunnyside Garden’s “superblocks,” where the houses lean toward rear courts, and for her use of native plants in all her projects.
In 1935, she became landscape consultant to the state of New Hampshire and oversaw the construction of 10 state parks, and she also taught at Columbia University and MIT. Later that year she also published a book called “Garden Design.”
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