From 1954, “Sunnyside Yards” probably requires some explanation for people unfamiliar with western Queens. The yard (foreground) was built with Penn Station in the aughts because there was simply not enough room near the station, in Manhattan, for a proper yard. So, except for a tiny storage yard west of the station, train storage and sorting takes place a couple of miles away, on the other side of the East River. The yard was also built to handle freight coming down from the north over the Hell Gate Bridge; in the photo we see boxcars belong to the Georgia Railroad, the Southern Pacific, the Grand Trunk Western, and the Milwaukee road, among others.
The yard butts up agains the southeast edge of Queens Plaza*, an insane tangle of Northern Boulevard and Queens Boulevard merging to become the approach to the Queensboro Bridge underneath the transfer station for the Flushing and Astoria elevated subways. That’s the Astoria train in the photo.
Behind, we’ve got the office buildings of the plaza. The 1927 building on the right, commonly known as the Clocktower, was the tallest building in Queens at the time and remained the tallest commercial building in the borough, amazingly, until 1990, although there were taller residential building by the 60s. It’s a landmark and still stands, completely dwarfed by its newest neighbor. The sign on the roof reads “Bank of the Manhattan Company” which was one of the ancestors of the current Chase Bank.
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* A minor pet peeve: the physical location is “Queens Plaza.” The underground subway station (nowadays, the E, M, and R trains) is also “Queens Plaza.” The elevated subway station (the 7 and N trains) is “Queensboro Plaza” and the bridge is the “Queensboro” Bridge. I’m not an etymologist, but my guess is that the “borough” portion was emphasized right after consolidation in 1898 to remind people that Queens was now part of the city.
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