The Many Megaprojects of Sunnyside Yard

On November 27, 1910, New York City celebrated the opening of Pennsylvania Station. An estimated crowd of 100,000 came to see the new Beaux-Arts masterpiece. With slightly less fanfare, Sunnyside Yard in Queens came online that day as well. At the time, the 180-acre floodlit complex was the largest railroad yard in America, serving dozens of trains that now could go straight into Manhattan.

The station is no more — torn down in the 1960s, to become an enduring symbol for the historic preservation movement. Its namesake railroad merged with the New York Central and has also gone the way of all flesh. But the rail yards live on, serving about 780 trains from Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and commuter train lines each day. And in 2020 New York, Sunnyside Yard has become a much-coveted rarity: a large tract of undeveloped land in the biggest city in the United States. But that could be about to change.