Pest Control in Sunnyside, Queens
Sunnyside is a compact, walkable neighborhood tucked between Long Island City and Woodside, bounded roughly by Sunnyside Yard to the north and the Long Island Expressway and Calvary Cemetery to the south. The elevated 7 train runs above Queens Boulevard, with stops at 40th, 46th and 52nd Streets, making it one of the easiest commutes into Manhattan from Queens. Its population is remarkably diverse, including longtime Irish families alongside Korean, Turkish, Romanian, Colombian, Ecuadorian and Nepali residents. Greenpoint Avenue and Skillman Avenue hold much of the local shopping and dining. The planned Sunnyside Gardens section, with its interior courtyards and shared lawns, gives the area a green, village-like feel unusual this close to Midtown.
Also known as: Sunnyside Gardens.
About Sunnyside
Sunnyside grew up in the early twentieth century after the Pennsylvania Railroad built the enormous Sunnyside Yard and the Queensboro Bridge and elevated subway opened. Between 1924 and 1928 the City Housing Corporation, led by architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, built Sunnyside Gardens as a model garden community of low brick homes arranged around shared courtyards. The Phipps Garden Apartments followed nearby, and larger apartment buildings filled the remaining blocks along Queens Boulevard and Skillman Avenue.
Common Pest Problems in Sunnyside
Sunnyside's many six-story prewar apartment buildings are classic cockroach territory. German cockroaches spread between units through gaps around radiator pipes, under kitchen sinks and along trash chutes, while mice take advantage of old plaster walls and dumbwaiter shafts. The strip of restaurants and delis under the elevated 7 train generates heavy trash volume every night, supporting rats that burrow in tree beds and the courtyard plantings of nearby buildings. Pigeons are a fixture under the elevated tracks along Queens Boulevard, where they nest in the steel framework above the sidewalk.
Sunnyside Yard, a vast open rail yard, and the cemetery land to the south add to rodent pressure along the neighborhood's edges. In Sunnyside Gardens, shared courtyards are a pleasant amenity but also a place where rats can nest under shrubs and in landscaped beds if trash storage is careless. Inside older co-ops, closets packed with stored winter clothing invite clothes moths, and silverfish thrive in the steamy bathrooms and damp basement storage rooms common to these buildings.