Book Talk – Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens

In celebration of the late Jeffrey A. Kroessler’s book Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens (Rutgers University Press, 2025), his widow, the architect Laura Heim, will discuss the unique production process and engaging content of this first comprehensive history of the great borough of Queens. Once wetlands, Queens today is a crowded cityscape of dense urban neighborhoods and suburban sprawl. The largest of New York City’s five boroughs by area, it has a larger population than every American city except Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City itself. It possesses the most culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse population in the United States and possibly the world. This is the story of Queens, “the world’s borough,” and how it transformed, in less than one hundred years, from an agricultural hinterland to a vital urban corridor.

Rural County, Urban Borough is a history of place, charting the rapid transformation of the Queens landscape. It identifies what drove the borough’s development, from public infrastructure, architecture, and transportation to technological innovation and urban planning. New York historian Jeffrey A. Kroessler takes us inside the backrooms and boardrooms where local powerbrokers shaped the borough’s future, chronicling how its relationship with the city has evolved. He also shows the steps Queens residents from all backgrounds took to care for their neighborhoods and build their communities. Richly illustrated, this book underscores why Queens is integral to New York City and the wider world and reveals how, in its evolution, we see the whole arc of American urban history.

Speakers:
Laura Heim, FAIA LEED AP, Principal, Laura Heim Architect  

About the Speakers:
Laura Heim established her award winning, neighborhood-based studio in 2006 in a storefront on Lewis Mumford Way (Skillman Avenue) in Sunnyside Gardens. Her firm, Laura Heim Architect, has a particular expertise in historic preservation and adaptive reuse/renovation. She has served as the Chair of Architecture on the Steering Committee of the Sunnyside Gardens Preservation Alliance, as president of the AIA Queens chapter, and on the Board of Directors of AIA New York State. She was the Co-Chair of the AIANY Fellows Committee in 2023. She is serving her second year as a College of Fellows NY Regional Representative. Currently, she is on the Board of Directors of the Historic Districts Council. She frequently collaborated on historic preservation work with her late husband, Jeffrey Kroessler, author of Rural County, Urban Borough.