Bowne House Historical Society invites you to celebrate the publication of
Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens by the late Jeffrey A. Kroessler
Cover of Rural Country, Urban Borough. Rutgers University Press, 2025
Join Laura Heim, architect and widow of author Jeffrey A. Kroessler, and Rob MacKay, author of Historic Houses of Queens, as they discuss the genesis, evolution, production, revelatory content, and impact of Kroessler’s posthumously published book, Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens.
About the Book:
A former wetlands, Queens today is a crowded cityscape of dense urban neighborhoods and suburban sprawl. Rural County, Urban Borough is a history of place, charting the rapid transformation of the Queens landscape, identifying what drove the borough’s development, from public infrastructure, architecture, and transportation to technological innovation and urban planning. The book dramatically chronicles how Queens’ relationship with the city has evolved, as well as highlights how Queens residents, from all backgrounds, care for their neighborhoods and build their communities. Queens is integral to New York City and the wider world and reveals, in its evolution, the whole arc of American urban history.
Location: Flushing Town Hall at 137-35 Northern Blvd, Flushing, NY 11354
Date & Time: Sunday, October 12th, 2025 at 1:00pm
This is FREE program. Pre-registration via Eventbrite is required.
John Bowne House, 1923. (Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Archives, Eugene L. Armbruster Photographs.) The first chapter of Rural County, Urban Borough is titled "Queens under the Dutch and the English" and includes the historic Bowne House.
About the Speakers:
Laura Heim, FAIA LEED AP, is an award-winning architect with a firm in historic Sunnyside Gardens, Queens. Her firm 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. 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.
Rob MacKay was a longtime, award-winning community journalist who currently works for the Queens Economic Development Corporation as Director of Public Relations, Marketing & Tourism. As part of his job, he operates various social media channels that promote the borough’s restaurants, shops, and tourism attractions nationally and internationally. MacKay is the author of Historic Houses of Queens (Arcadia Publishing, 2021) and Famous People of Queens (Arcadia Publishing, 2023). His interest in writing these books grew organically—and intensely—after he became a trustee of the Queens Historical Society.
