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THE GENERAL SOCIETY
OF MECHANICS & TRADESMEN
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
FOUNDED 1785
Labor, Literature and
Landmarks Lecture Series
Spring 2026
A History of Queens:
Rural County, Urban Borough
With Architect Laura Heim
Tuesday, March 10th at 6:00 P.M.
Presented in Partnership with
The New York Landmarks Conservancy
An In-Person and Online Program.
The in-person program will be followed
by a book-signing and a reception.
To register for In-Person attendance,
please click here
To register for Online attendance,
please click here
All registrants will receive a link to the recording
approximately 10 days after the lecture.
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In celebration of the late Jeffrey A. Kroessler’s book Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens, 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.
A former wetland, 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.
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Queensboro Bridge during construction, February 24, 1908
(Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Archives,
Chamber of Commerce of the Borough of Queens Collection.)
In this talk, Laura Heim will tell the story of Queens, “the world’s borough,” and describe its diversity and how it transformed, in less than one hundred years, from an agricultural hinterland to a vital urban corridor. She will reveal why Queens is integral to New York City and the wider world and show how, in its architecture and evolution, the whole arc of American urban history unfolds.
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Steinway and Sons Factory, 1895. Astoria, NY. (Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Archives, Illustrations Collection-Astoria.)
Jeffrey A. Kroessler (1952–2023) was a professor at the Lloyd Sealy Library of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. His many books include Sunnyside Gardens: Planning and Preservation in a Historic Garden Suburb, New York Year by Year: A Chronology of the Great Metropolis, and Historic Preservation in Queens.
He was a passionate advocate for the borough of Queens, including co-founding the Queensborough Preservation League, involvement in the effort to landmark Long Island City’s New York Architectural Terra Cotta Works Office Building, and helping lead the successful campaign to designate the Sunnyside Gardens Historic District. He served on The Historic Districts Council's (HDC) boards of directors and advisers for 36 years, helping to craft the organization’s advocacy strategies and educational programs on preservation across the city. He also served on the Municipal Art Society Preservation Committee and as president of the City Club of New York.
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Village of College Point, 1876. (Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Archives, Borough President of Queens Photographs.)
Laura Heim, FAIA LEED AP, is an award-winning architect with a firm in historic Sunnyside Gardens, Queens. 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. 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.
Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens will be available to purchase in-person at the lecture and available online here.
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