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Rural County, Urban Borough
A History of Queens
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Jeffrey A. Kroessler
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
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.
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.
Author / Editor information
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.
Reviews
"Indispensable to anyone who wants to understand the city, its current politics or its history. . . . It is not an exaggeration to say that migrants from many lands drive the cultural and economy of today’s Queens—making it a truly remarkable place and an American success story. It is a story that needs to be told, particularly right now, and Kroessler tells it superbly."— The Place Master
"Finally, a comprehensive history of the physical and social evolution of the borough of Queens! Whether discussing suburbanization, the influence of rail lines, noxious industry, or world fairs, Kroessler's book provides the broad context and enlivening details that explain how Queens has developed and changed for over four hundred years and, most importantly, why the architecture, neighborhoods, and people of Queens have made significant contributions to the American story."— Andrew S. Dolkart, author of Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development
"You can't understand New York City by staying in Manhattan, and in this superb book Kroessler brings to life the story of the city's largest and most fascinating borough. A masterful creation that gives new insight into Queens and New York City itself."— Clifton Hood, author of 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York
"Especially incisive in its exposition of Queens's Forest Hills/Sunnyside Gardens urban planning heritage and in its explicit rendering of the physical transformations wrought there during Queens's Great Depression, New Deal, and coterminous Robert Moses ('Power Broker') eras. Kroessler's comprehensive history of Queens is unique for its wide-ranging perspective, one that also focuses on New York's urban housing issues, a good complement to Nicholas Dagen Bloom's excellent Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century. . . . Recommended."
— Choice"Rural County, Urban Borough is a history with a strong sense of place. Covering the history of Queens from European settlement to the present, Kroessler charts centuries of change in the landscape. He shows how politics, industry, transportation, government and real estate interests all shaped the borough. Linking Queens to New York City and the wider world, Kroessler illuminates important elements of American metropolitan history."
— Robert W. Snyder, Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History“The borough of Queens is the most diverse place on earth, and it is also one of the ten most populous (of 3,000 counties) counties in the United States. What Queens has lacked is an interpretive, scholarly, and readable history. Jeffrey Kroessler has wonderfully filled that gap, and his Rural County, Urban Borough is a magnificent tribute to add to his scholarship and his decades of service to his home county.”
— Kenneth T. Jackson, President Emeritus, New-York Historical Society
— Kenneth T. Jackson, President Emeritus, New-York Historical Society
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Preface
ix -
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Introduction
1 - Part 1 Rural County
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1 Queens under the Dutch and the E nglish
19 -
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2 The Rural Landscape
45 -
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3 The Railroad and Long Island
63 -
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4 The Verdant Suburbs
101 -
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5 The Noxious Industries
119 -
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6 The Leisure Landscape
133 - Part 2 Urban Borough
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7 The Politics of Consolidation
163 -
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8 The Queensboro Bridge
189 -
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9 The Booming Borough
217 -
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10 The Crisis of the Great Depression
241 -
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11 Building the World of Tomorrow
261 -
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12 Prosperity and Stability in Postwar Queens
281 -
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13 The Most Diverse Place on the Planet
311 -
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Acknowledgments
331 -
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Notes
335 -
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Bibliography
367 -
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Index
389 -
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About the Author
409
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 26, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9781978837836
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781978837836
Keywords for this book
Queens; New York City; five boroughs; New Amsterdam; population growth; diversity; rural to urban transformation; agricultural hinterland; urban neighborhoods; development; transportation; technological innovation; urban planning; architecture; immigration; race; ethnicity; private enterprise; public infrastructure; politics; New York historiography; Jeffrey A. Kroessler; history of Queens; cultural borough; Queens history; urban development; demographic changes; cultural diversity; historical moments; community transformation; socio-economic factors; urban landscape; historical narrative; New York culture
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
