Rural County, Urban Borough

A History of Queens

Jeffrey A. Kroessler (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

424 Seiten

2025
Rutgers University Press (Verlag)
978-1-9788-3781-2 (ISBN)

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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.

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.

Preface
Introduction
Part I: Rural County
Chapter 1: Queens Under the Dutch and the English
Chapter 2: The Rural Landscape
Chapter 3: The Railroad and Long Island
Chapter 4: The Verdant Suburbs
Chapter 5: The Noxious Industries
Chapter 6: The Leisure Landscape
Part II: Urban Borough
Chapter 7: The Politics of Consolidation
Chapter 8: The Queensboro Bridge
Chapter 9: The Booming Borough
Chapter 10: The Crisis of the Great Depression
Chapter 11: Building the World of Tomorrow
Chapter 12: Prosperity and Stability in PostWar Queens
Chapter 13: The Most Diverse Place on the Planet
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Preface ix
Introduction 1
Part I Rural County
1 Queens under
the Dutch and the English
19
2 The Rural Landscape 45
3 The Railroad and Long Island 63
4 The Verdant Suburbs 101
5 The Noxious Industries 119
6 The Leisure Landscape 133
Part II Urban Borough
7 The Politics of Consolidation 163
8 The Queensboro Bridge 189
9 The Booming Borough 217
10 The Crisis of the Great
Depression 241
11 Building the World of Tomorrow: Robert Moses
and the New Deal Landscape 261
12 Prosperity and Stability in Postwar Queens 281
13 The Most Diverse Place on the Planet 311
Acknowledgments
331
Notes 335
Bibliography 367
Index 000

Erscheinungsdatum	12.06.2025
Zusatzinfo	19 color and 45 B-W images
Verlagsort	New Brunswick NJ
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 235 mm
Gewicht	499 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Regional- / Landesgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
	Technik ► Architektur
ISBN-10	1-9788-3781-X / 197883781X
ISBN-13	978-1-9788-3781-2 / 9781978837812
Zustand	Neuware