Jeffrey Kroessler Student Research Award

The Historic Districts Council is honored to announce the creation of the Jeffrey Kroessler Student Research Award, an annual juried award highlighting original graduate-level research on topics relevant to historic preservation in New York City. This research award will provide emerging preservationists an opportunity to gain public recognition by showcasing their research that is beneficial to the advancement of the historic preservation community. At least one $1,000 award will be presented each year and the awarded recipient(s) will have the opportunity to publicly present their research to peers and preservationists in 2025.

The award cycle has ended. Please subscribe to our newsletter and follow our social media channels for updates on the inaugural student research presentations and the next application cycle in 2025.

2024 JKSRA Recipients

HDC would like to congratulate the first recipients of the Jeffrey Kroessler Student Research Award! Read more about them below:

Weijie “Christina” Sun is a recent graduate from Columbia University. Her research interests focus on the built environment, cultural studies and preservation efforts of underrepresented communities, with an emphasis on the narratives of the socio-spatial interactions. Christina holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Urban Design and Planning from Southeast University, China, and a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University. Christina will be receiving the award for her thesis “Invisible History” of the Chinese Americans’ “Economic Lifelines”: Spatial Interpretations of the Pillar Industries of the Chinese American Community in Manhattan’s Chinatown, 1930s – 1980s.

William Dunsmore is an archaeologist who has worked on projects in the American Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, the New York Metropolitan Area, New England, and the Cycladic Islands of Greece. He obtained his master’s degree from Bard Graduate Center, where he studied the rise of lager beer in the nineteenth century and its impacts on the German American Community in New York City and throughout the United States. William’s research interests are varied and include historical, industrial, documentary, landscape, and contemporary archaeology, Ancestral Puebloan and Mogollon ceramics, Southwest earthen architecture, and ancient and historic beer production. William will be receiving the award for his thesis “A Winter Temperature in the Summer Time”: Preserving Nineteenth-Century Lagerkellers and German-American Heritage.

We thank all of the students who have participated in this year’s cycle and we hope to continue Jeffrey’s legacy through the award. Please consider donating to the Jeffrey Kroessler Student Research Award by clicking the donation link below.

JKSRA Inaugural Jurors

From left to right: Laura Heim, Diana Budds, and Thomas Rinaldi.

HDC is pleased to announce our inaugural jurors for the first Jeffrey Kroessler Student Research Award. Read more about them below:

Laura Heim is an award-winning architect with a firm located in historic Sunnyside Gardens, Queens. Her firm has a particular expertise in historic preservation and adaptive reuse/renovation. She served as the Chair of Architecture on the Steering Committee of the Sunnyside Gardens Preservation Alliance, as president of the AIA Queens chapter, and was on the Board of Directors of AIA New York State. Most recently, she was the Co-Chair of the AIANY Fellows Committee from 2021-2023. Laura frequently collaborated on historic preservation work with her late husband, Jeffrey Kroessler, which the award is named after.

Diana Budds is a design journalist based in New York. Her writing has appeared in Curbed, Dwell, Fast Company, and the New York Times.

Thomas Rinaldi grew up in the Hudson River Valley near Poughkeepsie, New York.  He is the author of “Patented: 1,000 Design Patents” (Phaidon, 2021), “New York Neon” (W.W. Norton, 2012), and the co-author of the book “Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape” (University Press of New England, 2006). His photographs have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the New York Observer, Westchester Magazine, CNN Online, and elsewhere, and have been exhibited at the New York State Museum at Albany and at the Municipal Art Society of New York.  He holds degrees from Georgetown University and Columbia University and has worked for the National Park Service, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation, and the Central Park Conservancy.  Rinaldi currently works as an architectural designer in New York City.

About Jeffrey Kroessler

Jeffrey Kroessler served on HDC’s board of directors and advisors for 36 years. As a preservationist, author, educator, librarian, and historian, Kroessler assisted in crafting the organization’s advocacy strategies and educational programs on preservation across the city. As an author and historian, he published three books, The Greater New York Sports Chronology (2009), New York, Year by Year (2002), and Sunnyside Gardens: Planning and Preservation in a Historic Garden Suburb (2021), which received critical acclaim in The New York Review of Books.

His contributions and publications have been included in The Encyclopedia of New York City, The Encyclopedia of New York State, Robert Moses and the Modern City: the Transformation of New York, Journal of Planning History, New York History, and Long Island History Journal. As a passionate advocate for the borough of Queens, Jeffrey co-founded the Queensborough Preservation League, participated in the successful effort to landmark the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Works Building in Long Island City, and spearheaded the successful campaign to designate the Sunnyside Gardens Historic District.

In honor of Jeffrey Kroessler being a champion of New York City history and his commitment to the education and development of upcoming preservationists, we are esteemed to create this award in his memory.

As we invigorate this campaign, we would like to thank all who have contributed to the cause and are actively helping us honor Jeffrey’s legacy.

Founding Donors

John M. Bacon

Françoise Astorg Bollack and Tom Killian

Peter Bray

Andrew Scott Dolkart

Franny Eberhart

Laura Heim

Ricardo Zurita

Additional Donors

Lisa Ackerman

Samuel Albert

Penelope Bareau

Suzanne Braley

Kathleen Benson Haskins

Sara Caples

Patricia Dorfman

Jonathan Epstein

Friends of Terra Cotta

Deborah Furlone

Doreen Gallo

Jeffrey Gerson

Alison Greenberg

Michael Goldblum

Carol Heim and Philip Carter

Carolyn and Donald Heim

Diane Heim

Jeanette Heim

Nadine Heim

Susan Hopper

Carol Clark and Kyle Johnson

Daniel Karatzas

Margaret Latimer

Robin Lynn

Abigail Mellen

Natalie Mendell

Nancy and Otis Pearsall

Gina Kim Perry and William Perry

Liz and Herbert Reynolds

Joseph Rosenberg

Frank Sanchis

Wayne Sheppard

Elizabeth and Daniel Shields

David Smiley

Fernando Villa

Ronda Wist

To maintain the future of historic preservation, we need your support more than ever to make this award a reality for emerging preservationists. Their research is pivotal to the past, present, and future of our city. Your donation will directly support the prize for the awarded recipients, the student showcase, and the award ceremony. All donations are fully tax deductible.

Donors at the following levels will receive special recognition:

For more information please contact Kaija Mendez-Bryan at [email protected].