Neighborhood Architecture: Irvine Park
Jeanne Kosfeld and Richard Kronick

Twin Cities-based illustrator Jeanne Kosfeld and author Richard Kronick have together transformed a simple sketchbook featuring pen and ink drawings into a brief storytelling of the Irvine Park neighborhood’s unique 172-year history. The author and illustrator will share the history and the architecture of Irvine Park’s fanciful Queen Anne-style homes, simple clapboard houses, and elaborate French Second Empire-style mansions, and the story of the area and its inhabitants.

What began as a casual sketch outing in Saint Paul’s charming Irvine Park neighborhood during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic became Neighborhood Architecture – Irvine Park, Saint Paul: a coloring book. Twin Cities-based illustrator Jeanne Kosfeld and author Richard Kronick have together transformed a simple sketchbook featuring pen and ink drawings into a brief storytelling of the Irvine Park neighborhood’s unique 172-year history. Artists of all ages and abilities can colorize their own imagined versions of these historic edifices.

Neighborhood Architecture – Irvine Park, Saint Paul: a coloring book will be available from RCHS in April.
Neighborhood Architecture – Irvine Park, Saint Paul: a coloring book will be available in softcover with 18 house sketches, brief histories of the homes’ owners and architecture; and an architectural style guide and glossary at the end of the 48-page book. $18.99 regular price, $15.00 for RCHS members. Shipping will be additional.

To order books, use the order form here.

About the Illustrator: Artist Jeanne Kosfeld paints primarily with water-based media, but her large body of work also includes print and board game design and public sculpture. She started her career as a newspaper illustrator and cartoonist. Along her creative path, she led the design department at the University of Alaska, where she was also an adjunct faculty member. In Minnesota, she worked as the creative director at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts for eighteen years.

Kosfeld has won several awards, and her work resides in many public and private collections. She has been honored with artist-in-residences around the globe.

About the Author: Richard Kronick has been a full-time freelance writer since 1985, specializing in architecture and engineering. He is the co-author with Rick Harrison and Greg Yoko of a 2010 book on suburban planning titled Prefurbia: Reinventing the Suburbs from Disdainable to Sustainable. Kronick has written over one hundred articles and reviews on the built environment and has planned and led more than sixty architecture tours in the Twin Cities, the Midwest, and Italy. He is a member of the board of directors of the nonprofit Preserve Minneapolis (PM) and is editor-in-chief of PM’s MinneapolisHistorical.org, a guide to the city’s architecture. He often lectures and teaches continuing education courses on the history of architecture and is an expert on the Prairie School architects Purcell & Elmslie.