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Buildings on Belgrade Waterfront new chapter in the city of Belgrade, Serbia. Belgrade Waterfront, known in Serbian as Belgrade on Water is an urban renewal development project.
Nanpu Bridge at night, Shanghai, China
Sold by Getty Mar 2017 for Arm (United Kingdom (Great Britain)).
Presbytery, Roman Catholic Church of St Charles Borromeo, Ogle St, Fitrzovia, Camden, London, England, UK. 1862
Apakh Hoja Tomb (or Xiangfei Tomb), 5 kms northeast of Kashgar, an important cultural unit protected by the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. As a tomb group of the descendants of an Islamic missionary, it was built around 1640. The legend has it that seventy-two persons in all of five generations of the same family were buried in the tomb.
© Eric Lafforgue
Down below the crofthouse museum there was this little stone-built structure. The fence posts give you some idea of its size and I'll add that it was necessary to crouch down to look inside that opening.
This is the remains of what was once a mill. The motive force for the mill stones was the flow of water diverted from that stream: the Burn of Wiltrow.
Now I know what you're thinking! There's no mill race, no leat and that building is far too tiny for a mill wheel. I am confident there was a leat. How else do you suppose the millstone was turned? Next to the Burn there's no room for something like a horse or ox to do the circle work you'd see in others places and there are no native terrestrial mammals in Shetland. Are you proposing a hamster wheel brought over by the Vikings? All will be revealed!
For a mill on this scale I suspect this might be the sort of place where the little stones we saw back in Busta could been housed.
Medinet Habu (Medinet Abou) is an archaeological locality situated near the foot of the Thebes illustration by David Roberts (1796-1864).
Yemen, Kowkaban, view of a built structure with rustic wooden door at arched entrance
This built structure is named by "Dongdaemun" which is the wall militarily to protect the Imperial Palace from the outsiders. I don't interested in whether that is true or not. this gate is located in the east area from the main imperial palace "Gyeongbokgung".
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard by E. Mond'Rel bearing an early photograph of the Pont du Gard. Note the extensive older-style graffiti which is more visible in a larger version of the image. Someone has written '1891' over the top of the doorway.
On the other side of the card the publisher has printed:
'Le Pont du Gard. Colossal et incomparable
fragment d'un aqueduc de 41 km construit l'an
19 av. J.-C., pour conduire à Nîmes les sources
de l'Eure, situées près d'Uzès. Détruit par les
Visigoths (412-418).
Formé de trois rangs d'arches d'inégales
dimensions, dont 6 au premier rang, 11 au
second et 35 au troisième au-dessus duquel
se trouve le canal (260m). Il a 48m de haut.
Le 'pont' ajouté en 1743 lui a enlevé d'un coté
sa grâce et sa légèreté.
Il faut donc le voir en amont pour concevoir
toute la hardiesse de ce génial chef-d'œuvre
de l'architecture Romaine'.
Le Pont du Gard
The original water conduit was in fact nearly 50 km (31 miles) long, and had a gradient of 34 centimetres per kilometre, descending only 17 metres vertically over its entire length.
The aqueduct delivered 20,000 cubic metres (5 million gallons) of water daily. That's 14 cubic metres a minute - enough to fill a 5 metre by 10 metre swimming pool every six minutes.
On the first level it carries a road, and at the top of the third level, a water conduit, which is 1.8 metres high and 1.2 metres wide. The conduit has a gradient of 0.4%.
The Pont and the aqueduct itself are an amazing achievement when you think that they were built two thousand years ago without the use of modern surveying and construction equipment.
How, for example, could they have known within centimetres the exact height of Nîmes in relation to the water source which was 50 undulating kilometres away?
Markings left by the original builders can be seen, indicating where the dressed stones were to be placed - e.g. "FRS II" stands for "Frons Sinistra II", or "Front Left 2".
The Engineering Masterpiece of the Nîmes Aqueduct and the Pont du Gard
The Pont du Gard is an ancient Roman aqueduct bridge built in the first century AD to carry water over 50 km (31 mi) to the Roman colony of Nemausus (Nîmes). It crosses the river Gardon near the town of Vers-Pont-du-Gard in southern France.
The Pont du Gard is the tallest of all Roman aqueduct bridges, as well as one of the best preserved. It was added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites in 1985 because of its exceptional preservation, historical importance, and architectural ingenuity.
Description of the Pont du Gard
The bridge has three tiers of arches made from Shelly limestone, and stands 48.8 m (160 ft) high. The aqueduct formerly carried an estimated 40,000 m3 (8,800,000 imp gal; 11,000,000 US gal) of water a day over 50 km (31 mi) to the fountains, baths and homes of the citizens of Nîmes.
The structure's precise construction allowed an average gradient of 1 cm (0.39 in) in 182.4 m (598 ft). It may have been in use as late as the 6th. century, with some parts used for significantly longer, but lack of maintenance after the 4th. century led to clogging by mineral deposits and debris that eventually stopped the flow of water.
After the Roman Empire collapsed and the aqueduct fell into disuse, the Pont du Gard remained largely intact with a secondary function as a toll bridge. For centuries the local lords and bishops were responsible for its upkeep, with a right to levy tolls on travellers using it to cross the river.
However over time, some of its stone blocks were looted, and serious damage was inflicted in the 17th. century.
The Pont du Gard attracted increasing attention starting in the 18th. century, and became an important tourist destination. A series of renovations between the 18th. and 21st. centuries culminated in 2000 with opening of a new visitor centre and removal of traffic and buildings from the bridge and area immediately around it.
Today it is one of France's most popular tourist attractions, and has attracted the attention of a succession of literary and artistic visitors.
The Route of the Nîmes Aqueduct
The location of Nemausus (Nîmes) was somewhat inconvenient when it came to providing a water supply. Plains lie to the city's south and east, where any sources of water would be at too low an altitude to be able to flow to the city.
The hills to the west made a water supply route too difficult from an engineering point of view. The only real alternative was to look to the north, and in particular to the area around Ucetia (Uzès), where there are natural springs.
The Nîmes aqueduct was built to channel water from the springs of the Fontaine d'Eure near Uzès to the castellum divisorum (repartition basin) in Nemausus. From there, it was distributed around the city.
The straight-line distance between the two is only about 20 km (12 mi), but the aqueduct takes a winding route measuring around 50 km (31 mi). This was necessary in order to circumvent the southernmost foothills of the Massif Central.
They are difficult to cross, as they are covered in dense vegetation and indented by deep valleys. It was impractical for the Romans to attempt to tunnel through the hills, as it would have required a tunnel of between 8 to 10 kilometres (5 to 6 mi), depending on the starting point. A roughly V-shaped course around the eastern end of the foothills was therefore the only practical way of transporting the water from the spring to the city.
The Fontaine d'Eure, at 76 m (249 ft) above sea level, is only 17 m (56 ft) higher than the repartition basin in Nîmes, but this provided a sufficient gradient to sustain a steady flow of water to the 50,000 inhabitants of the Roman city.
The aqueduct's average gradient is only 1 in 3,000. It varies widely along its course, but is as little as 1 in 20,000 in some sections. The Pont du Gard itself descends 2.5 cm (0.98 in) in 456 m (1,496 ft), a gradient of 1 in 18,241.
The average gradient between the start and end of the aqueduct is far shallower than was usual for Roman aqueducts – only about a tenth of the average gradient of some of the aqueducts in Rome.
The reason for the disparity in gradients along the aqueduct's route is that a uniform gradient would have meant that the Pont du Gard would have been infeasibly high, given the limitations of the technology of the time.
By varying the gradient along the route, the aqueduct's engineers were able to lower the height of the bridge by 6 metres (20 ft) to 48.77 metres (160.0 ft) above the river – still exceptionally high by Roman standards, but within acceptable limits.
This height limit governed the profile and gradients of the entire aqueduct, but it came at the price of creating a "sag" in the middle of the aqueduct. The gradient profile before the Pont du Gard is relatively steep, descending at 0.67 metres (2 ft 2 in) per kilometre, but thereafter it descends by only 6 metres (20 ft) over the remaining 25 kilometres (16 mi).
In one section, the winding route between the Pont du Gard and St. Bonnet required an extraordinary degree of accuracy from the Roman engineers, who had to allow for a fall of only 7 millimetres (0.28 in) per 100 metres (330 ft) of the conduit.
Water took nearly 27 hours to flow from the source to the city. The water arrived in the castellum divisorum at Nîmes – an open, shallow, circular basin 5.5 m in diameter by 1 m deep. It would have been surrounded by a balustrade within some sort of enclosure, probably under some kind of small but elaborate pavilion.
When it was excavated, traces of a tiled roof, Corinthian columns and a fresco decorated with fish and dolphins were discovered in a fragmentary condition.
The aqueduct water entered through an opening 1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in) wide, and ten large holes in the facing wall, each 40 centimetres (16 in) wide, directed the water into the city's main water pipes. Three large drains were also located in the floor, possibly to enable the nearby amphitheatre to be flooded rapidly to enable naumachia (mock naval battles) to be held.
The spring still exists, and is now the site of a small modern pumping station. Its water is pure but high in dissolved calcium carbonate leached out of the surrounding limestone.
This presented the Romans with significant problems in maintaining the aqueduct, as the carbonates precipitated out of the water during its journey through the conduit. This caused the flow of the aqueduct to become progressively reduced by deposits of calcareous sinter.
Another threat was posed by vegetation penetrating the stone lid of the channel. As well as obstructing the flow of the water, dangling roots and decomposition introduced algae and bacteria within the conduit.
It required constant maintenance by circitores, workers responsible for the aqueduct's upkeep, who crawled along the conduit scrubbing the walls clean and removing any vegetation.
Overground or Underground
Much of the Nîmes aqueduct was built underground, as was typical of Roman aqueducts. It was constructed by digging a trench in which a stone channel was built and enclosed by an arched roof of stone slabs. The roof was then covered with earth.
Some sections of the channel are tunnelled through solid rock. In all, 35 km (22 mi) of the aqueduct was constructed below ground.
The remainder had to be carried on the surface through conduits set on a wall or on arched bridges. Some substantial remains of the above-ground works can still be seen today, such as the Pont Rue that stretches for hundreds of metres around Vers and still stands up to 7.5 m (25 ft) high.
Other surviving parts of the aqueduct include the Pont de Bornègre, three arches carrying the water 17 m (56 ft) across a stream; the Pont de Sartanette, near the Pont du Gard, which covers 32 m (105 ft) across a small valley; and three sections of aqueduct tunnel near Sernhac, measuring up to 66 m (217 ft) long.
However, the Pont du Gard is by far the best-preserved section of the entire aqueduct.
Description of the Bridge
Built on three levels, the Pont is 49 m (161 ft) high above the river at low water and 274 m (899 ft) long.
Its width varies from 9 m (30 ft) at the bottom to 3 m (9.8 ft) at the top. The three levels of arches are recessed, with the main piers in line one above another. The span of the arches varies slightly, as each was constructed independently to provide flexibility to protect against subsidence.
The lowest level of the Pont du Gard adjoins a road bridge that was added in the 18th. century. The water conduit or specus, which is about 1.8 m (6 ft) high and 1.2 m (4 ft) wide, is carried at the top of the third level.
The upper levels of the bridge are slightly curved in the upstream direction. It was long believed that the engineers had designed it this way deliberately to strengthen the bridge's structure against the flow of water, like a dam wall.
However, a survey carried out in 1989 showed that the bend is caused by the stone expanding and contracting by about 5 mm (0.20 in) a day under the heat of the sun. Over the centuries, this process has produced the current deformation.
The Pont du Gard was constructed largely without the use of mortar or clamps. It contains an estimated 50,400 tons of limestone with a volume of some 21,000 cibic metres (740,000 cu ft); some of the individual blocks weigh up to 6 tons.
Most of the stone was extracted from the local quarry of Estel located approximately 700 metres (2,300 ft) downstream, on the banks of the Gardon River.
The coarse-grained soft reddish shelly limestone, known locally as "Pierre de Vers", lends itself very well to dimension stone production. The blocks were precisely cut to fit perfectly together by friction and gravity, eliminating the need for mortar.
The builders also left inscriptions on the stonework conveying various messages and instructions. Many blocks were numbered and inscribed with the required locations, such as fronte dextra or fronte sinistra (front right or front left), to guide the builders.
The method of construction is fairly well understood by historians. The patron of the aqueduct – a rich individual or the city of Nîmes itself – would have hired a large team of contractors and skilled labourers.
A surveyor or mensor planned the route using a groma for sighting, chorobates for levelling, and a set of measuring poles five or ten Roman feet long.
His figures and perhaps diagrams were recorded on wax tablets, later to be written up on scrolls. The builders may have used templates to guide them with tasks that required a high degree of precision, such as carving the standardised blocks from which the water conduit was constructed.
The builders would have made extensive use of cranes and block and tackle pulleys in order to lift the stones into place. For the largest blocks, a massive human-powered treadmill would have been used; such machines were still being used in the quarries of Provence until as late as the start of the 20th. century.
A complex scaffold was erected to support the bridge as it was being built. Large blocks were left protruding from the bridge to support the frames and scaffolds used during construction. These blocks are still visible.
The aqueduct as a whole would have been a very expensive undertaking; Émile Espérandieu estimated the cost to be over 30 million sesterces, equivalent to 50 years' pay for 500 new recruits in a Roman legion.
Design of the Pont du Gard
Although the exterior of the Pont du Gard is rough and relatively unfinished, the builders took great care to ensure that the interior of the water conduit was as smooth as possible, so that the flow of water would not be obstructed.
The walls of the conduit were constructed from dressed masonry, and the floor from concrete. Both were covered with a stucco incorporating minute shards of pottery and tile.
It was painted with olive oil and covered with maltha, a mixture of slaked lime, pork grease and the viscous juice of unripe figs. This produced a surface that was both smooth and durable.
Although the Pont du Gard is renowned for its appearance, its design is not optimal as the technique of stacking arches on top of each other is clumsy and inefficient (and expensive) in the amount of materials it requires.
Later aqueducts had a more sophisticated design, making greater use of concrete to reduce their volume and cost of construction.
The Aqueduct bridge of Segovia and the Pont de les Ferreres are of roughly similar length but use far fewer arches. Roman architects were eventually able to do away with "stacking" altogether.
The Acueducto de los Milagros in Mérida, Spain and the Chabet Ilelouine aqueduct bridge, near Cherchell, Algeria utilise tall, slender piers, constructed from top to bottom with concrete-faced masonry and brick.
History of the Aqueduct
The construction of the aqueduct has long been credited to the Roman emperor Augustus' son-in-law Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, around the year 19 BC. At the time, he was serving as aedile, the senior magistrate responsible for managing the water supply of Rome and its colonies.
Newer excavations however suggest that the construction may have taken place between 40 and 60 AD. Tunnels dating from the time of Augustus had to be bypassed by the builders of the Nîmes aqueduct, and coins discovered in the outflow in Nîmes are no older than the reign of the emperor Claudius (41–54 AD).
On this basis, a team led by Guilhem Fabre has argued that the aqueduct must have been completed around the middle of the 1st century AD. It is believed to have taken about fifteen years to build, employing between 800 and 1,000 workers.
From the 4th. century onwards, the aqueduct's maintenance was neglected as successive waves of invaders disrupted the region.
It became clogged with debris, encrustations and plant roots, greatly reducing the flow of the water. The resulting deposits in the conduit, consisting of layers of dirt and organic material, are up to 50 cm (20 in) thick on each wall.
An analysis of the deposits originally suggested that the aqueduct had continued to supply water to Nîmes until as late as the 9th. century, but more recent investigations suggest that it had gone out of use by about the sixth century, though parts of it may have continued to be used for significantly longer.
Although some of the aqueduct's stones were plundered for use elsewhere, the Pont du Gard remained largely intact. Its survival was due to its use as a toll bridge across the valley. In the 13th. century the French king granted the seigneurs of Uzès the right to levy tolls on those using the bridge.
The right later passed to the Bishops of Uzès. In return, they were responsible for maintaining the bridge in good repair.
However, it suffered serious damage during the 1620's when Henri, Duke of Rohan made use of the bridge to transport his artillery during the wars between the French royalists and the Huguenots, whom he led.
In order to make space for his artillery to cross the bridge, the duke had one side of the second row of arches cut away to a depth of about one-third of their original thickness. This left a gap on the lowest deck wide enough to accommodate carts and cannons, but severely weakened the bridge in the process.
In 1703 the local authorities renovated the Pont du Gard to repair cracks, fill in ruts and replace the stones lost in the previous century.
A new bridge was built by the engineer Henri Pitot in 1743–47 next to the arches of the lower level, so that road traffic could cross on a purpose-built bridge. The novelist Alexandre Dumas was strongly critical of the construction of the new bridge, commenting that:
"It was reserved for the eighteenth century to
dishonour a monument which the barbarians
of the fifth had not dared to destroy."
The Pont du Gard continued to deteriorate, and by the time Prosper Mérimée saw it in 1835 it was at serious risk of collapse from erosion and the loss of stonework.
Napoleon III, who had a great admiration for all things Roman, visited the Pont du Gard in 1850 and took a close interest in it. He approved plans by the architect Charles Laisné to repair the bridge in a project which was carried out between 1855 and 1858, with funding provided by the Ministry of State.
The work involved substantial renovations that included replacing the eroded stone, infilling some of the piers with concrete to aid stability and improving drainage by separating the bridge from the aqueduct.
Stairs were also installed at one end, and the conduit walls were repaired, allowing visitors to walk along the conduit itself in reasonable safety.
There have been a number of subsequent projects to consolidate the piers and arches of the Pont du Gard.
The Pond du Gard has survived three serious floods over the last century. In 1958 the whole of the lower tier was submerged by a giant flood that washed away other bridges, and in 1998 another major flood affected the area.
A further flood struck in 2002, badly damaging nearby installations.
The Pont du Gard was added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1985 on the criteria of:
"Human creative genius, testimony
to cultural tradition, and significance
to human history".
The description on the list states:
"The hydraulic engineers and architects
who conceived this bridge created a
technical as well as artistic masterpiece."
Tourism
The Pont du Gard has been a tourist attraction for centuries. The outstanding quality of the bridge's masonry led to it becoming an obligatory stop for French journeyman masons on their traditional tour around the country, many of whom have left their names on the stonework.
From the 18th. century onwards, particularly after the construction of the new road bridge, it became a famous staging-post for travellers on the Grand Tour, and became increasingly renowned as an object of historical importance and French national pride.
The bridge has had a long association with French monarchs seeking to associate themselves with a symbol of Roman imperial power. King Charles IX of France visited in 1564 during his Grand Tour of France, and was greeted with a grand entertainment laid on by the Duc d'Uzès.
Twelve young girls dressed as nymphs came out of a cave by the riverside near the aqueduct and presented the king with pastry and preserved fruits.
A century later, Louis XIV and his court visited the Pont du Gard during a visit to Nîmes in January 1660 shortly after the signature of the Treaty of the Pyrenees.
In 1786 his great-great-great-grandson Louis XVI commissioned the artist Hubert Robert to produce a set of paintings of Roman ruins of southern France to hang in the king's new dining room at the Palace of Fontainebleau.
These including a picture depicting the Pont du Gard in an idealised landscape. The commission was intended to reassert the ties between the French monarchy and the imperial past.
Napoleon III, in the mid-19th century, consciously identified with Augustus and accorded great respect to Roman antiquities; his patronage of the bridge's restoration in the 1850's was essential to its survival.
By the 1990's the Pont du Gard had become a hugely popular tourist attraction but was congested with traffic – vehicles were still allowed to drive over the 1743 road bridge – and was cluttered with illegally built structures and tourist shops lining the river banks.
As the architect Jean-Paul Viguier put it, the "appetite for gain" had transformed the Pont du Gard into "a fairground attraction".
In 1996 the General Council of the Gard département began a major four-year project to improve the area. The entire area around the bridge was pedestrianised, and a new visitor centre was built on the north bank.
The redevelopment has ensured that the area around the Pont du Gard is now much quieter due to the removal of vehicular traffic, and the new museum provides a much improved historical context for visitors.
The Pont du Gard is today one of France's top five tourist attractions, with 1.4 million visitors reported in 2001.
Literary Visitors to the Pont du Gard
Since it became a tourist destination, many novelists and writers have visited the Pont du Gard and written of the experience. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was overwhelmed when he first visited it in 1738:
"I had been told to go and see the Pont du Gard;
I did not fail to do so. It was the first work of the
Romans that I had seen. I expected to see a
monument worthy of the hands which had
constructed it.
This time the object surpassed my expectation, for
the only time in my life. Only the Romans could
have produced such an effect. The sight of this
simple and noble work struck me all the more since
it is in the middle of a wilderness where silence and
solitude render the object more striking and the
admiration more lively; for this so-called bridge was
only an aqueduct. One asks oneself what force has
transported these enormous stones so far from any
quarry, and what brought together the arms of so
many thousands of men in a place where none of
them live. I wandered about the three storeys of this
superb edifice although my respect for it almost kept
me from daring to trample it underfoot. The echo of
my footsteps under these immense vaults made me
imagine that I heard the strong voices of those who
had built them. I felt myself lost like an insect in that
immensity. While making myself small, I felt an
indefinable something that raised up my soul, and I
said to myself with a sigh, 'Why was I not born a
Roman!'"
The mid-19th-century writer Joseph Méry wrote in his 1853 book Les Nuits italiennes, Contes Nocturnes that on seeing the Pont du Gard:
"One is struck dumb with astonishment; you are
walking in a desert where nothing reminds you
of man; cultivation has disappeared; there are
ravines, heaths, blocks of rock, clusters of rushes,
oaks, massed together, a stream which flows by
a melancholy strand, wild mountains, a silence
like that of Thebaid, and in the midst of this
landscape springs up the most magnificent
object that civilization has created for the glory
of the fine arts."
The novelist Henry James, visiting in 1884, was similarly impressed; he described the Pont du Gard as:
"Unspeakably imposing, and nothing
could well be more Roman."
He commented:
"The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpectedness,
the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave
you nothing to say – at the time – and make you
stand gazing.
You simply feel that it is noble and perfect, that it
has the quality of greatness ... When the vague
twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed
to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name,
as if the mighty empire were still as erect as the
supports of the aqueduct; and it was open to a
solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to
believe that no people has ever been, or will ever
be, as great as that, measured, as we measure
the greatness of an individual, by the push they
gave to what they undertook.
The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four
deepest impressions they have left; it speaks of
them in a manner with which they might have
been satisfied."
Hilaire Belloc wrote in 1928 that:
"When one sees the thing all that is said of it
comes true. Its isolation, its dignity, its weight,
are all three awful. It looks as though it had
been built long before all record by beings
greater than ourselves, and were intended
to stand long after the dissolution of our petty
race.
One can repose in it. I confess to a great
reluctance to praise what has been praised
too much; but so it is.
A man, suffering from the unrest of our time,
might do worse than camp out for three days,
fishing and bathing under the shadow of the
Pont du Gard."
Some Indigenous peoples have built structures similar to cairns.
In some cases these are general trail markers.
***
This cavern, one of the most visited, is located in the Roiho area. It is covered by a layer of solidified lava which resonates like a drum when someone jumps on it, which gives it the name Te Pahu (drum). It was used as a tribal residence with natural sources of water and cultivated plants. It has three rather long branches which measure some 1,500 meters (nearly 5000 feet) in all.
The waiting room was a small brick and stone built structure with a slate roof and a wooden door overhang. There were four windows with two at the front and one at each gable end. Each gable end also had a small round window to allow light into the attic space. There was only the one door giving access to the building.
The inside would have been plain internal brickwork and painted, originally cream/white then green (by observing the laters of paint) with seats around the walls. A large frame containing public information would have been mounted on the wall immediately in front of the door upon entering. The wooden elements around the doorway still retains their bright red paintwork.
Please see front page of the Set for general information on the Athlone-Mullingar line www.flickr.com/photos/23885771@N03/sets/72157624392741649/
Thank you for reading.
Stuart.
The Roman Catholic church of St Charles in Gosforth was built in 1911 (replacing an earlier iron-built structure) and is a handsome building with two small west steeples flanking the main facade and a wide cruciform body culminating in a shallow apse. The interior is partially enlivened by marble-cladding, particularly around the sanctuary.
The outstanding features here however are in glass, principally the two large windows that dominate the north and south transepts, the largest windows in the church and both filled with gloriously rich stained glass by Harry Clarke Studios of Dublin and installed in 1945 (long after the death of Clarke himself and most likely designed by his successor Richard King). The south window depicts the Nativity, whilst that to the north represents the Deposition, with Christ's body being removed from the Cross. There is a further window by the same studio in the south nave clerestorey depicting Christ before Pilate, somewhat smaller and sadly less accessible.
This is a thoroughly rewarding church to visit for lovers of stained glass, though it is best to check with the church about access as it isn't always open outside mass times.
This 210 Foot Monument was built in 1933 with monies bequeathed by Lillie Hitchock Coit to beautify the city she loved. Frescoes were painted in the interior of the newly built structure by local artists funded through the United State's government's Public Works of Art project. This plaque is placed by the Recreation and Park Commission, October 8, 1983, to mark Coit Tower's 50th Anniversary and its designation as an historical landmark.
Coit Tower, sitting in Pioneer Park atop Telegraph Hill, was built in 1933 by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard, at the bequest of Lillian Hitchcock Coit for the purposes of beautification of the City of San Francisco. The 210-foot tall, unpainted, reinforced concrete, Art Deco tower resembles a fire hose nozzle. However, even though Lillie Coit was a big supporter of the city's fireman, contrary to urban legend the tower does not serve as a memorial in wake of the 1906 earthquake. Over 250,000 visitors come to Coit Tower annually to take the elevator ride up to the 360-degree observation deck, which sits 179-feet high and 542-feet above sea level. There is a small studio apartment on the first level of the tower, which was originally used as lodging for the structure's caretaker.
The interior is decorated with murals, mostly done in fresco, carried out by 26 artists under the auspices of the Public Works Project. Executed in 1934, the muralists, who were mainly faculty and students were supervised by Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim. Artists included Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Ray Bertrand, Rinaldo Cuneo, Mallette Harold Dean, Clifford Wight, Edith Hamlin, George Harris, Robert B. Howard, Otis Oldfield, Suzanne Scheuer, Hebe Daum and Frede Vidar.
Pioneer Park, one of the first dedicated parks in San Francisco, was established atop Telegraph Hill in 1876. Telegraph Hill earned its name from the marine semaphore telegraph which was posted there in the 1850's, providing notification of arriving ships.
National Register #07001468 (2007)
Aerial photography of the Chicago, Illinois downtown loop and skyscrapers, summer 2017.
On my site: ericbowers.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Chicago/G0000aH...