LUC has worked with a large multi-disciplinary team to deliver a sustainable infrastructure and development masterplan to guide the long term transformation of Shawfield in Glasgow’s East End. LUC also led the design and implementation of an advanced phase of public realm and landscape works that now forms a framework for new development to be realised over a 20-25year horizon.

 

Prior to construction the site was heavily contaminated and consisted of large areas of vacant and derelict land together with dated business and industrial premises. The site was completely cleared and underwent significant ground remediation in advance of the public realm works to ensure the site is ‘development ready’.

 

LUC developed a green infrastructure strategy to inform the masterplan design with an emphasis on integrated surface water drainage and pedestrian connectivity to surrounding communities, transport nodes and the River Clyde corridor.

The Clyde riverbanks have been manipulated to provide new pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and this now provides an extension to the strategically important Clyde Walkway.

 

An ecologically diverse mosaic of riparian woodland, grassland and wetland habitats has been created that will improve the biodiversity of the River Clyde corridor.

A new strategic pedestrian and cycling link has been created linking the new South Dalmarnock Smart Bridge with the centre of the masterplan site, improving connectivity in the area. In contrast with the more naturalistic riverside treatment this link is more formal in character with strong tree avenue planting, lighting and paving patterns.

  

For more information, visit: www.landuse.co.uk

 

Image Available for purchase from www.ballaratheritage.com.au

 

Statement of Significance

 

What is significant?

 

The Cussen Memorial is a mausoleum located within the Roman Catholic section of the Boroondara General Cemetery, Kew (VHR0049). The sandstone memorial is built in the Gothic Revival style in the form of a small chapel with carvings, diamond shaped roof tiles and decorated ridge capping embellishing the exterior. The memorial occupies a landmark position within the Cemetery. The Cussen Memorial was constructed in 1912-13 by Leo Cussen in memory of his son Hubert. Leo Cussen (later Sir Leo) was appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1906, where he displayed the qualities which were to mark him, in the words of Sir Owen Dixon, as the 'greatest of all judges', combining legal expertise with great humanity and practicality. Sir Leo was considered by Sir Robert Menzies as 'one of the great judges of the English speaking world'. In addition to his duties as a judge, Leo Cussen accepted responsibility for the consolidations of the Victorian Acts of Parliament, which took place in 1915, and again in 1929. In 1922, after four years of labour over centuries of English legislation, he presented to the Victorian Parliament the Bill for the Imperial Acts Application Act, which was passed without amendment.

 

The architect for the Memorial was WP Conolly of the firm Kempson and Conolly. Conolly was one of the most prominent architects designing Catholic churches in Melbourne in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cussen's choice of architect for the memorial reflects his Catholic connections in Melbourne. In 1930, Conolly was asked by Lady Cussen to make alterations to the Cussen Memorial to allow for additional tombs. In spite of being built initially for Hubert Cussen, the Memorial has been strongly associated with Sir Leo Cussen since his burial there in 1933 and is often referred to as the Leo Cussen Memorial.

 

How is it significant?

 

The Cussen Memorial is of architectural and historical significance to the State of Victoria

 

Why is it significant?

 

The Cussen Memorial is of architectural significance as a fine example of an early twentieth century mausoleum in the Gothic style, designed by WP Conolly, one of the most prominent architects designing Catholic churches in Melbourne in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 

The Cussen Memorial is of historical significance for its association with Sir Leo Cussen, justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria from 1906 to 1933, a highly popular and respected judge, legal educator and scholar, who was responsible for the consolidation of Victoria's statutes in 1915 and 1929 and the consolidation of over 7000 English Acts applicable in Victoria in the Imperial Acts Application Act of 1922.

 

VHR Statement of Significance

 

What is significant?

 

Boroondara Cemetery, established in 1858, is within an unusual triangular reserve bounded by High Street, Park Hill Road and Victoria Park, Kew. The caretaker's lodge and administrative office (1860 designed by Charles Vickers, additions, 1866-1899 by Albert Purchas) form a picturesque two-storey brick structure with a slate roof and clock tower. A rotunda or shelter (1890, Albert Purchas) is located in the centre of the cemetery: this has an octagonal hipped roof with fish scale slates and a decorative brick base with a tessellated floor and timber seating. The cemetery is surrounded by a 2.7 metre high ornamental red brick wall (1895-96, Albert Purchas) with some sections of vertical iron palisades between brick pillars. Albert Purchas was a prominent Melbourne architect who was the Secretary of the Melbourne General Cemetery from 1852 to 1907 and Chairman of the Boroondara Cemetery Board of Trustees from 1867 to 1909. He made a significant contribution to the design of the Boroondara Cemetery

 

Boroondara Cemetery is an outstanding example of the Victorian Garden Cemetery movement in Victoria, retaining key elements of the style, despite overdevelopment which has obscured some of the paths and driveways. Elements of the style represented at Boroondara include an ornamental boundary fence, a system of curving paths which are kerbed and follow the site's natural contours, defined views, recreational facilities such as the rotunda, a landscaped park like setting, sectarian divisions for burials, impressive monuments, wrought and cast iron grave surrounds and exotic symbolic plantings. In the 1850s cemeteries were located on the periphery of populated areas because of concerns about diseases like cholera. They were designed to be attractive places for mourners and visitors to walk and contemplate. Typically cemeteries were arranged to keep religions separated and this tended to maintain links to places of origin, reflecting a migrant society.

 

Other developments included cast iron entrance gates, built in 1889 to a design by Albert Purchas; a cemetery shelter or rotunda, built in 1890, which is a replica of one constructed in the Melbourne General Cemetery in the same year; an ornamental brick fence erected in 1896-99(?); the construction and operation of a terminus for a horse tram at the cemetery gates during 1887-1915; and the Springthorpe Memorial built between 1897 and 1907. A brick cremation wall and a memorial rose garden were constructed near the entrance in the mid- twentieth century(c.1955-57) and a mausoleum completed in 2001.The maintenance shed/depot close to High Strett was constructed in 1987. The original entrance was altered in 2000 and the original cast iron gates moved to the eastern entrance of the Mausoleum.

 

The Springthorpe Memorial (VHR 522) set at the entrance to the burial ground commemorates Annie Springthorpe, and was erected between 1897 and 1907 by her husband Dr John Springthorpe. It was the work of the sculptor Bertram Mackennal, architect Harold Desbrowe Annear, landscape designer and Director of the Melbourne Bortanic Gardens, W.R. Guilfoyle, with considerable input from Dr Springthorpe The memorial is in the form of a small temple in a primitive Doric style. It was designed by Harold Desbrowe Annear and includes Bertram Mackennal sculptures in Carrara marble. Twelve columns of deep green granite from Scotland support a Harcourt granite superstructure. The roof by Brooks Robinson is a coloured glass dome, which sits within the rectangular form and behind the pediments. The sculptural group raised on a dais, consists of the deceased woman lying on a sarcophagus with an attending angel and mourner. The figure of Grief crouches at the foot of the bier and an angel places a wreath over Annie's head, symbolising the triumph of immortal life over death. The body of the deceased was placed in a vault below. The bronze work is by Marriots of Melbourne. Professor Tucker of the University of Melbourne composed appropriate inscriptions in English and archaic Greek lettering.. The floor is a geometric mosaic and the glass dome roof is of Tiffany style lead lighting in hues of reds and pinks in a radiating pattern. The memorial originally stood in a landscape triangular garden of about one acre near the entrance to the cemetery. However, after Dr Springthorpe's death in 1933 it was found that transactions for the land had not been fully completed so most of it was regained by the cemetery. A sundial and seat remain. The building is almost completely intact. The only alteration has been the removal of a glass canopy over the statuary and missing chains between posts. The Argus (26 March 1933) considered the memorial to be the most beautiful work of its kind in Australia. No comparable buildings are known.

 

The Syme Memorial (1908) is a memorial to David Syme, political economist and publisher of the Melbourne Age newspaper. The Egyptian memorial designed by architect Arthur Peck is one of the most finely designed and executed pieces of monumental design in Melbourne. It has a temple like form with each column having a different capital detail. These support a cornice that curves both inwards and outwards. The tomb also has balustradings set between granite piers which create porch spaces leading to the entrance ways. Two variegated Port Jackson Figs are planted at either end.

 

The Cussen Memorial (VHR 2036) was constructed in 1912-13 by Sir Leo Cussen in memory of his young son Hubert. Sir Leo Finn Bernard Cussen (1859-1933), judge and member of the Victorian Supreme Court in 1906. was buried here. The family memorial is one of the larger and more impressive memorials in the cemetery and is an interesting example of the 1930s Gothic Revival style architecture. It takes the form of a small chapel with carvings, diamond shaped roof tiles and decorated ridge embellishing the exterior.

 

By the 1890s, the Boroondara Cemetery was a popular destination for visitors and locals admiring the beauty of the grounds and the splendid monuments. The edge of suburban settlement had reached the cemetery in the previous decade. Its Victorian garden design with sweeping curved drives, hill top views and high maintenance made it attractive. In its Victorian Garden Cemetery design, Boroondara was following an international trend. The picturesque Romanticism of the Pere la Chaise garden cemetery established in Paris in 1804 provided a prototype for great metropolitan cemeteries such as Kensal Green (1883) and Highgate (1839) in London and the Glasgow Necropolis (1831). Boroondara Cemetery was important in establishing this trend in Australia.

 

The cemetery's beauty peaked with the progressive completion of the spectacular Springthorpe Memorial between 1899 and 1907. From about the turn of the century, the trustees encroached on the original design, having repeatedly failed in attempts to gain more land. The wide plantations around road boundaries, grassy verges around clusters of graves in each denomination, and most of the landscaped surround to the Springthorpe memorial are now gone. Some of the original road and path space were resumed for burial purposes. The post war period saw an increased use of the Cemetery by newer migrant groups. The mid- to late- twentieth century monuments were often placed on the grassed edges of the various sections and encroached on the roadways as the cemetery had reached the potential foreseen by its design. These were well tended in comparison with Victorian monuments which have generally been left to fall into a state of neglect.

 

The Boroondara Cemetery features many plants, mostly conifers and shrubs of funerary symbolism, which line the boundaries, road and pathways, and frame the cemetery monuments or are planted on graves. The major plantings include an impressive row of Bhutan Cypress (Cupressus torulosa), interplanted with Sweet Pittosporum (Pittosporum undulatum), and a few Pittosporum crassifolium, along the High Street and Parkhill Street, where the planting is dominated by Sweet Pittosporum.

 

Planting within the cemetery includes rows and specimen trees of Bhutan Cypress and Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens), including a row with alternate plantings of both species. The planting includes an unusual "squat" form of an Italian Cypress. More of these trees probably lined the cemetery roads and paths. Also dominating the cemetery landscape near the Rotunda is a stand of 3 Canary Island Pines (Pinus canariensis), a Bunya Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwillii) and a Weeping Elm (Ulmus glabra 'Camperdownii')

 

Amongst the planting are the following notable conifers: a towering Bunya Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwillii), a Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), a rare Golden Funeral Cypress (Chamaecyparis funebris 'Aurea'), two large Funeral Cypress (Chamaecyparis funebris), and the only known Queensland Kauri (Agathis robusta) in a cemetery in Victoria.

 

The Cemetery records, including historical plans of the cemetery from 1859, are held by the administration and their retention enhances the historical significance of the Cemetery.

 

How is it significant?

 

Boroondara Cemetery is of aesthetic, architectural, scientific (botanical) and historical significance to the State of Victoria.

 

Why is it significant?

 

The Boroondara Cemetery is of historical and aesthetic significance as an outstanding example of a Victorian garden cemetery.

 

The Boroondara Cemetery is of historical significance as a record of Victorian life from the 1850s, and the early settlement of Kew. It is also significant for its ability to demonstrate, through the design and location of the cemetery, attitudes towards burial, health concerns and the importance placed on religion, at the time of its establishment.

 

The Boroondara Cemetery is of architectural significance for the design of the gatehouse or sexton's lodge and cemetery office (built in stages from 1860 to 1899), the ornamental brick perimeter fence and elegant cemetery shelter to the design of prominent Melbourne architects, Charles Vickers (for the original 1860 cottage) and Albert Purchas, cemetery architect and secretary from 1864 to his death in 1907.

 

The Boroondara Cemetery has considerable aesthetic significance which is principally derived from its tranquil, picturesque setting; its impressive memorials and monuments; its landmark features such as the prominent clocktower of the sexton's lodge and office, the mature exotic plantings, the decorative brick fence and the entrance gates; its defined views; and its curving paths. The Springthorpe Memorial (VHR 522), the Syme Memorial and the Cussen Memorial (VHR 2036), all contained within the Boroondara Cemetery, are of aesthetic and architectural significance for their creative and artistic achievement.

 

The Boroondara Cemetery is of scientific (botanical) significance for its collection of rare mature exotic plantings. The Golden Funeral Cypress, (chamaecyparis funebris 'aurea') is the only known example in Victoria.

 

The Boroondara Cemetery is of historical significance for the graves, monuments and epitaphs of a number of individuals whose activities have played a major part in Australia's history. They include the Henty family, artists Louis Buvelot and Charles Nuttall, businessmen John Halfey and publisher David Syme, artist and diarist Georgiana McCrae, actress Nellie Stewart and architect and designer of the Boroondara and Melbourne General Cemeteries, Albert Purchas.

Tuesday, 4 August 2015, saw the passing out parade of the latest group of Greater Manchester Police’s Volunteer Cadets. The ceremony took place at Swinton Civic Centre.

 

The Force’s Chief Constable, Sir Peter Fahy, reviewed the cadets and presented them with certificates to recognise the completion of their training.

 

In 2012, Sir Peter pledged to create a new Volunteer Police Cadet Scheme for young people in the region.

 

The scheme, developed by Sergeant Jane Butler and Youth Strategy Officer, PC Andrew Marsden, is aimed at 13- 17 year-olds and provides a programme of weekly Cadet nights filled with activity, information and – hopefully – some fun.

 

The aims of the scheme include:

 

•Promoting and encouraging a practical interest in policing among young people,

 

•Providing training which will encourage positive leadership within communities which will include volunteering opportunities,

 

•Encouraging a spirit of adventure and developing qualities of leadership and good citizenship. Cadets will be given the opportunity to obtain a Duke of Edinburgh Award, First Aid qualification etc.

 

Cadets units will be based in areas where there is currently little to occupy local youngsters.

 

Volunteers will have to apply, stating their reasons for wanting to be part of the scheme and will be encouraged to remain with the scheme for as long as they can. On reaching the end of their time as a cadet, they will be given with advice on careers and business, help with CVs and information about any opportunities to remain with the Force.

 

The first cadet scheme has been developed with the support of the Co-op Academy, Blackley.

 

Cadets are currently completing a "probationary" period and have so far experienced drill, physical exercise classes and advice on subjects such as the effective and safe use of social media.

 

Further items on the curriculum are lessons on the law, public order awareness, phonetics and radio use, problem solving … and more drill!

 

A uniform will be worn but only issued on completion of a successful probationary period.

 

The scheme's team leaders are also volunteers and include schools based officers, PCSOs, special constables and university students, all contributing their own time to run each cadet night.

 

To build number of successful schemes across the region we are looking for help. Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer team leader and can demonstrate a commitment and desire to "change hearts and minds" can contact Sergeant Jane Butler at volunteerpolicecadets@gmp.police.uk.

 

To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit our website.

www.gmp.police.uk

 

You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.

 

LUC has worked with a large multi-disciplinary team to deliver a sustainable infrastructure and development masterplan to guide the long term transformation of Shawfield in Glasgow’s East End. LUC also led the design and implementation of an advanced phase of public realm and landscape works that now forms a framework for new development to be realised over a 20-25year horizon.

 

Prior to construction the site was heavily contaminated and consisted of large areas of vacant and derelict land together with dated business and industrial premises. The site was completely cleared and underwent significant ground remediation in advance of the public realm works to ensure the site is ‘development ready’.

 

LUC developed a green infrastructure strategy to inform the masterplan design with an emphasis on integrated surface water drainage and pedestrian connectivity to surrounding communities, transport nodes and the River Clyde corridor.

The Clyde riverbanks have been manipulated to provide new pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and this now provides an extension to the strategically important Clyde Walkway.

 

An ecologically diverse mosaic of riparian woodland, grassland and wetland habitats has been created that will improve the biodiversity of the River Clyde corridor.

A new strategic pedestrian and cycling link has been created linking the new South Dalmarnock Smart Bridge with the centre of the masterplan site, improving connectivity in the area. In contrast with the more naturalistic riverside treatment this link is more formal in character with strong tree avenue planting, lighting and paving patterns.

  

For more information, visit: www.landuse.co.uk

(for further information and pictures please go to the end of page and by clicking on the link they are availabe!)

The Church of St. Othmar

Previous buildings | Today's Construction | Tour | Exterior | Timeline | Calendar

550-year anniversary | History on construction time | Wikipedia

Construction of the Othmar church

560 years ago

On 13th May 1454, the Monday after the feast of St. Pancras, the building of the late Gothic St. Othmar church was begun. Thereon reports the following inscription above the main entrance of the church.

Laying the foundation stone of St. Othmar

The 550-year anniversary was on 13th May 2004 celebrated in a festive vespers followed by a festive academy.

View of the main altar

You can approach a church as historically interested person, as art-historically committed tourist or as a believer. One will see different things.

The historically interested will impress on the Othmar Church in Mödling that since more than 1000 years at this point on the slope of the Calendar mountain (Kalenderberg) (= bare hithe - kahle Lände) are standing churches and that the current construction the seventh church in an unbroken sequence on this place is. He will think of the destruction of the Roman church in 1252 by the Hungarians and the horrors of the Turkish wars in 1529 and 1683.

Tourists who are interested in art and art history, see the in 1454-1523 built late Gothic hall church, the Baroque interior, the neo-Gothic windows and Stations of the Cross and the testimonies of contemporary art in the sanctuary.

For the believer the Othmarkiche makes the impression of a ship that has gone halfway between level and height at anchor to accommodate the people. Twelve pillars - the Twelve Apostles - wear its vaults. The base has a level.

This church is not a castle - defiant, dark and unwelcoming. Its bow goes into the distance. As Noah's Ark it gives refuge and security. It stands on this earth. Yet it has walls. But their higher regions are translucent, are light. The glory of heaven is guessable.

Two of the windows are of particular importance: the window in the east as the window of the creation and resurrection, and the window in the West as the window of the sunset, the Last Judgment. The world stands between Jesus' resurrection and his second coming. Every visit to the church, every church service to the community becomes an invocation to deal with God's creation and creatures that way that you don't need to fear his judgment.

The previous buildings

Mödling is ancient settlement with hilltop settlements of the Neolithic on the Jennyberg and the Hallstatt period on the Frauenberg as well as on the Calendar mountain (Calendar mountain culture).

Archaeological excavations in 1982 have shown that at the site of the present Othmar church since the 9th Century at least six predecessor buildings have been located.

More information about the predecessors ...

The present building

Start of construction 1454

As an inscription above the main entrance says, was on 13 May 1454, one year after completion of the hospital church, the construction of the present Othmar church started. It was the Monday after the feast of St. Pancras, whose feast on 12th May is observed. Pancras was the patron of the castle chapels of the castle Mödling and the castle Liechtenstein.

The 550-year anniversary of this laying of the cornerstone on 13th May 2004 was celebrated.

The dimensions of the church are for a market town that had at the time of the laying of the cornerstone 250 (mainly built of wood) Houses, huge: 54 m long, 23 m wide and 18 m high, the ridge height is 37 m. As a building material was, as for the St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, Sarmatsandstein (Cerithiensandstein) used, a rough, deficient in fossils sandstone, which was born as a deposit of Neogene Sea at the edge of the Vienna Basin.

Pastor Hinderbach and Pius II

1449-1465 was Johannes Hinderbach pastor of St. Othmar (in some sources he is called Johann Hinderbach). He planned and thus began the construction of Othmar church. He was a diplomat, ambassador and secretary of Emperor Frederick III. at the court in Wiener Neustadt, together with Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini), who was good friends with Hinderbach. It is likely that Aeneas Silvius a few times was in Mödling on visit and was well informed about the plans of the new church.

In the tenure of Hinderbach also falls the presentation of the Mödlinger coat of arms by Frederick III.

Aeneas Silvius was for some years pastor in Laa an der Thaya (Lower Austria), 1458 he was elected Pope and took the name Pius II. He built from 1459 the cathedral of Pienza in the form of a hall church, which at that time was unusual for Italy. Models were hall churches in Austria, possibly the Othmar church under construction, however, this is historically not proven. Due to time constraints Aeneas Silvius may have seen from the Othmar church not more than the blueprints and the foundation walls.

Hinderbach and Aeneas Silvius were followers of the for the Gothic spirit characteristic attitude of mind of the light mysticism. A hall church is a suitable design to implement this principle: light-irradiated, large stained glass windows instead of walls painted with images that are prevalent in the Romanesque style.

In Him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.

The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.

(Jn 1, 4 to 5.9)

1465-1486 was Hinderbach Bishop of Trent. Perhaps the Othmar church was originally planned as a bishop's church, but this is historically not proven. Hinderbach created one of the most important collections of music of the 15th Century, the so-called Trent codices.

For more information, in a speech by Dr. Gebhard König here ....

Completion 1523-1525

The year date 1499 on a buttress in the parish garden likely shows the toping-off ceremony, the year date 1509 on the north-eastern crossing pier, the completion of the vault.

After 69-year construction period (corresponding to the age of the saint Othmar), the church was completed in 1523. The above-mentioned Cathedral of Pienza, however, was already completed in 1462.

The progress has been hampered by numerous wars and confusions. In that time, the civil war between the Habsburg Emperor Friedrich III . and his brother, Archduke Albrecht VI. (until his death in 1463) and the conquest of Lower Austria by the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus I., who resided in Vienna from 1485, falls.

1525 the church was consecrated (year date above the organ).

Destruction 1529

In fall of 1529, six years after the end of construction, the church was destroyed by the hordes of Kassim Beg during the first Turkish siege. The collapsing roof penetrated the vault and the vault of the lower church. Likewise, the Burg (castle) Mödling was destroyed, which was not rebuilt since then.

According to the report of a parish visitation in 1544 was the kürchen (church) and pfarrhof (vicarage) sambt (along with) the gantzen Marckt Mödling (whole market) as well as the umbliegenden (adjoining) fleckhen (hamlets) of the 29th year verwüst (devastated) by the türkhen (Turks) in Grundt (to the ground) and burned.

The grooves and the rectangular holes in the central pillars on which they wanted attach figure niches with pinnacle baldachins and Kapitellsockeln (capital bases) as with the pilasters, therefore, remained to this day empty. At the times when the Othmar church was not usable, the hospital church served as a parish church.

From the interior decoration of the church from the time before the destruction of 1529 today only three items are present: the tabernacle, the head of the crucified and an embroidered image of Mary, which is today at the votive altar.

To 1540 begins on the eastern slope of the Anninger (small mountain) a pine to grow that later became famous under the name width pine (Breite Föhre).

Reconstruction to 1690

Rötelinschriften (red chalk epigraphs) next to the entrance, the south transept and north aisle next to the organ parapet indicate that work has been done on the church in 1556 again.

After 1555 the Peace of Augsburg had approved the principle that the ruler could determine the religious denomination of the subjects, reinforced Emperor Ferdinand I the Counter-Reformation to the recatholicization of the country. 1556 Ferdinand issued the so-called gift letter (Gabebrief). With this document he gave the community all possessions owned by the parish (church buildings, forests, vineyards, fields). He imposed the condition that instead of an Evangelical preacher a Catholic priest was responsible for the pastoral care again and that Mödling became Catholic. Still today the municipality bears the building cost for the ecclesiastical buildings (Othmar church, hospital church, Karner, rectory, sacristan apartment) and has a say in the appointment of a new pastor.

A son of Ferdinand I, Emperor Maximilian II, the famous castle Neugebäude had built.

One reason for the lengthy reconstruction of the church might have been the Reformation (1517 were the 95 theses of Martin Luther published) and the decline in the number of Catholics. Pastor Georg Müller from 1527 is first Protestant minister in Mödling, sometimes up to three Evangelical pastors in Mödling are active .

Mödling in 1560 among the 18 richest cities and markets in the country is in sixth place. 1576 there is again a Catholic priest. Of him it is said that he had not a good life in the market. The population flows to the Protestant clergies of the surrounding residences, and again and again come Protestant preachers to Mödling.

1582 the church possesses a shallow makeshift roof over a cross barrel vault, the vault is still preserved today. (However, the church in the plan of the Burgfrieden (civil peace) and the District Court market Mödling is represented by 1610 without a roof and called Old deserted churche. Alongside the Karner is shown with pointed conical roof.)

Still in 1605 is reported on the parish that most part is not Catholic and does run after foreign cure of souls.

In the course of the Counter-Reformation cardinal Melchior Khlesl in a decree calls for donations for the reconstruction of the church:

The with big heavy expenses respectable built God house of Mödling under Gebürg (mountain), then as such anno 1523 with all belonging to the city even built up, it is at once it in 6 years afterwards by the erbfeundt (hereditary friend) as he with all of his power invaded the land and besieged the city of Vienna, put on fire and and along with all churches ornat burned down.

Khlesl was originally Protestant, then converted, influential politician, since 1598 bishop of Vienna, 1615 the first Cardinal in Vienna, he died in 1630, tomb in saint Stephen's cathedral.

However, 1618 is also the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, whereby the construction progress was further delayed.

One hundred years after the destruction of the church, it is still worked on the restoration. 1629 a citizen of Salzburg donates the Märbelsteinpflaster (Salzburg marble) for the sanctuary. The top step in front of the high altar is still made ​​of old stones, the difference with the 1982 renewed stones is clearly visible. A commemorative plaque to the donator from Salzburg is located on the right column at the high altar:

Almighty God in praise, of St. Mary Mother of God in honor, has Florianus Ursprunger, citizen and Gastgeb (host) of Salzburg of present choir the Märbelpflastersteine handed on anno 1629.

A lightning strike shattered the windows and the tracery in 1643: here the weather has beaten in the main church, and both the windows and outmost grids anything shattered. 20 years later is reported a Corpus Christi Brotherhood, to which belongs one third of the population of Mödling.

In a report in 1664 six altars in the Othmar church (and one in the Pantaleon chapel) are enumerated by name. The church may have been thus completed for the most part.

1679 the pleague in Mödling breaks out.

1683 destruction and reconstruction

On 12th and 13th July 1683 suffers Mödling the conquest by the troops of Kara Mustafa. The church is partly destroyed and the vault is damaged.

The population is almost entirely eradicated. Many had sought in the crypt and the Karner (charnel house) refuge and were killed as a plate in front of the church reports. It is believed that, of the approximately 2000 inhabitants, only about 10% have survived, who had hidden in the woods.

After 1683 follows the rapid reconstruction of the church under Marktrichter (equivalent to mayor) Wolfgang Ignaz Viechtl, his home with a commemorative plaque stands on Liberty Square. As can be seen on the board, was Viechtl a miller (on the Fischermühle), so he on the outside of the west wall at high altitude had attached two millstones (see external view).

On 1st September 1688 is the vault restored, the executive master mason Brand for it receives according to Council minutes 1/4 bucket of wine (equivalent to approximately 14 liters). In 1690 the church was inclusively roof and truss restored (year date above the organ).

Baroquisation 18th century

The victory over the Turks initiates the second phase of the history of Othmar church. It is made in Baroque style (1690-1760). The windows are bricked up, the light mysticism of the Gothic becomes less important. The pulpit and seven baroque altars are built (see the high altar, Nepomuk altar, Anne altar, weekday chapel, votive altar). 1727 an organ is built. The hall of the Children of God turns into the throne room of the Heavenly Majesty.

Neo-Gothic restoration from 1875 to 1897.

The elevation of Mödling in 1875 as a city under Mayor Joseph Schöffel induces to a major renovation (1875 - 1897). They want the church according to the zeitgeist (spirit of the times) rebuilt in the neo-Gothic style. To do this, on 6th February 1875 at the request of Mayor Joseph Schöffel a church restoration club is founded.

The in the Baroque period bricked-up windows are laid open. This can be seen clearly on the frescoes on the Anne altar in the south transept. The grave stones lying in the soil are placed on the wall.

The figure niches and canopies on the pillars were replaced (except right behind the high altar). At Anne altar there are for unknown reasons no figure niches.

1904, a second gate is broken. The main entrance is getting a new stem, the in 1773 built Cross chapel is removed.

Renovation 1982 to May 1983

The renovation of 1982 restores the hall church (year date above the organ). The by the transept indicated cross in the ground plan of the church is satisfied that the Baroque interior in this cross takes the place of the stigmata. The liturgical ideas of Second Vatican Council are realized in works of contemporary art (folk altar and ambo).

Supplements

In 2008, the heating system was renewed.

Karner and church

Karner and church of the rest of St. John

Inscription on the laying of foundation stone 1454

Glass window

The glass window bears the inscription

Church restoration Club = 1895

Inscription 1499 (topping-off ceremony)

Buttresses in the garden

Inscription 1509 (vault completion)

Red chalk inscription 1558

Plan in 1610, Karner and Old deserted church

Commemorating plaque 1629

Commemorating plaque to the donor of the Märbelsteinpflaster 1629

Märbelsteinstufe (stone step) 1629 at the High Altar

Engraving after Merian 1649

St. Othmar and Karner

Engraving after Matthäus Merian 1649

Saints in figure niches

Lonely St. Anna - all other figure niches (they stem from the construction period 1454-1523) are empty or do not exist.

Choir stalls detail and consecration cross

Ceiling painting Holy Ghost Hole (1700 - 1750)

Consecration Cross: Twelve Apostle or consecration crosses are in the Othmar church, at those in 1525 at the fair were done prayers

Column

Twelve octagonal central pillars carry the vault

St. Anthony at a column

www.othmar.at/kirchen/st_othmar/st_othmar.html

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower, designed by Pierre L. LeBrun of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, is a major and memorable evocation of the world-famous campanile in Venice's Saint Mark's Square. Built in 1907-09, the Metropolitan Life tower was for a time, the tallest building in the world. It is also the final and crowning work of a firm, father and sons, whose combined production spanned almost seventy years of American architecture.

 

The tower was extensively renovated (1960-64) by Lloyd Morgan & Eugene V. Meroni, Architects, successors to Leonard Schultze & Associates, who retained the tower's major features — monumental clock faces, setback arcade, pyramidal spire, cupola, chime and lantern — as well as its original entasis. The tower's site, opposite historic Madison Square Park at 24th Street, is one of the finest settings in the city. For the past eighty years the tower has been both a significant silhouette on the Manhattan skyline and a corporate symbol; the lantern at its top has been called "The light that never fails."

 

Madison Square Park - a brief history

 

Few buildings in New York enjoy the spacious and verdant setting Madison Square Park provides the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company home office complex and tower. The park itself had been included by the Street Commissioners in their 1811 Map of Manhattan nearly 180 years ago. Then the park was a reserve of almost 239 acres; it was not pared down to its present seven acres until 1844. Even as the park's size diminished, its historical significance increased; decades before the architecture of commerce came to dominate its borders, Madison Square possessed a rich civic, military, social and cultural history.

 

With the onset of the War of 1812, President James Madison mobilized troops and the site, a temporary home to upstate volunteers, became "Camp Madison," a likely source for the square's name. Today only commemorative monuments remain, echos of American military victories. The Fifth Avenue Hotel, a Republican Party stronghold, opened in 1858 and the park opposite became a pantheon of the party's most revered public servants from New York; with bronze statues of Secretary William H. Seward, Senator Roscoe Conkling, and President Chester A. Arthur.2 To the east, Madison Avenue, insulated by the park, became a fashionable residential enclave.

 

On the corner of 24th Street was the Madison Square Presbyterian Church (1854). From its pulpit the Reverend Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst marshaled the moral indignation that ended Boss Tweed's domination of municipal government.

 

In the 1880s and 1890s the Madison Square area became a theatrical center. Steele McKay built the Madison Square Theatre in 1880 and the Lyceum Theatre in 1885. In 1890 McKim, Mead & White's famous Madison Square Garden (demolished in 1924) opened at the northeast corner of Madison and East 26th Street on the site where P.T. Barnum formerly had his Monster Classical & Geological Hippodrome, and Gilmore's Garden had sheltered boxing demonstrations and the annual National Horseshow.

 

In the same year Joseph F. Knapp, the president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, initiated the first of many property acquisitions the company would make on Madison Square when the houses on the Square's east side were purchased. With the exception of Dr. Parkhurst's church, the whole block front was demolished to build the company's new headquarters, an eleven-story office building faced with Tuckahoe marble, designed by Napoleon LeBrun & Sons. Considered in retrospect, it was the entertainment industry's encroachment that prompted residents to move further uptown, but it was the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's new and solid presence which re-stabilized Madison Square's eastern border. In 1896 the State of New York erected the marble courthouse for the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court (James Brown Lord, architect), a designated New York City Landmark, on the northeast corner of Madison and 25th Street. Knapp's vision of the square prepared the site for the next chapter in its history, the growth of corporate giants.

 

History of Metropolitan Life

 

Metropolitan Life began as the National Union Life & Limb Insurance Company in 1863, but was split into two separate companies, the National Life Insurance Company and the National Travellers Insurance Company, in 1866. In 1868 the company's charter and its name were changed to Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.4 At this time the life insurance industry in this country was already dominated by several well-established companies. The agency system was well-developed and the principal policy plans of today — straight life, endowment, annuity and term insurance — were already in use.

 

Metropolitan Life's first president, Dr. John Richardson Dow, who served from 1866 until his death in 1870, was a retired physician of ample means. Like Dow, the majority of the stockholders and directors were Brooklyn residents, well known to one another. Metropolitan Life was first located in offices at 243 Broadway. In 1870 the company moved to 319 Broadway. It was at this time that the Hildise Bund, a sizeable society of German-speaking wage earners organized about 1870, approached Metropolitan Life seeking coverage for its membership. The Bund collected weekly premiums from its members and transmitted them quarterly to Metropolitan Life. It was this German business which pulled Metropolitan Life through the Panic of 1873.

 

Joseph Fairchild Knapp, Metropolitan Life's second president from 1871 until his death in 1891, had formerly been a principal in the Major & Knapp Engraving, Manufacturing and Lithographing Company. Metropolitan Life's growth required more space and in 1876 the company leased the five-story Wilson B. Hunt building at the corner of Park Place and Church Street (now demolished). In 1879 Knapp initiated Industrial insurance, an area previously ignored in the United States. Industrial insurance had been introduced by the Prudential Assurance Company of London; Knapp was so impressed with Prudential's succesp that he imported English agents to train Metropolitan Life's employees.

 

Metropolitan Life and its Home Offices

 

As well as mastering the insurance business, Knapp appears to have understood the value of architectural imagery. Knapp must have been aware of the new Second Empire style Equitable Life Building (1868-70) on Broadway. Knapp commissioned the architectural firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Son to undertake the renovation of Metropolitan Life's new home on Park Place. LeBrun had demonstrated his skill in this fashionable commercial style already. In 1870 LeBrun won the Masonic Lodge competition with his solid Second Empire design. LeBrun brought the two simple Italianate elevations of the Wilson B. Hunt building up to date.

 

By re-organizing the ground floor and adding a two-story pavilioned mansard, he established the strong symmetry characteristic of this style. This commission was the first of many that Metropolitan Life awarded to the LeBruns. In 1890 Metropolitan Life purchased the site at 1 Madison Avenue, then so far uptown that no office building had yet been constructed there. Knapp turned again to the LeBrun firm. This eleven-story office block contained a delicately carved program of Italian Renaissance motifs which enriched the reveals and spandrels of windcws and doorways.7 This new building, on its corner site opposite Madison Square Park, did much to establish Metropolitan Life in the eyes and the mind of the public.

 

John Rogers Hegeman, Metropolitan Life's third president from 1891 until his death in 1919, was an even more avid builder than his predecessor Joseph Knapp. He, too, recognized the value of an impressive home office. During his tenure, the company expanded its complex to the whole block, building the great tower, and initiating its incursion to the adjacent block to the north. In 1894 lots on the south side of East 24th Street, immediately behind the Presbyterian church and tangent to the new home office building, were purchased and subsequently so were lots along East 23rd Street.

 

A twelve-story addition was constructed on 24th Street. By 1902 the company owned the Lyceum Theatre site and was purchasing the northeast corner of the block. In 1904-05 the new buildings, all from plans prepared by the LeBrun firm, completed the block; except for the northwest corner where the church stood.

 

Finally, on April 5, 1906, the church site was secured. Dr. Parkhurst had objected to selling, but when Metropolitan Life offered him the more spacious site just across East 24th Street as well, he and his Session accepted. The old church was razed and Metropolitan Life's 700 foot tower was begun, the tallest building in the world, and the LaBruns' final, crowning achievement.

 

By 1909 all eight of these buildings (the tower included) — all of Block 853 — were complete (Plate 3). Their exterior elevations, adaptations of the building commissioned by Knapp (1890), presented broad, unified eleven- and twelve-story facades along Madison and Park Avenues and 23rd and 24th Streets. While these buildings were linked by a major corridor running east and west from avenue to avenue and minor north-south corridors to both streets, each building had its own elevator shafts. At least six courts — generous light wells — brought light and air to the interior spaces of this block-size warren. As work spaces expanded, the thick party walls may have become obstructions. By the mid-1920s a more centralized structure was needed to house the increasing divisions of a large corporation the size of Metropolitan Life.

 

Begun in 1952, Morgan & Meroni's reconstruction of the home office complex, or south building as it is now called, and the tower, took place in three stages: the northeastern portion — an angled northwest to southeast diagonal dividing the block, from the tower to the corner of Park Avenue and 23rd Street, for the most part following the system of internal light courts; the southwestern portion; and the tower. Business continued in the old spaces before demolition and in the new as they became accessible. The new home office is a fourteen-story, skeletal steel structure with generous setbacks, faced with ashlar limestone. Though conservative in its conception, stylistically Lloyd Morgan's design draws upon aspects of the Moderne — the symmetry of both the building's mass and its window bays and entrances — as well as upon the tenets of the International Style. (This building is not included within this designation.)

 

The Architects

 

Two architectural firms are responsible for the appearance of the Metropolitan Life tower today: Napoleon LeBrun & Sons and Lloyd Morgan & Eugene V. Meroni, Architects. The LeBrun firm served as architects to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company from 1876 until 1909. Morgan & Meroni received the commission to reconstruct the whole of the original home office complex and to "modernize" the tower in the early 1950s.

 

Pierre Lassus LeBrun (1846-1924) has not received the attention that he is due, perhaps in part, because the name of the firm, Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, made him, and later his brother Michel, all but anonymous. Little is known of Pierre's formal architectural education. Apparently he was imbued with his father's classical preferences. Napoleon Eugene Charles LeBrun (1821-1901) was born to French emigrant parents in Philadelphia. At fifteen years of age he was placed in the office of classicist Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887), where he remained for six years. LeBrun began his own practice in 1841 in Philadelphia but moved to New York in 1864 where the choice in 1870 of his Second Empire style Masonic Temple competition submission did much to establish his reputation.

 

In the same year his son Pierre joined him and the firm became Napoleon LeBrun & Son. Like his father, Pierre LeBrun was not so much an innovator as he was an adherent to a stylistic consistency at a time of stylistic transition and flux. With but few exceptions this preference was demonstrated in the work of both generations. Father and sons were active members of the new American Institute of Architects.

 

The firm's work can be divided into two periods, an early one spanning the 1870s into the mid-80s and a later one from the later 1880s until the firm's dissolution in 1909. The earlier is robust. The later work was significantly different. Building elevations became more planar; walls were no longer load bearing. Design of ornament relied solely upon historic prototypes. The first Metropolitan Life building was an example of a new building type given stylistic character through the application of ornament, as is LeBrun's still-extant Home Insurance Company (1893-94) facade on Broadway above Murray Street. This conventional, tall office building is enhanced by the Renaissance style triumphal arch motif applied to its first three stories. The tall, pyramidal copper roof is fronted by a three-story dormer, intelligently crafted from some study storage collection of Renaissance motifs.

 

While little is known of Pierre LeBrun's architectural education, his three trips abroad in the service of the Willard Architectural Commission are documented. Levi Hale Willard, a wealthy businessman, died in 1883 leaving to the newly founded Metropolitan Museum of Art $100,000 toward the creation of a collection of models and casts illustrative of the art and science of architecture, to be made under the direction of a commission chosen by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In his will Willard nominated Napoleon LeBrun as president of the Commission; Willard, a friend, had often discussed with LeBrun the need to cultivate a popular taste for architecture. Pierre LeBrun was appointed the Commission's purchasing agent. The younger LeBrun visited the significant sites and met with the suppliers of casts in Paris, Munich and Rome.

 

The historical accuracy characterizing the ornament of the LeBruns' later work appears to have been inspired by the Willard Collection.9 Surely, Pierre LeBrun was the partner responsible for the firm's designs in the later phase. Filial duty and affection prompted Pierre and his brother Michel to maintain the firm's name as their father had proudly amended it, first in 1870 and again in 1892. Only someone of Pierre's generation could readily understand the requirements of tall building design; only someone with the historical knowledge gained in acquiring the Willard bequest could know how to appropriately integrate historic detail with a new building type. There is every reason to attribute the designs for these later buildings — and certainly that of the Metropolitan Life Tower — to Pierre L. LeBrun.

 

In a 1914 history of the company there is a chapter on architecture, and the architecture of the tower in particular. It is written with such authority that the reader may assume that the anonymous author is Pierre LeBrun himself.10 He indicates that the resolution of a skyscraper style depends upon the utilization and reshaping of the elements of past styles. Size, he points out, is the only departure from precedent. To justify the propriety of his tower design he presents two comparisons, a brief survey of the proportions of height to width of towers, his and earlier monuments, and a second historic survey of the proportions of the height of tcwers to the mass of adjacent structures.

 

The architects responsible for the Metropolitan Life tower renovation in 1960-64 are Lloyd Morgan and Eugene V. Meroni, formerly of Leonard Schultze & Associates. The tower work — the architects called it a "modernization" — was but a P&rt of the complete rebuilding of the home office which commenced in 1951.

 

Lloyd Morgan (1892-1970) graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1911 and pursued subsequent study at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was awarded the Paris Prize in 1921 and spent the next five years in Europe, studying for a time at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1926 Morgan joined the firm of Schultze & Weaver which specialized in the design of hotel and office buildings and was made a partner three years later. Outside the office he served as an acting professor of architecture at Yale and New York University and conducted his own classes — the Atelier Morgan — for students who could not afford to attend architectural school. Upon S.F. Weaver's death in 1940, the firm became Leonard Schultze & Associates.

 

Morgan is credited with designing some of the firm's best known buildings: the Waldorf-Astoria, the Barbizon Plaza and the Pierre Hotel in New York? the Miami Biltmore and the Roney Plaza in Miami Beach. Morgan also designed suburban housing projects, Parklabrea in Los Angeles, Parkmerced in San Francisco, and Parkfairfax near Washington, D.C., all for Metropolitan Life. Eugene V. Meroni graduated from the Mechanics' and Tradesmen's Institute and trained at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design.1 It seems Morgan was the partner responsible for the design of Metropolitan Life. At Schultze's death in 1951, the firm became Lloyd Morgan & Eugene V. Meroni, Architects.

 

Building Design

 

John Rogers Hegeman, Metropolitan Life's third president, is generally credited with conceiving the idea of the tower; different versions of his inspirations are recorded and to each a possible date and different set of circumstances can be attached. (Behind them all stands the remembered silhouette of the tall steeple of the Presbyterian Church, sharply rising against the sky, a sharp vertical at 24th Street.) The first version is based upon a composite image attributed to Hegeman himself. Sometime after the Home Life Insurance Building (1893-94) was finished, Hegeman clipped an illustration of its facade and juxtaposed it to the left of an illustration of the new home office, a hint to his architects of what he had in mind.

 

In the second version, a published description of the tower as it neared completion, it is indicated that a "tower or campanile" had been part of the original plan for this corner. Though it appears that a tower was not on Joseph Knapp's immediate building agenda, a tower became an important component of Hegeman's. The company's aggressive campaign to acquire the remainder of the block, after its initial base was secure, is we 11-documented. But at what stage of the home office's enlargement a tower was projected, or even what form it was to assume, is not.

 

In his dedicatory remarks in 1909, John Hegeman described the tower as a symbol of integrity.17 Only four years earlier he had endured the inquiries conducted by New York State's Armstrong Committee concerning unethical practices in the insurance industry. Although Metropolitan Life was cleared, Hegeman was indicted, though subsequently exonerated.18 Might he not have seen his tower — the tallest in the world — as a symbol of vindication, both corporate and personal?

 

According to the final version, the great sixteenth-century campanile in Venice's Piazza San Marco, a landmark much beloved by Hegeman, was the prototype of the Metropolitan Life tower.19 The Venetian campanile made global headlines shortly after 9:50 A.M., July 2, 1902, when it collapsed, crushing Jacopo Sansovino's Loggetta. Despite opinions to the contrary,20 the Venetians rebuilt it; work did not begin until the end of 1908 almost three years after the Metropolitan Life tower was begun. While it is true that the campanile form had been considered as an appropriate expression for the tall office building, it was LeBrun who realized it first. But the news from Venice — the loss of one of that city's most familiar features — produced a great swell of public sentiment. An evocation of the fallen tower, anchored to Manhattan's bedrock, would be understandable. Perhaps, then, it was in the summer of 1902 that the projected Metropolitan Life tower in the form of the great Venetian campanile was conceived in the minds of the company president and his architect.

 

The Metropolitan Life Tower - Original Design

 

The Metropolitan Life tower's fifty-story height, articulated as base, shaft and capital - though surmounted with the setback and pyramidal spire of its prototype, and the cupola and lantern - was distinguished by its classical proportions and defined by historical ornamental detail — a reference to Sansovino's Loggetta distinguished the second and third stories (Plate 1). Pierre LeBrun likened the proportions of his tower to those of a Doric column; he had designed the shaft with an entasis — one foot, six inches on the short axis and two feet on the long axis — which the engineers, Purdy & Henderson, duly translated to the steel frame. The tower's elevations were nearly identical and completely faced with White Tuckahoe marble. A concentration of ornamental detail was reserved for the shaft's principal feature, the four great clock faces.

 

Purdy & Henderson designed the tower's footing and skeletal frame, which is anchored to bed rock at depths varying between twenty-eight and forty-six feet below the curb. Although it was not structurally innovative, the tower attracted attention because it was to be the tallest building in the world.26 The fireproofing of the tower's structure was considered an advance in 1909. Rather than heavy brick, or lighter terra cotta, all of the steel members — columns, girders, girths and windbracing — were encased in concrete carefully packed within wooden forms to eliminate air spaces.27 The tower was the crowning commission of Pierre LeBrun's professional career; he was able to apply his historic erudition to this most challenging of new building types.

 

The Metropolitan Life Tower- Renovation

 

Though planned in 1951-52, Morgan & Meroni's renovation of the Metropolitan Life tower did not begin until i960 and was not complete until 1964. For a second time the design of the Metropolitan Life tower was brought into harmony with an adjacent home office building.

 

Morgan's task was twofold: duplicate the new building's limestone cladding on portions of the tower's surface, and translate its planar character to the tower's four elevations. In the effort to reconcile the tower to the new home office, Morgan removed much of Pierre LeBrun's architectural detail; he chose the areas where ornament had been most concentrated —the base, the shaft quoins, the arcade and spire cupola — but retained the proportions and the entasis, recognizing them as the major defining architectural features of the tower.

 

It is clear that Morgan appreciated Metropolitan Life's splendid site opposite the Park as well. He massed and scaled the home office building to flatter the tower's 700 foot sweep upward from the curb to its lantern. Rather than repeating the blunt right angle of the tower's old juxtaposition to the original home office building, Morgan had the tower emerge up from behind the three graduated steps of the new building's tenth, eleventh and thirteenth story setbacks.

 

Description

 

In plan the tower retains its 75 by 85 foot configuration. The fifty-story Metropolitan Life tower remains articulated in the conventional manner: base, shaft, and capital and from within the arcaded capital rises a setback capped with a pyramidal spire, cupola and lantern. The tower's new two-story base conforms with that of the adjacent new home office building. A polished, light gray granite water table (five feet high) - an extension of the new building's wall base - runs the widths of both the tower's Madison Avenue and East 24th Street elevations and is flush with the tower's limestone cladding. Along Madison Avenue three tall, one-over-one, plate glass show windows light the tower's first story; their thin frames and vertical mul lions are stainless steel.

 

On 24th Street, two of these show windows flank a broad though unarticulated entrance architrave of the polished granite. Currently this entrance is not in use. The two pairs of doors within the architrave are false; entrance to the tower is gained through the South Building. Like the doors, the tripartite transom above them is framed in stainless steel. The architrave is immediately flanked by two signs, metal with raised letters, the ground painted black: "Metropolitan Life Insurance Company" with the company's logo. The second-story windows in both elevations correspond in width to the show windows below, but they are a fraction of their height (plates 5 & 6). Each is vertically tripartite, the central, single pane is wider than those flanking it, a modified Chicago window. The dividing stainless steel mul lions are broad but the window's stainless steel frames are thin. A simple, forty-five degree angle string course separates the tower's base from its shaft.

 

Two distinct elements characterize the tower's four shaft elevations, the three attenuated bays of triple window openings contained within the simple corner reveals and the monumental clock faces. The shaft's dominant verticality is modified by the repetition of projecting window sills every second story on only the uneven stories, starting at the third story.

 

The third-story windows do not extend all the way down to their sills; their lower rails are higher than those on any other story. The fourth-, fifth- and eleventh-story window spandrels are higher than those on other stories (plates 2 & 6).31 At the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh stories, the triple window openings of the outermost bays are reduced to paired windows.

 

These, and all of those in the center bay, have been eliminated by the breadth of the clock faces. Each of the shaft's window openings has its own architrave, in section an elaboration of a Vitruvian scroll molding, retained from LeBrun's design. All the windows are of reflective, single-paned glass and framed in stainless steel, and although recessed, the reflective glass sustains Morgan's planar aesthetic..

 

LeBrun's ornamental detail is retained around the four monumental clock faces (plate 8). The decorative spandrels each contain a shell supported by a pair of reversed dolphins. The clock dials are encircled by marble wreaths of fruits and flowers, ornament which Pierre LeBrun modelled after early Italian Renaissance motifs — the Delia Robbias or Desiderio di Settignano. The dials themselves are reinforced concrete slabs, almost twenty-seven feet in diameter and faced with vitreous turquoise blue and white mosaic tile. The blue tiles create a decorative corona at the center and a border just inside the minute marks.

 

The hands are built on iron frames, sheathed with copper. The minute hand is seventeen feet from end to end and weighs 1000 pounds; the hour hand measures thirteen feet, four inches and weighs 700 pounds. The numbers, four feet high, are edged in copper. The peripheral minute markers, ten and a half inches in diameter, are edged in copper also. The hands, numerals and minute markers are glazed and are illuminated at night.

 

Just as the triple bays and clock faces articulate the tower's shaft, the three-story arcades — five arches per elevation — characterize the tower's capital. The twenty-ninth and thirtieth story fenestration serves as a transition from the lower tripartite rhythm to the arcade's pentad above. Ten smaller windows light the twenty-ninth story. On the thirtieth, the ten windows have been arranged in five pairs.

 

Morgan's preference for the planar is most clearly expressed in the capital, the tower's thirty-first to thirty-fourth stories. The new arcades (plate 9), pared of all of their considerable marble ornament, become flat screens, the ashlar limestone applied as precise voussoirs. The secondary planes of the emerging setback are introduced within the arcade (plate 10). The new limestone balustrades have been greatly simplified and flattened. The comers of each baluster are chamfered.

 

Five windows, one above each arch, light the thirty-fourth story. The cornice projects now only enough to halt the eye momentarily. The balustrade above, at the thirty-fifth story, shorn of its ornamental balusters and finials, adheres to Morgan's planar aesthetic. The corners of these balusters are articulated with right angle channels (plate 12).

 

The freestanding portion of the tower's setback — stories thirty-five to thirty-eight — acts as a massive plinth for the pyramidal spire, cupola and lantern above. It is here that the tower's wider north and south and narrower east and west elevations are made evident (Plates l and 2). This is seen clearly in the disparity of the fenestration within the setback's framing reveal. On the north and south elevations the reveal frames six windows — three pairs of two — on each story. Just above the setback's cornice — the thirty-ninth story — there are four small windows on the north and south elevations and three on the east and west. Similarly in the spire. The spire's marble surfaces are articulated with a raised lattice pattern punctuated with four stories of round hooded dormers.

 

Ten half-round hooded dormers break the latticed stone surface of the north and south elevations, one-above-two above three-above-four. There are seven dormers on the east and west, one-above-one above two-above-three. A broad reveal frames each pyramidal surface? the corner ribs rise to support the quarter-circle bevels of the forty-fifth story viewing platform (Plate 13). On the north and south elevations five long brackets, originally more ornate, support the platform? two eyelet windows between them light the forty-fourth floor. On the east and west four long brackets support the platform and there is but one window between them.

 

Morgan redesigned LeBrun's ornately carved, viewing platform balustrade. The north and south elevations have four panels of the new cylindrical balusters (plate 14), the east and west have three. The cupola's base, wider on its northern and southern elevations, is the highest and last demonstration of the tower's rectangular plan. The cupola itself is a regular octagon in plan (plate 15). The eight columns, originally Corinthian, of its two-story peristyle (at the forty-sixth and forty-seventh stories) are no longer round but angled to conform with the cupola's octagonal plan and Morgan's planar aesthetic (plate 16). The four bronze bells of the tower's chime (cast at the Meneely Foundry near Troy, New York) are mounted on the forty-sixth story.

 

The largest, the 7000 pound bell, is mounted on the western projection of the cupola's base; the next to largest, a 3000 pound bell, is mounted on the eastern projection (plate 17). The smaller 2000 and 1500 pound bells, are mounted on the north and south within the peristyle. The forty-seventh story windows, seen through the peristyle, light a circular staircase within the cupola's core. The cupola's entablature, the highest point at which stone is used, is also the sill for the eight half-round hooded dormers in the cupola's gold-colored anodized aluminum dome, the tower's forty-eighth story.

 

The tower's steel frame continues to the top, though sheathed in the gold anodized aluminum. The topmost platform with its gold anodized aluminum railing is at the forty-ninth story (plate 18). The tower's terminal feature is the octagonal electric lantern —"the light that never fails" — on the fiftieth story (plate 19). It is eight feet in diameter and 700 feet above the sidewalk. After ten in the evening - when the tells cease their chiming until dawn, the lantern blinks each quarter hour.

 

After dark and until midnight the tower's upper portions are bathed with light, often tinted. The lamps are inobtrusively hidden within the arcade and behind parapets. The quality of this illumination has been remarkably fine, so that the Metropolitan Life tower makes as distinguished a contribution to New York's skyline at night as it does by day.

 

APPENDIX

 

The same master clock — a mercurial compensated astronomical clock — which powers the hands on the tower's monumental clock faces as well as the hundreds of clocks throughout the home office, drives the tower's chime bell hammers. Originally each of the four bells was supported on a steel pipe filled with cement grout and sunk into stone-faced, solid concrete, but now the bells rest atop battered sided steel supports (Plate 17). The smallest, the 1500 pound bell — G natural, is struck by a hammer of fifty four pounds. The 2000 pound bell — F natural — is struck by a hammer of sixty-one pounds. The 3000 pound bell — E flat — is struck by a seventy-one pound hammer. The largest, the 7000 pound bell — B flat — is struck by ninety-four pound hammer. There is a fifth hammer of 131 pounds to strike the hours on the 7000 bell.

 

Of the best known bell foundries in the United States, the Meneely Foundry of Watervliet near Troy, N. Y., is the oldest. An earlier LeBrun-designed church building, the Cathedral Of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, has a chime peal from the Meneely works. The bronze of the Meneely bells is composed exclusively of seventy-eight part, purest ingot copper which gives their bells their fine and brilliant tone.

 

The bells of the Metropolitan Life tower chime are struck in quarters — four blows at the quarter hour, eight at the half hour, twelve at the three quarter hour, and sixteen at the hour followed by the hour stroke — from seven o'clock in the morning until ten at night. The tune has a fine but often misunderstood provenance.

 

- From the 1989 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Brickcon is only a week away form now!

Mario Runco Jr. (born January 26, 1952), is a former United States Navy officer and NASA astronaut. He is an Earth and planetary physicist.

Contents

 

1 Personal data

2 Education

3 Special honors

4 Experience

5 NASA experience

6 Space flight experience

7 References

 

Personal data

 

Mario was born in the Bronx, New York on January 26, 1952. Raised in the Highbridge section of the Bronx near Yankee Stadium, his family moved to Yonkers, New York in his early teen years. He is married to the former Susan Kay Friess of Sylvania, Ohio; they have two children, Maria and Carl. He enjoys ice hockey, baseball, softball, camping, model railroads, toy train collecting, and astronomy among other interests. He played intercollegiate ice hockey on the City College of New York and Rutgers University teams. Mario's parents Mario and Filomena Ragusa Runco (originally from Lago, in the province of Cosenza, Italy) still reside in Yonkers, and Sue's parents, Fredrick and Margaret Bidlack Friess, reside in Sylvania, Ohio.

Education

 

Graduated from Sacred Heart School in the Bronx in 1966 and Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in 1970; he received a bachelor of science degree in Earth and Planetary Science from the City College of New York in 1974, a master of science degree in Atmospheric Physics from Rutgers University in 1976, and an honorary doctor of science degree from the City College of New York in 1999.

Special honors

 

Awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, Navy Achievement Medal and Navy Pistol Expert Medal. Also awarded three NASA Space Flight Medals (STS-44, STS-54 and STS-77), two Navy Sea Service Ribbons (USS Nassau and USNS Chauvenet), and the Navy Battle Efficiency Ribbon (USS Nassau). Mario was also the recipient of the City College of New York's Townsend Harris Medal (1993), and the Cardinal Hayes High School John Cardinal Spellman Award (1993). As an undergraduate, he received the City College of New York Class of 1938 Athletic Service Award.

Experience

 

After graduating from Rutgers University, Mario worked for a year as a research hydrologist conducting ground water surveys for the United States Geological Survey on Long Island, New York. In 1977, he joined the New Jersey State Police and, after completing training at the State Police Academy, he worked as a New Jersey State Trooper until he entered the United States Navy in June 1978. Upon completion of Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, in September 1978, he was commissioned and assigned to the Naval Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Laboratory in Monterey, California as a research meteorologist. From April 1981 to December 1983, he served as the Meteorological Officer aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Nassau. It was during this tour of duty that he earned his designation as a Naval Surface Warfare Officer. From January 1984 to December 1985, he worked as a laboratory instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. From December 1985 to December 1986, he served as Commanding Officer of Oceanographic Unit 4 embarked aboard the naval survey vessel USNS Chauvenet, conducting hydrographic and oceanographic surveys of the Java Sea and Indian Ocean. His last assignment within the Navy was as Fleet Environmental Services Officer, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Mario joined NASA in 1987 and remained on active duty as a NASA astronaut until 1994.

NASA experience

 

Selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate in June 1987, Runco qualified for assignment as an astronaut mission specialist in August 1988. A veteran of three space flights (STS-44 in 1991, STS-54 in 1993, and STS-77 in 1996), Mario has logged over 551 hours in space which includes a 4.5 hour spacewalk during his STS-54 mission. His technical assignments to date include having served in Operations Development, where he assisted in the design, development and testing of the Space Shuttle crew escape system; in Mission Support, at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), where he performed test and evaluation of Space Shuttle mission-specific flight software; at the Kennedy Space Center, in Astronaut Support, where he assisted in preparing Space Shuttle missions for launch, and in the Mission Control Center as a Capsule (Spacecraft) Communicator (CAPCOM). Mario currently serves as an Earth and Planetary Scientist and is the Lead for Science and Utilization of the International Space Station's Destiny Module Science Window and the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), of which he provided input to both design teams.

Space flight experience

 

On his first flight, Runco served on the crew of STS-44 aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis which launched on the night of November 24, 1991. The primary mission objective was accomplished with the successful deployment of a Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite. In addition, the crew conducted two Military Man-in-Space Earth Observation experiments, three radiation monitoring experiments, and numerous life sciences experiments in support of long duration space flights. The mission concluded after completing 110 orbits of the Earth. Atlantis returned to a landing on the lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on December 1, 1991. Mission duration was 6 days, 22 hours and 50 minutes.

Runco carried by fellow astronaut Gregory Harbaugh during their EVA on the STS-54 mission.

 

Just over a year later Mario served as a mission specialist on the crew of STS-54 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. STS-54 (January 13–19, 1993) launched and landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The six-day mission featured the deployment of a NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-F). Also carried in the payload bay was the Diffuse X-Ray Spectrometer (DXS). This astronomical instrument for studying stellar evolution scanned the local vicinity of our Milky Way galaxy and recorded the low-energy X-ray emanations believed to originate from the plasma remnants of an ancient supernova. Crewmate Greg Harbaugh and Runco also became the 47th and 48th Americans to walk in space during a 4.5-hour space walk designed to evaluate the limits of human performance during extravehicular activities (EVA) in anticipation of the construction of the International Space Station. In what was called the "Physics of Toys", which has since become a popular children's educational video, the crew also demonstrated how everyday toys behave in space to an interactive audience of elementary school students across the United States. Mission duration was 5 days, 23 hours and 38 minutes.

 

Mario most recently served as a mission specialist on the crew of STS-77 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour (May 19–29, 1996). STS-77 carried a number of technology development experiments as well as a suite of microgravity science experiments. The technology development experiments included two deployable satellites both of which were deployed by Runco. For the deploy of the Spartan/Inflatable Antenna Experiment, Mario was the Remote Manipulator System (Robotic Arm) operator. The other deployable was a small Satellite Test Unit (STU) which used residual atmospheric drag and the Earth's magnetic field for attitude control and stabilization. STS-77 also featured the fourth flight of a SpaceHab module as an experiment laboratory. Mario also filmed some additional Physics of Toys scenes for a sequel to the original educational video and subsequently made several appearances on the children's television show Sesame Street. Mission duration was 10 days and 39 minutes.

 

Originally dating to around 1320, the building is important because it has most of its original features; successive owners effected relatively few changes to the main structure, after the completion of the quadrangle with a new chapel in the 16th century. Pevsner described it as "the most complete small medieval manor house in the county", and it remains an example that shows how such houses would have looked in the Middle Ages. Unlike most courtyard houses of its type, which have had a range demolished, so that the house looks outward, Nicholas Cooper observes that Ightham Mote wholly surrounds its courtyard and looks inward, into it, offering little information externally.[9] The construction is of "Kentish ragstone and dull red brick,"[10] the buildings of the courtyard having originally been built of timber and subsequently rebuilt in stone.[11]

  

The moat of Ightham Mote

The house has more than 70 rooms, all arranged around a central courtyard, "the confines circumscribed by the moat."[10] The house is surrounded on all sides by a square moat, crossed by three bridges. The earliest surviving evidence is for a house of the early 14th century, with the great hall, to which were attached, at the high, or dais end, the chapel, crypt and two solars. The courtyard was completely enclosed by increments on its restricted moated site, and the battlemented tower was constructed in the 15th century. Very little of the 14th century survives on the exterior behind rebuilding and refacing of the 15th and 16th centuries.

 

The structures include unusual and distinctive elements, such as the porter's squint, a narrow slit in the wall designed to enable a gatekeeper to examine a visitor's credentials before opening the gate. An open loggia with a fifteenth-century gallery above, connects the main accommodations with the gatehouse range. The courtyard contains a large, 19th century dog kennel.[12] The house contains two chapels; the New Chapel, of c.1520, having a barrel roof decorated with Tudor roses. [13] Parts of the interior were remodelled by Richard Norman Shaw.[14] wikipedia

 

16th century-late 19th century

The house remained in the Selby family for nearly 300 years.[3] Sir William was succeeded by his nephew, also Sir William, who is notable for handing over the keys of Berwick-upon-Tweed to James I on his way south to succeed to the throne.[4] He married Dorothy Bonham of West Malling but had no children. The Selbys continued until the mid-19th century when the line faltered with Elizabeth Selby, the widow of a Thomas who disinherited his only son.[5] During her reclusive tenure, Joseph Nash drew the house for his multi-volume illustrated history Mansions of England in the Olden Time, published in the 1840s.[6] The house passed to a cousin, Prideaux John Selby, a distinguished naturalist, sportsman and scientist. On his death in 1867, he left Ightham Mote to a daughter, Mrs Lewis Marianne Bigge. Her second husband, Robert Luard, changed his name to Luard-Selby. Ightham Mote was rented-out in 1887 to American Railroad magnate William Jackson Palmer and his family. For three years Ightham Mote became a centre for the artists and writers of the Aesthetic Movement with visitors including John Singer Sargent, Henry James, and Ellen Terry. When Mrs Bigge died in 1889, the executors of her son Charles Selby-Bigge, a Shropshire land agent, put the house up for sale in July 1889.[6]

 

Late 19th century-21st century

The Mote was purchased by Thomas Colyer-Fergusson.[6] He and his wife brought up their six children at the Mote. In 1890-1891, he carried out much repair and restoration, which allowed the survival of the house after centuries of neglect.[7] Ightham Mote was opened to the public one afternoon a week in the early 20th century.[7]

 

Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson's third son, Riversdale, died aged 21 in 1917 in the Third Battle of Ypres, and won a posthumous Victoria Cross. A wooden cross in the New Chapel is in his memory. The oldest brother, Max, was killed at the age of 49 in a bombing raid on an army driving school near Tidworth in 1940 during World War II. One of the three daughters, Mary (called Polly) married Walter Monckton.

 

On Sir Thomas's death in 1951, the property and the baronetcy passed to Max's son, James. The high costs of upkeep and repair of the house led him to sell the house and auction most of the contents. The sale took place in October 1951 and lasted three days. It was suggested that the house be demolished to harvest the lead on the roofs, or that it be divided into flats. Three local men purchased the house: William Durling, John Goodwin and John Baldock. They paid £5,500 for the freehold, in the hope of being able to secure the future of the house.[8]

 

In 1953, Ightham Mote was purchased by Charles Henry Robinson, an American of Portland, Maine, United States. He had known the property when stationed nearby during the Second World War. He lived there for only fourteen weeks a year for tax reasons. He made many urgent repairs, and partly refurnished the house with 17th-century English pieces. In 1965, he announced that he would give Ightham Mote and its contents to the National Trust. He died in 1985 and his ashes were immured just outside the crypt. The National Trust took possession in that year.[8]

 

In 1989, the National Trust began an ambitious conservation project that involved dismantling much of the building and recording its construction methods before rebuilding it. During this process, the effects of centuries of ageing, weathering, and the destructive effect of the deathwatch beetle were highlighted. The project ended in 2004 after revealing numerous examples of structural and ornamental features which had been covered up by later additions.[1]

Many thanks to Olav who kindly provided me the repartition of norwegian kommuner by area code.

a colour shot of one of Walters rebuilt and refurbished Lorain cranes.it would seem that there is not much to do now to complete the transformation from USAF useage to one of Walters finished gems. behind the crane of note is the road tanker body that is being used as a fuel storage tank for Walters fleet.

Finished it!

Liking the darker reds, this will make a find stand-in for the otherwise older dinky Bloodthirster from the 90's (80's?).

 

100% Games Workshop components, and alarmingly easy to accomplish.

 

Details on how it was built and painted can be found at my blog: battle-brothers.blogspot.com

KARR (Knight Automated Roving Robot) is the name of a fictional, automated, prototype vehicle featured as a major antagonist in two episodes of the television series Knight Rider and was part of a multi-episode story arc in the 2008 revived series.

 

Origin and background

 

KARR is the prototype version of KITT, originally designed by Wilton Knight and built by his company Knight Industries. Upon completion of the vehicle, KARR's CPU was installed and activated. However, a programming error made the computer unstable and potentially dangerous. The project was put on hold and KARR was placed in storage until a solution could be found.

 

Unlike KITT, whose primary directive is to protect human life, KARR was programmed for self-preservation, making him a ruthless and unpredictable threat. He does not appear as streetwise as KITT, being very naive and inexperienced and having a childlike perception of the world. This has occasionally allowed people to take advantage of his remarkable capabilities for their own gain; however, due to his ruthless nature he sometimes uses people's weaknesses and greed as a way to manipulate them for his own goals. Despite this, he does ultimately consider himself superior (always referring to KITT as "the inferior production line model") as well as unstoppable, and due to his programming the villains don't usually get very far. KARR demonstrates a complete lack of respect or loyalty - on one occasion ejecting his passenger to reduce weight and increase his chances of escape.

 

KARR first appeared in the Season One episode "Trust Doesn't Rust" aired on NBC on November 19, 1982, where he seemingly met his demise at the end. However, he was so popular with viewers that he was brought back again in the Season Three episode "K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R.", aired on NBC on November 4, 1984 (marking him as one of the very few villains in the original series to make a return appearance).

 

Appearances in the original series

 

"Trust Doesn't Rust" - Season 1, Episode 9

 

Once KITT was constructed, it was presumed that his prototype KARR had been deactivated and dismantled. However, the latter did not occur and KARR was placed in storage and forgotten following the death of Wilton Knight. When two thieves, Tony (Michael MacRae) and The Rev (William Sanderson), break into the warehouse where KARR is "sleeping", they unwittingly reactivate him, and he escapes.

 

When the two thieves realize how useful the vehicle could be, they use KARR to go on a crime spree, whilst Michael and KITT frantically try to catch up with KARR and stop him before anyone is seriously hurt. Bonnie devises a high-powered laser, the only known way to stop KARR, which must be fired from KITT directly into KARR's scanner. However, when KARR needs maintenance, Tony kidnaps Bonnie before the laser can fully be calibrated. Although Michael rescues Bonnie, she is unable to get a clear shot at KARR with the laser and he escapes.

 

KARR's only weakness is his primary directive of self-preservation and Michael uses this to his advantage. When KARR threatens to destroy KITT in a head-on collision, Michael plays chicken with him, on a hunch that KARR will veer out of KITT's path in order to protect himself. KARR indeed swerves out of the way, but unable to stop in time, he drives off a cliff and seemingly explodes in the ocean (using footage of the climactic scene from the 1977 film The Car, footage that was also used for KITT on a couple of other occasions). KARR was voiced by well known Canadian voice actor, Peter Cullen.

 

Trust Doesn't Rust was also printed in book form, written by Roger Hill and Glen A. Larson, following the story and general script of the original television episode, expanding some areas of the plot and adding several extra secondary characters.

 

"K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R." - Season 3, Episode 6

 

KARR was only believed to have been destroyed. He was damaged and ended up buried in the sand on the beach below the cliffs. When the tide had gone out, a young couple, John and Mandy, stumble upon the partially buried car, dig him out, and reactivate him. This time, KARR is furious and has only one clear motive: revenge against Michael and KITT.

 

KARR is still damaged after the last encounter with KITT and forces John to serve as his driver, and also to carry out some cosmetic modifications to his paintwork. In a ravine, KARR challenges Michael and KITT to a final showdown. After releasing the young couple, KARR fires a stolen laser and damages KITT. However, Michael and KITT destroy KARR's laser by reflecting the beam back to the emitter. Damaged, KARR prepares for another attack. KITT and KARR both turbo boost and collide in mid-air. KARR is blown to pieces, but Michael and KITT survive the impact. At the end of the episode, however, KARR's motherboard — i.e. KARR himself — can be seen lying undamaged on the ground amongst the wreckage, its LED's still blinking - suggesting to the viewer that KARR is still "alive."

 

Production changes[edit]

Originally, KARR appeared identical to KITT, with a red light scan bar, and the only physical difference was a greenish-yellow LED voice modulator on his dash (for the first half of the first season, KITT's voice modulator is a red square that blinks on and off as he talks; KARR's voice modulator is the prototype to the one seen on KITT from the mid first season onwards, after it was received well by viewers). When KARR returns in "K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R.", KARR's scan bar is now amber.

 

KARR later gets a two-tone paint job incorporating a silver lower body into his familiar all-black finish. KARR's scanner originally made a low droning noise, but in the comeback episode it sounds similar to KITT's but with a slight reverb audio effect added to it. The sound of KARR's engine, originally sounding rough and "fierce", here sounds similar to KITT's, again effected by a reverb. In "Trust Doesn't Rust," KARR had no license plates. In KARR's second appearance, he had a California license plate that read "KARR". Despite various other changes, KARR's dashboard remains correct with continuity - he still has the earlier version of the dash as previously seen on KITT, whereas by the time of 'KITT Vs KARR', Bonnie had updated KITT's dash and various functions at the start of the third season.

 

KARR's personality is also somewhat different in the comeback episode. His childlike perceptions are diminished into a more devious personality, completely cold and bent on revenge. His self-preservation directive is no longer in play when KARR is close to exploding after receiving severe damage; he willingly turbo-jumps into a mid-air collision with KITT hoping that his own destruction would also spell his counterpart's. Even KARR's modus operandi is different; serviceful enough in the first episode, he aims to actually make use of other persons, anyone, to serve his own needs. One explanation of this change could be as a result of the damage he received after falling over the cliff at the end of "Trust Doesn't Rust", which further malfunctioned his programming. Indeed, KITT himself is seen to malfunction and suffer change of personality as a result of damage in several other episodes.

 

In "Trust Doesn't Rust" and the 2008 series, the voice of KARR was provided by voice actor Peter Cullen, better known as the voice of Optimus Prime in the Transformers cartoon series, and whom had a previous working relationship with series creator Glen A. Larson after voicing several Cylon characters in the original Battlestar Galactica. In "K.I.T.T. vs K.A.R.R.", KARR was voiced by Paul Frees, best known as the voice of Boris Badenov in the popular series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and as the voice of Ludwig Von Drake in the popular anthology series, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. As with William Daniels, the voice of KITT, who was never credited on-screen, Frees was uncredited on-screen for his role, leading Cullen to sometimes be mistakenly credited as providing KARR's voice in "K.I.T.T. vs K.A.R.R." Peter Cullen reprised his role as the voice of KARR in the 2009 Knight Rider episode, "Knight to King's Pawn."

 

[Text from Wikipedia]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KARR_%28Knight_Rider%29

 

As corny as Knight Rider seems now, this show well and truley captured the imagination of my 11-year old self. Many of the 'futuristic' technologies incorporated into K.I.T.T. are now becoming commonplace.

 

This miniland-scale Lego Pontiac 1982 Firebird Trans Am 'K.A.R.R.' (Knight Rider TV Series - 1984) has been created for Flickr LUGNuts' 91st Build Challenge, - "Anger Management", - all about cars with some link to being angry.

Simple Lines shawl is done. Due to poor lighting, there are only teaser-type images. :)

blogged:

mysistersknitter.typepad.com/my-blog/2013/06/off-the-need...

   

The SR 509 Completion Project in the SeaTac/Des Moines, WA area includes a new Veteran's Drive tunnel under I-5. The tunnel will create a link between the southbound off-ramp (on the right) to Military Road (visible in the photo's upper left).

 

To build the tunnel, crews are excavating from the middle of I-5, working on the west half of the tunnel first.

 

The SR 509 Completion project is part of the Puget Sound Gateway program which completes critical missing links in Washington state's highway and freight network.

The southern facade of the Ingenium Building (nearing completion) adjacent to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

  

As per Wikipedia:

 

>>

Ingenium, (Long name: Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation) formerly called the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation, is a Canadian Crown corporation responsible for overseeing national museums related to science and technology. The name is based off the Latin root of the word ingenuity.

 

The corporation oversees the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. The organization is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

The corporation's museums are associated with the Canadian Museum Association, the Virtual Museum of Canada and the Canadian Heritage Information Network. Ingenium has an

open documents portal where the corporation shares working documents and corporate plans. It also maintains an open data portal.

<<

December 7, 2012. Bright Angel Trailhead Project. NPS photo by Michael Quinn.

Significant progress has been made on the Bright Angel Trailhead rehabilitation project on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, including reconstruction of the stone masonry wall near Kolb Studio, completion of parking lot paving between the Bright Angel cabins and the trailhead, and near completion of the shade shelters in the plaza. (Updated November 29, 2012)

 

Additionally, the new restrooms are about 25% complete, and construction has begun on the new accessible trail from Village Loop Road to the southwest trailhead near the corral. The overall project is on schedule and should completed sometime in April, 2013.

 

The next major milestone, is the construction of the Rim Trail and Bright Angel walls. The work began on Monday, November 26. Fencing has been erected and detour signs posted, directing all Bright Angel Trail access to the northeast access point, just west of Kolb Studio; the southwest trailhead (near the coral) will be closed. This closure is anticipated to be in effect through December, weather permitting and will be signed to help visitors access the Bright Angel Trail and surrounding area.

 

An alternative route for mule access has been provided and coordinated with the concessioner, Xanterra South Rim, LLC and the National Park Service trail crew; mule riders will also be utilizing the northeast trailhead near Kolb Studio, via a portion of the Rim Trail. Temporary provisions have been added to sections of this alternative route (soil and stop bars) to facilitate mule traffic on steep paved areas and over steps as outlined on the detour map shown above.

 

Grand Canyon National Park: the Bright Angel Trailhead rehabilitation project began on September 4, 2012. The area will be under construction through April 2013.

 

Work will include: a 90 car paved parking lot around the Bright Angel Lodge cabins; an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessible Rim Trail connection between the Hermits Rest Route Transfer shuttle bus stop and the Kolb Studio; reconstruction of stone masonry retaining walls near the Kolb Studio and near the southwest trailhead of the Bright Angel Trail; new restrooms and a meeting plaza with shade structures; and burial of utilities.

Apartment and Commercial Building in Schutzenmattstrasse, Basel

Wohn- und Geschäftshaus in Schützenmattstrasse, Basel

Completion: 1993

Architects: Herzog & de Meuron

 

Wohn- und Geschäftshaus in Schützenmattstrasse, Basel

Fertigstellung: 1993

Architekten: Herzog & de Meuron

The new track, sports field, grandstands, bus parking, playground and multipurpose room are nearing completion for use by the Kaiserslautern Raiders in Vogelweh, Germany April 11, 2013. The Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Europe project is 97 percent complete and will be ready for the DODDS-E track and field championships in late May. The state-of-the-art, all-weather running track surrounds a fully-lit turf soccer/football field. The field will require less water and maintenance than a traditional grass field. The project also includes a multipurpose room for the local elementary school. The MPR features a basketball court, rock climbing wall, performance stage and a fully-functional kitchen. In addition to this project, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District is working with DoDDS-E to build new 21st century high-, middle- and elementary schools on U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern, the largest U.S. community overseas. USACE is currently designing and building 21st century schools for DoDDS throughout Germany, Italy, Belgium and the U.S., for more information read the following article: www.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsArchive/tabid/204/Article/42... (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jennifer Aldridge)

The Goondiwindi War Memorial includes a 'Digger' statue erected in 1922 and a set of gates erected in 1949, as memorials to the First and Second World Wars respectively.

 

The Soldiers' Monument was originally erected in Herbert Street, with an iron fence surrounding the monument. The monument cost £1 800 and was unveiled in September 1922, by Sir Matthew Nathan, Governor of Queensland, who was in Goondiwindi to observe an eclipse of the sun. It is likely that the monument was erected by a public committee. Although the designer of the monument is unknown, it is possible that it was manufactured in New South Wales.

 

In 1949 the monument was re-sited, presumably at the time the World War 2 Memorial Gates were constructed. More than £2 844 was spent on transferring the monument to the park site and erecting the gates. The gates were erected by the Goondiwindi War Memorial Committee, and were unveiled in April 1949 by Sir Thomas William Glasgow. At the completion of the ceremony the keys of the gates were handed to Alderman F Vetter, symbolic of the town accepting responsibility and custody of the memorial. The designer of the gates is also unknown.

 

Description source:

Queensland Heritage Register

 

View the original record at the Queensland State Archives:

Digital Image ID 27079

meanwhile in the workshop the line's polish usa type 0-6-0t nears completion

Another beauty from Yanoman, from their Art Series No. 05-71 (early 1980s).

 

The piece shapes had quite a bit of personality to them and this puzzle went very quickly the whole way through. The pieces were about the loosest fitting that I can recall.

 

Completion time: 1 hr. 23 mins. with no box reference. 10.0 secs/piece; 361.4 pcs/hr. Difficulty rating: 1.0/10.

Radio City Music Hall is the popular heir to the aristocratic Opera, planned but never executed at Rockefeller Center. It is one of four theaters originally envisioned for the complex by RKO, and the sole survivor of the two actually constructed. With 6,200 seats, the Music Hall was, upon its completion in 1932, the world' largest indoor theater.

 

RKO was formed in late 1928 by RCA's David Sarnoff and Joseph P. Kennedy (father of the late John and Robert F. Kennedy) who had controlling interest in the 7ilm Hooking Office (F30) production agency. Through a series of mergers between the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville chain, and later with Pathe Pictures (of which Kennedy was a major stockholder), Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) emerged as one of the six leading producers of motion pictures in America.[2]

 

Created on the eve of the Depression and encouraged—at least initially---by its distraction-seeking audiences, RKO intended to construct at Rockefeller Center two small theaters for drama and comedy and eventually television as well as a large movie house and an even larger showcase for two-a-day vaudeville spectaculars.

 

The grand scheme ripened as a result of Samuel Lionel Rothafel ("Roxy"1) who left his new namesake theater (located just one block west of Rockefeller Center) to join RKO.

 

Born in 1892 in a small Minnesota town, Roxy was the son of Gustave Rothafel, a shoemaker. His parents moved to New York when he was twelve, and after working in a department store as a cash boy, he entered the Marines. Seven years later Roxy traveled as a house-to-house peddler and ended up in Pennsylvania where he met his future wife. While working in his father-in-law's bar, Roxy transformed the large dancing hall at the rear into a movie house.

 

He bought a second-hand screen and projector, rented 200 chairs from an undertaker, hired a pianist and charged a nickel admission. He then moved on to Minneapolis and later Milwaukee, introducing such innovative entertainments as music and dance performances to movie theaters.

 

Roxy returned to New York City in 1913 to manage the Regent Theater at 116th St. and Seventh Avenue (generally recognized as the first "movie palace") where he improved the traditional program with novel lighting effects and a 100-piece orchestra. In the following years Roxy moved on to the newly completed Strand, then to the Rialto and Rivoli theaters, and in 1923 to the Capitol heater from which he broadcast "Roxy and his Gang," one of the most popular radio shows in America.

 

Roxy's brilliant theatrical reputation reached a peak in 1927 when he assumed management and gave his name to William Fox's Roxy Theater at West 50th St. and Seventh Avenue. With nearly 6,000 seats this opulent movie house was the largest in the world. Roxy allegedly intended to further enlarge the theater as a center for varied entertainments but when negotiations with William Fox failed, he found a most cordial welcome at Rockefeller Center.

 

By luring the impresario away from Fox, RKO won over its most serious competition. In return Roxy was made vice president, producer and manager of RKO's theaters at Rockefeller Center. Roxy's only rival was his record of past theatrical achievements. He surpassed it brilliantly, especially at Radio City Music Hall, where he realized "the aspirations of a lifetime."[5] Roxy brought in the noted theater architects C.W. and G.L. Rapp to advise on the Music Hall's design.[6] And while it was actually built by the Associated Architects, the Music Hall everywhere bore the influence of Roxy's own imagination and comprehensive knowledge of theater design.

 

On December 21, 1931, construction began on the "RKO Roxy" (rechristened in 1934 as the "Center Theater"). located to the south of the RCA Building on the southeast corner of 49th Street and Sixth Avenue (site of the present Simon & Schuster Building addition), this 3,700 seat house was Roxy's "intimate" theater.[7] It was designed for a mixed bill of motion picture and stage entertainment. Work was simultaneously undertaken on the "International (later Radio City) Music Hall," located on the other (north) side of the RCA Building on Sixth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets. It was built in conjunction with the RKO Building which was partially constructed over the Music Hall's lobby.[8] In 1938 the Music Hall's east wall was abutted by the newly constructed Associated Press Building.

 

The exteriors of the two theaters were similar in their low-lying limestone massing, a feature dictated by the building code then in effect which forbade construction above theater auditoriums. The (121 foot) high Music Hall, however, was almost twice as large as the RKO Roxy and considerably more decorative. Its exterior sculpture reflected the unique kind of entertainment which Roxy intended to showcase. Unlike his previous theaters which featured a mixed bill of stage and screen entertainment, the Music Hall was designed as a center for diverse and sophisticated entertainments such as legitimate drama, ballet and opera, combined with jazz, a revival of rapidly waning vaudeville and precision dances by the "Roxyette" chorus girls.

 

The more popular entertainments of the Music Hall were represented toy six bronze plaques over the entrance and side of the theater's vestibule on Sixth Avenue. The series was designed by Rene Chambellan and is closely related to that which he executed for the doors of the Grand Foyer on the theater's interior. The series shows scenes from International vaudeville acts. Heading from left to right are five Russian minstrels who accompany a gypsy dancer, two Black banjo players and a tap dancer, a seated German accordionist and saxophonist who play as a patient cat listens, five American precision dancers (the "Roxyettes"), an old French cellist and female violinist who play as a dog (in clown costume) sits upright, and finally a seated Jewish drummer with a tuxedo clad singer/dancer.

 

The more legitimate stage arts were depicted in a classically-inspired series of metal and enamel plaques installed 60 feet above West 50th Street on the Music Hall's sprawling south facade. Designed by Hildreth Meiere and executed by Oscar B. Bach, these L8 foot roundels represent a major technical and artistic achievement. They were fashioned from copper, bronze, aluminum, chrome nickel steel and vitreous enamels. Although polychromed metals had been used before, most notably in Sweden, they were largely ignored by American artists.

 

Meiere not only introduced the technique, but did so at unprecedented scale.[9] She drew on her skill as a painter and mosaicist to brilliantly enliven the r:usic Hall's wall and achieved, in the words of a Rockefeller Center spokesman, "a striking relief from the usual severe [mural] surfaces of theater buildings."

 

Meiere also drew on her previous success in Bertram Goodhue's Nebraska State Capitol and especially his National Academy of Sciences in Washington where Meiere painted similar inhabited roundels on the pendentives of its dome.

 

Dance is located at the far left of the wall, closest to Sixth Avenue- The plaque is dominated, as are the two companion plaques, by nude or semi-nude figures whose skin tone changes from matte nickel to a glowing metallic white, varying with the position of the sun.

 

Dance is represented by an animated female, copper symbols in her raised arms, who leaps across the wall as her brown-red hair flies upward over the geometrically patterned metal and enamel frame. Behind is a copper helmeted matte silver foot soldier (in a black and gold enamel moderne-patterned uniform). He attempts to catch the bacchanalian dancer in a blue and gold drape which billows around her and emphasizes the circular composition of the plaque.

 

Drama, the middle plaque, is represented by a monumental Athena-like figure, draped in a shiny patterned silver chiton with copper bodice. She radiates on the wall, particularly in the glare of afternoon sun. The muse wears an enormous fan-shaped copper and enamel crown, and is framed by a brown and red drape (with gold details and dark blue enamel trim). Her drape falls in angular cascades in a splendid Art Deco design, 'he muse is flanked by two crouching females who raise large comic and tragic masks (shiny silver with copper mouths and blue enamel hair).

 

Song returns the viewer back to Sixth Avenue as a dorsal performer prances west, her green and blue shawl flapping behind. A brown-draped, piper is seated to her left on a silver Greek stool. He plays while three shiny silver birds flutter around the animated singer.

 

The decorative aspect of the Music Hall's exterior is furthered by its two moderne verticals and marquee which wraps around the theater's southwestern corner, only to be continued In three additional segments along West 50th Street. The theater's north and south facades are also relieved at ground level by a variety of bronze-framed display windows and screens.

 

Above, and to the right of Hildreth Meiere's medallions, are eight long vertical screens. They mask with a diaper-like pattern the fire escapes that mar the exteriors of so many other theater theaters, Similar screens appear on the W. 51st Street facade which, facing away from the entertainment complex, is somewhat less decorative.

 

The Music Hall had its gala opening on December 27, 1932 with performances by twenty different entertainers including Martha Graham, Harold Kreutzberg and ids ballet, the contralto Vera Schwartz, comedians Weber & fields, the Tuskegee Institute choir singing Negro spirituals and more. Vet despite the varied program, the entertainment was disappointing.

 

It hardly mattered, as it was the theater itself that stole the show. As one critic wrote, "...the new -Music Hall need[ed] no performers... its beauty and comforts alone [were] sufficient to gratify even the greediest of playgoers. Rockefeller himself found it "beautiful, soul satisfying, inspiring beyond anything [he] dreamed possible.

 

Technically advanced and lavishly embellished through the unique collaboration of some of the finest decorative artists of the day, the Music Hall was nonetheless a tremendous financial disaster, for the first time in his thirty year career Roxy had misjudged his audience. To his ruinous dismay, there was no interest in his supra-vaudeville revival.

 

Within two weeks of its opening the Music Hall abandoned Roxy's entertainment policy, adopting in its place the film-and-stage show format of the smaller RAO Roxy (which had premiered just two days after the Music Hall). The change effectively eclipsed--and ultimately killed - the RKO Roxy. In subsequent years it showcased films, then musicals, later ice skating marvels, and finally television before being demolished in 1954.

 

The switch to a combined film-and-stage show policy in early 1933 barely sustained the sumptuous but unprofitable Music Hall, now suffering in the throes of the Depression.

 

The situation only worsened when RKO went into receivership in late January of the same year. A joint RCA-Rockefeller Center committee of six replaced the disgraced and now physically ailing Roxy in management of the Music Hall, extracting his resignation within the year.

 

The theater limped through 1934; for a time it even accepted "IOUs" in lieu of its $.35 - $.55 admission fees. But by mid-decade audiences were attracted to the Music Hall's varied bill, most movie palaces having abandoned live entertainment. By the early 1940s it had become one of Mew York's greatest attractions with first run Hollywood films and spectacular precision dancing by the Rockettes (previously named the "Roxyettes" but renamed after Roxy's resignation).

 

For decades the Music Hall remained "The Showplace of the Nation" before faltering perilously in the late 1960s and 1970s as a result of changes in popular entertainment habits. After closing for a brief period the house was revived in the late 1970s. Recently it has featured stage shows and popular concerts, ironically realizing Roxy's failed attempt to present varied live entertainment.

 

Radio City Music Hall is physically linked with No.1270 Avenue of the Americas, whose tower rises partially above the Music Hall's lobby. The Music Hall's main entrance at the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th Street is recessed under the lower wing of No.1270, and an enormous marquee and twin vertical signs are attached to this frontage, which is therefore being described with the Music Hall.

 

This wing rises five stories above the entrance, to a major setback, behind and above which rises the tower of No.1270, which turns the corner at 51st Street and continues east for seven bays. The south elevation of the complex, rising six and eight stories from the lot line, and the north elevation, proceeding eastward from the eighth bay, form the remainder of the Music Hall's exterior.

 

The major entrance to Radio City Music Hall is through a recessed rectangular areaway at the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th Street. It is covered by a giant marquee which is supported on three polygonal piers faced in polished granite. In the long, north-south wall of the areaway are set a wide central pair of double-doors, a single double-door to its north, and two single double-doors to its south.

 

These are separated from each other by thick piers faced in polished bronze, with polished granite bases and bronze-enframed announcement boards, capped by a horizontal, modernistic banding with abstract floral ornament. Above these doorways are polished granite blocks serving as background for the series of bronze reliefs on entertainment themes (see p. 47 ). The north, short wall of the areaway is faced with polished granite, and holds a wide, ornamental bronze announcement board with one of the bronze entertainment reliefs above.

 

The enormous marquee over the areaway curves around the corner onto 50th Street, and continues along the street in three additional, separate segments which are cantilevered over the sidewalk. Their long vertical faces are divided into a wide upper zone and a narrow lower zone by three modernistic bands. These bands are formed by four narrow continuous metal strips, within which are set three neon tubes. The wide upper zone holds the words "Music Hall" in cursive neon lettering and the words "RADIO CITY" in bold neon capitals, repeating sequentially along the marquee. The lower band is reserved for changing announcements of current attractions.

 

Twin seven-story tall vertical signs rise at the north and south ends of the Sixth Avenue portion of the marquee; the northern vertical is placed perpendicular to the avenue, and the southern vertical parallel to it. Tall, narrow and rectangular, their narrow ends are faced with ridged metal plates, while their two wide feces hold the words "RADIO CITY" in vertically placed bold capital neon lettering, and, beneath, the smaller words "MUSIC HALL" in neon lettering on a diagonal. Each vertical is capped with a curving modernistic metal top. The top of the

 

northern vertical attaches directly to a seventh story setback, while the top of the southern vertical is continued down to the fifth-story setback of the adjoining lower facade.

 

The remainder of the Sixth Avenue elevation of Radio City Music Hall, in appearance an extension of No.1270's tower design, is treated in the standard Center manner of vertical window-spandrel bays alternating with limestone piers? spandrels are vertically ridged, and bays terminate in 2-eyelet foliage.

 

On 50th Street, the first three bays from the corner of Sixth Avenue are window-spandrel bays above the curve of the marquee. The marquee continues in three separate sections. Beneath it is a continuous polished granite wall, into which are inset, from west to east, a bronze-enframed double entrance, four bronze-enframed announcement boards continuing the decorative features of those in the areaway, and a series of bronze doorways.

 

Above the marquee, the wall is blank from the second through fifth stories, clad in limestone, and serves as a backdrop for three enormous polychromatic metal and enamel reliefs (see p. 48 ). Above the western end of this blank surface is one story of four window bays, while above the more extensive eastern end rise two stories of nine window bays, each bay combining windows, spandrels and grilles in an irregular order; these bays are topped with 2-eyelet foliage.

 

To the east of the large portion of blank wall is a set of eight four-story high vertical grilles at the second- to fifth-story level; these are continued in the stories above by triple spandrels, a single casement window, and terminal 2-eyelet foliage. The final ten easternmost bays revert to the typical window-spandrel bays set between limestone piers; these bays are grouped in a 2-3-2-3 pattern.

 

The ground level of this section contains, from west to east, three enormous bronze-enframed announcement boards with modernistic grilles and abstract floral ornament, and a series of intermingling smaller announcement boards and entrances. The entire treatment of the 50th Street elevation reflects the windowless auditorium of the Music Hall behind it.

 

The 51st Street elevation of the Music Hall is simply a smaller version of the 50th Street elevation. It includes a blank wall with no reliefs, and a six-story high vertical over a two-section marquee with curved corners and neon lettering. The ground-floor level is faced with polished granite, and contains bronze-enframed announcement boards and entrances. The portion of the elevation east of the blank wall and marquee is articulated with multi-story grilles similar to those on 50th Street; beneath them are large bronze-enframed announcement boards.

 

The final ten bays are treated with typical window-spandrel bays set between limestone piers. Towards the eastern end of the elevation at the ground floor level, two sets of

 

bronze-enframed doors are capped by an inventive grille based on conic-tragic masks symbolizing theater. There are also grilles on windows and on a pair of doors.

*****

Significant features include but are not limited to:

SIXTH AVENUE FACADE

- Buff colored shot sawed Indiana limestone cladding

- Vertically ridged slate-gray aluminum spandrels

- Decorative pier terminations

- Polished granite base and polished granite entrance wall

- Polished granite polygonal piers

- Bronze-enframed entrances

- Bronze-enframed announcement boards

- Bronze banding

- Bronze abstract floral ornament

- 2/1 double-hung steel sash

- Terminal foliage of the 2-eyelet variety

- Six bronze entertainment reliefs (see p. 47 )

- Marquee with neon lettering

- Two vertical signs with neon lettering

50TH STREET FACADE

- Buff colored shot sawed Indiana limestone cladding

- Beveled and scalloped window sills (at the east end of the

first story)

- Vertically ridged slate-gray aluminum spandrels

- Decorative pier terminations

- Polished granite base along the entire ground-floor level

- Bronze-enframed entrances

- Bronze-enframed entrances with grille doors

- 2/1 double-hung steel sash

- Bronze-enframed announcement boards with modernistic grilles

- Bronze abstract floral ornament

- Three polychromatic metal and enamel reliefs (see p. 48 )

- Marquees with neon lettering

51ST STREET FACADE

- Buff colored shot sawed Indiana limestone cladding

- Vertically ridged slate-gray aluminum spandrels

- Decorative pier terminations

- Polished granite base along the entire ground-floor level

- Bronze-enframed entrances

- Bronze grilles with comic-tragic masks

- Bronze-enframed entrances with grille doors

- 2/1 double-hung steel sash

- Bronze grilles over windows at ground-floor level

- Bronze-enframed announcement boards with modernistic grilles

- Bronze abstract floral ornament

- Terminal foliage of the 2-eyelet variety

- Marquee with neon lettering

- Vertical sign with neon lettering

 

- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Waterfront and docks Liverpool UK

As a major British port, the docks in Liverpool have historically been central to the city's development. Several major docking firsts have occurred in the city including the construction of the world's first enclosed wet dock (the Old Dock) in 1715 and the first ever hydraulic lifting cranes. The best-known dock in Liverpool is the Albert Dock, which was constructed in 1846 and today comprises the largest single collection of Grade I listed buildings anywhere in Britain.Built under the guidance of Jesse Hartley, it was considered to be one of the most advanced docks anywhere in the world upon completion and is often attributed with helping the city to become one of the most important ports in the world. The Albert Dock houses restaurants, bars, shops, two hotels as well as the Merseyside Maritime Museum, International Slavery Museum, Tate Liverpool and The Beatles Story. North of the city centre is Stanley Dock, home to the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse, which was at the time of its construction in 1901, the world's largest building in terms of area and today stands as the world's largest brick-work building.

One of the most famous locations in Liverpool is the Pier Head, renowned for the trio of buildings – the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building – which sit upon it. Collectively referred to as the Three Graces, these buildings stand as a testament to the great wealth in the city during the late 19th and early 20th century. Built in a variety of architectural styles, they are recognised as being the symbol of Maritime Liverpool, and are regarded by many as contributing to one of the most impressive waterfronts in the world.

  

Bluecoat Chambers, the oldest building in Liverpool city centre

In recent years, several areas along Liverpool's waterfront have undergone significant redevelopment. Amongst the notable recent developments are the Museum of Liverpool, the construction of the Echo Arena Liverpool and BT Convention Centre on Kings Dock, Alexandra Tower and 1 Princes Dock on Prince's Dock and Liverpool Marina around Coburg and Brunswick Docks. The Wheel of Liverpool opened on 25 March 2010.

Sometimes called the Isaac Motte House. "Thomas Young originally owned a lot which extended from Meeting through to Church Street. A masonry single house was begun on Meeting Street and was sold before completion to Col. Isaac Motte, an officer in the Royal Americans, 60th Regiment. The pedimented gable and tripartite window are nineteenth-century Greek Revival alterations." --Jonathan H. Poston, The Buildings of Charleston (1997), p.257.

A view from the right, showing the piazzas, can be seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/hunky_punk/8310079413.

This is a video of the the finished 3D Painting entitled Centurion. Watch in HD with red/cyan 3D Glasses.

 

See the full slide show in the Epic Journey in the Transformation of this 3D Painting here.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/57605784@N06/sets/72157625891634410...

 

When I first saw this picture I know I had to paint it, full credit to the original artist, it is a masterpiece. Bursting out of the Colosseum, on the left you have the elements of history and tradition, and on the right you have the future, which looks like a space craft, and in the middle you have the Centurion, signalling, forward...the past and future being lead by the present, how it should be.

 

Working full time as well, this picture may take me 3 to 4 days to complete, every night I will post more & more stages to completion. If you click on the Slideshow link below you can watch a Slideshow showing the many stages in the painting of the picture, iv uploaded 11 so far, it may take as many as 30 until im happy with it. Every night if you click on the same link you will see the new additions automatically added to the slidehow, giving you an insight into how 3D Paintings are created.

 

Transformation Slideshow :

 

www.flickr.com/photos/57605784@N06/sets/72157625891634410...

 

As with all civilisations, nations & empires, its not how strong you are, its what you stand for that counts , it is these values, not military might & brute force, that determines longevity & prosperity.

 

Many things have been said about the Romans, the recent film released 2010 entitled Centurion is a good example, as was Spartacus, and the birth & life of Jesus Christ. When all is said & done the Romans lasted an aweful long time, they must have been doing something right.

 

There demise was started with the emergence of a movement that put forth to mankind a much higher set of values, not a stronger military force. That movement is Christianity.

 

The Roman civilisation tried to Adapt, tried to absorb, but its decline was inevitable. The Catholic Church is what remains of the Roman branch of Christianity.

 

The Maryland National Guard Freestate Challenge Academy held their course completion ceremony for the 22 week residency phase for 104 cadets of class #47 at Havre de Grace High School, Havre de Grace, Md., Dec. 10, 2016. .

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Retired Air Force Gen. Larry O. Spencer, who served as the VIce Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, spoke to the cadets as the keynote speaker..

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The Academy is a two-phased 17-month intervention program for underemployed, drug-free, “at-risk” high school dropouts from the state of Maryland between 16-18 years of age. Following graduation from the resident phase, the cadets are mentored for an additional 12 months, during which time they are placed into jobs, continue their higher education, or vocational trades training or enter the military..

.

The mission of the Academy is to intervene in and reclaim the lives of at-risk youth and to produce graduates with the values, skills, education and self-discipline needed to succeed as adults..

.

The students were brought into a structured and highly disciplined quasi-military academic setting that builds confidence and self-esteem to become productive and contributing members of our society. Cadets attend academic classes to prepare them for the test for the General Education Development (GED) credential and Maryland High School Diploma.

Views of stairway, escalators, and elevator work nearing completion between the mezzanine of the 42 St-Grand Central station and Grand Central Terminal street level on Thu., August 20, 2020.

 

Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit

Col. Nick Ducich, Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine commander (left), presents Lt. Col. Roman Zabrodsky, 2nd Airborne Parachute Battalion, 25th Airborne Brigade commander a certificate of completion Apr. 29 during the rotation two Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine graduation ceremony at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center near Yavoriv, Ukraine. Each JMTG-U rotation will consist of nine weeks of training where Ukrainian soldiers will learn defensive combat skills needed to increase Ukraine's capacity for self-defense. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Adriana M. Diaz-Brown, 10th Press Camp Headquarters)

Construction nears completion on a new junior high school building, housing grades 4-6, in Grumesa, Ghana July 22, 2013. The building, designed to accommodate more than 150 students, features three classrooms, a teachers’ room, storage space and a detached latrine facility. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District is working in partnership with U.S. Africa Command and the local embassy to bring the school to fruition. The new classrooms will enable additional students from the district to attend school in Grumesa. The project, valued at $208,700 dollars, features local building materials including mahogany doors and decorative cement blocks, hand selected by the school headmaster. In addition, local masons, painters and other workers were hired as subcontractors. The Ghanaian subcontractors credit U.S. partners, and contractor, Dover Vantage, for their newly acquired knowledge of U.S. building and safety practices. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jennifer Aldridge)

Completion of rain delayed GWOC game

The last of the three main structures that make up the UN permanent Headquarters.

The General Assembly building is now nearing completion and will be ready for the opening of the seventh session of the Assembly when it convenes, on 14 October.

The General Assembly building occupies the most prominent part of the site area and is the focal point of the Headquarters' composition. Its low sweeping lines stand in sharp contrast to the 39 story skyscraper Secretariat building (to which it is connected by the Conference area). The northern facade of the building (foreground) is made of translucent glass set between marble columns. The concave side walls are faced with English lime-stone, with panels and trimmings in marble matching the narrow ends of the Secretariat building.

Photo ID 475364. 01/10/1952. United Nations, New York. UN Photo/x. www.unmultimedia.org/photo/

May 27, 2021—New York City —Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, joined by Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa, Budget Director Robert Mujica, and MTA Chief Development Officer Janno Lieber, announces the completion of civil construction on East Side Access - the MTA's megaproject connecting the Long Island Rail Road to a new 350,000-square-foot passenger terminal under Grand Central Terminal. This is the largest new train terminal to be built in the United States since the 1950s and the first expansion of the LIRR in more than 100 years. The new connection will double the LIRR's capacity into Manhattan with up to 24 trains per hour and cut travel time for Queens commuters by 40 minutes per day. Afterwards, Governor Cuomo toured part of the new East Side Access Project with Mr. Lieber. (Kevin P. Coughlin / Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)

The Maryland National Guard Freestate Challenge Academy held their course completion ceremony for the 22 week residency phase for 104 cadets of class #47 at Havre de Grace High School, Havre de Grace, Md., Dec. 10, 2016. .

.

Retired Air Force Gen. Larry O. Spencer, who served as the VIce Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, spoke to the cadets as the keynote speaker..

.

The Academy is a two-phased 17-month intervention program for underemployed, drug-free, “at-risk” high school dropouts from the state of Maryland between 16-18 years of age. Following graduation from the resident phase, the cadets are mentored for an additional 12 months, during which time they are placed into jobs, continue their higher education, or vocational trades training or enter the military..

.

The mission of the Academy is to intervene in and reclaim the lives of at-risk youth and to produce graduates with the values, skills, education and self-discipline needed to succeed as adults..

.

The students were brought into a structured and highly disciplined quasi-military academic setting that builds confidence and self-esteem to become productive and contributing members of our society. Cadets attend academic classes to prepare them for the test for the General Education Development (GED) credential and Maryland High School Diploma.

Votivkirche (9, Rooseveltplatz, the provost parish church "To the Divine Savior").

History

Archduke Ferdinand Max after the rescue of his brother Franz Joseph I (assassination attempt of Johann Libenyi on 18 February 1853), suggested by an appeal the construction of a memory church, which was built from 1856 to 1879 according to the plans of Heinrich Ferstel (who at the beginning of construction was only 28 years old) together with the parsonage behind it in the style of French cathedral gothic of the 13th century on the Glacis in front of the (gate) Schottentor. Since the Glacis had not yet been released for development, the church had to be erected on the outer edge of this one and thus a few years later it stood distant from the Ring Road. Around the construction of the church there were a number of unrealized projects: the planned in a semicircular shape University of Vienna behind the church respectively a Hall of Fame (Viennese Acropolis, realized in the Arsenal) and the Tegetthoff monument in front of the church.

The site was definitively established on 25th October 1855; on 24th of April, 1856, the foundation stone was laid by Cardinal Archbishop Rauscher (commemorative plaque); on 18th of August, 1868, the completion of the tower was celebrated. The consecration was carried out by Cardinal Archbishop Kutschker on the occasion of the silver wedding of the Imperial couple on April 24, 1879 (commemorative plaque). The Votivkirche was in the monarchy (catholic) garrison church for Vienna (imperial decision of 1862). Here, too, all military funerals commenced. The Votivkirche is one of the most outstanding examples of historic architecture.

Roosevelt square - Votivkirche, around 1900

Exterior

Double tower facade with three figures portals and window rose.

Main portal

Main portal with rich figural decoration by Johannes Benk (Christ-King statue in the midst of the apostles, surrounded by models from the Old Covenant [Abel, Noe, Melchizedek, Isaak, Samson, Aaron, Moses]; in the gable above the Holy Trinity (by Josef Gasser), on the side four evangelists and Austro-Hungarian provincial patrons (Koloman [Lower Austria], Vigilius (South Tyrol), Aegius [Carinthia], Josef [Steiermark], Leopold [Lower Austria], Wenzel (Bohemia), Spiridion (Dalmatia), Michael (Galicia), Georg (Krain), Rochus (Croatia), St. Nicholas of Bari (Veneto), Ladislaus (Transylvania), Justus (Trieste), Hedwig (Silesia), Ruprecht (Salzburg), Johannes Nepomuk (Bohemia) by Franz Melnitzky and Peter Kastlunger) above the rosette "Coronation of Mary" by Gasser.

Side portal

Reliefs of Gasser ( "Annunciation of Mary" [below it the four prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, David and Micah by Anton Schmidgruber], "Resurrection of Christ" (below it St Francis, Elisabeth and Sophie von Kastlunger).

Entrance portals

The entrance portals into the transept are devoted to God the Father and the Holy Spirit. There are eight prophets, or church fathers, on the arcade arrows. The church received a new roof of Eternit-plates in 1967.

Interior

Three-aisled, ribbed vaulted basilica, with four flat side chapels on each side; three-aisled transept; choir with 7/12 closing; chapel ambulatory and apse chapel. The wall and ceiling paintings stem from Joseph von Führich, A. von Wörndle, Carl Jobst and Josef Matyáš Trenkwald. On the vault of the central nave, the Christ's Family Tree by Franz Jobst and Carl Jobst. The organ (1874-1878) by E. F. Walcker & Co. (Ludwigsburg) is the only mechanical work of this size (3,762 pipes) in Europe (Anton Bruckner has also played here).

The glass paintings of the church windows, to which Trenkwald had supplied the designs, were destroyed during the Second World War and replaced by figural windows (mostly by designs by Christine Feldmann, with the exception of the "emperor window" which was renewed according to old pattern, thus in the replacement windows there are also topics that fall into the time after church building).

High altar

High altar of white marble with six Egyptian alabaster columns with figural ornamentation by Gasser, Robert Streschnak and Ferdinand Laufberger (cardinal virtues in the vault of the canopy), portrait of Mary, that was a gift from Pope Pius IX in the middle of the (constantly locked) chapel ambulatory.

Marienaltar (once the Antwerp altar)

Here stood the Antwerp altar (the most important work of the Flemish carving art of the 15th century, since 1996 for security reasons as a loan in the cathedral and diocesan museum).

The theme of the church window is the history of Christ's suffering.

"Emperor window"

Window of the city of Vienna "Emperor window"

The window was donated by the municipality of Vienna in 1877 and renewed by the latter after the Second World War.

Bishop's Chapel

The altar is dedicated to the Divine Heart of Jesus; grave of the Auxiliary Bishop Godfried Marschall (he was the first church minister).

Church windows: Bishops of Austrian church history.

Altar of the Mother of God of Guadelupe.

Church window: History of the worship of the Virgin of Guadelupe.

Winged altar

The altar made of cedar wood from Lebanon, shows Mary's engagement with St. Joseph, the proclamation with closed wings.

Church window: History of the worship of the Marienbild of Mariazell.

Barbara candle (Artillery Memorial).

Church window: History of Mary's image by Maria Pötsch.

Monument to the members of the executive who have fallen.

Church window: History of the wonderful glass window of Absam (Tyrol).

Church window: Rudolf I

Church window: Ferdinand II

Gothic chapel shrine

Holy grave for the last days of Holy Week.

Church window: 23rd Eucharistic Congress in Vienna (1912).

Church window: death in the National Socialist concentration camp Mauthausen.

Baptismal chapel

Baptismal stone of Egyptian marble; tumba by Niklas Graf Salms (Salm tomb).

Church windows: Major Austrian missionaries.

Pulpit

Pulpit of marble; On the gold mosaic of the parapet, the four church fathers and the teaching Savior; at the foot of the pulpit the bust of Ferstel by Viktor Tilgner.

Monument to the Austrian Kaiserschützen Regiments, church Window: Representatives of the Austrian Social Reform (draft by Hans Schweiger).

Cross altar

Church window: left John of God (defense of Vienna against the Turks 1529), right Franz Jägerstätter.

 

Votivkirche (9, Rooseveltplatz; Propsteipfarrkirche „Zum göttlichen Heiland").

Geschichte

Erzherzog Ferdinand Max regte nach der Errettung seines Bruders Franz Joseph I. (Attentat von Johann Libenyi am 18. Februar 1853) durch einen Aufruf den Bau einer Gedächtniskirche an, die 1856-1879 nach den Plänen von Heinrich Ferstel (der bei Baubeginn erst 28 Jahre alt war) samt dem dahinterstehenden Pfarrhaus im Stil französischer Kathedralgotik des 13. Jahrhunderts auf dem Glacis vor dem Schottentor erbaut wurde. Da das Glacis damals noch nicht zur Verbauung freigegeben war, musste die Kirche am äußeren Rand desselben errichtet werden und stand damit einige Jahre später fern der Ringstraße. Rund um den Bau der Kirche gab es eine Reihe unrealisierter Projekte: die halbkreisförmig hinter der Kirche geplante Universität Wien beziehungsweise eine Ruhmeshalle (Wiener Akropolis; realisiert im Arsenal) und das Tegetthoffdenkmal vor der Kirche.

Das Areal wurde am 25. Oktober 1855 definitiv festgelegt, am 24. April 1856 fand die Grundsteinlegung durch Kardinal-Erzbischof Rauscher statt (Gedenktafel), am 18. August 1868 feierte man die Turmvollendung. Die Weihe nahm Kardinal-Erzbischof Kutschker anlässlich der Silberhochzeit des Kaiserpaars am 24. April 1879 vor (Gedenktafel). Die Votivkirche war in der Monarchie (katholisch) Garnisonskirche für Wien (kaiserlicher Entschluss von 1862). Hier nahmen auch alle militärischen Leichenbegängnisse ihren Ausgang. Die Votivkirche ist eines der hervorragendsten Beispiele historisierender Architektur.

Rooseveltplatz – Votivkirche, um 1900

Äußeres

Doppelturmfassade mit drei Figurenportalen und Fensterrose.

Hauptportal

Hauptportal mit reichem figuralem Schmuck von Johannes Benk (Christ-König-Statue inmitten der Apostel, umgeben von Vorbildern aus dem Alten Bund [Abel, Noe, Melchisedech, Isaak, Samson, Aaron, Moses); im Giebel darüber Heilige Dreifaltigkeit (von Josef Gasser), seitlich vier Evangelisten und österreichisch-ungarische Landespatrone (Koloman [Niederösterreich], Vigilius [Südtirol], Ägydius [Kärnten], Josef [Steiermark], Leopold [Niederösterreich], Wenzel [Böhmen], Spiridion [Dalmatien], Michael [Galizien], Georg [Krain], Rochus [Kroatien], Nikolaus von Bari [Venetien], Ladislaus [Siebenbürgen], Justus [Triest], Hedwig [Schlesien], Ruprecht [Salzburg], Johannes Nepomuk [Böhmen]) von Franz Melnitzky und Peter Kastlunger), über der Rosette „Krönung Mariens" von Gasser.

Seitenportale

Reliefs von Gasser („Verkündigung Mariens" [darunter die vier Propheten Jeremias, Isaias, David und Michäas von Anton Schmidgruber ], „Auferstehung Christi" [darunter Namenspatrone der kaiserlichen Familie: Franziskus, Elisabeth und Sophie von Kastlunger]).

Eingangsportale

Die Eingangsportale ins Querschiff sind Gott Vater und dem Heiligen Geist gewidmet. An den Arkadenpfeilern befinden sich acht Propheten beziehungsweise Kirchenväter. Die Kirche erhielt 1967 ein neues Dach aus Eternitplatten.

Inneres

Dreischiffige, kreuzrippengewölbte Basilika, beiderseits vier flache Seitenkapellen; dreischiffiges Querschiff; Chor mit 7/12-Schluss; Kapellenumgang und Kapellenkranz. Die Wand- und Deckengemälde stammen von Joseph von Führich, A. von Wörndle, Carl Jobst und Josef Matyáš Trenkwald. Am Deckengewölbe des Mittelschiffs Stammbaum Christi von Franz Jobst und Carl Jobst. Die Orgel (1874-1878) von E. F. Walcker & Co. (Ludwigsburg) ist das einzige mechanische Werk dieser Größe (3.762 Pfeifen) in Europa (auch Anton Bruckner hat hier gespielt).

Die Glasgemälde der Kirchenfenster, zu denen Trenkwald die Entwürfe geliefert hatte, wurden während des Zweiten Weltkriegs vernichtet und (mit Ausnahme des nach alter Vorlage erneuerten „Kaiserfensters") durch Figuralfenster (zumeist nach Entwürfen von Christine Feldmann) ersetzt (daher finden sich bei den Ersatzfenstern auch Themen, die in die Zeit nach dem Kirchenbau fallen).

Hochaltar

Hochaltar aus weißem Marmor mit sechs ägyptischen Alabastersäulen mit figuralem Schmuck von Gasser, Robert Streschnak und Ferdinand Laufberger (Kardinaltugenden im Gewölbe des Baldachins), Bildnis der Maria, das ein Geschenk von Papst Pius IX. war, in der Mitte des (ständig gesperrten) Kapellenumgangs.

Marienaltar (einst Antwerpener Altar)

Hier stand der Antwerpener Altar (bedeutendstes Werk der flämischen Schnitzkunst des 15. Jahrhunderts; seit 1996 aus Sicherheitsgründen als Leihgabe im Dom- und Diözesanmuseum).

Thema des Kirchenfensters ist die Leidensgeschichte Christi.

„Kaiser-Fenster"

Fenster der Stadt Wien („Kaiser-Fenster"). Das Fenster wurde 1877 von der Gemeinde Wien gespendet und von dieser nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg erneuert.

Bischofskapelle

Der Altar ist dem Göttlichen Herzen Jesu gewidmet; Grabstätte des Weihbischofs Godfried Marschall (er war der erste Propst der Kirche).

Kirchenfenster: Bischöfe der österreichischen Kirchengeschichte.

Altar der Gottesmutter von Guadelupe.

Kirchenfenster: Geschichte der Verehrung des Marienbilds von Guadelupe.

Flügelaltar

Der aus Zedernholz vom Libanon geschaffene Altar zeigt die Verlobung Mariens mit dem heiligen Josef, bei geschlossenen Flügeln die Verkündigung.

Kirchenfenster: Geschichte der Verehrung des Marienbilds von Mariazell.

Barbarakerze (Artilleristen-Gedächtnisstätte).

Kirchenfenster: Geschichte des Marienbilds von Maria Pötsch.

Denkmal für die im Dienst gefallenen Angehörigen der Exekutive.

Kirchenfenster: Geschichte des wunderbaren Glasfensters von Absam (Tirol).

Kirchenfenster: Rudolf I.

Kirchenfenster: Ferdinand II.

Gotischer Kapellenschrein

Heiliges Grab für die letzten Tage der Karwoche.

Kirchenfenster: 23. Eucharistischer Kongress in Wien (1912).

Kirchenfenster: Todesstiege im nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager Mauthausen.

Taufkapelle

Taufstein aus ägyptischen Marmor; Hochgrab von Niklas Graf Salms (Salmgrabmal).

Kirchenfenster: Bedeutende österreichische Missionare.

Kanzel

Kanzel aus Marmor; auf dem Goldmosaik der Brüstung die vier Kirchenväter und der lehrende Heiland; am Kanzelfuß Büste Ferstels von Viktor Tilgner.

Denkmal für die österreichische Kaiserschützen-Regimenter, Kirchenfenster: Vertreter der österreichischen Sozialreform (Entwurf von Hans Schweiger).

Kreuzaltar

Kreuz-Altar.

Kirchenfenster: links Johannes von Gott (Verteidigung Wiens gegen die Türken 1529), rechts Franz Jägerstätter.

www.wien.gv.at/wiki/index.php/Votivkirche

Ready for Sundays Cheshire run. Yet again my lads have done another cracking job on this one.

"hugo ganwell" 06-07 winter

15.12.2018 8th plenary meeting of the CMP (upon completion of CMA plenary)

The Tornado project aimed to complete the task of building the locomotive from scratch, with no recovered/restored parts, a feat never achieved in the preservation movement before, and not completed in Britain for a main line locomotive since 1960. This was considered by the trust to be the next logical step in the steam heritage movement, after the restoration of Standard 8P Pacific No.71000 Duke of Gloucester, which due to its final state, had involved building a large quantity of new parts.

 

Building an A1, based on the LNER Peppercorn Class A1 would fill the 'missing link' in the otherwise preserved examples of East Coast main line traction, such as the Stirling Single, Ivatt Atlantics, LNER A4, A3 and A2 Pacifics, Class 40s and Deltics, and more modern examples.

 

The original target date for completion was 27 September 2007, the 175th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, at a projected cost of £1.6m, with construction taking 10 years. With inflation and material cost increases, the actual spend has increased to £3m.

 

The trust has financed the Tornado project with a system of regular and one off covenants and industrial sponsorship, as well as negotiating generous terms from several manufacturers. Significant costs were saved in the project by securing parts from companies for free or at significant discount. The trust has also issued bonds to investors in return for financial contributions. Bond holders in return receive interest, and a repayment of the bond on maturity. By 2005 the trust's monthly income was over £10,000 and rising.

 

Courtesy Wikipedia: A1_Steam_Locomotive_Trust

 

North Yorkshire Moors Railway - www.nymr.co.uk/

 

© All rights reserved

15.12.2018 8th plenary meeting of the CMP (upon completion of CMA plenary)

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My words:

Every spot visit was optimally time-bound in our whole 8-day conducted tour. So I had to take snaps as much as possible to tell you a story of my visit. It was really a laborious task to cover as many elements as possible within that short span of time. This is for the reason I utilized every opportunities I could avail...like majorities of my landscape photographs were taken from our running bus, and I really enjoyed it to do so.

 

This is a series of photographs representing the rich cultural heritage of native Indians of North America. My whole effort will not go to vane if you really like and appreciate this small effort of mine.

  

About the Monument

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota, United States. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior, Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

 

The memorial master plan includes the mountain carving monument, an Indian Museum of North America, and a Native American Cultural Center. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain, on land considered sacred by some Oglala Lakota, between Custer and Hill City, roughly 17 miles from Mount Rushmore. The sculpture's final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high. The head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet high.

 

The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is far from completion. If completed, it may become the world's largest sculpture.

[ Custer City- is generally considered to be the oldest town established by European Americans in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Gold was found there during the 1874 Black Hills Expedition, conducted by the 7th Cavalry led by Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, a discovery which initiated the Black Hills Gold Rush.

For thousands of years, the Black Hills had been part of the territory of varying tribes of indigenous peoples. They were within historical territory of the Oglala Sioux at the time of United States encounter, and within the Great Sioux Reservation established by the US Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868). Having established dominance in the area by the eighteenth century, the Oglala Sioux had long considered the Black Hills as sacred land]

  

Who was Crazy Horse?

Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S. Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people. His most famous actions against the U.S. military included the Fetterman Fight (21 December 1866) and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25–26 June 1876). He surrendered to U.S. troops under General Crook in May 1877 and was fatally wounded by a military guard, while allegedly resisting imprisonment. He ranks among the most notable and iconic of Native American tribal members and was honored by the U.S. Postal Service in 1982 with a 13¢ postage stamp that is part of its Great Americans series.

 

History of the monument

Korczak Ziolkowski and Henry Standing Bear.

Henry Standing Bear ("Mato Naji"), an Oglala Lakota chief, and well-known statesman and elder in the Native American community, recruited and commissioned Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to build the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. In October 1931, Luther Standing Bear, Henry's older brother, wrote sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was carving the heads of four American presidents at Mount Rushmore. Luther suggested that it would be "most fitting to have the face of Crazy Horse sculpted there. Crazy Horse is the real patriot of the Sioux tribe and the only one worthy to place by the side of Washington and Lincoln." Borglum never replied. Thereafter, Henry Standing Bear began a campaign to have Borglum carve an image of Crazy Horse on Mt. Rushmore. In summer of 1935, Standing Bear, frustrated over the stalled Crazy Horse project, wrote to James H. Cook, a long time friend of Chief Red Cloud's "I am struggling hopelessly with this because I am without funds, no employment and no assistance from any Indian or White."

 

On November 7, 1939, Henry Standing Bear wrote to the Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who worked on Mount Rushmore under Gutzon Borglum. He informed the sculptor, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too." Standing Bear also wrote a letter to Undersecretary Oscar Chapman of the Department of the Interior, offering all his own fertile 900 acres (365 ha) in exchange for the barren mountain for the purpose of paying honor to Crazy Horse. The government responded positively, and the National Forest Service, responsible for the land, agreed to grant a permit for the use of the land, with a commission to oversee the project. Standing Bear chose not to seek government funds and relied instead upon influential Americans interested in the welfare of the American Indian to privately fund the project.

 

In the spring of 1940, Ziolkowski spent three weeks with Standing Bear at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, discussing land ownership issues and learning about Crazy Horse and the Lakota way of life. According to Ziolkowski, "Standing Bear grew very angry when he spoke of the broken Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868). That was the one I'd read about in which the President promised the Black Hills would belong to the Indians forever. I remember how his old eyes flashed out of that dark mahogany face, then he would shake his head and fall silent for a long while."

  

Memorial foundation

The memorial is a non-profit undertaking, and receives no federal or state funding. The Memorial Foundation charges fees for its visitor centers and earns revenue from its gift shops. Ziolkowski reportedly was offered US$10 million for the project from the federal government on two occasions, but he turned the offers down. He felt the project was more than just a mountain carving, and he feared that his plans for the broader educational and cultural goals of the memorial would be overturned by federal involvement.

 

After Ziolkowski died in 1982 at age 74, his widow Ruth Ziolkowski, took charge of the sculpture, overseeing work on the project as CEO from the 1980s to the 2010s. Ruth Ziolkowski decided to focus on the completion of Crazy Horse's face first, instead of the horse as her husband had originally planned.[13] She believed that Crazy Horse's face, once completed, would increase the sculpture's draw as a tourist attraction, which would provide additional funding. She also oversaw the staff, which included seven of her children.

 

Sixteen years later, in 1998, the face of Crazy Horse was completed and dedicated.

Ruth Ziolkowski died 21 May 2014, aged 87. Monique Ziolkowski, Ruth's daughter, became CEO and three of her siblings continue to work on the project, as well as three of Monique's nephews.

  

Completed vision

The memorial is to be the centerpiece of an educational/cultural center, to include a satellite campus of the University of South Dakota, with a classroom building and residence hall, made possible by a US$2.5 million donation in 2007 from T. Denny Sanford, a philanthropist from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It is called the University and Medical Training Center for the North American Indian and the Indian Museum of North America. The current visitor complex will anchor the center. Sanford also donated US$5 million to the memorial, to be paid US$1 million a year for five years as matching donations were raised, specifically to further work on the horse's head.

  

Controversies

Crazy Horse resisted being photographed and was deliberately buried where his grave would not be found. Ziolkowski envisioned the monument as a metaphoric tribute to the spirit of Crazy Horse and Native Americans. He reportedly said, "My lands are where my dead lie buried." His extended hand on the monument is to symbolize that statement.