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Vrijdag namiddag besteld, zelfde dag pakje aangekomen in Memphis om 12:03AM lokale tijd en maandag om 10h36 afgeleverd. Rapper moet dat niet gaan!
Handig is vooral de SMD box met 1400 capaciteiten 0805. Zo kan ik eenvoudiger optimaliseren, je moet nu eenmaal naar SMD overschakelen omdat bepaalde componenten niet meer beschikbaar zijn in DIL. Ook de afmetingen moeten kleiner.
Nu nog de SMD pcb tekenen. Doel is een nog betere IR detector te bouwen die heel gevoelig is, ook voor kleine donkere beestjes in volle vlucht, en dit overdag waarbij er ook nog veel zonlicht aanwezig is. Of het echt beter zal worden moeten we afwachten. Zodra er resultaten zijn komen er wel nieuwe beelden.
ROOF HEAT PROOFING COMPANY PROFILE:
We would like to introduce ourselves as one of the Pioneer of ROOF HEAT PROOFING in Pakistan. Our company was established in the year 2000.
ROOF HEAT PROOFING Family Business Background.
Our Business Background is that we are importer of chemicals. When Pakistan got independence our grandfather Mr.Abdul Khaliq Gandhak wala (Late) was the first one to open a chemical outlet in Jodia Bazar Karachi. Every chemical related industrialist and Business men know him really well.
What is ROOF HEAT PROOFING Cool Tech?
In chemical field, we started ROOF HEAT PROOFING, a new business which fulfills the need of every house, Factory, Office, Hotel, School, Hospital and any other organization. ROOF HEAT PROOFING is the mixture of different types of chemicals, and Sun block chemicals from Pakistan, Korea, China and Germany.
ROOF HEAT PROOFING Vision and Mission.
After 35 years all over the world such as USA, GULF, Saudi Arabia and Hot region countries Cool Tech brought ROOF HEAT PROOFING facility in Pakistan in 2000. Approx.: 8000sq ft clean Area can be done within a day without any disturbance and noise. You can use your roof conveniently and you can search that type of coating on internet by any search engine like yahoo Google etc. Just mention ROOF HEAT PROOFING. Your Air Conditioner Bill will be deducted around 20 to 30%. Recommended by Engineers and consultant all over the world.
WHY ROOF HEAT PROOFING IS NECESSARY FOR ALL TOP FLOORS.
ROOF HEAT PROOFING saves your money against high Air conditioner Bills.
Cool Tech Saves your money against high Air conditioner Bills. The best reason to use Cool tech (ROOF HEAT PROOFING) is simply put……..You save Money! How much does it cost? Well, considering reduced electric bills, less wear and tear on air conditioner components, extended roof life, increased comfort and the beauty supplied, it’s almost FREE! Cool Tech will help pay for itself before you know it by enabling you to save 20-30% of your electricity cost. Cool Tech (ROOF HEAT PROOFING) is a high built coating made from highly water-resistant polymers and additives that give flexibility and durability.
ROOF HEAT PROOFING Protect your roof against hot sun rays.
Roof Heat Proofing provides SOLAR REFLECTANCE, which means it reflects most of the infrared and visible light striking the surface of the coating. Over 80% of the light striking Cool Tech (ROOF HEAT PROOFING) is reflected back into the atmosphere and away from your roof. Then Roof Heat Proofing repels over 80% of the heat striking it. It bounces this heat back into the atmosphere. This synergistic effect means that Cool Tech reflects the majority of radiant energy away from the structure while the micro-porous structure of the coating dissipated and blocks any radiation that is absorbed and reduces the energy transmitted to the substrate.
ROOF HEAT PROOFING Protect your roof against thermal shocks
Roof Heat Proofing also helps prevent thermal shocks. A hot roof can experience thermal shocks when a passing shower of cold rain hits the hot roof causing a rapid and tremendously violent contraction. These violent contractions can rip seams open, pop fasteners out of the roofs substrate, pull flashing out of the imbedding plies and generally destroys your roof. Keeping your roof cool prevents the radical contraction that leads to “ROOF SHOCK”, premature roof failure and costly replacement costs.
SOME OF OUR VALUABLE CLIENTS (COMMERCIAL)
• BAY VIEW HIGH SCHOOL CLIFTON 2012
• PAK GREASE MANUFAC KEEMARI KARACHI 2013
• BONANZA GARMENTS 2013
• SOUTH SHORE O-LEVEL SCHOOL DHA 2013
• KARACHI GRAMMAR SCHOOL CLIFTON 2011
• SIEMENS PAKISTAN ENGINEERING CO. LTD. SITE 2010
• (FOTCO) FAUJI OIL TERMINAL & DISTRIBUTION Co. Ltd (PORT QASIM) 2010
• OYSTER TECHNOLOGIC (PVT)LTD KORANGI 2011
• THE RESIDENCY HOTEL (LAHORE) 2011
• ARENA KARSAZ (2010)
• ARY DIGITAL NETWORK STUDIO (SITE) 2009
• MERCK (PVT) LTD QUETTA 2011
• CARE LOGISTIC SHARA-E-FAISAL 2011
• PRECISION POLYMERS (PVT) LIMITED 2011
• S. ABDULLAH & COMPANY (K-SHAMSHEER) (DHA) 2005
• MEDICAIDS PAKISTAN PVT LTD (KORANGI) 2011
• ICON TOWER (SITE OFFICE) ADJACENT ABDULLAH SHAH GHAZI MAZAR 2010
• CENTURY 21 TEXTILE (S.I.T.E) 2004
• HAKEEM ABDUL GHAFFAR AGHA (AGHA HERBAL, TARIQ ROAD) 2009
• (FOTCO) GUEST HOUSE (DHA) 2010
• MR. IQBAL.S.MUHAMMAD PARAMOUNT BOOKS PVT LTD 2009
• EDEN ROBE GARMENTS (SITE) 2007
• RAZAQUE STEEL (SITE) 2008
• STAR CNG N.NAZIMABAD 2011
• ST. PETERS HIGH SCHOOL KASHMIR ROAD 2009
• K.N. ACCADEMY (MALIR CANTT) 2003
• HAMPTON SCHOOL (CLIFTON) 2007
• WOODWARDS (PVT) LTD (AMEER KHUSRO ROAD) 2010
• CHAS. A MENDOZA (RAZI ROAD) 2010
• KIRAN HOSPITAL (SAFFORA GOTH) 2004
• USMAN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL (F.B. AREA) 2003
• CIVIL HOSPITAL 2004
• M.M. TOWERS (DHA) (MAIN KHAYABAN-E-ITEHAD) 2004
• LOYA ASSOCIATE (P.E.C.H.S) 2005
• ALI ASGHAR TEXTILE (KORANGI OFFICE AREA) 2010
• OXYHEALTH LOUNGE & RELAXATION CLUB (CLIFTON) 2008
• SHAN SILK (KORANGI) 2011
SOME OF OUR VALUABALE CLIENTS (RESIDENTIAL)
• MR. FAROOQ (BONANAZA GARMENTS) 2013
• MR. JUNAID JAMSHED DHA 2013
• MR ASHRAF S/O MR. LIAQUT ALI KHAN 1ST PRIME MINISTER OF PAKISTAN
• MIAN NASEER ARCHITECT 2013
• MR. SIKANDER BAKHT (FORMER PAKISTANI CRICKETER) D.H.A 2011
• MR. MASOOD HASSAN (CLIFTON) 2009 M/S. SIEMENS CO. LTD. SITE 2010
• MR. MURAD ALI SHAH MINISTOR OF IRRIGATION AND POWER (DHA) 2010
• MR. IMRAN S. SATTAR OXFORD SWETTERS DHA 2011
• MR. ASGHAR RANGOON WALA (ROYAL RODALE CLUB) (DHA) 2007
• MR YASIN SIDDIQUI CHAIRMAN “APTMA” DHA 2010 (SINDH & BALOCHISTAN ZONE)
• MR. SAJJAD HUSSAIN SHAH “APNA TV CHANNEL” (C.E) DHA 2010
• MR. SARFARAZ HUSSAIN SHAH “APNA TV CHANNEL” (C.E) DHA 2010
• MR. RAFIQ (ORIENT TEXTILE) DHA 2011.
• MS. FATIMA (D/O LATE MR. KAMAL FILM ACTOR) DHA 2011
• MR. BUKSH JUMANI (KHAIRPUR HOUSE) DHA 2011
• MR DANISH KHWAJA (A.R.Y) 2011 D.H.A / MR. NOFEL HUM T.V. 2011
• MR. YOUSUF DEWAN. (DEWAN GROUP OF INDUSTRIES) (DHA) 2003
• MR. HAMZA FAROOQ / MR. ABDUL BAAQI DEWAN. (DHA) 2008
• DR. RAHEEM-UL-HAQ (DHA) (SOUTH CITY HOSPITAL CLIFTON) 2007
• DR. ZEENAT ESSANI D.H.A 2008 / DR. ZAKIR ALVI D.H.A 2011
• MR. A. KARIM PARACHA (C.I.M. SHIPPING COMPANY) (DHA) 2008
• MR. SHAKEEL MASOOD (C.E. DAWN NEWS). (DHA) 2008
• MR ABBAS / MR SHABBIR (ARENA KARSAZ) 2010
• MR. AHMED ZAFAR EMIRATES GLOBAL BANK (DHA) 2010
• MR. POLAD SUZUKI MOTORS DEALER CLIFTON 2010
• MR. IQBAL.S.MUHAMMAD PARAMOUNT BOOKS PVT LTD 2009
• MR SIKANDAR (CAFÉ FLOW) / MR. NADEEM ISLAM (BAYVIEW SCHOOL)
• MR. ALI ADAMJEE / MR. BILAL DAILY AGHAZ NEWS DHA 2010
• MR. HASSAN AKHTER (DHA) (MATRIX COMPANY CLIFTON) 2004
• MR. BILAL (DHA) DAILY AGHAZ NEWS 2009
• MR. NOSHAER (YAZDANI MOTORS D.H.A) 2008
• MRS. ANWAR PIONEER CABLES (D.H.A) 2011
• MR. ASLAM PAKISTAN CABLES (CLIFTON) 2011
• MR. ABDUL HANNAN (KHAS INDUSTRIES) D.H.A 2010
• MR. NAVEED ILLAHI “ALI ASGHAR TEXTILE” (DHA RESIDENCE) 2010.
roof heat proofing, roof treatment services, roof insulation pakistan, roof insulation chemical, roof heat protection, heat reflection white coating, heat proof HOME
Roof Heat Proofing for existing roofs to protect your place from heat.
Available in all major cities of Pakistan.
For client list and more details.
contact: salman matin
03332284724
02135486688
www.cooltechpk.com/videos.html
www.facebook.com/roofheatproofing
www.facebook.com/roofheatproofingkarachi
www.roofinsulationpakistan.com,
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The "Entwicklung" tank series (= "development"), more commonly known as the E-Series, was a late-World War II attempt by Germany to produce a standardized series of tank designs. There were to be six standard designs in different weight classes, from which several specialized variants were to be developed. This intended to reverse the trend of extremely complex tank designs that had resulted in poor production rates and mechanical unreliability.
The E-series designs were simpler, cheaper to produce and more efficient than their predecessors; however, their design offered only modest improvements in armor and firepower over the designs they were intended to replace, such as the Jagdpanzer 38(t), Panther Ausf. G or Tiger II. However, the resulting high degree of standardization of German armored vehicles would also have made logistics and maintenance easier. Indeed, nearly all E-series vehicles — up through and including the E-75 — were intended to use what were essentially the Tiger II's 80 cm (31½ in) diameter, steel-rimmed road wheels for their suspension, meant to overlap each other (as on the later production Tiger I-E and Panther designs that also used them), even though in a highly simplified fashion. For instance, while the E-50/75’s running gear resembled outwardly the Tiger II’s, the latter’s torsion bar suspension, which necessitated a complex hull with many openings, was replaced by very compact conical spring coil packages that each held a pair of interleaved road wheels – with the benefit that all suspension elements remained outside of the hull. This considerably simplified production and saved time as well as scarce material.
Focus of initial chassis and combat vehicle development was the E-50/75 Standardpanzer, designed by Adler. These were two mostly identical vehicles and only differed in armor thickness, overall weight and running gear design to cope with the different weights. While the E-50 was the standardized replacement for the medium PzKpfw. V “Panther” and the last operational PzKpfw. VI “Tiger”, with an operational weight of around 50 tons, the E-75 was intended to become the standard heavy tank in the 70 ton class, as a replacement for the Tiger II battle tank and the Jagdtiger SPG. They were to share many components, including the same Maybach HL 234 engine with up to 900 hp output and the drivetrain, as well as running gear elements and almost all peripheral equipment. Both E-50 and E-75 were built on the same production lines for ease of manufacture.
This universal tank chassis would, beyond the primary use for battle tanks, also become the basis for a wide range of specialized support vehicles like self-propelled artillery, assault guns, tank hunters and anti-aircraft weapon carriers, which would gradually replace and standardize the great variety of former support vehicles, dramatically optimizing maintenance and logistics.
The E-50/75 SPAAG sub-family itself was quite diversified and comprised a wide range of vehicles that mainly carried different turrets with the respective weaponry as well as air space surveillance, targeting and command equipment. The range of armament included not only guns of various calibers for short, medium and long range in armored and mostly fully enclosed turrets, there were furthermore armored launch ramps for anti-aircraft missiles, including the guided “Rheintochter”, “Wasserfall” or “Enzian” SAMs as well as batteries with unguided “Taifun” anti-aircraft missiles.
Among this new vehicle family, the heaviest gun that was carried in a fully enclosed turret was the Rheinmetall 8.8 cm Flak 41. This was an improved version of the powerful pre-war 8.8 cm Flak 36/37 that was also developed into an anti-tank gun and became the main armament for Germany’s heavy battle tanks like the Tiger I: the 8.8 cm PaK 43 and KwK 43, respectively.
The 8.8 cm Flak 41 was a mobile field weapon on a new pedestal mounting that lowered its silhouette, and it used a longer barrel and a longer 88 mm cartridge with an increased propellant load. The shells had a weight of 9.4-kilogram (20 lb) and achieved a muzzle velocity of 1,000 m/s (3,280 ft/s), giving the gun an effective ceiling of 11,300 meters (37,100 ft) and a maximum of 14,700 meters (48,200 ft). The barrel initially consisted of three sections and had a length of 74 calibers but was then redesigned to a simpler dual-section barrel with a length of 72 calibers, for easier manufacture. Improvements in reloading raised the manual firing rate, with 20 to 25 rounds a minute being quoted. The Flak 41 could also be used against ground targets and was able to penetrate about 200 mm (7.9 inches) of armor at 1,000 m (3,280 feet), allowing it to defeat the armor of any contemporary tank from a relatively safe distance. Because of the high cost and complexity of this weapon, however, Rheinmetall manufactured relatively few of them, 556 in all. 399 were fielded, the rest went into SPAAG production.
The new pedestal mounting made it easy to adapt the weapon to a vehicle, so that this formidable weapon was immediately earmarked to be combined with a tank chassis to improve its mobility. Since an SPAAG would not need the massive frontal armor of a battle tank, the hull from the lighter E-50 was used (which still had a maximum armor thickness of 60mm at the front at 30°, which was effectively 120 mm vs. the E-75’s 185 mm), but instead of the E-50 MBT’s running gear with six steel wheels per side, the Flak 41 SPAAG used the heavier E-75’s running gear with eight wheels per side and wider tracks, effectively creating a hybrid E-50/75 chassis. This measure was taken to better distribute the vehicle’s overall weight and stabilize the it while moving and firing. In this form the new vehicle received the designation Sd.Kfz. 192/3, also known as “Einheits-Flakpanzer E-50 (88 mm)” or “E-50-41” for short.
The Flak 41 was integrated into Rheinmetall’s standardized SPAAG turret that could carry a wide range of automatic anti-aircraft weapons. It was a spacious, boxy design, optimized for maximum internal space than for effective armor protection, resulting in almost vertical side walls and a high silhouette. However, the level of armor was sufficient to protect the crew and the equipment inside from 20 mm gun shells – the typical armament of Allied fighter bombers of the time like the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest.
A heavy-duty hydraulic gun mount with a reinforced recoil system allowed an elevation of the Flak 41 between +83° and -3°. As a novel feature the weapon received a semi-automatic loading mechanism. This was the attempt to increase the gun’s excellent manual rate of fire even further, and it mimicked the magazine clips of the smaller 37 mm Flak 37 that contained seven rounds for short, continuous bursts of fire. A belt feed for truly continuous fire had been envisioned, but not possible with the long and heavy 88 mm rounds within the turret and chassis limits. A mechanical magazine solution, e. g. a drum with several rounds, was impossible, too. The most practical solution was a spiral-shaped magazine, driven by simple gravitation and directly attached to the Flak 41’s breech. This feeding could – beyond an initial round already in the barrel – hold up to three more rounds, and upon firing and expelling the empty case, a fresh round automatically fell into place. The rounds from the magazine could be fired in a fully automatic mode in a short burst with a rate of 50-55 RPM. The magazine itself had to be filled manually, though, and the gun could alternatively be fed directly, too, so that different types of ammunition could be prepared and the gunner could switch between them on short notice.
To accommodate the weapon’s longer ammunition (the Flak 41’s cartridge was 855 mm long) and a crew of four (commander, gunner and two loaders), the standard Rheinmetall Flak turret had to be extended at the rear. Anti-aircraft aiming was done visually, a stereoscopic rangefinder with a span of 200 cm (78¾ in) was integrated above the gun mount. A secondary ZF.20 scope for ground targets was available, too. Two more crewmen, the driver and a radio operator, sat in the hull in front of the turret, similar to the E-50/75 battle tank’s layout. The radio operator on the right side also acted as a third loader for the ammunition supply stored in the hull’s front.
Initially, no secondary defensive armament was provided since the new SPAAGs were to be operated in specialized anti-aircraft units, the so-called Fla-Züge, in which the SPAAGs’ protection would be taken over by supporting infantry and other dedicated vehicles. However, initial field experience quickly revealed this weak spot in the vehicle’s close-range defense: due to material and personnel shortages the Fla-Züge units could hardly be equipped with everything they needed to operate as planned, so that they were in most cases just an underserved mix of SPAAGs, occasionally augmented by a command vehicle and rarely with the protection these specialized vehicles needed. Most of the time the units’ vehicles had to operate independently and were therefore left to their own devices. As a solution, a commander cupola was soon added to the Sd. Kfz.192/3’s turret that not only improved the field of view around the vehicle to assess the tactical situation and detect approaching infantrymen that tried to attach mines or throw Molotov cocktails, it also featured a remote-controlled MG 42 that could be aimed and fired by the commander from the inside. However, to re-supply the ammunition, the cupola hatch had to be opened and someone had to leave the turret’s cover and manually insert a new box of rounds. Furthermore, a 100 mm grenade launcher, a so-called “Nahverteidigungswaffe”, was mounted into the opposite side of the turret roof, too. It fired SMi 35 leaping mines for close defense against approaching infantry. This made the cramped turret interior even more cluttered, but significantly improved the vehicle’s survivability, especially in a confined, urban combat environment. Updated vehicles reached the frontline units in late 1945 and were immediately thrown into service.
Despite being a powerful weapon, several operational problems with the Sd.Kfz. 192/3 became soon apparent. The complex Flak 41 and its feeding mechanism needed constant proper maintenance and service – otherwise it easily jammed. Spent shell casing also frequently jammed the gun. The high silhouette was an innate tactical problem, but this had already been accepted during the design phase of Rheinmetall’s SPAAG standard turret. However, the tall turret was the source of an additional conceptual weakness of the Sd.Kfz. 192/3: the sheer weight of the large turret with the heavy gun frequently caused imbalances that overstressed the turret bearing and its electric drive (which had been taken over from the E-50/75 battle tanks), resulting in a jammed turret — especially when either fully loaded or when the ammunition supply was depleted. Due to the large and heavy turret, the vehicle’s center of gravity was relatively high, too, so that its off-road handling was limited. Even on paved roads the early Sd.Kfz. 192/3s tended to porpoise in tight corners and upon braking. Stiffer coil springs, introduced during the running production and retrofitted through field kits to existing vehicles, countered this flaw, even though these kits were rare due to material shortages. Sometimes the harder coil springs were distributed between two vehicles, only replacing the suspension on the front and rear pair of wheels.
A different tactical problem was the limited ammunition supply for the Flak 41. While 57 rounds were sufficient for a comparable battle tank, the semi-automatic Flak 41‘s theoretical high rate of fire meant that the Sd.Kfz. 192/3 quickly depleted this supply and could only keep up fire and its position for a very limited period, or it had to save ammunition to a point that its deployment became pointless. After spending its ammunition, the vehicle had to retreat to a safe second line position to re-supply, and this was, due to the vehicle’s limited mobility, size and the heavy and bulky rounds, a risky undertaking and meant tedious manual labor with poor protection for the supply crews. The resulting supply logistics to keep the Sd.Kfz. 192/3 operational and effective were demanding.
Nevertheless, despite these shortcoming, the Sd.Kfz. 192/3 greatly improved the heavy Flak units’ mobility and firepower, and the weapon’s effectiveness was high against both air and ground targets. Until mid-1946, a total of around forty Sd.Kfz. 192/3 were built and put into service, primarily with units that defended vital production sites in Western Germany and Saxonia.
At the time of the Sd.Kfz. 192/3’s introduction, anti-aircraft aiming was already augmented by mobile radar systems like the “Würzburg” device or special command vehicles like the Sd.Kfz. 282 “Basilisk” which combined an autonomous radar system with a powerful visual rangefinder and an integrated analogue range calculator, the Kommandogerät 40. However, fire control development had continued, and at least one Sd.Kfz. 192/3 was used in late 1946 during trials to fully automatize gun aiming and firing remotely through electric drives through “slaving” a turret to an external director. This was a modified Sd.Kfz. 282/1 that successfully controlled the Sd.Kfz. 192/3 via cable from an elevated location 50 m away from the SPAAG’s firing position. The objective of these trials was to connect several anti-aircraft weapons to a single command unit with improved sensors and high accuracy under any weather condition for concentrated and more effective fire and an improved first shot hit probability.
Specifications:
Crew: Sixe (commander, gunner, two loaders, radio operator, driver)
Weight: 64 tonnes (71 short tons)
Length: 7.27 m (23 ft 10 ¾ in) (hull only)
9.57 m (31 ft 4 ½ in) with gun forward
Width: 3.88 m (12 ft 9 in)
Height 3.46 m (11 ft 4 in)
3.81 m (12 ft 6 in) with commander cupola
Ground clearance: 495 to 510 mm (1 ft 7.5 in to 1 ft 8.1 in)
Suspension: Conical spring
Fuel capacity: 720 liters (160 imp gal; 190 US gal)
Armor:
30 – 60 mm (1.2 – 2.4 in)
Performance:
Speed
- Maximum, road: 44 km/h (27.3 mph)
- Sustained, road: 38 km/h (24 mph)
- Cross country: 15 to 20 km/h (9.3 to 12.4 mph)
Operational range: 160 km (99 miles)
Power/weight: 14 PS/tonne (12.5 hp/ton)
Engine:
V-12 Maybach HL 234 gasoline engine with 900 PS (885 hp/650 kW)
Transmission:
ZF AK 7-200 with 7 forward 1 reverse gears
Armament:
1× 8,8 cm Flak 41 L/72 anti-aircraft cannon with 57 rounds in turret and hull
1× 7.92 mm Maschinengewehr 42 with 2.400 rounds, remote-controlled on the commander cupola
The kit and its assembly:
This fictional German SPAAG never existed, not even on the drawing boards. But I wondered, after ModelCollect had released an E-100 SPAAG with a twin 88mm gun some years ago, why there was no lighter vehicle with the powerful 88 mm Flak in a closed turret? There were plans to mount this weapon onto a tracked chassis in real life, but it would have been only lightly armored. Then I recently came across a whiffy aftermarket resin turret with a single 88 mm Flak, based on the Tiger II’s Porsche turret, and I liked the idea – even though the rather MBT-esque aftermarket turret looked rather dubious and too small for my taste – esp. the potential angle of the AA weapon appeared insufficient. From this basis the idea was born to create a personal interpretation of a Flak 41 in a fully enclosed turret on a tank chassis.
The basis became the Trumpeter 1:72 E-75 kit of the twin 55 mm Flak with its boxy turret. While I initially considered a totally different turret shape, I eventually settled on a generic design that would have been used for a variety of weapons. This appeared more realistic to me and so I stuck to the Rheinmetall AA turret. However, due to the heavy weapon its certainly massive mount and bulky recoil system as well as the long rounds and a crew of four, I decided to enlarge the Rheinmetall turret. The turret was cut into a front and rear half and an 8 mm wide plug, made from 1.5 mm styrene sheet, was implanted and PSRed. To keep the turret rotatable, the rear extension had to be raised, so that the “oriel” could move over the air intake fairings on the engine cover.
Due to the longer roof, some details were modified there. The most obvious addition is a commander cupola on the left, taken from an early Panzer IV, together with a MG 42 and a small shield on a swing arm, inspired by the remote-controlled installation on some Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer. A stereoscopic rangefinder was added to the turret flanks and a periscope added to one of the loader’s hatches. A cover for a ventilator was added on the right side of the roof, together with a cover for a vertical grenade launcher underneath.
Using the original turret as base, the model’s movable mount for the twin 55 mm guns was retained and the rear extension would also become a good visual balance for the new main weapon. The armor at barrels’ base was cut off and a 1:72 Flak 41, taken from a Zvezda field gun kit, was glued to it, together with parts of the field gun’s recoil system and styrene bits to blend the new gun into the rest of the turret.
The E-75 chassis was taken OOB, since it would be a standardized vehicle basis. Outwardly the hull did not bear recognizable differences to the lighter E-50, which it is supposed to represent, just with more wheels to better cope with the bulky and heavy new turret.
Thankfully, this Trumpeter kit’s vinyl tracks were molded in black – sometimes they come in a sandy beige, and it’s a PITA to paint them! As another bonus, Trumpeter’s running gear on the 1:72 E-50/75 model is of a more sturdy and simpler construction than the one on the alternative ModelCollect kit(s), making the assembly and esp. the mounting of the tracks much easier. The Trumpeter kit is simpler than the comparable ModelCollect models with the E-50/75 basis, but the result is visually quite similar.
Painting and markings:
The paint scheme uses once more typical German late WWII "Hinterhalt" camouflage colors, namely Dark Yellow, Olive Green and Red Brown. This time, however, to adapt the livery to the boxy hull and the huge turret, the pattern ended up as a kind of a splinter scheme – inspired by a real Panzer V Panther from the Eastern Front in 1943.
The basic colors became Humbrol 57 (Buff) for the RAL 7028 Dunkelgelb, in this case as a rather pale (stretched?) shade, plus large areas of brown (RAL 8017, I used this time Humbrol 98 for a darker and less reddish shade) and Humbrol 86 for the green (RAL 6003), which appears quite pale in contrast to the dark brown. The camouflage was applied over an overall coat of sand brown as a primer coat, with the intention of letting this uniform basis shine through here and there. The distribution of the darker colors is quite unique, concentrating the brown on the vehicle’s edges and the green only to the flanks of hull and turret. However, the pattern works well on the huge E-50/75, and I can imagine that it might have worked well in an urban environment, breaking up the tank’s outlines.
As a match for the upper hull the wheels were painted uniformly in the same standard colors –without any pattern, because this would be very eye-catching while on the move. The many delicate tools on the tank’s hull are molded, and instead of trying to paint them I tried something else: I rubbed over them with graphite, and this worked very well, leaving them with a dark metallic shine. Just some wooden handles were then painted with a reddish brown.
Decals/marking came next, everything was procured from the scrap box. The Balkenkreuze came from a Hasegawa Sd.Kfz. 234/2 “Puma”, the tactical code from a TL-Modellbau sheet and the small unit badges on front and back from an UM Models Bergehetzer. A dry brushing treatment with light grey followed, highlighting surface details and edges, and after painting some details and adding some rust marks with watercolors followed a coat of matt varnish.
The tracks were painted with a cloudy mix of dark grey, red brown and iron acrylic paints, and mounted after hull and running gear had been assembled. The antennae, made from heated spure material, were mounted to the turret and, finally, the tank’s lower areas were dusted with a greyish-brown mineral pigment mix, simulating dust and mud residue.
This project was realized in just two days, made easy through the Trumpeter kit’s simple construction. Most work went into the extended turret and the different main weapon, but all parts mostly fell into place – and the result looks IMHO quite believable. In fact, the E-50/75 with a Flak 41 reminds a bit of the Italian Otomatic 76 mm SPAAG from the late Eighties?
Necklace made for the Art Jewelry Elements component of the month blog hop.
fulgorine.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/aje-september-seedpod/
Focal seed pod by Lesley Watts, polymer clay beads & necklace by me.
black sagebrush, Artemisia nova, Nevada, White Mountains, Sugarloaf, Sugarloaf Canyon, Pinchot Creek - Columbus Salt Marsh watershed, elevation 2617 m (8585 ft).
This is the gray form of black sagebrush, looking and behaving very much like low sagebrush (Artemisia arbuscula) on the landscape, but with the typical elongate heads, glabrate inner phyllaries, entire bracts, and elevated orangeish inflorescences of black sagebrush. In this area, it grew in pure stands on convex slopes, alternating in mosaic with taller stands of mountain sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata subsp. vaseyana) on concave slopes. Farther north in the Great Basin, low sagebrush is instead the usual mosaic component on convex slopes. True low sagebrush has yet to be found as far south as the White Mountains, with past reports based mostly on specimens of alpine sagebrush (Artemisia rothrockii) or black sagebrush.
Black sagebrush is widespread in a variety of habitats across most of the intermountain west of the United States, from higher desert valleys nearly up to subalpine elevations. It occurs on more arid sites, on average, than the other species mentioned here. At least here in the White Mountains, this gray form tends to occur on better-developed, less alkaline soils, while the green form tends to be found on calcareous rock outcrops and other harsher and/or more alkaline soils. The name black sagebrush refers to the appearance of the plants (the bark in particular) when wet after rain or fresh snowmelt.
Space Cruiser Alterra (@1260)
Progression and build (may omit certain components)
This is made entirely of 9-ball Triangle sub-units. The main single layer sub-unit consists of (2x(4x9)). The core is made up of a 4x4 subunit cube. Base feet (2x9) were added to stabilize the structure along the outer edges. The middle layer consists of a sub-unit surrounded by (2x9) extenders which stack diagonally across the top of the cube mount points. Horizontal/Vertical (2x9) arches are added to create solar panels along the length/width of the structure. The top layer is a sub-unit with triangle accent stacks.
(@108) - Top (((2x(4x9)center)+(4x9 stackers)
(@144) - Middle (4x(2x9)mount pts)+((2x(4x9)center)
(@288) - Arches 4x(4x(2x9)vert+horz)
(@576) - Base 2x(4x((2x(4x9)))stack 4x4 cube)
(@144) - Base Feet (8x(2x9))
Lightning: RGB multi-color flashlight
Base: Taps Plastic rotational platform
vist de costat per veure millor els calaixos, l'osciloscopi i la font, el plafó de les eines i els calaixets amb components recuperats
llegeix el post a: serkeros.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/el-talleret/
The Kenworth T880 equipped with a PACCAR MX-13 engine rated up to 500-hp and 1,850 lb.-ft. of torque already provides a durable, reliable and productive vocational truck for such demanding applications. The Hendrickson ULTIMAAX advanced severe-duty suspension helps enhance the T880’s traction, stability and handling under loads from 46,000 to 52,000 pounds. Plus, it adds even more durability and helps customers maintain a lower cost of operation with its components designed for maximum weight savings for additional payload.
My Main instrument Panel components; I designed using CAD and just received the results from the machine shop. Took a lot of help from David Allen to get this far.
3D Design
www.flickr.com/photos/24409839@N07/6849951075/in/datepost...
Mingle Media TV and Red Carpet Report host Paige Sullivan were invited to cover the Movie Awards Eco Lounge, a premiere socially conscious luxury event honoring the 2014 MTV Movie Award nominees and the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.
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About the Movie Awards Eco Lounge
Produced by Debbie Durkin, LA's leading sustainable product placement entrepreneur brings together eco conscious brands, luxury vacations, and the best in lifestyle products for an unforgettable event. This year’s Movie Awards Eco Lounge was hosted at Bar 210 at the world famous Beverly Hilton while guests enjoyed Circa 55’s California farm-to-table far and wine tastings from NakedWines.com, while celebrity DJ Duo ShayFKennedy & DJ Marshall Raymond entertained them with the hottest beats.
Focus on Giving Back
Debbie Durkin and the Movie Awards Eco Lounge event is proud to feature a charity component at their events. Their charity partner for this event was Yes! Beat Liver Tumors, a 501c3 nonprofit that provides information, resources, support and hope for anyone affected by cancers of the liver. www.beatlivertumors.org
Eco Friendly Brands
Guests attending the 2014 Movie Awards Eco Lounge were introduced to a variety of eco-friendly brands including beauty products from Caribbean Living, beyond the beach luxury vacations; Circa 55 chefs will serve classic California farm-to-table foods; wine tastings from NakedWines.com; The Southmore Group serving up martini's and other exotic cocktails at the bar; Baylee Nasco designer pet beds & blankets; Perri Ink- Tattoo artist Adam Daniel; Eyebrow shaping and organic spay tans from The Eyebrow Boutique; Pooki's Mahi exotic teas; SNAP! Celebrity supporters in SAY YES! To Hope photo booth in support of BeatLiverTumors.com cancer survivors; Parisian fashion designer Joseph Agi of LA + Jo- premiering the women's Summer 2014 collections; O.P.I Gwen Stefani Collection; C4 Belts; Transcend Organics sensual apothecary; Loree Rodkin bath salts & fragrance; HAI Styling Tools; Vape Revolution; The Daily Method; Jockey; Fresh Step’s Feline Arts Council; The Flower Studio; Canine Caviar; and Nash Motorcycle’s showcasing made-in-the-USA custom bikes, leather bracelets & t-shirts.
For more information visit: durkinentertainmentgroup.com or on Twitter @producerdeb
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Composants électroniques (focus stacking).
Image composée de 25 photos prises avec la bonnette Raynox DCR-250 et assemblées avec Zerene Stacker.
Los principales componentes que se necesitan para habilitar VoIP son los siguientes:
•Componentes VoIP del servidor front-end
•Componentes de integración con RTC
•Componentes VoIP de la red perimetral
Componentes VoIP del servidor front-end
Los principales componentes VoIP ubicados en...
I'm pleased as punch to see this project completed (other than adding a lockable drawer in the empty slot about 1/3 the way down from top. Proper control of the audio/visual system in my office's main committee room has been a LONG time coming!
A 3d diversion inspired by seier+seier+seier's fascinating photos of an agricultural building by German architect Hugo Häring.
Modeled in rhino3d using panelingtools. The timber structural components ended up being curved which isn't correct, but I'm not too bothered about that! All dimensions are guessed... Rendered in 3dstudio with vray as always.
It took me longer to figure out the shape of the component to be repeated than it did to model the entire barn, I ended up having to resort to a pen and paper!
Beginning in the 1960s, defense cuts and the contracting of the British Empire “east of Suez” led to the retirement of the Royal Navy’s once-significant fleet of carriers, and the cancellation of the CVA-01 class meant to replace them. This left the RN without a true means of power projection, especially since the RN also lacked surface ships heavier than a light cruiser. Before the last of the RN carriers, HMS Ark Royal, was decommissioned, however, the Fleet Air Arm had already been considering a replacement of the deHavilland Sea Vixen strike fighter with a version of the Hawker-Siddeley Kestrel, which would later evolve into the Harrier. Since the Kestrel/Harrier used thrust-vectoring to give it V/STOL capability, this would allow the FAA to keep a fixed-wing component while still allowing the retirement of the Ark Royal. With the Harrier now available, the RN planned three light carriers, the Invincible-class, to operate both them and helicopters; to avoid the notice of Ministry of Defense budget cuts, they were disguised as “through-deck cruisers.”
Since the FAA would need a more advanced aircraft than either the basic Harrier GR.1 or ground attack specialized GR.3, British Aerospace, which had absorbed Hawker-Siddeley, made a number of changes to the basic Harrier design. The Sea Harrier FRS.1 had an entirely new nose section, with a raised cockpit and bubble canopy for better all-around vision, necessary in a dogfight, since the Sea Harriers would also have to defend a task force as well as undertake strike missions. The nose was also larger and longer than the “bottlenose” GR.3, to accommodate the Ferranti Blue Fox radar, needed to guide Sea Eagle antiship missiles, the Sea Harrier’s other role. Some aluminum parts were replaced by steel to better resist corrosion at sea.
The first Sea Harrier FRS.1 entered service in 1978, going to sea aboard both the purpose-built “Harrier carrier” HMS Invincible in 1981, and the World War II-era light carrier HMS Hermes, which had been retained until the rest of the Invincibles could come on line. The Blue Fox radar left a little to be desired, but since the only air-to-air missile available to the Sea Harrier was the AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeker, this was not deemed to be a problem, especially as the Sea Harriers would be equipped with the all-aspect AIM-9L. Both carriers were fitted with “ski-jumps” at the end of the flight deck, which allowed the Sea Harriers to take off with full warloads—something not possible using strictly hover mode.
The Sea Harrier would get its first test much sooner than anticipated, however, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982. With the demise of Britain’s fleet carriers, the Sea Harriers were the only fixed-wing aircraft available to defend the task force heading to reclaim the islands. Despite not being really designed for the job it assumed, the Sea Harrier did exceptionally well, shooting down 20 Argentine fighters for no air-to-air losses. While this was initially attributed to the Sea Harrier’s V/STOL capability, in actuality it was due to the superior training of British pilots, the Sea Harrier’s small size, and the fact that the Argentinians were fighting at the edge of their range.
Despite this, the Sea Harrier was obviously in need of upgrading if it was going to continue in the fleet defense role. After the end of the war, the FAA embarked on upgrading the Sea Harrier FRS.2 in 1988, later redesignating it the FA.2. This replaced the Blue Fox with the far superior Blue Vixen, which allowed the FA.2 to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM, though it wouldn’t be until 1993 that the AMRAAM reached the FAA. Avionics were also upgraded and an improved ECM package fitted. This allowed the Sea Harrier to finally maximize its potential as a fleet defense fighter.
In the end, however, the Sea Harrier would never get a chance to do this. Though it saw action over Bosnia and Serbia in 1995 and 1999, the MoD decided to retire the Sea Harrier beginning in 2002. The FAA had already ordered the F-35B Lightning II to replace the Sea Harrier in 2012, and the MoD, despite protests from the FAA, saw no reason to perform a necessary mid-life upgrade for an aircraft to be retired. This may have proven premature, as the F-35 has since been pushed back to 2016, leaving the FAA jointly flying RAF Harrier GR.9s, which lack the ability to carry AMRAAMs; the Harrier force was retired completely due to budget cuts in 2009.
The only other nation to fly the Sea Harrier is India, which acquired 25 Sea Harrier FRS.1s in 1983. These aircraft are being upgraded to carry the Rafael Derby AAM, but though India expressed interest in acquiring second-hand Sea Harrier FA.2s, this fell through due to India buying the MiG-29K Fulcrum for use on full-size carriers and the US being unwilling to supply India with the AMRAAM.
It was something of a surprise to see a "Shar" at the Pima Air and Space Museum, but it is one of six Harriers on display at the museum, and one of only two Sea Harriers on display outside of the UK and India. ZH810 was among the last five Sea Harriers produced for the FAA, and joined 899 Squadron at Yeovilton in 1999. As a result of the retirement of the Sea Harrier force in 2006, it is a very low-time aircraft! It was obtained by Pima in 2017 and was put on display in 2019, making it the newest addition to the museum when I visited that May. It wears the overall gray and subdued markings of the FAA's FA.2s, along with the flying fist of 899 Squadron.
Peter Blau works with instruments to determine tribological properties of battery components at the High Temperature Materials Laboratory
Two engineers inspecting a component in the assembly line at SATU facility in Singapore
Please attribute copyright © Rolls-Royce PLC
Formentera è una delle quattro isole principali componenti l'arcipelago delle Baleari, Spagna; assieme alla vicina Ibiza forma a sua volta una delle Isole Pitiuse. Caratterizzata da vegetazione tipicamente mediterranea, fu sfruttata dai Romani quale deposito di frumento, da cui deriva il nome di Formentera. La popolazione residente è di appena 5.553 abitanti, sparsa tra i centri principali dell'isola quali il capoluogo comunale Sant Francesc, La Savina, sede del porto, Es Pujols, principale centro turistico e Sant Ferran, centro abitato e meta hippy a partire dagli anni sessanta. Tale popolazione cresce a dismisura durante il periodo estivo, visto che l'isola è una delle mete preferite in Europa, grazie alla bellezza delle spiagge ed all'aspetto incontaminato della sua macchia mediterranea.
Formentera è una destinazione turistica molto popolare: grazie alla bellezza delle spiagge e alla sua vicinanza con Ibiza con cui è collegata da frequentissimi traghetti, offre, a differenza della sua dirimpettaia, una vita ed un turismo meno formale e meno legato al variopinto mondo delle discoteche. Negli ultimi anni è diventata meta di moltissimi turisti italiani che hanno instaurato la moda dell'aperitivo in riva al mare accompagnato da musica fino a tarda ora. Sono diversi i chioschi (chiringuito in spagnolo) che con il calar del sole si trasformano in discoteche. Formentera rimane uno dei luoghi del Mar Mediterraneo preferiti dai naturisti che continuano a frequentare la maggior parte delle spiagge dell'isola (Migjorn, Llevant, Ses Illetes, Espalmador, Platja de Llevant, Platja de Tramuntana, Platja de Sa Roqueta, etc..) grazie alla legislazione permissiva presente in Spagna, che di fatto permette il naturismo in molte zone del paese.
The clamping component is a steel column with a pressure pad base, and a long spring loaded rod through the column. The rod is actuated at the top end with an eccentric cam lever which pulls up on the rod. The opposite end of the rod has a steel rectangular component which is intended to be angled in the sliding table t-slot, thus providing the gripping function to secure the steel column to the sliding table.
I have mixed feelings about this steel rectangular component since it has no softer material on the face to prevent chewing up the underside of the aluminum sliding table t-slot. Care must be taken in adjusting the clamping force to ensure it doesn't damage the upper inside edge of the sliding table t-slot.
Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
An integral component of the highly-acclaimed International Style Seagram Building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (a designated New York City Landmark), the Four Seasons Restaurant Ground Floor and First Floor Interiors have been praised by architectural critics as among the finest International Style interior spaces in the United States. Designed in 1958 by celebrated architect Philip Johnson and built in 1958-59 as an innovative first-class restaurant for Restaurant Associates, it opened amid much fanfare and was at that time the costliest restaurant ever constructed. The
interiors produced by Johnson and a stellar team of consultants are considered to be among Johnson's last projects to mirror the architectural theories of his mentor Mies van der Rohe. The designers used rich materials, installed with expert craftsmanship to accentuate their inherent beauty, innovative technology, and distinctive architectonic elements to shape the understated and elegantly proportioned interiors, which reflect the modular system employed in the design of the Seagram Building. The operations of the award-winning Four Seasons Restaurant were taken over in 1972 by Tom Margittai and Paul Kovi, who have kept the interior spaces in virtually intact condition and have been faithful to their original, influential design. Among the creative features of the restaurant is its seasonal' theme, which inspires the meals served as well as plantings and color-coded ' appointments. A cultural magnet for tourists and the city's elite, it is one of New York's premier dining spaces due to the architectural preeminence of its design, the richness of its exquisite interiors, its location in the the Seagram Building, and the restaurant's exceptional culinary reputation.
History of the Seagram Buildinq
The Seagram Building, erected in 1956-58, is the only building in New York City designed by architectural master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Carefully related to the tranquil granite and marble plaza on its Park Avenue site, the elegant curtain wall of bronze and tinted glass enfolds the first fully modular modem office tower. Constructed at a time when Park Avenue was changing from an exclusive residential thoroughfare to a prestigious business address, the Seagram Building embodies the quest of a successful corporation to establish further its public image through architectural patronage. The president of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Samuel Bronfman, with the aid of his daughter Phyllis Lambert, carefully selected Mies, assisted by Philip Johnson, to design an office building later regarded by many, including Mies himself, as his crowning work and the apotheosis of International Style towers. The innovative, modular design of the building was a feat furthered by a coalition of talented consultants, a successful collaboration rarely realized in twentieth-century architecture, and by pioneering efforts of research and fabrication. Still virtually intact due to the foresighted maintenance plan of the Seagram Company, the building and plaza have inspired the work of many subsequent designers, affected New York's zoning regulations and real estate tax assessment, and provided a favorable environment for work and repose.
As one of the amenities of the building, the Seagram management from the beginning had the intent to provide large, elegant interior spaces with public access from the lobby. In discussions as early as 1956, several options were considered: a museum of crafts, a stylish automobile showroom (along the lines of Frank Lloyd Wright's Mercedes-Benz showroom further north on Park Avenue), and a first-class restaurant. Mies and Johnson began preliminary work on the overall design of the interior spaces prior to the selection of Restaurant Associates as the tenant.
Restaurant Associates
The Seagram Company decided that a first-class restaurant should occupy the space adjacent to the lobby of its new building, and in 1957 Seagram's leasing agent, Cushman & Wakefield, made arrangements with the firm of Restaurant Associates. Restaurant Associates, Inc. was founded in 1947 by A.F. Wechsler, leader of one of the world's largest companies which roasted coffee for commercial use. Holding a substantial interest in the restaurant chain that owned Rikers restaurants, Wechsler selected his son-in-law Jerome Brody (bom c.1924) as the president of R.A. Mr. Brody expanded the company's activities to include the operation of snack bars and cafeterias for outside interests? he also negotiated contracts to operate the food services at Newark Airport and the Lexington Hotel in New York, and purchased the tourist-enticing leone's. After their successful expansion into the first-class restaurant business with the Forum of the Twelve Caesars, Brody and vice-president Joseph Baum (bom c.1921), a prominent American restaurateur, dedicated themselves to establishing the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building as a first-class restaurant with a seasonal theme.
Philip C. Johnson
When approached by Lambert regarding who should design of the restaurant interiors, Mies recommended Johnson. Critic, historian, and architect Philip Johnson (b. 1906) was graduated from Harvard University and became associated with the Museum of Modem Art soon after its founding in 1929, directing its innovative department of architecture and later designing its sculpture garden (1953) and two additions (1950, 1964). With the critic and historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, he organized the momentous exhibition, "Modem Architecture" (1932), and coauthored The International Style (1932), a manifesto for the vanguard architecture of Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe.
Johnson was responsible for inviting Le Corbusier and Mies to the United States. Completing his professional degree in architecture at Harvard in 1943, he subsequently designed several influential residences, including his own Glass House (1949). His association with Mies on the Seagram Building, particularly his design for the Four Seasons Restaurant Interiors (1958-59), was recognized by architectural critics as a highlight in Johnson's career. His later work includes many New York projects: Asia House (now the Russell Sage Foundation/Robert Sterling Foundation Building), 112 East 64th Street (1958- 60), located in the Upper East Side Historic District; New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (1964); New York State Pavilion (1964, with Richard Foster) for the World's Fair in Flushing; Elmer Holmes Bobst Library and Tisch Hall, New York University (1972, both with Richard Foster) ; and the American Telephone and Telegraph Building, 550 Madison Avenue (1980-84, with John Burgee). In 1978 the American Institute of Architects awarded him its highest honor, the Gold Medal.
Design Consultants
Johnson selected a stellar team of design consultants to work with him on the Four Seasons Interiors; in addition, he was aided by William Pahlmann, who was the principal designer for Restaurant Associates.
A graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York and the Parsons School in Paris, leading interior designer William C. Pahlmann, F.A.I.D., (1900-87) worked as a stage designer and in 1931 established a New York office as a private interior consultant. He became head of the decorating department at Lord & Taylor in 1936; his designs there earned him the reputation as "the best known department store decorator in the U.S."
Praised for his colorful designs, he then became a military camoufleur as a captain in the Army Air Corps. Noted for both his eclecticism and innovativeness, Pahlmann "exercised a pervasive influence on American taste" and helped turn interior designing and decorating into an important component of the multi-billion-dollar home-furnishings industry. At the Four Seasons, he is credited with proposing the marble pool for the north dining room, its placement in the room with four trees at its comers, and the floral festoons at the windows. The New York chapter of the American Institute of Interior Designers granted him the Elsie de Wolfe Award in 1964.
Architect and lighting consultant Richard Kelly (c.1911-1977) designed the lighting for the Seagram Building and the Four Seasons Restaurant Interiors. While studying at Columbia College, Kelly supported himself by designing and selling light fixtures; after graduating in 1932, he opened his own office as a lighting consultant. During his career, Kelly, the "most outstanding lighting consultant in the country," collaborated with such prominent architects as Louis I. Kahn and Eero Saarinen, as well as Mies and Johnson.
He produced many exceptional lighting designs, including those for: the Seagram Building; Lincoln Center (except for the Metropolitan Opera), New York (1962-64); Dulles Airport, Chantilly, Va. (1958-62); General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Mich. (1945-56); Sculpture garden at the Museum of Modem Art, New York (1953) ; Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, or St. Louis Arch (1948-64); Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan, Conn. (1949); Eric Boissonnas House, New Canaan, Conn. (1956); Kneses Tiferith Israel Temple, Port Chester, N.Y. (1956); Toronto City Hall (1961-65); Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn. (1951-53); Mellon Center for British Art and Studies at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. (1969-74) ; Coming Glass Center, Coming, N.Y. (1950-51, 1955-56) ; Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago (1948-51) ; and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Tex. (1966-72). Kelly also published extensively on illumination.
Other consultants were Karl Linn, the landscape architect and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania; Everett Lawson Conklin, the horticulturist and award-winning floral designer; and Marie Nichols, a weaver who designed the aluminum chain draperies for the Four Seasons Interiors and had collaborated with Richard Kelly on several projects. Artist Richard Lippold designed the suspended gold-dipped brass sculptures in the Bar/Grill Room.
Still others were selected for their designs of movable features which, although significant to the history of the Four Seasons, are not included in this designation. The chairs were designed by Mies much earlier in his career and originally shown in Czechoslovakia in 1927. Additional chairs were designed by Charles Eames (1907-78), pull-up hassocks and small tabouret tables by Eero Saarinen (1910-61), two prominent architects and designers who collaborated on furniture designs for Knoll Associates as well as on architectural projects. Ada Louise and L. Garth Huxtable produced over sixty special designs for the silver holloware, glassware, and silver services—which are still in use at the Four Seasons.
Design and Construction
Having provided the Seagram Building with a unity between indoor and outdoor spaces, Mies carried the modular design, clearly evident on the building's exterior, into the interiors of the grand public rooms. Johnson used the structural system and generously proportioned volumes as his point of departure for the design of the restaurant interiors, substantially completed in 1958. His design took advantage of the space to create dramatic effects and elegant proportions achieved through varied ceiling heights, a controlled system of circulation through the rooms, and architectonic elements, such as the pool and the bar, which further define distinct volumes within the larger spaces.
The interplay of solid and void is artfully exemplified by the sturdy bar with its delicate sculpture above. These large public spaces were conceived to have elegant interiors to complement the Seagram Building itself: walls of the spacious rooms covered with expensive wood paneling washed in light from invisible sources and floor-to-ceiling windows screened by metallic chain curtains which ripple when the ventilation system is operating. The restrained ceiling, elegant staircases, ingenious lighting scheme, sculpture, and furnishings were carefully designed to create the sophisticated simplicity associated with the International Style. Johnson's early works were noticeably indebted to Mies's architectural theories, and this design is generally regarded as Johnson's last such project.
The Four Seasons Restaurant
Five dining rooms accommodate 400 persons. Its two wine "cellars" permit the Four Seasons to boast one of the largest wine collections in the country. Upon the opening of the restaurant in July of 1959, first-class service was assured by daily indoctrination for waiters by James Beard, the famous wine and food authority.
The seasonal theme inspired the Four Seasons to maintain its own herb garden, an innovative venture in American restaurants. Eclectic menus combine American bounty with international culinary concepts and techniques, making the Four Seasons a pioneer of what would later be called the "New American Cuisine." These concepts are reflected visually in the restaurant's decor. Rotated seasonally, the four trees at the comers of the marble pool complement the restaurant's logo, which determines the color scheme for each season. Thus auxiliary planting as well as appointments such as uniforms,
menus, and even ash trays were originally rotated every three months: pink for spring, green for summer, burnt orange for autumn, and brown for winter. Establishing an optimum micro-climate for plant survival allowed the designers to integrate interior planting from the beginning of the project.
The total cost of approximately $4.5 million for the Four Seasons, making it at that time the costliest restaurant ever built, included architectural alterations and furnishings, linens, uniforms, art, kitchen equipment, silver, service carts, china, glassware, menus and other printed matter, plants and flowers, and design and consultation fees. The Seagram Company underwrote part of the cost, including the installation of the air conditioning system, the walls, and the partitions.
The Seagram Company enhanced the International Style interiors by lending the restaurant several masterpieces of modem art. These features, while long associated with the restaurant spaces, are not part of this designation. Pablo Picasso's "The Three-Cornered Hat," a painted curtain completed in 1919 for Diaghilev's ballet "Le Tricorne" hangs in the restaurant lobby.
This dedication to modem art, continued over the years, includes works by Frank Stella and Jackson Pollock. In 1984 the current restaurant owners commissioned James Rosenquist for a painting later titled "Fish, Flowers, and Females for the Four Seasons," now displayed in the mezzanine dining room overlooking the Pool Room.
The Four Seasons opened to the public in July, 1959, and was followed, in the subsequent year, by a neighboring restaurant, The Brasserie, also designed by Johnson and Pahlmann (not included in this designation).
Description
located on portions of the first floor and the ground floor at the eastern end of the Seagram Building, the Four Seasons Restaurant Interiors are composed of several interior spaces, each with a distinct character and spatial quality but united by certain design elements. The Interiors of the Fours Seasons Restaurant include two major dining rooms, the Pool Room at the north side of the building and the Bar/Grill Room at the south side, linked by an Entrance Corridor/Lobby which adjoins the Lobby of the Seagram Building.
The East 52nd Street Entrance lobby located at the ground floor provides access to the Bar/Grill Room by means of a broad staircase. Two small, adjoining private dining rooms are situated behind a balcony that overlooks the Bar/Grill Room. Another dining room is located at the mezzanine level of the Pool Room. The restaurant is furnished with movable custom furniture, fixtures, and accessories which still adhere to the original designs.
The Entrance Corridor/Lobby:
The entrance to the Four Seasons Restaurant Interiors from the Seagram Building Lobby (a designated New York City Interior Landmark) is reached by broad travertine steps. A glass wall provides visual continuity between the two spaces, which share certain design features: walls and floors lined in travertine, ceilings composed of gray glass mosaic set in black cement, and engaged bronze piers of the building's structural system. The bronze-framed tripartite glass wall is bisected by a central meeting rail and contains paired glass doors. A flat bronze band intersects the lower portion of the wall. Bronze piers are located near the eastern wall of the corridor, flanking Picasso's painted curtain, "The Three-Cornered Hat" (not subject to this designation).
Designed to be illuminated from below, a row of raised alabaster panels, framed in bronze and protected by posts with suspended chain, is located along the floor beneath the curtain. Recessed light fixtures illuminate the space and incandescent recessed troffer lighting fixtures wash the eastern wall with light. Metal-framed glass doors at each end of the corridor lead to vestibules serving the major dining rooms. The vestibules have dropped ceilings formed by brass-colored egg-crate grids illuminated from above. The glazed eastern wall of the Pool Room vestibule reveals a wine "cellar," and the eastern wall of the Bar/Grill Room vestibule is lined in French walnut with openings to accommodate a coat- check area.
The Pool Room:
A lofty, square space with a twenty-foot high ceiling, the Pool Room is dominated at the center by a table-height twenty-foot square pool of white Carrara marble filled with continuously bubbling water. Cylindrical bronze planters holding trees sit on the floor at each of the four comers of the pool; the trees, which change seasonally, are illuminated from below with bucket lights set into the planters.
The western and northern walls are composed of continuous windows which rise above low travertine ledges. The windows are divided into vertical panels by bronze mullions; metal draperies of thin anodized aluminum chains are fitted into vertical channels in the mullions. The chains, in shades of brass, bronze, and copper, subtly ripple with the movement of air from diffusers set into the ledges below. Bronze bowl planters are suspended in front of the windows from nearly invisible wires. The southern wall, pierced by openings for the entrance and the kitchen, is lined with rectangular rawhide panels set on walnut. The bottom row of panels is gray, and those above are natural. Each wall in the room is punctuated by engaged bronze piers.
At the eastern end of the Pool Room is a rectangular mezzanine-level room reached by a broad central staircase. The base of the mezzanine is paneled in gray rawhide. The stairs and the edge of the mezzanine are lined with bronze railings composed of thin staggered rods, which, when viewed as one passes them, create the effect of movement. Panels of French walnut, designed and crafted to emphasize the prominent grain of the wood, are set behind the railings; they also pivot so that the mezzanine-level room may be either closed off or function as an extension of the Pool Room. The glazed northern wall is continued in the upper room, while the eastern wall, dominated by a large painting by James Rosenquist (not subject to this designation), and the southern wall of that room are covered in beige carpet panels.
The specially-designed ceiling is composed of square off-white panels of perforated aluminum layered over a recessed grid; the intersections of the grid are fitted with "darklites," a recessed incandescent fixture from which light is directed by bronze-finished reflectors. Recessed troffers wash the southern wall with light. The wall-to-wall carpeting has a grid pattern which echoes the overall geometry of the room. (Although not original, it was designed under the direction of Philip Johnson).
The Bar/Grill Room:
The Bar/Grill Room is divided into several different areas. A small lounge area located at the northwest comer of the room is separated from a bar area at the southwest comer of the room by a large, broad stairwell linking the space with the East 52nd Street Entrance Lobby. A dining area occupies the center of the room and a narrow balcony-level dining area, reached by stairs at each end, spans the eastern side of the room.
The Bar/Grill Room has some of the many architectural elements as the Pool Room, including the twenty-foot high specially-designed ceiling, window walls with metal draperies rising from travertine ledges at the west and south, French walnut paneling lining the northern and eastern walls, wall- to-wall carpet, and the balcony. The face of the balcony is now washed with light from below by a bay of incandescent lamps covered by a grid. Engaged bronze piers punctuate the walls. The carpeting is a darker version of the same design used in the Pool Room.
The stairwell between the bar and lounge areas is lined in bronze railings of thin, staggered rods. The bar area is dominated by a square walnut bar fitted with leather panels and surrounded by an ebonized oak floor. Two sculptures by Richard Lippold, composed of delicate groups of gold-dipped brass rods of varying lengths, are suspended from the ceiling by nearly invisible wires. Following his usual procedure, Lippold designed the sculptures specifically for their present locations to enhance the organization of the Bar/Grill Room. The larger sculpture contrasts dramatically with the solid walnut bar directly beneath it, creating an intimate space within the larger limits of the room. This juxtaposition is balanced by the smaller sculpture over the balcony.
The bar is separated from the dining area by a partition of laminated, cracked glass; this was installed in 1983 under the direction of Philip Johnson and replaced a trellis of climbing ivy. A French walnut service desk to the east of the entrance from the Corridor/Lobby and round planters (which replace the original wood planters) between the service desk and the partition also serve to define the dining area.
Two adjoining rooms are situated behind walnut-paneled doors at the northern and southern ends of the balcony; these doors have an ebonized surface on the side of the rooms. The rooms are smaller and more intimate than the large rooms. A vestibule behind the northern end of the balcony leads to the larger of the two rooms, which is rectangular, and joins the smaller, square room to the south by a wide doorway with a sliding ebonized door. Except for the outer wall of the southern room which has continuous windows and metal draperies, the walls are lined with rectangular panels of highly-polished hardwood set onto a dark wood surface. The ceiling is of the same grid-and-panel design used in the larger rooms, except that the surface is black and the panels are pierced with holes roughly one-inch wide and spaced apart in a random pattern, which are illuminated from above. The floors are carpeted. The vestibule at the northern end is similarly finished.
The East 52nd Street Entrance Lobby:
The lower Entrance Lobby is reached at its southeastern end from East 52nd Street through two sets of glass doors separated by a vestibule with a brass-colored egg-crate grid ceiling. The outer doors are etched with vertical stripes. The floor and walls are travertine and pierced with openings along the eastern, southern, and northern walls for restrooms, an office, and a coat-check area. The space is illuminated by recessed fixtures set into a low white ceiling. Engaged bronze piers and a ceiling beam bisect the room on a north-south axis. At the western side of the lobby is a broad staircase with one landing; this links the Lobby and the Bar/Grill area. It is lined with bronze railings. The two round planters replace the original wood planters.
Subsequent History
Immediately after its opening the Four Seasons received enthusiastic reviews, both architectural and culinary; critics said that the "spectacular, modem and audacious" restaurant design "combines its exceptional sumptuousness with exquisite refinement." When it opened, the restaurant had no peer "in conception, in scale, in the wealth of talent behind it."
In the early 1970s, Transylvanian-born Tom Margittai, then vice- president of Restaurant Associates, was given the responsibility of selling off the business of a foundering Four Seasons Restaurant. Instead, he and the director of the Four Seasons, Hungarian-born Paul Kovi, jointly purchased it from R.A. in 1972 with the goal of reviving the restaurant. They hired chef Joseph Renggli, a Swiss native, and soon the restaurant became, as "one of America's leading symbols of good taste," extremely popular with New York's elite. A recipient of twenty-two major awards, the Four Seasons has hosted many memorable parties for national celebrities, international gourmet societies, and wine inaugurals.
Experts Ada Louise and L. Garth Huxtable, involved with the restaurant from its planning stages, have noted that the new owners "have been faithful to the [original] concept." The design of these famous International Style interiors has been caringly maintained. Among the handful of physical changes was the removal of an ivy-covered screen and its replacement in 1983 by a laminated, cracked glass partition designed by Johnson.
- From the 1989 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
The Miao is an ethnic group recognized by the government of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component groups of people, which include (with some variant spellings) Hmong, Hmub, Xong (Qo-Xiong), and A-Hmao.
The Chinese government has grouped these people and other non-Miao peoples together as one group, whose members may not necessarily be either linguistically or culturally related, though the majority are members of Miao-Yao language family, which includes the Hmong, Hmub, Xong, and A-Hmao and the majority do share cultural similarities. Because of the previous given reasons, many Miao peoples cannot communicate with each other in their mother tongues, and have different histories and cultures. A few groups designated as Miao by the PRC do not even agree that they belong to the ethnic group, though most Miao groups, such as the Hmong and Hmub, do agree with the collective grouping as a single ethnic group – Miao.
The Miao live primarily in southern China's mountains, in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, and Hubei. Some members of the Miao sub-groups, most notably the Hmong people, have migrated out of China into Southeast Asia (northern Vietnam, Laos, Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand). Following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975, a large group of Hmong refugees resettled in several Western nations, mainly in the United States, France, and Australia. There has been a recent tendency by Hmong Americans to group all Miao peoples together under the term Hmong because of their disdain for the Chinese term Miao. This however fails to recognize that the Hmong are only a subgroup within the broader linguistic and cultural family of Miao people and the vast majority of Miao people do not classify themselves as Hmong and have their own names for themselves.
NOMENCLATURE: MIAO AND HMONG
The term "Miao" gained official status in 1949 as a minzu (ethnic group) encompassing a group of linguistically-related ethnic minorities in Southwest China. This was part of a larger effort to identify and classify minority groups to clarify their role in the national government, including establishing autonomous administrative divisions and allocating the seats for representatives in provincial and national government.
Historically, the term "Miao" had been applied inconsistently to a variety of non-Han peoples. Early Western writers used Chinese-based names in various transcriptions: Miao, Miao-tse, Miao-tsze, Meau, Meo, mo, miao-tseu etc. In Southeast Asian contexts words derived from the Chinese "Miao" took on a sense which was perceived as derogatory by the Hmong subgroup living in that region. In China, however, the term has no such context and is used by the Miao people themselves, of every group.
The later prominence of Hmong people in the West has led to a situation where the entire Miao linguistic/cultural family is sometimes referred to as Hmong in English language sources. Following the recent increased interaction of Hmong in the West with Miao in China it is reported that some upwardly aspiring non-Hmong Miao have even begun to identify themselves as Hmong. However, most non-Hmong Miao in China are unfamiliar with the term as referring to their entire group and continue to use "Miao", or their own separate ethnic self-designations.
Though the Miao themselves use various self-designations, the Chinese traditionally classify them according to the most characteristic colour of the women's clothes. The list below contains some of these self-designations, the colour designations, and the main regions inhabited by the four major groups of Miao in China:
Ghao Xong/Qo Xiong; Xong; Red Miao; Qo Xiong Miao: west Hunan
Gha Ne/Ka Nao; Hmub; Black Miao; Mhub Miao: southeast Guizhou
A-Hmao; Big Flowery Miao: west Guizhou and northeast Yunnan
Gha-Mu; Hmong, Mong; White Miao, Green/Blue Miao, Small Flowery Miao; south and east Yunnan, south Sichuan and west Guizhou
DEMOGRAPHICS
According to the 2000 census, the number of Miao in China was estimated to be about 9.6 million. Outside of China, members of the Miao linguistic/cultural family sub-group or nations of the Hmong live in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Burma due to outward migrations starting in the 18th century. As a result of recent migrations in the aftermath of the Indochina and Vietnam Wars from 1949–75, many Hmong people now live in the United States, French Guiana, France and Australia. Altogether, there are approximately 8 million speakers in the Miao language family. This language family, which consists of 6 languages and around 35 dialects (some of which are mutually intelligible) belongs to the Hmong/Miao branch of the Hmong–Mien (Miao–Yao) language family.
The Hmong live primarily in the northern mountainous reaches of Southeast Asia including Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, and in far Southwest China mostly in the provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, and to a very limited extent in Guizhou. There are about 1.5–2 million Hmong in China.
Note: The Miao areas of Sichuan province became part of the newly created Chongqing Municipality in 1997.
Most Miao currently live in China. Miao population growth in China:
1953: 2,510,000
1964: 2,780,000
1982: 5,030,000
1990: 7,390,000
3,600,000 Miao, about half of the entire Chinese Miao population, were in Guizhou in 1990. The Guizhou Miao and those in the following six provinces make up over 98% of all Chinese Miao:
Hunan: 1,550,000
Yunnan: 890,000
Sichuan: 530,000
Guangxi: 420,000
Hubei: 200,000
Hainan: 50,000 (known as Miao but ethnically Yao and Li)
In the above provinces, there are 6 Miao autonomous prefectures (shared officially with one other ethnic minority):
Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture (黔东南 : Qiándōngnán), Guizhou
Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (黔南 : Qiánnán), Guizhou
Qianxinan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (黔西南 : Qiánxīnán), Guizhou
Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (湘西 : Xiāngxī), Hunan
Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (Hmong) (文山 : Wénshān), Yunnan
Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (恩施 : Ēnshī), Hubei
There are in addition 23 Miao autonomous counties:
Hunan:Mayang (麻阳 : Máyáng), Jingzhou (靖州 : Jīngzhōu), and Chengbu (城步 : Chéngbù)
Guizhou: Songtao (松桃 : Sōngtáo), Yingjiang (印江 : Yìnjiāng), Wuchuan (务川 : Wùchuān), Daozhen (道真 : Dǎozhēn), Zhenning (镇宁 : Zhènníng), Ziyun (紫云 : Zǐyún), Guanling (关岭 : Guānlíng), and Weining (威宁 : Wēiníng)
Yunnan: Pingbian (屏边 : Píngbiān), Jinping (金平 : Jīnpíng), and Luquan (禄劝 : Lùquàn)
Chongqing: Xiushan (秀山 : Xiùshān), Youyang (酉阳 : Yǒuyáng), Qianjiang (黔江 : Qiánjiāng), and Pengshui (彭水 : Péngshuǐ)
Guangxi: Rongshui (融水 : Róngshuǐ), Longsheng (龙胜 : Lóngshēng), and Longlin (隆林 : Lōnglín) (including Hmong)
Hainan Province: Qiong (琼中 : Qióngzhōng) and Baoting (保亭 : Bǎotíng)
Most Miao reside in hills or on mountains, such as
Wuling Mountain by the Qianxiang River (湘黔川边的武陵山 : Xiāngqián Chuān Biān Dí Wǔlíng Shān)
Miao Mountain (苗岭 : Miáo Líng), Qiandongnan
Yueliang Mountain (月亮山 : Yuèliàng Shān), Qiandongnan
Greater and Lesser Ma Mountain (大小麻山 : Dà Xiǎo Má Shān), Qiannan
Greater Miao Mountain (大苗山 : Dà Miáo Shān), Guangxi
Wumeng Mountain by the Tianqian River (滇黔川边的乌蒙山 : Tiánqián Chuān Biān Dí Wūmēng Shān)
Several thousands of Miao left their homeland to move to larger cities like Guangzhou and Beijing. There are 2,000,000 Hmong spread throughout northern Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and on other continents. 174,000 live in Thailand, where they are one of the six main hill tribes.
HISTORY
History according to Chinese legend and other considerations
According to Chinese legend, the Miao who descended from the Jiuli tribe led by Chiyou (Chinese: 蚩尤 pinyin: Chīyóu) were defeated at the Battle of Zhuolu (Chinese: 涿鹿 pinyin: Zhuōlù, a defunct prefecture on the border of present provinces of Hebei and Liaoning) by the military coalition of Huang Di (Chinese: 黃帝 pinyin: Huángdì) and Yan Di, leaders of the Huaxia (Chinese: 華夏 pinyin: Huáxià) tribe as the two tribes struggled for supremacy of the Yellow River valley.
ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES
According to André-Georges Haudricourt and David Strecker's claims based on limited secondary data, the Miao were among the first people to settle in present-day China. They claim that the Han borrowed a lot of words from the Miao in regard to rice farming. This indicated that the Miao were among the first rice farmers in China. In addition, some have connected the Miao to the Daxi Culture (5,300 – 6,000 years ago) in the middle Yangtze River region. The Daxi Culture has been credited with being amongst the first cultivators of rice in the Far East by Western scholars. However, in 2006 rice cultivation was found to have existed in the Shandong province even earlier than the Daxi Culture.
A western study mention that the Miao (especially the Miao-Hunan) have some DNA from the Northeast people of China, but has origins in southern china. Recent DNA samples of Miao males contradict this theory. The White Hmong have 25% C, 8% D, & 6% N(Tat) yet they have the least contact with the Han population.
CHU
In 2002, the Chu language has been identified as perhaps having influence from Tai–Kam and Miao–Yao languages by researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
QIN AND HAN DYNASTIES
The term Miao was first used by the Han Chinese in pre-Qin times (in other words, before 221 BC) for designating non-Han Chinese groups in the south. It was often used in combination: "nanmiao", "miaomin", "youmiao" and "sanmiao" (三苗; pinyin: Sānmiáo)
MING AND QING DYNASTIES
During the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911) 'miao' and 'man' were both used, the second possibly to designate the Yao (傜 Yáo) people. The Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties could neither fully assimilate nor control the indigenous people.
During the Miao Rebellions, when Miao tribes rebelled, Ming troops, including Han Chinese, Hui people, and Uyghurs crushed the rebels, killing thousands of them. Mass castrations of Miao boys also took place.
During the Qing Dynasty the Miao fought three wars against the empire. In 1735 in the southeastern province of Guizhou, the Miao rose up against the government's forced assimilation. Eight counties involving 1,224 villages fought until 1738 when the revolt ended. According to Xiangtan University Professor Wu half the Miao population were affected by the war.
The second war (1795–1806) involved the provinces of Guizhou and Hunan. Shi Sanbao and Shi Liudeng led this second revolt. Again, it ended in failure, but it took 11 years to quell the uprising.
The greatest of the three wars occurred from 1854 to 1873. Zhang Xiu-mei led this revolt in Guizhou until his capture and death in Changsha, Hunan. This revolt affected over one million people and all the neighbouring provinces. By the time the war ended Professor Wu said only 30 percent of the Miao were left in their home regions. This defeat led to the Hmong people migrating out of China.
During Qing times, more military garrisons were established in southwest China. Han Chinese soldiers moved into the Taijiang region of Guizhou, married Miao women, and the children were brough up as Miao. In spite of rebellion against the Han, Hmong leaders made allies with Han merchants.
Politically and militarily, the Miao continued to be a stone in the shoe of the Chinese empire. The imperial government had to rely on political means to ensnare Hmong people, they created multiple competing positions of substantial prestige for Miao people to participate and assimilate into the Qing government system. During the Ming and Qing times, the official position of Kiatong was created in Indochina. The Miao would employ the use of the Kiatong government structure until the 1900s when they entered into French colonial politics in Indochina.
20th CENTURY
During the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Miao played an important role in its birth when they helped Mao Zedong to escape the Kuomintang in the Long March with supplies and guides through their territory.
In Vietnam, a powerful Hmong named Vuong Chinh Duc, dubbed the king of the Hmong, aided Ho Chi Minh's nationalist move against the French, and thus secured the Hmong's position in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, Miao fought on both sides, the Hmong in Laos primarily for the US, across the border in Vietnam for the North-Vietnam coalition, the Chinese-Miao for the Communists. However, after the war the Vietnamese were very aggressive towards the Hmong who suffered many years of reprisals and genocide. Most Hmong in Thailand also supported a brief Communist uprising during the war.
HAN CHINESE ORIGIN MIAO CLANS
A great number of Hmong lineage clans were founded by Chinese men who married Hmong women, these distinct Chinese descended clans practice Chinese burial customs instead of Hmong style burials.
The Hmong children of Hmong women who married Chinese men was the origin of numerous China and South East Asia based Hmong lineages and clans, these were called "Chinese Hmong" ("Hmong Sua") in Sichuan, the Hmong were instructed in military tactics by fugitive Chinese rebels.
Marriages between Hmong women and Han Chinese men is the origin of a lot of Hmong lineages and clans.
Hmong women married Han Chinese men to found new Hmong lineages which use Chinese names.
Chinese men who married into Hmong clans have established more Hmong clans than the ritual twelve, Chinese "surname groups" are comparable to the Hmong clans which are patrilineal, and practice exogamy.
Hmong women married Han Chinese men who pacified Ah rebels who were fighting against the Ming dynasty, and founded the Wang clan among the Hmong in Gongxian county, of Sichuan's Yibin district.
Hmong women who married Chinese men founded a new Xem clan in a Hmong village (among Northern Thailand's Hmong), fifty years later in Chiangmai two of their Hmong boy descendants were Catholics. A Hmong woman and a Chinese man married and founded the Lauj clan in Northern Thailand.
A marriage between a Hmong woman and a Chinese man resulted in northern Thailand's Lau2 clan being founded, another Han Chinese with the family name Deng founded another Hmong clan, Han Chinese men's marriages with Hmong women has led some ethnographers to conclude that Hmong clans in the modern era have possible all or partly have been founded in this matter.
Jiangxi Han Chinese are claimed by some as the forefathers of the southeast Guizhou Miao, and Miao children were born to the many Miao women married Han Chinese soldiers in Taijiang in Guizhou before the second half of the 19th century.
Imperially commissioned Han Chinese chieftancies "gon native", with the Miao and were the ancestors of a part of the Miao population in Guizhou.
The Hmong Tian clan in Sizhou began in the seventh century as a migrant Han Chinese clan.
Non-han women such as Miao women became wives of Han Chinese male soldiers who fought against the Miao rebellions during the Qing and Ming dynasties since Han women were not available.
The Ming dynasty Hongwu Emperor sent troops to Guizhou whose descendants became the Tunbao. The origin of the Tunbao people traces back to when the Ming dynasty sent 300,000 Han Chinese male soldiers in 1381 to conquer Yunnan and the men married Yao and Miao women.
The presence of women presiding over weddings was a feature noted in "Southeast Asian" marriages, such as in 1667 when a Miao woman in Yunnan married a Chinese official.
Some Sinicization occurred, in Yunnan a Miao chief's daughter married a scholar in the 1600s who wrote that she could read, write, and listen in Chinese and read Chinese classics.
The Sichuan Hmong village of Wangwu was visited by Nicholas Tapp who wrote that the "clan ancestral origin legend" of the Wang Hmong clan, had said that several times they were married into the Han Chinese and possibly one of these was their ancestor Wang Wu, there were two tpes of Hmong, "cooked" who sided with Chinese and "raw" who rebelled against the Chinese, the Chinese were supported by the Wang Hmong clan. A Hmong woman was married by the non-Hmong Wang Wu according to The Story of the Ha Kings in Wangwu village.
DISTRIBUTION
The 2000 Chinese census recorded 8,940,116 Miao in mainland China.
CUISINE
Miao Fish (苗鱼 miáo yǘ)
Miao fish is a special way of cooking a fish by Miao people. It has been recognized as a local featured cuisine with its tasty flavor: the mixture of fish, green peppers, ginger slices and garlic provided people with great eating experience.
WIKIPEDIA
Fort Totten Historic District, Fort Totten, Bayside, Queens
Building 207 is a two-and-one-half story rectangular residence, faced in red brick laid in stretcher bond above a rusticated foundation of schist. The building has a gabled roof covered with asphalt shingles. The horizontal and raking cornices at the edge of the roof are enriched with corbels and dentils.
On the front roof slope two wide gabled dormers are faced with slate shingles, have Palladianesque window surrounds, and are framed with wood pilasters carrying raking denticulated cornices. A two-story wood porch extends across the entire front facade. Two sets of wooden stairs approach the porch. At both levels, Tuscan columns are linked by wood balustrades. The second-story columns support a shallow hipped roof. The porch base is supported on concrete piers with wooden screens between them.
The two entrances to the residence have paired paneled wood doors below transoms. Similar entrances are located at the second story. All of the first and second-story window openings have splayed brick lintels with keystones. The windows have stone sills and contain two-over-two wood sash. Paired arched windows with keystones and stone sills are placed at attic level in the gable ends.
Building 207 was constructed in 1905 as Enlisted Personnel (lower-ranking non-commissioned officers) Quarters, part of a campaign to meet the housing needs of the rapidly growing fort and the newly installed Coast Artillery. Erected for the Office of the Quartermaster General, the building displays the forms and details of the popular Colonial Revival style. Under construction at the same time as the adjacent Post Headquarters, Building 207 replaced a frame building, the assistant engineer's office, constructed between 1866 and 1871 during the first development phase of the Fort at Willets Point. It remained in use as housing for enlisted officers until the late 1960s.
Historic District description
Fort Totten occupies a 136-acre site in northeast Queens, north of Bayside, on a peninsula jutting into the Long Island Sound. The Fort Totten Historic District, incorporating much of the peninsula, includes over 100 buildings and smaller secondary structures built between the 1830s and the 1960s.1 The fort, originally called the Fort at Willets Point, was established in 1857 as a major component in the defense system of New York Harbor. Its surviving, although uncompleted, fortification displays the features of the last phase of the Third System of coastal fortification, an important period of American military construction. The fort's surviving structures from various phases of construction vividly depict the changing role of military technology and defense strategy between the Civil War and World War II. The major period of improvement and expansion for the fort occurred in 1885-1914, resulting in much of the historic character that exists today.
In addition to upgrading the fortifications and batteries, installing torpedo buildings, and reconfiguring the parade grounds, the Army built about 80 structures, many of them to house the soldiers and officers who were stationed there. In 1898, the Fort at Willets Point was renamed in honor of Maj. Gen. Joseph G. Totten (1788-1864), who had been a major force in developing the Third System, and it was characterized as one of the most essential posts on the East Coast. The buildings and grounds, represent Fort Totten as a major military post and as one of the most intact, self-contained army posts in New York City.
Fort Totten is a tangible reminder of New York City's once-powerful harbor defense system which ranged from the inner harbor adjacent to Manhattan Island to the Narrows and Long Island Sound. Since the sixteenth century, New York Harbor has been recognized for its strategic importance, and as the city grew to prominence, its defense became increasingly important to New York and the nation. Fort Totten (the Fort at Willets Point) was planned as the counterpoint to Fort Schuyler on Throgs Neck (The Bronx), begun 1833, to guard the Long Island Sound entrance to New York Harbor. Although the Third System fort, begun in 1862 during the Civil War, was never completed because of advances in weaponry during that conflict, the army post retained its importance as the site of advanced training for Army Engineers and of research in military technology and military medicine.
It also housed several major military commands, including the Eastern Artillery District, New York, and the Coast Defense of Eastern New York and the North Atlantic District, through much of the twentieth century.
In 1968, Fort Totten became the home of the 77th United States Regional Support Command for the Army Reserve, and the United States Coast Guard took over a portion of the facility in 1969. The United States Department of Labor established a Job Corps Training Center on a portion of the site in 1971.2 Both the Army and the Coast Guard retain some facilities at Fort Totten; however, much of the fort is to be turned over the the City of New York and will be operated under the jurisdiction of the Fire Department, the Parks Department, and the Historic House Trust.
Notable structures have survived from four major periods of construction on Willets Point. These periods correspond to changing roles of military technology and defense strategy at Fort Totten, and the surviving physical structures of each period give tangible evidence of those roles and exert a strong historical presence.
These periods of construction are described briefly below and in greater detail in the History section following. The fort's open space, which reflects the topography of the peninsula, evolved as part of these campaigns. A description of the open space and landscape features concludes this section on Physical and Architectural Development.
Period of Local Settlement. 1639-1857
Although the Dutch had taken over the peninsula from the Matinecock Indians in 1639, no pre-nineteenth-century structures survive at Fort Totten. The Willets family constructed a Greek Revival double house,3 now known as Building 211, after Charles Willets purchased the peninsula, then known as Wilkins Point, in 1829 and changed the name to Willets Point. This house, the earliest surviving structure on the fort and the only one that predates the fort's establishment, was described in 1868 as "a large double house, which had been built on that portion of the point facing the river and commanding a view of Long Island Sound, for occupation as a summer residence."4 At that time, the house had been moved to its present location on Murray Avenue and remodeled as a Gothic Revival villa to serve as the living quarters for the commanding officer of the fort, Major Henry L. Abbot.
The Fort at Willets Point: Third System. Civil War, and Reconstruction Periods (1857-1885)
Construction of the original Third System battery (now called the Stone Fort or Building 518) began in 1862 at the north end of the peninsula under the direction of Col. William Petit Trowbridge. It was planned as a V-shaped structure with a polygonal bastion at the vertex of the ramparts with four tiers of casemates, but construction halted in 1864 when advances in Civil War weaponry made the plan obsolete. The two tiers of vaulted casemates that were built are of brick, faced with heavy granite blocks, and they command an impressive view of Long Island Sound and Fort Schuyler on Throgs Neck. The Quartermaster's Wharf (Building 605) was built in 1864, extending 460 feet into Little Bay with all necessary facilities for unloading vessels. Portions of this pier structure survive.5
Although the battery was obsolete as planned, the Army Engineers enhanced the defensive capability of the Fort at Willets Point in several phases ~ 1868, 1872, and 1883; the main magazine was constructed of concrete and masonry with walls from 17 to 36 inches thick for the storage of gun powder in the hillside behind the battery in several phases — 1868, 1872, and 1883. A barrel-vaulted vehicular access tunnel of concrete was built through the hillside in 1870, linking the batteiy with the rest of the post. Adjacent to the magazine and tunnel are vaulted masonry and concrete casemates, built into the south slope of the hill, for storing torpedo mines. Building 129, constructed sometime between 1871 and 1879 as a fireproof torpedo storehouse, is the oldest brick building at the post and the only surviving structure from the Army Engineers' initial period of research into torpedo technology and development of torpedo defense.
The Queen Anne style and domestic appearance of Building 317, constructed in 1882-83, belies its initial use as a photographic laboratory; it is one of the oldest surviving frame buildings at Fort Totten and is the earliest surviving frame building constructed specifically for the purposes of this Army post, namely one of the technical and research functions carried out by the Army Engineers.
Endicott Board and Taft Board Period. 1885-1914
The major period of improvement and expansion at the fort occurred in 1885-1914, resulting in much of the historic character that survives today. This work was in part the outcome of recommendations for improved harbor defense for the New York area (in addition to other strategic locations in the United States) from two Congressionally-authorized boards of experts, the Endicott Board, issued in 1886, and the Taft Board, issued in 1906, as well as a locations of these two structures has not been determined; they were demolished prior to 1890. See Trieschmann and Gettings, vol. 1, 37.
While the fortifications were upgraded by the Army Corps of Engineers, other improvements to the fort were undertaken by the Office of the Quartermaster General. Some 80 structures were built during this period, including housing for the soldiers and officers who were stationed there.6 Many of these replaced earlier wood-frame structures. The first major building from this period is Building 208, a castellated Gothic Revival style wood frame structure built as the Officers Mess and Officers Club in 1887, facing the parade ground at the west. Now a designated New York City Landmark, it is leased to the Bayside Historical Society. Brick barracks with Colonial Revival details, Buildings 322, 323, and 325, were built at the south end of the parade ground between 1892 and 1894. (These three barracks were enlarged in 1904.)
Building 405, a slightly later barracks dating from 1900 but similar in design to the earlier ones, was built north of the parade ground. Building 331, a brick and frame fire engine house, was erected in 1892 near the new barracks. A new bungalow style guardhouse, Building 103, was constructed in 1892, just inside the grand Romanesque Revival style entrance gates that had been installed in 1889. Building 637, the brick Engineers' Museum, was built in 1890-98 with Romanesque Revival detail, facing what is now Totten Avenue. Building 333 was constructed in 1897-98 near the barracks as the post mess hall for non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel. Building 222, built sometime between 1890 and 1898 as offices and a storehouse for the commissary, is located southwest of the intersection of Murray Avenue and Sgt. Beers Avenue.
The Quartermaster's storehouse (Building 107), built in 1897, is located near the guardhouse, while another commissary storehouse, Building 601, dating from 1896-97, is on the shore of Little Bay. The bakery, Building 309, was built that same year, and is close to the barracks. Building 502, built in 1900 as an ordnance shop strategically situated near the batteries (and later an artillery repair shop), is now the Fort Totten Historical Center. All of these non-domestic structures have a sturdy utilitarian character enhanced by Romanesque Revival detail.
A major building campaign beginning in 1905 brought many significant structures to the area adjacent to the parade ground as part of the campaign to improve and enhance the facilities at Fort Totten. This coincided with a change in the fort's mission after the Army Engineers were withdrawn and the Coast Artillery installed. All of the buildings constructed during this campaign are brick structures, designed in variants of the Colonial Revival style but with a common vocabulary of details that echo the details used on the somewhat earlier barracks structures and reinforce the architectural cohesion of the fort. Virtually all were constructed according to standardized plans from the Office of the Quartermaster General. Building 206, the Post Headquarters, displays the characteristics of high style Colonial Revival architecture with neo-Georgian details.
The use of such elaborate detail can be seen to convey the importance of the headquarters as the command post of the Fort Totten military installation, by then the home of the Coast Artillery. Housing for commissioned officers was built in single-family and twin-dwelling units in the area north and west of the parade ground, forming an enclave known as Officers' Row. This group includes Buildings 203, 400, 401, 402, 409, 411, 413, 415, 418, and 420. Field officers (with the rank of major or colonel) occupied the single-family dwellings, while lieutenants and captains occupied with twin dwellings.7 Twin-dwelling units for noncommissioned officers were built off Shore Road, south of the parade ground (Buildings 306, 308, 309, 310, 312, and 314 (the last remodelled in the 1930s)). Building 207, a multi-unit dwelling to house enlisted officers, was constructed west of the parade ground between the post headquarters and the officers' mess.
The last major barracks structure, Building 330, which is similar in architectural character and detail to the earlier barracks, was built in 1907-08 southeast of the parade ground. A new imposing neo-Georgian Commanding Officer's Quarters, Building 422, was constructed among the other houses of Officers Row in 1909.
The Colonial Revival style Hospital, Building 304, built in 1906 and enlarged in 1911-12, is located east of the parade ground along Shore Road facing Little Neck Bay. While the hospital is much larger in size, its details are similar to those of the contemporary houses as well as the earlier brick barracks. The somewhat more architecturally elaborate annex, Building 326, dates from 1914. During this period the mission of the fort was expanded to include research into and development of medical equipment and care for military personnel. Building 305, a modest Colonial Revival style dwelling, was built in 1907 to house the hospital steward. Building 319, the gymnasium, was built in 1905 south of the parade ground. Colonial Revival in form and detail, it complements the nearby residential structures.
The more utilitarian buildings constructed prior to 1914 are situated on the periphery of the fort. Building 128, built in 1907-08 as a stable, is located southwest of the noncommissioned officers' housing; Building 604, Building 607, and Building 614 are storage facilities situated close to Little Bay. Building 105 was constructed in 1910 as the permanent electric sub-station for Fort Totten, which connected the army base with the municipal power supply at Bayside, Queens.
The Period between World War I and World War II. 1920-1940
While the 1920s saw little new construction at Fort Totten, a number of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century utilitarian structures were converted for other uses.8 The YMCA, Building 318, a neo-Georgian style brick building, situated next to the gymnasium, was built in 1926-27. The YMCA had a presence at Fort Totten prior to the construction of this building.9
Another building campaign to improve housing facilities at Fort Totten (as well as many other Army posts) took place beginning in 1933. This resulted in the construction of several Colonial Revival twin dwellings; Buildings 316 and 634 are within the boundaries of the historic district. Building 314, a frame twin dwelling, was remodeled in the Colonial Revival style to be more compatible with other nearby houses. Two other major structures date from 1938-39. Building 332, the theater, was constructed south of the barracks area, east of the gymnasium and the YMCA. The chapel, Building 638, is situated north of the parade ground, between Officers' Row and the Post Headquarters. Both were built according to standardized plans that display characteristics of the Colonial Revival style.
Among the secondary structures constructed at Fort Totten in 1937-38 are the many one-story garages set behind the officers' housing and the small brick transformer structures throughout the grounds. Both are evidence of continuing technological change at the fort.
Open Space and Landscape Features
Fort Totten is located on a small ridge that forms a peninsula jutting into Long Island South that is protected by a stone sea wall. Historically the peninsula was known as Thome's Point, subsequently Wilkins Point, and then Willets Point, after the major owners prior to acquisition by the U.S. government. The portions of Long Island Sound surrounding the peninsula on three sides are more specifically identified as Little Bay, Little Neck Bay, and the Hast River Channel, while the land side was historically wetlands, much of which has been filled in. The ridge rises to the northeast to a high point of 68 feet above sea level, but it drops abruptly at the north end at the site of the granite fortifications and on the west facing Little Bay. The road system of Fort Totten generally follows the topographical terrain of the ridge, creating a series of circular drives that focus attention on the parade ground and allow for vistas overlooking Long Island Sound.
The rising slope at the intersection of Bay side Street and Totten Avenue, in front of Building 635, contains the simple granite grave marker of Charles A. Willets, the property owner who gave the point its name. The steep slope rising to the south of Totten Avenue remains open.
The major open space at Fort Totten is the parade ground, which had been established after the Civil War.10 It was originally oriented in a north-south direction and fronted by buildings with the post gardens behind at the north and south. As part of the major building campaign in the early twentieth century, the parade ground was reoriented from a north-south to an east-west direction. It is likely that the trees surrounding the periphery date from that period. The parade ground is bisected by a pedestrian path, and the eastern section is sometimes called the park. Many of the major buildings of the fort continue to front the parade ground on the north, south, and west. Current plans to expand the parade ground into parklands include the demolition of several of the 1959 houses northeast of the parade ground (Buildings 406-408, 423-431, 504-514).
Two sections of the parade ground have been identified as containing archeological deposits and recommended as eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Section A at the southwest corner is bordered by Story Avenue and Murray Avenue and may contain intact structural remnants from the 1866-1885 period. Section B is at the northwest corner of the eastern section (the park) bordered by Weaver Avenue and the pedestrian path; it contains intact foundation remnants and the possible remains of a storehouse from the period of the 1860S-1910.11
Historic cast-iron lamp posts edge the roads throughout the fort. These presumably were installed after 1910 when the first permanent electric sub-station was constructed. The posts have fluted shafts set on molded bases with stylized acanthus caps surmounted by octagonal lanterns.
Additional open space is located near the north end of the fort on top of Battery King (Building 500), now a baseball field bounded by Abbott Road and North Loop Road.
HISTORY OF FORT TOTTEN
Local Settlement to Government Acquisition. 1639-1857
The peninsula occupied by Fort Totten was taken from the Matinecock Indians by the Dutch in 1639. William Kieft, Governor General of New Netherlands, transferred the land by patent to the Englishman William Thome, who had been forced to Long Island from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for assisting religious dissenters. The land became known as Thome's Point, and his farmstead was called "one of the most valuable and handsome" in the area.13 The property, some 152 acres, was held by the Thome family until 1788, when Ann Thome married William Wilkins and the peninsula became known as Wilkins Point. In 1829, Charles A. Willets (1781-1832), an area nurseryman, purchased the Wilkins farmland and changed the name of the peninsula to Willets Point. Possibly Willets hoped to sell the property to the Army, as the Army Board of Engineers had recommended fortifying various points in the New York Harbor, including Willets Point and Throgs Neck, in a report issued in 1821.
A property transfer did not take place, so Willets established a nursery and built a Greek Revival style house near the north end of the peninsula. This house, now known as Building 211, was subsequently moved and remodeled in the fashionable Gothic Revival style in 1867. Presumably other service buildings were constructed by either Wilkins or Willets, but none survive. Charles Willets died in 1832 and was buried on the property down the slope from the original site of the house. His simple granite grave marker survives near the intersection of Bayside Street and Totten Avenue. Willets's heirs sold the property in 1857 to George Irving, a New York broker and land speculator.
The Fort at Willets Point: Third System. Civil War, and Reconstruction Periods (1857-1885)
The defense of New York Harbor had been a matter of continuing interest to the United States government from the time of the Revolutionary War on. Initial efforts had focused on the inner harbor utilizing the First and Second Systems of fortifications; the result was the construction of Fort Jay (later Fort Columbus), Castle Williams and the South Battery on Governors Island, Castle Clinton at the southern tip of Manhattan, Fort Wood on Bedloe's (now Liberty Island), and Fort Gibson on what is now Ellis Island.16 Following the War of 1812, the Federal government established a board to create a permanent system of defenses and fortification, which came to be known as the Third System. Organized in 1816, the board was headed by Simon Bernard, a French military engineer, Capt. J.D. Elliott of the Navy, and Maj. William McKee and Lt. Col. Joseph G. Totten of the Army Engineers.
Totten proved to be the most influential figure in the advancement of the Third System, serving for 26 years as Chief Engineer of the Army Engineers. In this capacity he was responsible for the design of most of the forts built in the United States between the 1820s and the 1860s; the Third System is often called the Totten system, in recognition of his achievement. Third System forts are generally polygonal in plan with one or more arched tiers of casemates on the seaward fronts and roof tiers of barbette emplacements (platforms from which guns were fired over parapets) surmounting the exterior walls, which were built of brick or stone or both materials. Casemate emplacement and the size and shapes of the embrasures (gun openings) were a major focus of Totten's innovations.18 In addition to the Fort at Willets Point, two other forts were named after him, one in North Dakota and the other in North Carolina.
The Bernard Board was initially charged with dealing with seacoast defense "as an activity involving the efforts of several interrelated elements—a navy, fortifications, avenues of communication in the interior, and a regular army and well-organized militia."19 The Board's first report was submitted in February 1821 and listed 18 defensive works as a top priority, followed by 32 for future construction as lesser priorities. However, by 1850, the Board envisoned a major scheme of harbor defense for the United States, with nearly 200 separate works, from the East Coast, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Pacific Coast. In fact, because of the limitations of cost and manpower, far fewer fortifications were actually constructed.
In New York, the system of harbor fortification gradually moved to the outer harbor. While the Narrows had been guarded initially by Fort Richmond and Fort Tompkins on the Staten Island side and Fort Lafayette on the Brooklyn side, these 1812 fortifications were replaced in 1847 and 1825 respectively by the present Fort Richmond and Fort Hamilton. Throgs Neck in the Bronx acquired Fort Schuyler, beginning in 1833, to guard the entrance from Long Island Sound. Finally, the last piece of New York harbor defense under the Third System was put into place with the acquisition of 110 acres of Willets Point from George Irving in 1857.
The price, $200,000, brought forth accusations of profiteering and an abortive congressional investigation. Even though Congress appropriated some $155,000 to have plans drawn for a fortification, reputedly by Robert E. Lee, the work was not carried out despite continued calls for improving New York Harbor defenses.
With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, a temporary camp known as Camp Morgan was set up at Willets Point to train military recruits and to accommodate volunteer units, among them the 15th New York Volunteers (Engineer), the 2nd Marine Volunteers (Infantry), and the 9th Indiana Volunteers (Infantry). With fears that Confederate troops might attack New York Harbor from Long Island Sound, Congress appropriated $200,000 in 1862 for fortifications work at Willets Point. The land area of the fort was increased in 1863 with the purchase of an additional 26 acres. Work on the pentagonal casemated fortification had begun in 1862 at the north end of the peninsula. The Quartermaster's Wharf, jutting into Little Bay, was constructed at the same time to accommodate materials and supplies needed during construction.
The fortification called for four tiers of casemates on the water side and two tiers on the land side with foundations extending twelve feet below sea level and walls eight feet thick. Guns and cannon were to be mounted in the casemates. Even as construction was underway, the fortification was made obsolete by advances in military technology.22 The Rodman cannon could smash fort walls with heavy iron balls, while rifled guns and cannons could be fired with great accuracy over long ranges. Rifled projectiles could penetrate the masonry walls of fortifications and then explode inside. Only two tiers of casemates were completed at Fort Totten, and the work was subsequently abandoned.
The other major construction at the fort during the Civil War was the General Grant Hospital, completed in 1865 in the southern section of the site. Containing 1,410 beds in 37 wards, the hospital treated 5,283 soldiers in its one year of existence.23
Following the Civil War, three of the Army's four companies of Engineers were sent to the Fort at Willets Point because of existing storage facilities for the engineering materials remaining from the war. This was the first permanent garrison at the Fort where they were initially commanded by Gen. J.C. Duane and then, beginning in 1868, for some twenty years by Maj. Henry L. Abbot (1831-1927). The relocation and remodelling of the original Willets house occurred in 1867-68 in conjunction with the establishment of this permanent garrison.
Prior to 1866, the Army Engineers had headed the program at West Point. When this connection ended, a group of officers founded the Essayons Club at Willets Point to perpetuate the study of engineering in the Army.24 This became the Engineer School for Application. The Engineer Depot for the eastern United States was established at Willets Point in 1870, and a torpedo school was set up in 1873.
Under Abbot's leadership, the Engineer School of Application carried out experiments and training in engineer reconnaissance, military bridges, weaponry, astronomy, photography, submarine mines, torpedoes, submarine rockets, and searchlights, beginning in 1872. Abbot's report on a system of coastal defense by submarine mines was published in 1881 as No. 23 of the Professional Papers of the Army Corps of Engineers.25
Few of the structures that were built between 1865 and 1885 survive. Those that do include the batteries behind the Civil War battery, the seacoast mortar battery, the torpedo research and storage facilities, as well as the photo laboratory (Building 317).
While frame barracks and other housing were constructed for enlisted men and officers, none of these survive. The frame officers quarters were of the type still seen on Governors Island around Nolan Park (located within the Governor's Island Historic District). Other structures built during this period included the observatory, library and theater, the first officers mess (designed in the Gothic Revival style and later replaced by the barracks on the south side of the Parade Ground), and the first chapel, also built in the Gothic Revival style 26
Endicott Board and Taft Board Period. 1885-1914
By the 1880s, coastal and harbor defense had again become a national issue. In 1885, Congress authorized a board of experts to examine what defenses were needed at what ports. This became known as the Endicott Board after its president, Secretary of War William C. Endicott. As a result, New York was identified as one of five harbors most in need of new fortifications, and as part of the New York Harbor defense, the Fort at Willets Point was classified as one of the most essential on the East Coast .29
As the result of Congressional appropriations in the 1890, more facilities were constructed in the 1890s, especially a first phase of more permanent barracks and related service structures. The fort had been supplied with water from the Town of Flushing in 1886. The Engineers' Museum was also constructed in the 1890s.
The Fort at Willets Point was renamed in honor of Maj. Gen. Joseph G. Totten in 1898 by direction of President William McKinley.30 However, the Engineer School of Application relocated to Washington in 1901, and the Engineering Depot closed in 1902.
The mission of the fort changed as five companies of the Coast Artillery Corps were moved there. There was a major influx of personnel between 1902 and 1913 with the establishment of the Eastern Artillery District, New York, in 1906, and the Coast Defense of Eastern New York and the North Atlantic District in 1913. The building campaign that began in 1905 coincided with this change as there were many more officers on site who needed housing.
President Theodore Roosevelt appointed the Taft Board, named after Secretary of War William Howard Taft, in 1905 to review and update the harbor defense programs. By this time, emphasis had shifted from fortifications to ever increasing attention to weapons and firepower. Fort Totten was the site of innovations and experimentation with searchlights, electrification, and precision methods of fire control for greater accuracy of artillery, all under the jurisdiction of the Coast Artillery stationed there.31
World War I period
No structures built at Fort Totten during this period survive. During the war, Fort Totten served as a training and administrative post. Units of the Coast Artillery, Infantry, Engineering, Field Artillery, Army Medical Corps, Signal Corps, Anti-aircraft, and members of the First Reserve Engineers were trained at Fort Totten before going to Europe. Company A of the First Reserve Engineers, sailed for France on July 14, 1917, becoming the first unit to leave the United States for the front.
The Period between World War I and World War II. 1920-1945
A new Torpedo Depot was established in 1921 which focused on improved torpedoes, naval mines, and anti-aircraft technology. The 62nd Coast Artillery (Anti-Aircraft) was stationed there in 1922. The batteries were abandoned completely in 1938. Many temporary structures were erected in 1940s for barracks, storage, etc. Few survive, and most are not within the boundaries of the historic district.
The first radar installation used in Anti-Aircraft Command on the east coast was constructed at Fort Totten in 1941. Fort Totten became the Headquarters of the Anti-Aircraft Command of the Eastern Defense Command. In 1944 the Eastern Defense Command Headquarters and the 1378 AAF unit of the North Atlantic Wing, Air Transport Command moved to Fort Totten. Fort Totten also served as the processing point for troops departing through La Guardia Field Terminal until 1947.
Post World War II to Present. 1945 on
Following World War II, Fort Totten remained in active service as the home of the 1362nd Service Unit in 1947 and the New York-New Jersey Sub-Area Headquarters for Civilian Component Activities in 1949. It housed the Fort Totten Medical Center for army personnel in 1947-49. The Development Branch of the Army Service Medical Program Agency moved to Fort Totten in 1948, being reorganized in 1957 as the U.S. Army Medical Equipment Research and Development Laboratory under direction of Army Surgeon General. The laboratory had the sole responsibility for conducting engineering research and development leading to new items of military equipment for the Army, including surgical, veterinary, dental, and optical equipment, hospital utensils, medical sets and kits, x-ray equipment, devices for insect and rodent control, and equipment for a combat casualty evacuation system.
The First Regional Army Air Defense Command was organized in 1954 to provide overall anti-aircraft defense for New England, New York, New Jersey, and Greenland. Its mission was expanded in 1961 to the defense of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington. First Anti-Aircraft Regional Command remained at Fort Totten until 1967 and included the 23 rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Group; the 41st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (with 90-millimeter guns); the 66th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Missile Battalion (which monitored the Nike/Ajax and Nike/Hercules missile systems). The construction of additional housing, beginning in 1959, to the north and south of the earlier officers' housing, coincided with this command. These houses, most of which are outside the boundaries of the historic district, are of the so-called Capehart type, built in double and quadruple units.36
In 1967, Fort Totten was placed on inactive status as a sub-installation for Fort Hamilton, after the First Regional Army Air Defense Command was relocated. It continued to provide housing for military personnel in the New York City area and to serve as the headquarters of the 77th Regional Support Command (RSC), stationed at Fort Totten in 1969. The United States Coast Guard took over 9.6 acres with its related buildings near the shore of Little Bay in 1969. The parade ground and Buildings 322 and 323 were transferred to the United States Department of Labor in 1971 for use as a Job Corps Training Center. The Army Reserve remained an active presence, and the Ernie Pyle U.S. Army Reserve Center was dedicated in 1983. This building is outside the boundaries of the historic district. Other buildings at Fort Totten have been leased to various units of New York City government and non-profit entities.
- From the 1999 NYCLPC Historic District Designation Report
Taken with a Zorki 1 camera in week 226 of my 52 film cameras in 52 weeks project:
52cameras.blogspot.com/
www.flickr.com/photos/tony_kemplen/collections/7215762311...
Rollei RPX 400 film developed in Ilfosol 3 1:14 for 18 minutes at 20 deg C
A selenium rectifier. These were used from the 30s to 50s until they were replaced by silicon diodes.
Mmmm... salad. That's spinach, blue cheese, walnuts, and strawberries. The ingredients for DELICIOUSNESS.
Different from my usual shallow-depth-of-field, shallow-angle food photos.
I'm not sure what it is, but I'm not happy with this photo. There's something not quite there and I can't figure out what. It's good enough to post I guess.
To build my Seldaan Village you will need:
4 dark tan 8x8 base plates
2 dark tan 6x6 base plates
1 green 6x6 base plate
1 tan 8x6 base plate
1 blue 4x4 plate
1 blue 6x4 plate
4 dark bluish grey 4x2 plates
3 dark bluish grey 2x2 plates
1-3 strength monster
4-2 strength monsters
6-1 strength monsters
Heroes
ability and life potion
gold
2 treasure chests
a book
and all that other good stuff
For those of you who are interested in the 'bits', here are a selection of the key parts.
Not a complete rundown by covers the main mechanicals and load-bearing structures.
Car is 'drivable' with rear engine/transaxle, front tub and front drive assembly module.
Engine is an eight cylinder in 'W' format. That is two Vee-fours with their crankshafts gearedto a cenntral drive shaft.
Front and rear suspension are both by swing axles and sprung by torsion bars. The front suspension module plus straing into the front of the stressed tub and is completely self contained for load paths. The rear suspension feefs the loadparths into the engine assembly.
Not on the engine module the heat exchangers mounted in front of the rear wheels as well as behing the rear suspension module. The real Veyron has 13 heat exchangers in all. The detailing on the top of the engine asembly replicates the intake system and air-air intercoolers for the charge air.
One of the included images has the entire vehicle assembly arrayed.
Please feel free to ask any questions or request further techincal information regarding the model.
JSC2011-E-218795 (23 Dec. 2011) --- Flight Director Mike Lammers, at his console in the space station flight control room of JSC's Mission Control Center, monitors activity aboard the International Space Station soon after two three-person components of the Expedition 30 crew reunited. Soyuz TMA-3M had just delivered Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko, Andre Kuipers and Don Pettit to the station. Already onboard were Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin. The six can be seen on a screen in the front of the FCR as they communicate with flight controllers. Photo credit: NASA
Mott Haven, Bronx, New York City, New York, United States of America
Summary
Featuring robust brick facades and a high corner clock tower, the former Estey Piano Company Factory is a distinguished monument to an industry that was once one of the Bronx’s most important. Anchoring the northeast corner of Lincoln Avenue and Southern (now Bruckner) Boulevard since 1886, when its original portion was completed, the Estey building is the oldest-known former piano factory standing in the Bronx today. It is also one of the earliest large factories remaining in its Mott Haven neighborhood, dating from the period in which the area first experienced intensive industrial development. Today, as in decades past, the building’s signature clock tower and expansive facades—simply but elegantly detailed with terra cotta, patterned brick, and contrasting stone—are visible from the waterfront and nearby Harlem River bridges, making the Estey Factory a true neighborhood landmark.
Manufacturing blossomed in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx during the 1880s, when new factories started springing up in the area east of Third Avenue. Many of these produced pianos or their components, and by 1919, the Bronx had more than 60 such factories, making it one of America’s piano-manufacturing centers. One of the city’s first piano factories to be built in the Annexed District or North Side, as the western portions of the Bronx were known between 1874 and 1898, the Estey building was credited with providing “an unusual stimulus” for the movement of other piano makers there. Several of the manufacturers that followed Estey to the Annexed District, and later the Bronx, clustered within a few blocks of its factory, creating an important nucleus for the piano industry.
The Estey Piano Company was organized by Jacob Estey and John B. Simpson in 1885. Two decades before, Estey had established an organ works in Brattleboro, Vt. that had grown into one of the country’s largest producers of reed organs, thousands of which found their way into American parlors every year. Like other organ manufacturers in the late nineteenth century, Estey sought to diversify into the booming piano industry, and his partnership with Simpson—a pioneering North Side piano manufacturer—was a means to that end. When Estey Piano opened its factory, it manufactured upright and grand pianos that would become recognized for their “superior construction and workmanship.”
The original portion of the Estey Piano Factory was designed by the architectural firm of A.B. Ogden & Son. Many of this building’s features, including its L-shaped plan, flat roof, regular fenestration pattern and bay arrangement, and relatively narrow width to allow for daylight penetration, are characteristic of latenineteenth-century factory buildings. Its mixture of segmental- and round-headed window openings, and the Romanesque machicolations of its clock tower, place the Estey Factory within the tradition of the American round-arched style. Other features, including the factory’s distinctive, red-orange brick, dogtoothed and zigzagging patterned-brick stringcourses, recessed brick panels, terra cotta tiles featuring festoons, lions’ heads, and foliate motifs—and of course, its dramatic, projecting clock tower—speak of a building that sought to announce its presence on the urban landscape, projecting a strong public image for its owner. Indeed, the Estey Piano Company often included an illustration of this factory on its trade cards, which advertised the firm’s products.
The original building was extended to the east along Southern Boulevard in 1890, with a harmonious five-story addition designed by John B. Snook & Sons, and to the north, along Lincoln Avenue, with one-story additions in 1895. The Lincoln Avenue additions appear to have been combined and expanded, and then raised to three stories in 1909, and by an additional two stories in 1919; the 1919 addition near the southeast corner of Lincoln Avenue and 134th Street features broad expanses of industrial sash that were characteristic of the “daylight factories” of the early twentieth century. Known today as the Clock Tower Building, the old Estey Piano Company Factory currently houses artists and their studios. With its historic fabric almost completely intact, the building remains, in the words of the AIA Guide to New York City, “the grande dame of the piano trade: not virgin, but all-together and proud.”
The Industrial Development of Mott Haven
Well before the 1898 creation of the borough of the Bronx, industrial activity was occurring in the area that is now the Bronx’s southernmost portion. In 1828, Jordan L. Mott, the inventor of a coal-burning iron cooking stove, opened a “modest little factory” on property he had purchased on the Harlem River near the present Third Avenue, in what was then the township of Morrisania. Mott started calling the area Mott Haven and, in 1850, seeking to attract additional industry to the area, he laid out the Mott Haven Canal, an artificial inlet from the Harlem River that would ultimately extend to just south of 144th Street. The canal, however, was slow to attract industrial firms, and by 1879, only a handful of substantial ones existed nearby, including a brass and iron works, a machine shop, and a few lumber and coal yards, all of which were below 138th Street. These were joined by a marble yard, lumber yard, and hotel west of the canal, near the tracks built by the New York & Harlem Railroad to connect Manhattan with what is now the Bronx, in 1841. Despite the presence of the large Harlem River & Port Chester Railroad yard, which stretched from Lincoln Avenue to Brown Place south of 132nd Street, few factories appear to have existed east of Third Avenue at the end of the 1870s.
In 1874, the townships of Morrisania, West Farms, and Kingsbridge—the sections of the present Bronx borough located west of the Bronx River—became part of New York City. Officially called the 23rd and 24th Wards, they were generally referred to as the “Annexed District” or “North Side,” but they remained fairly isolated. At that time, few links existed between the southern portion of the District and Manhattan; among those that did was a cast-iron bridge at Third Avenue which, in 1860, had replaced an old wood dam-bridge built in the 1790s at that location.
Soon after annexation, however, local residents, property owners, business owners, and booster groups like the North Side Association began agitating for improved infrastructure, including better connections with Manhattan. In the 1880s, new public works started to be built; among them was the Madison Avenue Bridge, completed in 1884, which spanned the Harlem River at 138th Street, about five blocks north of the Mott Iron Works complex. By 1885, additional industrial concerns—including a planing mill, cabinet maker, and nickel works, and factories making carpets and surgical instruments—had sprung up in Mott Haven, near and below 138th Street, and close to Third Avenue. The expanded rail yard below 132nd Street, at that point operated by the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, connected directly to new docks at the foot of Willis Avenue. A few factories had sprouted up in the area east of Lincoln Avenue, as the Estey Piano Company Factory, then under construction at the northeast corner of Lincoln Avenue and Southern (now Bruckner) Boulevard, shared a block with the expansive works of the New York Lumber and Woodworking Company.
The 1886 opening of the Second Avenue Bridge just a few blocks from the Estey Factory provided a Harlem River crossing for the trains of the new Suburban Rapid Transit Company. The Suburban’s line, which would come to be known in the Bronx as the Third Avenue El, was the first to bring rapid transit service to the Annexed District. With its southern terminus on the Manhattan side of the Harlem, where it met Manhattan’s east-side elevated lines, the Suburban stopped at Southern Boulevard, before continuing northward; service on the line was expanded and improved between 1887 and 1902. While the Suburban was under construction, Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide predicted that it would have an enormous impact on the North Side, calling it, in 1885, “a great thing for the [Annexed District], as well as for New York City. It will furnish cheap homes for a poorer population, as well as choice rural habitations for the well-to-do. We may expect many light manufacturing industries to become naturalized on the other side of the Harlem.” And the line did come to play a crucial role in Mott Haven’s late-nineteenth-century development, spurring rowhouse construction in the late 1880s and 1890s. As new housing sprouted up, so too did industry; an 1894 drawing of the Harlem River east of Third Avenue shows a busy waterfront with docks and factories on both sides of the river, including the Estey Factory, with its distinctive clock tower clearly visible. In 1895, the New York Times noted that “that part of the 23rd Ward along the Harlem River”—that is, the southernmost portion of the Annexed District, including Mott Haven—was “a very busy manufacturing place.”
Improved rapid transit connections with Manhattan aided Mott Haven’s residential growth, but the area’s industrial development was spurred by its Harlem River location and the expansion of its freight-rail infrastructure. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the New York, New Haven & Hartford—with a freight depot located one block south of the Estey Factory, at Lincoln Avenue and 132nd Street—connected with dozens of railroads providing service throughout the eastern and midwestern United States, and into Canada. The New York Central system, with extensive yards close by in Melrose, was just as far-reaching. And the southern Bronx retained these transportation advantages into the twentieth century. Writing in 1908 about the proliferation of piano factories, many of which were in the southern Bronx, lifelong piano man William
P.H. Bacon pointed to the borough’s “superior transportation and shipping facilities, both by water and land,” as well as “the opportunity of getting land for the erection of commodious factories at reasonable figures.” In experiencing strong manufacturing growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mott Haven was a microcosm of the Bronx and the city as a whole: by 1920, New York City had 12% of the country’s factory workers, and by 1927, the Bronx had 2,700 plants with more than 100,000 employees.
Industrial growth had been rapid in the southern Bronx; Bacon wrote, in 1908, of “the busy hum of commerce where but a few years ago, the lowing of cattle and other sylvan sounds were the only noises heard.” The end of World War II marked the apex of manufacturing in New York, as in 1947, more manufacturing jobs existed in the city than in Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia combined. But industrial activity in the Bronx would soon begin to decline, reflecting city-wide trends. By the 1950s, New York City was rapidly losing industrial jobs, with manufacturers leaving in droves for the suburbs, or departing the region entirely. Between 1969 and 1999, the number of manufacturing jobs in the city fell by twothirds. Contributing to the decline of industry in the southern Bronx was the destruction of manufacturing space with the construction of broad new highways; the building of the earliest portions of the Major Deegan Expressway through Mott Haven between 1935 and 1939, for example, wiped out several industrial buildings on the block immediately to the north of the Estey Factory, including the former factory of the Brambach Piano Company. In 1997, the New York City Department of City Planning, citing an underutilization of industrial space in Mott Haven, rezoned a portion of Bruckner Boulevard including the block containing the former Estey Factory, to allow for residential uses and community facilities. This special mixed-use zoning was expanded to blocks to the east, west, and south in 2005.
As Mott Haven becomes increasingly residential, the former Estey Factory is a reminder of the neighborhood’s early years of intensive industrial growth. Today, the Estey building is one of the oldest large factories standing in Mott Haven, and in the entire area of the southern Bronx below 149th Street.
The Estey Piano Company and Its Factory
The Estey Piano Company had its roots in the firm of Manner & Company, which manufactured pianos on the Bowery between 1866 and 1869. Manner called his piano the “Arion,” and in 1870, his firm’s name changed to the Arion Piano-Forte Company. In 1872, the company’s factory moved to 149th Street, in what is now the Bronx. John Boulton Simpson, who had been Arion’s secretary since 1871, took control of the company in 1875; in that year, the company apparently moved to a new factory on St. Ann’s Avenue and boasted that “Six years ago, there were none of our pianos in existence; to-day, there are over 7,500 in use.” In the following year, the firm’s name changed to Simpson & Company, although it also continued to be known by the Arion name. By the end of the 1870s, Simpson’s factory—stretching from Brook to St. Ann’s Avenues on the north side of 149th Street—was probably the largest piano factory in the Annexed District, but in 1880, it was sold to another piano maker, the William E. Wheelock Company.
While Simpson apparently continued to make “high grade pianos” following the Wheelock sale, the location of his factory in the early 1880s is unclear. Between 1881 and 1885, Simpson & Company continued to maintain a space, likely a showroom, at 5 East 14th Street—where it had been since 1876—but the company was also listed at 127 East 129th and 232 East 40th Streets, neither of which appears to have been the location of a substantial factory. These addresses do, however, link Simpson in the early 1880s with the respected tuner Stephen Brambach, who would play a crucial role in developing Estey’s first pianos; Brambach was located next door to Simpson between 1881 and 1883, and in the same building in 1884.
In 1885, the Estey Organ Company of Brattleboro, Vt. was hitting its peak. By the end of the 1880s, the firm, which had been founded in 1866 by Jacob Estey, would be the world’s largest producer of reed organs. Thousands of these instruments found their way into American parlors every year; they were also being distributed, by 1890, to Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America, and to major European cities. Despite the company’s success—it was described, in 1886, as doing “an immense business, amounting to over one million dollars annually”—and its rapid growth—production rose by a factor of seven between 1865 and 1886—the organ business was in decline. The piano business, however, was booming; and, likely noticing the 1882 entry of the renowned organ maker Mason & Hamlin into piano manufacturing, Estey and the company’s other principals, including Levi K. Fuller and Jacob’s son Julius, decided to take the same path.
Estey became a piano manufacturer by forming a partnership with Simpson, who was named president of the new Estey Piano Company; the Simpson piano was essentially re-branded as the new Estey model. Simpson, of course, had been a pioneer in Bronx piano manufacturing, and this may have played a role in Estey’s decision to build its plant on the North Side. A.B. Ogden & Son was hired to design the factory, but Simpson may have had some influence over its appearance and form, as he had dabbled in architecture, altering his home on West 129th Street in 1882 to give it a “picturesque exoticism.” Work began on the “large factory with modern appliances,” as it would later be described, in August of 1885; it was completed, at a cost of approximately $40,000, in February of 1886. While the factory was under construction, Estey Piano decided to construct three more buildings that would extend its complex by an additional 80 feet along Southern Boulevard. These brick structures, designed by Ogden’s firm and completed at the same time as the main factory, were a one-story extension, a one-story shed, and a two-story stable.
Estey Piano prospered in its early years, as “Estey grand and upright pianos soon became a dominant factor in the piano trade,” according to Alfred Dolge, who added that they often “carried off highest awards for superior construction and workmanship.” In 1887, the trade publication Musical Courier wrote that the Estey Piano Factory was “one of the most complete in the country”; two years later, it called the firm’s upright “a most beautiful specimen of piano manufacturing,” of which Estey would “find no difficulty in disposing … in the best musical circles in the land.” While trade journals’ opinions should be considered with caution, those of the respected piano tuner and regulator Daniel Spillane may be more reliable. Five years after the Estey Factory opened, Spillane called its piano “a very excellent instrument,” adding that “much of the technical and musical merit of these pianos is due to the competency and skill of [Stephen] Brambach, who is a gentleman of fine musical and mechanical sensibilities [and] … one of the best tuners in New York.” Although Brambach had apparently started his own piano company in 1885, he remained involved with Estey in 1890, originating “all new ideas in the mechanics and acoustics of the Estey piano.” Brambach’s brother Carl, “one of the most expert and artistic tuners and toners in the country,” was also employed by Estey Piano, according to Spillane.
Business was good, and only four years after the Estey Piano Factory opened, it underwent a huge expansion. In May of 1890, work began on a 100-foot-long east addition that would result in the demolition of the extension, shed, and stable on Southern Boulevard, and create the unified five-story, 200-foot-long Bruckner Boulevard façade that remains essentially unchanged today. The architect of this addition, which was completed in October of 1890 at a cost of about $23,000, was John B. Snook & Sons. This firm, then one of New York’s most prolific, traced its origins to the arrival of John B. Snook (1815-1901) in the United States, from England, in 1835. By 1842, Snook was working with Joseph Trench, and the two helped introduce the Anglo-Italianate style to New York with buildings such as the A.T. Stewart Store at 280 Broadway (1845-46, a Designated New York City Landmark). One of Snook’s best-known works was the first Grand Central Terminal (1869-71, demolished); in 1887, he took his three sons, James Henry (1847-1917), Samuel Booth (18571915), and Thomas Edward, and a son-in-law, John W. Boyleston, into his office, and changed his firm’s name to John B. Snook & Sons. Although Snook had designed a diverse array of buildings—including residential and commercial structures for some of New York’s most prominent families—his firm designed several manufacturing lofts in the 1880s and 1890s that would have made it an appropriate choice for the Estey addition. These industrial buildings, now located in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District—including 8 Greene Street (1883-84), 12 Wooster Street (1883-84), 127 Spring Street/87-89 Greene Street (1886-87), 391-393 West Broadway/77-81 Wooster Street (1889), 151 Spring Street (1889-90) and 361 Canal Street (1891-92)—were utilitarian brick buildings; but like the Estey Factory, they were also designed with an eye toward detail, featuring patterned and textured brickwork, and contrasting stone trim that enliven their facades.
The Estey Factory continued to grow in the 1890s. In 1895, the company extended the building 50 feet along Lincoln Avenue with a one-story, 69-foot-deep brick addition that apparently provided a fireproof home for its woodworking department; at the same time, Estey constructed a new, one-story brick lumber room running for an additional 38 feet along Lincoln, where it met a small, one-story brick building then existing at the southeast corner of Lincoln Avenue and 134th Street. Both the extension and the new building—which appear to remain today as the base of the five-story portion of the factory north of the original building—were designed by Hewlett S. Baker of 492 East 138th Street. Little is known about Baker; he was described as “a property owner in the South Bronx” in a 1910 New York Times article, and as “a contractor and builder in the Bronx” in a 1912 article about his death. By 1900, the one-story buildings near the corner of Lincoln and 134th appear to have been extended to the east.
The portion of the factory north of the original building remained at one story until 1909, when Simpson and architect S. Gifford Slocum raised it to three stories. Slocum, an architect of some note, is remembered primarily for his large residences for wealthy clients, including several fine Queen Anne-style residences built in the Saratoga Springs area in the 1880s. Born in Jefferson County, N.Y., Slocum studied architecture at Cornell University from 1873 to 1875, and by 1885, he had offices in Saratoga and Glens Falls, N.Y. In 1888, Slocum moved to Philadelphia while retaining his Saratoga office; between 1890 and 1909, he practiced architecture in New York City. Simpson hired Slocum to design an alteration to his residence at 117 East 83rd Street, in 1900. Slocum’s two-story addition to the Estey Piano Factory was described as being of “similar construction to the present building” in its Buildings Department application, and it demonstrates continuity with the floor below and with the original building in its segmental-arch-headed window openings, and in its similar decorative details, including pilasters, stone sills supported by corbelled brick courses, and patterned-brick stringcourses. A drawing of the factory following the completion of Slocum’s addition appeared in a 1917 Estey Piano Company advertisement.
Over the previous years, the Estey Piano Company had undergone several changes, weathering the deaths—in 1890, 1896, and 1902, respectively—of Jacob Estey, Levi K. Fuller, and Julius Estey. The firm’s “warerooms” or showrooms, which had been at 5 East 14th Street since the time of the company’s founding, were at 97 Fifth Avenue by 1900 and 7 West 29th Street by 1909. They would move again—in 1912 to the since-demolished “Estey Building” at 23 West 42nd Street—and by 1916 to 12 West 45th Street. By 1912, Estey pianos were being sold at Loeser’s department store in Brooklyn; in its advertising, the company took advantage of its historical association with the Estey Organ Company, stating that “the world-renowned Estey Pianos … are just as reliable as the Estey Organs made famous by the same firm in the days of our parents.” On at least one occasion, the Estey Piano Factory witnessed strife between its employees and management, as in 1912, workers struck Estey and other Bronx piano manufacturers that would not recognize the piano makers’ union and refused to close their shop floors to non-union employees.
In 1917, John B. Simpson’s leadership of the Estey Piano Company came to an end, when George B. Gittins, the former president of piano manufacturer Kohler & Campbell, purchased a controlling interest in the firm. Gittins, an industry prodigy who was only 37 at the time he took Estey Piano’s helm, appears to have begun revamping the company’s product line almost immediately; an “at-the-factory” clearance sale held in November of 1917 was prompted by the company’s intention “to concentrate on the large-scale production of a few standard models.” Two years later, Gittins purchased M. Welte & Sons, Inc., which was originally the American arm of a German company that had invented the reproducing piano, a technologically advanced kind of player piano using special rolls that were able to express, to some extent, the subtleties of the renowned pianists who had “recorded” them. Following the 1907 introduction of Welte’s “Mignon” reproducing piano in the United States, dozens of the world’s most famous pianists made recordings for Welte, allowing Americans to experience, for the first time, something close to having Paderewski, Saint-Saens, and other virtuosi play for them in their homes.
Soon after acquiring Welte, Gittins started shutting down the firm’s Poughkeepsie, N.Y. plant—which had produced rolls, reproducing pianos with and without keyboards, Welte “Philharmonic” reproducing organs, orchestrions, and other products—and expanding the Estey Factory building and its complex. In 1919, architect George F. Hogue of 41 Union Square in Manhattan was hired to add two stories to the northern, three-story portion of the factory, and to add an elevator shaft. This alteration, which cost about $25,000, featured broad expanses of industrial sash typical of the “daylight” factories that were then being constructed around the country. By 1921, Gittins had also constructed a two-story building (not part of this Designation) facing Southern Boulevard and adjoining Snook’s 1890 addition, as well as a four-story factory for Welte (not part of this Designation) that remains today at 27 Bruckner Boulevard. In 1922, the Estey-Welte Corporation was created, which served as an umbrella organization for several Gittins holdings, including the Estey Piano Company and the Welte-Mignon Corporation. Estey, at that time, was manufacturing a variety of pianos, including an 88-note player piano, and manual and reproducing uprights and grands; the new four-story factory on Southern Boulevard made Welte-Mignon pianos and grands, actions for reproducing instruments, and Welte Philharmonic organs.
In 1925, perhaps sensing the end of the glory days for the piano and player piano, Gittins decided to diversify into the manufacture of pipe organs for churches, concert halls, theaters, and large residences. In the following year, Estey-Welte appeared to be perfectly healthy, but by January of 1927, a crash in its stock price brought the over-extended company to its knees. Estey-Welte was in serious trouble, and by summer of that year, it was reorganized as the Welte Company. Gittins was soon gone; by 1928 his old firm was reorganized again, as the Welte-Mignon Corp. This latest incarnation of the firm fell into receivership in 1929, when its chief assets were split up and its factory emptied; one investor, Donald F. Tripp, bought some of the organ business, and the Estey Piano Company was sold to the Settergren Piano Company of Bluffton, Ind. Tripp’s firm was bankrupt within two years; in 1935, Settergren was renamed the Estey Piano Company.
The Estey Piano name continued on for decades. Estey spinets were being advertised in Chicago in 1948, and the firm’s pianos appeared in Macy’s advertisements in the early-to-mid 1960s. The Estey Piano Company was still operating in 1972, when it received a loan from the Commerce Department to assist it in starting production of a plastic piano. At that time, Estey was described as having “an office in Union, N.J., and an old plant in Bluffton, Ind.”
After the old Estey Piano Company Factory was vacated in 1929, it passed through the hands of a number of different owners, and was occupied by many different industrial tenants. A sheet-metal works leased space there in 1932, and its occupants in 1937 included the Whitman Supply Company and Unique Balance Company. By 1939, the factory had been acquired by the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. In February of 1940, Emigrant sold the five-story Estey Factory building and the adjacent two-story building constructed by Gittins to the S.H. Pomeroy Company, a manufacturer of window sashes that had been located on the same block as Estey Piano since 1923 or before. One month later, however, the owner of the building was the 120 Lincoln Avenue Realty Corporation, which was leasing space to Alta Furniture Factories. Until at least 1945, 120 Lincoln Avenue Realty remained the owner of the building; in 1969, it was occupied by the Ranger Plastics Corporation, and in 1973, it was home to a draperies manufacturer. At the end of the 1970s, the old Estey Piano Company Factory housed a maker of textile products and its outlet store, along with manufacturers of wire and “novelty” products. In 1995, when the building was mostly vacant, it was purchased by Truro College, which planned to convert it into student dormitories or a home for a liberal arts and sciences program. Those plans fell through, however, and the college sold the former Estey Factory, now known as the Clock Tower Building, to Carnegie Management, which remodeled its interior to accommodate live-in artists’ studios. It retains this use today.
Description
The Estey Piano Company Factory is an L-shaped, five-story building with a projecting clock tower at its southwest corner. Spanning the east side of Lincoln Avenue between Bruckner Boulevard and East 134th Street, the building has three primary street facades, all of which feature face brick laid in common bond: a 200-foot-long Bruckner Boulevard façade, a 200-foot-long Lincoln Avenue façade, and a façade on 134th Street that is approximately 69 feet in length and attached to an elevator shaft.
The original factory building, which was constructed in 1885-86, extended for 100 feet along Lincoln Avenue and for 100 feet along Southern (now Bruckner) Boulevard. Comprising the westernmost 15 upper-story bays on the south façade and the southernmost 15 upper-story bays on the west façade of the existing building, including the clock tower, this original portion of the Estey Piano Factory was extended by 100 feet to the east along Bruckner Boulevard with the construction of a five-story addition in 1890. (The construction of the 1890 addition resulted in the demolition of three buildings of one and two stories that were completed at the same time as the original factory, and which had a combined street frontage of 80 feet.) Before the construction of the 1890 addition, the five-story portion of the south façade terminated, at its east, with a two-bay projection featuring round-headed windows, all set within a corbelled recess, at the first through fifth floors. This projection—which was identical to the two-bay projection that originally terminated the Lincoln Avenue façade, and remains virtually unchanged today—extended above the adjacent portion of the façade, and, like the clock tower, outward from the façade plane. With the completion of John B. Snook & Sons’ 1890 addition, the two-bay projection on the south façade was doubled in width—the two new bays matching the original two—and its parapet was raised to match, in height, the parapet above the then-new, three-bay projection at the eastern end of the extended façade. Both the raised and new parapets featured, just below their pressed-metal cornices, recessed square panels arranged in a row. Also at that time, the four-bay projection became the central feature of a broad, essentially symmetrical Southern Boulevard façade, with the new three-bay projection at the eastern end of the façade balancing the three-bay, projecting clock tower at the building’s corner.
- From the 2006 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Electronics Hobby
Building a new components-cabinet.
Hacker (hobbyist)
In home computing, a hacker is someone who modifies software or hardware of their own private computer system. It includes building, rebuilding, modifying, and creating software (software cracking, demoscene), electronic hardware (hardware hacking, overclocking, modding), either to make it better, faster, to give it added features or to make it do something it was not originally intended to do. Hacking in this sense originated around hobbyist circles discussing the MITS Altair at the homebrew computer club.
Hacker artists[edit]
See also: Fractal art, algorithmic art and interactive art
Hacker artists create art by hacking on technology as an artistic medium. This has extended the definition of the term and what it means to be a hacker. Such artists may work with graphics, computer hardware, sculpture, music and other audio, animation, video, software, simulations, mathematics, reactive sensory systems, text, poetry, literature, or any combination thereof.
Dartmouth College musician Larry Polansky states: "Technology and art are inextricably related. Many musicians, video artists, graphic artists, and even poets who work with technology—whether designing it or using it—consider themselves to be part of the 'hacker community.' Computer artists, like non-art hackers, often find themselves on society’s fringes, developing strange, innovative uses of existing technology. There is an empathetic relationship between those, for example, who design experimental music software and hackers who write communications freeware." [3]
Another description is offered by Jenny Marketou: "Hacker artists operate as culture hackers who manipulate existing techno-semiotic structures towards a different end, to get inside cultural systems on the net and make them do things they were never intended to do." [4]
A successful software and hardware hacker artist is Mark Lottor (mkl), who has created the 3-D light art projects entitled the Cubatron, and the Big Round Cubatron. This art is made using custom computer technology, with specially designed circuit boards and programming for microprocessor chips to manipulate the LED lights.
Don Hopkins is a software hacker artist well known for his artistic cellular automata. This art, created by a cellular automata computer program, generates objects which randomly bump into each other and in turn create more objects and designs, similar to a lava lamp, except that the parts change color and form through interaction. Says Hopkins, "Cellular automata are simple rules that are applied to a grid of cells, or the pixel values of an image. The same rule is applied to every cell, to determine its next state, based on the previous state of that cell and its neighboring cells. There are many interesting cellular automata rules, and they all look very different, with amazing animated dynamic effects. 'Life' is a widely known cellular automata rule, but many other lesser known rules are much more interesting."
Some hacker artists create art by writing computer code, and others, by developing hardware. Some create with existing software tools such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP.
The creative process of hacker artists can be more abstract than artists using non-technological media. For example, mathematicians have produced visually stunning graphic presentations of fractals, which hackers have further enhanced, often producing detailed and intricate graphics and animations from simple mathematical formulas.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(hobbyist)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Jan. 31 that collaborative enforcement efforts led by its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) component and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) resulted in the seizure of nearly 285,000 counterfeit sports-related items worth an estimated $24.2 million. Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez represented CBP during the press event. Photo by Ozzy Trevino, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
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