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My little boy is a sick kitty. He was lethargic, refusing to eat, and having potty problems again. Turns out he has a urinary blockage and will need to spend till Monday morning in the hospital. Hoping he will be OK.
1-yard Front Load Dumpster
Royal Refuse
Eugene, OR
May 2014
©Bryn Erdman. All Rights Reserved.
(History.com) Dec. 1, 1955 - In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city's racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park's historic act of civil disobedience.
"The mother of the civil rights movement," as Rosa Parks is known, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. She worked as a seamstress and in 1943 joined the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
According to a Montgomery city ordinance in 1955, African Americans were required to sit at the back of public buses and were also obligated to give up those seats to white riders if the front of the bus filled up. Parks was in the first row of the black section when the white driver demanded that she give up her seat to a white man. Parks' refusal was spontaneous but was not merely brought on by her tired feet, as is the popular legend. In fact, local civil rights leaders had been planning a challenge to Montgomery's racist bus laws for several months, and Parks had been privy to this discussion.
Learning of Parks' arrest, the NAACP and other African American activists immediately called for a bus boycott to be held by black citizens on Monday, December 5. Word was spread by fliers, and activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the protest. The first day of the bus boycott was a great success, and that night the 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., told a large crowd gathered at a church, "The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right." King emerged as the leader of the bus boycott and received numerous death threats from opponents of integration. At one point, his home was bombed, but he and his family escaped bodily harm.
The boycott stretched on for more than a year, and participants carpooled or walked miles to work and school when no other means were possible. As African Americans previously constituted 70 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership, the municipal transit system suffered gravely during the boycott. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama state and Montgomery city bus segregation laws as being in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On December 20, King issued the following statement: "The year old protest against city buses is officially called off, and the Negro citizens of Montgomery are urged to return to the buses tomorrow morning on a non-segregated basis." The boycott ended the next day. Rosa Parks was among the first to ride the newly desegregated buses.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and his nonviolent civil rights movement had won its first great victory. There would be many more to come.
Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005. Three days later the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
Statue of Admiral David G. Farragut
•U.S. National Register of Historic Places
•Contributing Property to U.S. Historic District
•Part of: Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C.
•NRHP Reference #: 78000257
•Added to NRHP: September 20, 1978
•Location: Farragut Square, Washington, D.C., United States
•Coordinates: 38.901944°N 77.038972°W
•Designer: Vinnie Ream
•Material: Bronze (sculpture); Granite (base)
•Length: 3 feet (0.91 m)
•Width: 3 feet (0.91 m)
•Height: 10 feet (3.0 m)
•Opening date: April 25, 1881
•Dedicated to: David Farragut
Admiral David G. Farragut is a statue in Washington, D.C. honoring David Farragut, a career military officer who served as the first admiral in the United States Navy. The monument is sited in the center of Farragut Square, a city square in downtown Washington, D.C. The statue was sculpted by female artist Vinnie Ream, whose best known works include a statue of Abraham Lincoln and several statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection. The monument was dedicated in 1881 in an extravagant ceremony attended by President James A. Garfield, members of his cabinet, and thousands of spectators. It was the first monument erected in Washington, D.C. in honor of a naval war hero.
The statue is one of eighteen Civil War monuments in Washington, D.C., which were collectively listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The bronze statue, which rests on a granite base, was cast from the USS Hartford bronze propellers and not from enemy cannon like most Civil War monuments in the city. The monument and surrounding park are owned and maintained by the National Park Service, a federal agency of the Interior Department.
History
Background
David Farragut (1801–1870) was a career military officer who first saw combat during the War of 1812 at the age of 9. He served on the USS Essex and was captured by the British. After the war, Farragut fought pirates in the West Indies on the ship USS Ferret, his first command of a United States Navy vessel. He also fought in the Mexican–American War and oversaw the construction of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. Although Farragut and his wife were Southerners, they remained loyal to the United States during the Civil War. His success in capturing New Orleans resulted in Farragut being honored with a new title created by the Navy, rear admiral. He continued to have great success in defeating Confederate forces, most notably at the Battle of Mobile Bay, where he uttered his famous phrase “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Following the war, President Andrew Johnson promoted Farragut to admiral, the first U.S. naval officer to receive the title.
Soon after Farragut’s death in 1870, there were calls for a memorial to honor the naval hero. Representative Nathaniel P. Banks introduced a resolution in Congress for the erection of a monument to Farragut. The resolution stated that the statue was to be “after a design molded from life”, a subtle caveat intended to assist someone Banks already had in mind to create the statue, sculptor Horatio Stone of Washington, D.C., who claimed to have met Farragut and had already begun working on a statue. Bank’s resolution was referred to the Joint Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, where the committee chose to hold a competition, much to the dismay of Stone. Sculptors were only given sixty days to submit models of the statue, but when the congressional act approving the monument passed on April 16, 1872, the resolution was amended and the deadline for design submissions was extended by nine months.
Vinnie Ream (1847–1914), a sculptor who at age nineteen had received the first government commission ever granted a female artist when she created a bust of President Abraham Lincoln, began working on a bust of Farragut, whom she had met several times. Farragut’s widow, Virginia, admired Ream’s design and became a strong advocate for the artist’s model to be selected. Virginia wrote letters of endorsement to committee members and supplied Ream with the names of Farragut’s friends so that they too would offer their endorsements to the committee. There were thirteen artists who submitted models with Ream being the only woman. Their designs were displayed in the basement of the United States Capitol and several were severely criticized by the press, most notably the models by J. Wilson MacDonald, Randolph Rogers, and Edward Watson.
Stone and Ream’s model received the most praise. Stone’s model was praised by several naval officers who called it “true to life” and “unsurpassed by similar works.” Ream’s model received praise from several high profile individuals, most notably President Ulysses S. Grant, who called it “first rate”. Admiral David Dixon Porter said the model “of Miss Vinnie Ream is the only likeness in the lot.” General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was reportedly infatuated with Ream, also became a strong advocate for her model. He wrote to the committee that “the plaster model of Vinnie Ream struck me decidedly as the best likeness, and recalled the memory of the Admiral’s face and figure more perfectly than any other model there on exhibition.” The decision by the committee ultimately ended in a three-way tie between Ream, Stone, and MacDonald. The project stalled until the next Congress convened in 1874. A commission to select the winning model was created and consisted of Virginia, Sherman, and Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson. Virginia and Sherman voted to approve Ream’s design, though Robeson refused to accept the result and tried in vain to convince Virginia to change her mind. Two months after the vote, Robeson relented and Ream’s model was officially selected.
Ream was awarded $20,000 for the design and worked on the statue for the next few years. She consulted Virginia and incorporated her suggestions, much to the delight of Virginia. In 1879, Ream announced that the model was ready to be cast and that the process would take place at the Washington Navy Yard, which had never before cast such a large statue. She continued to perfect the model while at the Navy Yard, much to the delight of the sailors. Although many of the city’s statues of military heroes were cast from captured enemy cannon, Farragut’s statue was cast from the USS Hartford bronze propellers that were removed and shipped to the Navy Yard. The amount of bronze yielded from the propellers was enough not only for the statue, but the four mortars on the corners of the statue base.
The site chosen for the statue was Farragut Square, a park renamed in honor of the admiral shortly after his death. The original dedication date, March 4, 1881, was pushed back because the statue base wasn’t ready. The base did not arrive until April 20, five days before the dedication, resulting in Ream’s husband, Lieutenant Richard L. Hoxie, working around the clock with a crew of workers to make sure the site was ready. The base was completed and statue erected just hours before the ceremony began.
Dedication
The statue was dedicated at 1 pm on April 25, 1881, becoming the first monument erected in Washington, D.C. in honor of a naval war hero. Government employees were dismissed at noon, the same time a procession began at the base of Capitol Hill. The military contingent, led by Commodore Charles H. Baldwin, moved west on Pennsylvania Avenue, where houses were decorated with bunting, and past the White House, before heading north on Connecticut Avenue. The homes surrounding the square were decorated with streamers and flags. Nearly 4,000 invited guests, including members of the Grand Army of the Republic and fellow sailors who served alongside Farragut, listened to John Philip Sousa conduct the Marine Band as they filled three temporary stands that were built on three sides of the statue. Distinguished guests included President James A. Garfield and his wife, Lucretia, members of the President’s cabinet, Virginia Farragut, and Ream.
An opening prayer was led by Reverend Arthur Brooks followed by the statue being unveiled by two members of Farragut’s Hartford crew, Quartermaster C. B. Knowles and Boatswain James Wiley. When the statue was unveiled, the Marine Band began playing a march and a seventeen gun salute was fired from nearby Lafayette Square. Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt then introduced the President, who formally accepted the statue on behalf of the American people and gave a brief address. He stated: “Today we come to hail this hero, who comes from the sea, down from the shrouds of his flagship, wreathed with the smoke and glory of victory, bringing 60 years of national life and honor, to take his place as an honored compatriot and perpetual guardian of his Nation’s glory. In the name of the Nation I accept this noble statue, and his country will guard it as he guarded his country.” Speeches were then given by former Postmaster General Horace Maynard and Senator Daniel W. Voorhees followed by the Marine Band playing “Hail to the Chief” and another seventeen gun salute. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the military procession saluted the statue as they marched back down Connecticut Avenue, past the White House, and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Later History
The Farragut statue is one of eighteen Civil War monuments in Washington, D.C., which were collectively listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 20, 1978, and the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites on March 3, 1979. It is one of the few Civil War monuments that is a not an equestrian sculpture. The others are the Dupont Circle Fountain, Stephenson Grand Army of the Republic Memorial, Nuns of the Battlefield, the Peace Monument, and statues of Brigadier General Albert Pike and General John A. Rawlins. The monument and park are owned and maintained by the National Park Service, a federal agency of the Interior Department.
Design and Location
The statue is located in the center of Farragut Square, a park in downtown Washington, D.C., bordered by K Street (north), I Street (south), and 17th Street NW (east and west). Two sidewalks bisect the park from the northwest to southeast corners, running along either side of the statue, on axis with Connecticut Avenue. Another sidewalk leads from the northeast to southwest corners and runs along the statue. A small, ornamental iron fence surrounds the statue base.
The bronze statue measures 10 ft (3.0 m) tall, 3 ft (0.91 m) wide, and 3 ft (0.91 m) long. Farragut is depicted in his military uniform and standing on the deck of his ship, facing south towards the White House. His right knee is bent as his right foot rests on a capstan. He is holding a telescope with both hands. The base, made of granite from Rockland, Maine, is 16 ft (4.9 m) tall, 18 ft (5.5 m) long, and 24 ft (7.3 m) wide. It is a square, three-tiered base with a chopped mortar on each corner. The inscription “FARRAGUT” is on the front of the base. Inside the base is a box containing documents related to Farragut’s career, a history of the sculpture, a copy of the Army and Navy Register, and a bronze model of the propeller used to cast the statue and mortars.
Six Christian leaders including a nun have been arrested after holding a prayer vigil at Treasurer Joe Hockey’s electorate office in North Sydney. The group entered Mr Hockey’s office at 10:30am today and refused to leave, they calling for a timetabled commitment that all children will be released from immigration detention centres.
The group have been removed from Joe Hockey's office by police, and released without charge.
The protest follows a series of prayer-centred sit-in actions that has sparked a nationwide Christian movement called Love Makes A Way. Forty five religious leaders from a wide range of denominations have been arrested over the past four months after holding prayer vigils in offices of MPs from both major parties.
All the prayer vigil participants have previously been involved in advocacy for asylum seekers. The participants of today’s action feel moved to participate in nonviolent direct action in light of the complete failure of both major parties to protect the wellbeing of people seeking asylum.
Prayer vigil participant and Josephite Sister Jan Barnett said: "It is after great contemplation that I risk arrest here today, I feel I can't leave without a commitment from the Government to release all children from detention and to resettle them in a safe and nurturing environment."
"All people fleeing persecution have a right to seek asylum, it is legal to do so, and the Australian Government has both a legal and moral duty to care for asylum seekers, especially children," she said.
Matt Anslow, another participant in the prayer vigil said: "Mr Hockey told the federal parliament in 2012 during debate over the so-called Malaysia plan, ‘I will never ever support a people swap where you can send a 13-year-old child unaccompanied to a country without supervision. Never. It will be over my dead body’."
Mr Anslow described how the prayer vigil sought to appeal to Mr Hockey’s own values: "Mr Hockey’s denunciation of the Malaysia plan shows us he has heartfelt concern for children fleeing persecution. We ask that Mr Hockey use his influence to advocate for the freedom of children from Australia’s detention centres."
Retired nurse Margaret Coffey said: "I’m risking arrest today because working as a nurse meant I saw first hand the devastating mental health consequences of locking young people in detention centres."
"We are robbing children of their childhoods and doing irreversible damage to the health of young people with the Immigration Department’s most recent figures showing the average period of time we are locking up asylum seekers in detention facilities is steadily increasing to 349 days.
"The Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce recently described the Federal Government’s treatment of unaccompanied children seeking asylum as ‘state-sanctioned child abuse’ and as Christians we cannot stand idly by while vulnerable people suffer at the hands of our government," she said.
A deal to allow Australia to send refugees to Cambodia for resettlement is imminent and may be signed as early as this week, Fairfax Media reports.
Prayer vigil participant Kylie Beach said: “As a mother I feel that sending vulnerable children to Cambodia is dangerous and unconscionable because the Australian Government cannot guarantee their wellbeing or safety there. We should be welcoming these precious children into our communities, not exporting them to developing nations.”
Inter-media exhibition about music, mushrooms and decomposition by the band The Observatory at SAM, Tanjong Pagar Distripark.
2025 Waste Expo Tradeshow visit
Stellar Products refuse hopper for use on utility vehicles
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« I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. » (IT)
« Gli farò un'offerta che non potrà rifiutare. »
(Vito Corleone)
The Godfather is a 1972 American gangster-drama film based on the novel of the same name by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola, and Robert Towne It stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton, and features John Cazale, Talia Shire, Al Martino, and Abe Vigoda. The story spans ten years from 1945 to 1955 and chronicles the fictional Italian American Corleone crime family. Two sequels followed: The Godfather Part II in 1974, and The Godfather Part III in 1990.
Savoca is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Messina in the Italian region Sicily, located about 170 km east of Palermo and about 30 km southwest of Messina.
Savoca borders the following municipalities: Casalvecchio Siculo, Forza d'Agrò, Furci Siculo, Sant'Alessio Siculo, Santa Teresa di Riva.The town, together with Forza d'Agrò, was the location for the scenes set in Corleone of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Bar Vitelli in Savoca, which is still a functioning establishment, was featured in the motion picture as the place where Michael Corleone asked Apollonia's father to meet his daughter.
Il padrino (The Godfather) è un film del 1972 diretto da Francis Ford Coppola, prima pellicola della trilogia omonima firmata dal regista, ispirata al romanzo omonimo di Mario Puzo.La pellicola fu premiata con tre premi Oscar e, insieme al suo seguito, è considerata una pietra miliare della storia del cinema.Il padrino è stata infatti considerata la seconda miglior pellicola statunitense della storia dall'American Film Institute[, inoltre è al secondo posto della classifica dell'Internet Movie Database.Le scene siciliane del film furono girate a Savoca e particolarmente nel vecchio "Bar Vitelli" nella foto tuttora meta di visite di molti turisti americani.
Savoca è un comune italiano di 1.786 abitanti della provincia di Messina in Sicilia.Città d'Arte e paese dalle sette facce, dal 2008 è inserita tra i Borghi più belli d'Italia. Ha un'economia prevalentemente agricola che però si sta votando al turismo culturale. Sussistono coltivazioni di agrumeti, vigneti, uliveti, frutteti, mandorli, ortaggi e, allevamenti rurali di bovini, pecore, capre e suini. Conserva, nel suo territorio, antiche vestigia di origine medioevale, rinascimentale e barocca. È famoso perché possiede una cripta in cui sono custodite ed esposte le salme imbalsamate dei notabili del paese risalenti ai secc. XVIII e XIX e, per essere stato scelto come set di numerosi film di grande successo, come "il Padrino" di Francis Ford Coppola del 1972 e La vita rubata del 2007. Savoca fa parte del comprensorio turistico della Valle d'Agrò ed è altresì comune aderente all'Unione dei Comuni delle Valli joniche dei Peloritani e del P.I.T.13.Il comune di Savoca ha un'estensione di circa 8 km². L'abitato è costituito da un centro storico e da tante frazioni più o meno piccole immerse nella campagna. La vegetazione presente è quella tipicamente mediterranea: nelle zone pianeggianti ci sono dei rigogliosi agrumeti, mentre nelle zone collinari sono presenti vasti vigneti ed uliveti. Il capoluogo comunale si trova a 303 metri s.l.m., conta 106 abitanti ed è costituito da un borgo medioevale La maggior parte della popolazione abita le frazioni di Rina (498 abitanti), San Francesco di Paola (407 abitanti) e Contura, che si trovano nei pressi della Fiumara d'Agrò nell'omonima valle. Le altre frazioni sono: Cucco, Màllina, Romissa, Mancusa, Mortilla, Botte, Rogani e Cantidati Superiore.L'antico e caratteristico centro storico, ricco di antichi monumenti di origine medioevale, si caratterizza per la presenza di stretti e tortuosi vicoli ed è suddiviso in sette quartieri : Sant'Antonio,Cappuccini, Borgo,San Michele,San Rocco,Pentefur,e San Giovanni .
While working in a neighborhood in Winter Haven, this truck passed by me. I ended up seeing this crew the rest of the week throughout Winter Haven.
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
This truck is really old, but in absolutely fantastic condition for its age!
Probably built in the 60's!
The truck featured an automatic bin lifter for dust free collection.
If you pushed the brake pedal, the windscreen wipers started. If you turned on the lights, the horn sounded. The indicators refused to work at all. There was clearly something wrong with the English car that Mahy had bought for a song from a garage owner in Brussels. The price was just 3,000 Belgian francs, only marginally more than the car’s scrap value in the early 1960s. But apart from the dodgy electrics, there was not much wrong with it. The Cadillac V8 engine still purred nicely under the bonnet and the bodywork was passable, except for the radiator grille, which Ghislain Mahy hated. Like the name: Allard. Ghislain was not a big fan of English sports cars and even forgot the name of this one when he sent son Ivan to fetch it!
The Allard was a true Londoner. From its foundation in 1936 until the end of the Second World War, the company’s factory was in Putney. It then moved to Clapham, where it remained until Allard went out of business in 1966. During those 30 years, scarcely 1,900 cars were made. But they were good cars. The company shot to prominence when an Allard P1 won the challenging Monte Carlo rally in January 1952. Amongst the drivers was Sydney Allard, who had designed the car, which beat the legendary Stirling Moss (in a Sunbeam) into second place. It was in that same year that the first three cars of the new P2 Monte Carlo model rolled off the production line. It had a shortened radiator grille, to help keep snow out of the engine during the gruelling winter race to Monaco. With Hilton Brothers aluminium coachwork on a wooden frame, the P2 looked more modern that its predecessor, but was less popular with the car-buying public. As a result, only eleven P2s were ever made. The Mahy’s cream-coloured Allard is one of the first three made in 1952. And one of these three is known to have competed in the 1953 Monte Carlo Rally, but was unable to repeat the previous year’s success. Perhaps it was this one?
Engine : Cadillac
5.400 cc
V8
Mahy - a Family of Cars
09/09/2021 - 31/10/2021
Vynckier Site
Nieuwevaart 51-53
Gent
Belgium
Several Americans prisoners of war who refused to return to the United States hang a “Down with McCarthyism” sign on a truck January 28, 1954 as they prepare to leave the demilitarized zone in Korea and head into North Korea.
From left to right: Albert C. Delhome, Ashland, Pa.; Clarence C. Adams, Memphis, Tn.; Andrew Condron, the lone Briton; and John R. Dunn, Baltimore, Md.
As the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s continued in the United States, the prisoners who refused repatriation were labeled as “brainwashed” and fear of communists’ ability to shape people’s minds was spread across the country.
However some were African Americans who did not wish to return to face racial discrimination. Others agreed with their hosts that communism represented a better hope for mankind than the capitalism of the United States.
Most, though ultimately had difficulty adapting to the culture and language of the host country and eventually returned to the United States.
Prisoner repatriation was one of the greatest stumbling blocks in the long cease-fire negotiations between the forces of the United Nations and those of China and North Korea.
In June 1953, the two sides agreed that no prisoner who did not wish to be repatriated would be forced to do so (this had long been a sticking point in negotiations, with the Chinese and North Koreans wanting all prisoners returned to their home countries).
Prisoners who did not wish to go back to their home countries would be given 90 days in a neutral compound near Panmunjom to reconsider before being allowed to stay in enemy territory. Following the armistice that was signed on 27 July 1953, effectively ending the Korean War (South Korea never signed), the main prisoner exchange was free to proceed.
One British and 23 American soldiers (along with 327 South Koreans) refused to be returned to their homelands. Two, Corporal Claude Batchelor and Corporal Edward Dickenson, changed their minds before the 90-day window expired. Both were court-martialed and sentenced to prison terms, with Batchelor serving 4½ years and Dickenson 3½.
This left 22 U.N. soldiers who voluntarily stayed with the Communists after the final exchange of prisoners. The 21 Americans were given dishonorable discharges.
This had the unintended consequence of rendering them immune to court-martial when they finally returned to the United States (which the majority eventually did), because they were no longer active-duty military. However, they were still criminally culpable for any acts of collaboration or offenses against fellow prisoners committed while they were POWs.
About 4 a.m. on February 24, 1954, a train carrying the 21 American defectors rumbled across the Yalu River into China. The Chinese soon shipped some of the men off to study language and politics. Others went to mills, factories, and farms across Eastern China.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/p/2e8Xy6t
The photographer is unknown. The image is an Associated Press photograph housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star collection.
The great turning point in Martin of Tour’s life occurred about 336. It is a scene portrayed over and over again in icons and other images of Martin. One winter day, while stationed in Amiens, Gaul (modern-day France), as Martin approached the city gate, he saw a half-naked man shivering with cold and begging alms from indifferent passers-by. Having nothing but his cloak, Martin drew his sword, cut the cloak in two, and gave half to the beggar. That night, in a dream, Martin saw Jesus wearing the cloak he had given the beggar man and heard him say, "Martin, still a catechumen, has covered me with this garment." Martin’s baptism quickly followed this experience.
Martin’s situation as a newly baptized Christian and a soldier came to a crisis point following a barbarian invasion of Gaul. On the eve of battle, his company was called to appear before Caesar Julian receive a war-bounty. Refusing to accept such a reward, Martin told Julian: "Up to now I have served you as a soldier. Now let me serve Christ. Give the bounty to these others-they are going to fight, but I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful for me to fight."
The emperor accused Martin of cowardice, to which he replied that, in the name of Christ, he was prepared to face the enemy on the following day, alone and unarmed. He was thrown into prison, but a swift end to the hostilities meant that no further action was taken against him, and he was discharged.
Martin’s next move was to go to Poitiers, where the local bishop, Saint Hilary, welcomed the young man among his disciples.
After ten years he was called to become bishop of Tours, an office he accepted with profound reluctance but served for over twenty-five years until his death in 397. His biography recounts the many ways Martin brought a commitment to Christian peacemaking to his ministry as bishop. In particular, he opposed the use of violence against heretics, even when this left him susceptible to the charge of heretical sympathies. Thanks to the missionary activity of Martin and his monks, Christianity increasingly took root in the region surrounding Tours.
As Martin lay dying in 397, it is said that a devil appeared to tempt him one last time. Martin said, "You will find nothing in me that belongs to you. Abraham's bosom is about to receive me." With these words he gave up his soul to God.
Martin was the first confessor who was not a martyr whose name was added to the church calendar in the West. His biographer, Sulpitius Severus, wrote of him: "Martin never let an hour or a moment go by without giving himself to prayer or to reading and, even as he read or was otherwise occupied, he never ceased from prayer to God. His face shined with heavenly joy. In his mouth was nothing but the name of Christ and in his soul nothing but love, peace and mercy."
The story of Martin's conversion is striking for linking two themes, on the one hand an encounter with Christ hidden in the poor and, on the other, his realization that to follow Christ is to embrace a merciful life in which one is obliged to protect the lives of others, even one’s enemies.
1798 Rebellion monument by Oliver Sheppard - Father John Murphy points the way for the young insurgent.
It was at Oulart Hill near Enniscorthy that Father John Murphy had set the insurrection on its course. Enniscorthy was at the heart of the Rebellion, particularly Vinegar Hill, outside the town. The hill was first proposed as a site for the monument, but its owner, Lord Portsmouth, refused permission. It was then decided to place it in the Market Square which had seen bitter fighting in May and June, 1798. In 1905 Sir Thomas Esmond laid the foundation stone and in February the committee advertised for a sculptor. In raising the £800 for the commission the local committee was supported by committees in Dublin, Liverpool and New York. The support from America was particularly important. The Enniscorthy committee entreated Sheppard to make a submission, which he did by April 1905. An edition of 5,000 postcards using a photograph of Sheppard’s sketch was printed to publicise the project and raise money.
The driving force behind the Enniscorthy committee was Father Robert FitzHenry, administrator of St Aidan’s, Enniscorthy, who was a local nationalist historian. He made suggestions to the sculptor to modify the group to enhance its ‘meaning and strength’. Throughout 1906, Sheppard worked on the full-size model in his studio at 30 Pembroke Road, Dublin, assisted by the young sculptor, Albert Power. An Enniscorthy delegation came to his studio to inspect the progress of the work in May 1907. The bronze was cast by the Compagnie des Bronzes, Brussels, later that year and was completed by February 1908.
The unveiling took place on Sunday, 31 May, 1908. There was the normal big parade with an attendance of 20,000 people, many of whom came on special trains. The unveiling was performed once again by Father Kavanagh. He had a personal interest since he was grand-nephew of Father Michael Murphy, killed in action at the battle of Arklow. Kavanagh spoke forcibly on his usual themes. He praised the men who haddied for their ‘dear native land—in defence of her sacred altars and cherished homes’. He pointed to the contemporary lessons of the Rebellion—that Ireland must be a ‘self-governing nation...This Irish land belongs to the Irish race, whose ownership goes back to a remote period of the world’s history’. He castigated the Act of Union when the old Irish parliament was ‘so treacherously and basely filched from her people’. When he concluded the band played ‘Who Fears to Speak of 98’, ‘A Nation Once Again’, and ‘God Save Ireland’, with the crowd joining in song.
As in Wexford before, the Irish Parliamentary Party used the campaign and unveiling to marshal support for the Home Rule cause. William Redmond astutely linked the Rebellion of 1798 with various political improvements of the nineteenth century: ‘The aspiration of the patriots of ‘98 must be satisfied, and a full measure of national freedom must be granted to Ireland.’ Unlike Kavanagh,Redmond gave full credit to the United Irishmen which would have appealed to the more radical voters among the supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Father FitzHenry reiterated the contemporary Catholic church view when he referred to Sheppard’s two-figure group: It was particularly fitting that a priest and a peasant should stand together united as they stood... when they fought side-by-side for faith and fatherland...It was God’s decree that the people of Ireland should be allowed to carry out their own affairs without any interference from anyone.
There was only one discordant note. Mr McAleavy of Liverpool said that he supported Sinn Féin ‘but he was not going to run down the Irish Party’. The day concluded with dinner when Sheppard was thanked and handed a cheque for the balance owing.
The cult of Father John Murphy
The Enniscorthy memorial with two figures is more complex than the Wexford one. It shows Father John Murphy, the patriot-priest, with a young man with banner and home-made sword. The cult of Father John Murphy owed agreat deal to the polemical writing of Father Kavanagh who described him as ‘the idol of the brave men whom he led, and who admired in him the projection of their own courage’. The Enniscorthy monument commemorates the Rebellion as a religious crusade against anti-Catholic oppression. The orthodox piety of Father Murphy is emphasised by the rosary beads hanging from his pocket. (The Rosary was a popular Catholic devotion of 1898, rather than 1798.) The strong clerical element in the organising committee ensured the dominance of this interpretation.
In this monument by Sheppard, the 1798 Rebellion was viewed as a morally righteous rising by devout Catholic people, led by Catholic clergy, fighting for their religion and their country, against the Godless English enemy. All the complexities of the 1790s were ruthlessly compressed with this simplified, historically skewed, but extremely popular and powerful interpretation at the centenary. The actual French Revolution was detested by the Irish Catholic bishops in 1798 and again in 1898 when anti-clericalism in France was still very strong. In Ireland, the devotion to the Catholic church by Irish farmers, now gradually acquiring ownership of their land, was the bedrock on which the monuments were founded. The relative size of priest and pike man at Enniscorthy, with one clearly the leader pointing the way, and the other the follower, bearing the standard, were symbolic of this Catholic political strategy.
Deep ambiguity
However, constitutional nationalists preferred to ignore the deep ambiguity of this monument which clearly commemorate a violent and bloody popular rising. The Catholic church preferred to ignore the secularist republicanism. The presence of these physically large, dramatic and forceful monuments pointed to the possibility of using violence again to solve Ireland’s political problems. While constitutional nationalism provided the drive behind the creation of this monument, ironically it was the tradition of physical force, implicit in all the 1798 commemorations, including Sheppard’s figures, which ultimately benefited most. This in turn swept away the Irish Parliamentary Party. The sculptures are multi-faceted and have a resonance greater than the narrow intentions of those who commissioned them at the centenary.
In March of 1908, the Adelaide City Council purchased 2 acres on Halifax and Gilles streets to erect a refuse destructor. The successful tenderer was Heenan & Froude Ltd. of Manchester.
The destructor was driven by electricity, and by 1910, the destructor was in operation.
The chimney stack remains, surrounded by modern apartments.
Klinkicht, Gerhard, * 1915, † 14.03.2000 Bavaria, Wehrmacht Captain. A commemorative plaque on St. Stephen's Cathedral (side of the gate Singertor) recalls that in April 1945 Klinkicht refused to execute the order to bombard the cathedral.
Klinkicht, Gerhard, * 1915, † 14.03.2000 Bayern, Wehrmachtshauptmann. Eine Gedenktafel am Stephansdom (Seite des Singertors) hält in Erinnerung, dass sich Klinkicht im April 1945 geweigert hatte, den Befehl zur Beschießung des Doms auszuführen.
Fire in St. Stephen's Cathedral: eyewitnesses cried in the face of devastation.
Despite great need after the war, the landmark of Austria was rebuilt within seven years.
04th April 2015
What happened in the heart of Vienna 70 years ago brought tears to many horrified residents. On 12 April 1945, the Pummerin, the largest bell of St. Stephen's Cathedral, fell as a result of a roof fire in the tower hall and broke to pieces. The following day, a collapsing retaining wall pierced through the vault of the southern side choir, the penetrating the cathedral fire destroyed the choir stalls and choir organ, the Imperial oratory and the rood screen cross. St. Stephen's Cathedral offered a pitiful image of senseless destruction, almost at the end of that terrible time when the Viennese asked after each bombing anxiously: "Is Steffl still standing?"
100 grenades for the cathedral
Already on April 10, the cathedral was to be razed to the ground. In retaliation for hoisting a white flag on St. Stephen's Cathedral, the dome must be reduced to rubble and ash with a fiery blast of a hundred shells. Such was the insane command of the commander of an SS Artillery Division in the already lost battle for Vienna against the Red Army.
The Wehrmacht Captain Gerhard Klinkicht, from Celle near Hanover, read the written order to his soldiers and tore the note in front of them with the words: "No, this order will not be executed."
What the SS failed to do, settled looters the day after. The most important witness of the events from April 11 to 13, became Domkurat (cathedral curate) Lothar Kodeischka (1905-1994), who, as the sacristan director of St. Stephen, was practically on the spot throughout these days. When Waffen-SS and Red Army confronted each other on the Danube Canal on April 11, according to Kodeischka a report had appeared that SS units were making a counter-attack over the Augarten Bridge. Parts of the Soviet artillery were then withdrawn from Saint Stephen's square. For hours, the central area of the city center was without occupying forces. This was helped by gangs of raiders who set fire to the afflicted shops.
As a stone witness to the imperishable, the cathedral had defied all adversity for over 800 years, survived the conflagrations, siege of the Turks and the French wars, but in the last weeks of the Second World War St. Stephen was no longer spared the rage of annihilation. Contemporary witness Karl Strobl in those days observed "an old Viennese lady who wept over the burning cathedral".
The stunned spectators of destruction were joined, according to press reports, by a man in baggy trousers and a shabby hat, who incidentally remarked, "Well, we'll just have to rebuild him (the dome)." It was Cardinal Theodor Innitzer. Only a few weeks later, on May 15, 1945, the Viennese archbishop proclaimed to the faithful of his diocese: "Helping our cathedral, St. Stephen's Cathedral, to regain its original beauty is an affair of the heart of all Catholics, a duty of honor for all."
April 1945
In April 1945, not only St. Stephen's Cathedral burned. We did some research for you this month.
April 6: The tallest wooden structure of all time, the 190 meter high wooden tower (short-wave transmitter) of the transmitter Mühlacker, is blown up by the SS.
April 12: Following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman is sworn in as the 33rd US President.
April 13: Vienna Operation: Soviet troops conquer Vienna.
April 25: Björn Ulvaeus, Swedish singer, member of the ABBA group, is born.
April 27: The provisional government Renner proclaims the Austrian declaration of independence.
April 30: The Red Army hoists the Soviet flag on the Reichstag building. Adolf Hitler, the dictator of the Third Reich, commits suicide with Eva Braun.
Brand im Stephansdom: Augenzeugen weinten angesichts der Verwüstung.
Trotz großer Not nach dem Krieg wurde das Wahrzeichen Österreichs binnen sieben Jahren wieder aufgebaut.
04. April 2015
Was vor 70 Jahren im Herzen Wiens passierte, trieb vielen entsetzten Bewohnern die Tränen in die Augen. Am 12. April 1945 stürzte die Pummerin, die größte Glocke des Stephansdoms, als Folge eines Dachbrandes in die Turmhalle herab und zerbrach. Tags darauf durchschlug eine einbrechende Stützmauer das Gewölbe des südlichen Seitenchors, das in den Dom eindringende Feuer zerstörte Chorgestühl und Chororgel, Kaiseroratorium und Lettnerkreuz. Der Stephansdom bot ein erbarmungswürdiges Bild sinnloser Zerstörung, und das fast am Ende jener Schreckenszeit, in der die Wiener nach jedem Bombenangriff bang fragten: "Steht der Steffl noch?"
100 Granaten für den Dom
Bereits am 10. April sollte der Dom dem Erdboden gleichgemacht werden. Als Vergeltung für das Hissen einer weißen Fahne auf dem Stephansdom ist der Dom mit einem Feuerschlag von 100 Granaten in Schutt und Asche zu legen. So lautete der wahnwitzige Befehl des Kommandanten einer SS-Artillerieabteilung im schon verlorenen Kampf um Wien gegen die Rote Armee.
Der aus Celle bei Hannover stammende Wehrmachtshauptmann Gerhard Klinkicht las die schriftlich übermittelte Anordnung seinen Soldaten vor und zerriss den Zettel vor aller Augen mit den Worten: "Nein, dieser Befehl wird nicht ausgeführt."
Was der SS nicht gelang, besorgten einen Tag später Plünderer: Zum wichtigsten Zeugen der Geschehnisse vom 11. bis 13. April wurde Domkurat Lothar Kodeischka (1905–1994), der als Sakristeidirektor von St. Stephan in diesen Tagen praktisch durchgehend an Ort und Stelle war. Als am 11. April Waffen-SS und Rote Armee einander am Donaukanal gegenüberstanden, war laut Kodeischka die Nachricht aufgetaucht, SS-Einheiten würden einen Gegenstoß über die Augartenbrücke unternehmen. Teile der sowjetischen Artillerie wurden daraufhin vom Stephansplatz abgezogen. Für Stunden sei der zentrale Bereich der Innenstadt ohne Besatzung gewesen. Dies nützten Banden von Plünderern, die Feuer in den heimgesuchten Geschäften legten.
Als steinerner Zeuge des Unvergänglichen hatte der Dom über 800 Jahre hinweg "allen Widrigkeiten getrotzt, hatte Feuersbrünste, Türkenbelagerungen und Franzosenkriege überstanden. Doch in den letzten Wochen des Zweiten Weltkrieges blieb auch St. Stephan nicht mehr verschont vor der Wut der Vernichtung. Zeitzeuge Karl Strobl beobachtete damals "eine alte Wienerin, die über den brennenden Dom weinte".
Zu den fassungslosen Betrachtern der Zerstörung gesellte sich laut Presseberichten ein Mann in ausgebeulten Hosen und mit abgeschabtem Hut, der so nebenbei bemerkte: "Na, wir werden ihn (den Dom) halt wieder aufbauen müssen." Es handelte sich um Kardinal Theodor Innitzer. Nur wenige Wochen danach, am 15. Mai 1945, ließ der Wiener Erzbischof an die Gläubigen seiner Diözese verlautbaren: "Unsere Kathedrale, den Stephansdom, wieder in seiner ursprünglichen Schönheit erstehen zu helfen, ist eine Herzenssache aller Katholiken, eine Ehrenpflicht aller."
April 1945
Im April 1945 brannte nicht nur der Stephansdom. Wir haben für Sie recherchiert wa noch in diesem Monat geschah.
6. April: Das höchste Holzbauwerk aller Zeiten, der 190 Meter hohe Holzsendeturm des Senders Mühlacker, wird von der SS gesprengt.
12. April: Nach dem Tod von Präsident Franklin D. Roosevelt wird Harry S. Truman als 33. Präsident der USA vereidigt.
13. April: Wiener Operation: Sowjetischen Truppen erobern Wien.
25. April: Björn Ulvaeus, schwedischer Sänger, Mitglied der Gruppe ABBA, kommt zur Welt.
27. April: Von der provisorischen Regierung Renner wird die österreichische Unabhängigkeitserklärung proklamiert.
30. April: Die Rote Armee hisst die sowjetische Fahne auf dem Reichstagsgebäude. Adolf Hitler, der Diktator des Dritten Reiches, begeht mit Eva Braun Selbstmord.
www.nachrichten.at/nachrichten/150jahre/ooenachrichten/Vo...
In March of 1908, the Adelaide City Council purchased 2 acres on Halifax and Gilles streets to erect a refuse destructor. The successful tenderer was Heenan & Froude Ltd. of Manchester.
The destructor was driven by electricity, and by 1910, the destructor was in operation.
Refuse Fascism NO FASCIST TAKEOVER OF DC! Gathering Rally Before March at Dupont Circle, NW, Washington DC on Saturday afternoon, 16 August 2025 by Elvert Barnes Photography
Visit REFUSE FASCISM website at refusefascism.org/events/scenes-from-august-16-march-to-t...
SUMMER 2025 TRUMP'S TAKEOVER OF WASHINGTON DC Project
Elvert Barnes Protests Photography 2025 at elvertxbarnes.com/protests
Elvert Barnes August 2025 at exbphoto.com/2025