View allAll Photos Tagged Those
Those who are local to Seattle may be surprised to know that this was taken at Gasworks Park. Had to remove the background since that big rusty structure was looming in the background. But, it was a perfect chance for me to practice more post-processing! Fun times!! I took this during my lunch hour. Went back to work nice and dirty!
I was going for a dry, desert feel here. Thoughts are always welcome!
Donation Information:
If you would like to help those affected by Wednesday's storms, the American Red Cross is accepting donations in a couple of ways.
Make out your check to "American Red Cross - Neighbors in Need", and mail it to:
American Red Cross - Neighbors in Need
300 Chase Park South
Hoover Alabama 35244
If you prefer to make a donation on-line, please click here to visit alredcross.org
-To apply for federal disaster assistance online, go to www.disasterassistance.gov
-To apply over the phone, call 1-800-621-3362 between the hours of 7am and 10 pm.
-The United Way has set up a hotline to help victims find low cost temporary housing. Call 211 for more details.
Volunteer Information:
-United Way's Hands on Birmingham - www.handsonbirmingham.org
-Volunteers in Tuscaloosa are asked to register at St. Matthias Episcopal Church on Skyland Boulevard
-Volunteers in Calhoun County must register at the Ohatchee Police Department
-Volunteers in Concord must register at the YMCA on 4th Avenue South
-Webster's Chapel leaders are looking for volunteers with vehicles who can distribute supplies to tornado victims. Volunteers should go to the Webster's Chapel Fire Station
Drop off Locations:
-Harvest Church in Northport is accepting donations for tornado survivors
-Christian Service Mission at 3600 3rd Ave South is accepting personal care items, baby supplies, and other items of basic need
-First Baptist Church Trussville is a drop off point for donations Monday through Friday 8am to 6pm
-Church of the Highlands on Grants Mill Road is accepting items of basic need
-Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Alexandria is collecting donations of bathing supplies
-Clear Branch United Methodist Church in Argo is a drop off location from 8am to 4pm Monday through Friday
-Mark Ferrier Ministries has a drop off point at 97.7 Fox FM radio in Jasper
-Alabaster First United Methodist Church accepting donations for storm survivors at Restore Building behind the church
-Holy Faith Temple is accepting donations for tornado survivors in Childersburg
-Central Baptist Church of Jasper is collecting supplies for victims in Cordova.
-McAlpine Recreation Center at 1115 Avenue F in Ensley is now a drop off point
-108 Haynes Street in Talladega is collecting donations for survivors in East Alabama
-East Birmingham Church of God on First Avenue North is collecting supplies
-All Books-A-Million stores are collecing monetary donations for the Salvation Army
-East Birmingham Church of God in Christ on 1st Avenue is collecting supplies
-Aldrich Assembly of God is collecting relief supplies at Lucky's Market in Montevallo and Sammy's Fresh Market in Wilsonville.
-Vance town community center is collecting donations for survivors in Vance
-Helena Cumberland Presbyterian Church is accepting donations all week from 9am until 6pm.
-Donations in Calhoun County may be dropped off at Eagle Point Baptist Church in Jacksonville and Word Alive Church in Coldwater.
-Jasper Jaycees are accepting donated items at the fairgrounds on Airport Road. Cash donations can be made at Bank of Walker County. Call 205-221-3928 for more info.
-Hardin's Chapel Church in Ragland is an official EMA site
-Cullman county donation locations: Eagle Point Church, Isaiah 58-Word Alive Church, Piedmont Benevolence and Salvation Army
-UAB is holding blood drives at the North Pavillion from 10am to 5pm Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday. 7am to 2pm Tuesday and Friday
Places to pick up items or get help:
-People with disabilities who have lost medication or equipment can call 205-251-2223 ext 102
-United Way has set up a hotline to help victims find low cost temporary housing - call 211
-There will be a physician on site and medicine available at Scott School through Saturday from 7am to 7pm
-Tornado survivors in Hale and Greene counties can get help at Springfield United Methodist Church in Eutaw and at Johnson Hill United Methodist Church in Union
-Toiletries and clothing are available for pick up at Plum Grove Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa. If you need transportation, call 205-292-5836
-Food and water stations for victims are set up at the Leland Shopping Center, Forest Lake Baptist relief center and Skyland Elementary.
-Aldridge Community Missionary Baptist Church in Parrish has food, formula, clothes and water for any storm survivors who need help.
-Victims in St. Clair County can get food, water and other supplies at the Shoal Creek Community Center.
-Tarps available in St. Clair County at Odenville Fire Department, Pell City Fire Station One, Reiverside Fire Department
-The Salvation Army has set up mobile canteen operations in Forest Lake, Holt High School and on 15th Street in Alberta City.
-Tornado victims in Hale and Greene Counties can get help at Springfield United Methodist Church in Eutaw and at Johnson Hill United Methodist Church in Union.
-The Masonic Lodge in Pleasant Grove is serving meals and distributing supplies to tornado victims.
-Bethel Baptist Church in Pratt City is providing food and shelter to tornado survivors in that community
-Food, water and other supplies are available at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in Hueytown.
-The Red Cross has opened feeding stations at Oak Grove Baptist Church, Knighten's Volunteer Fire Department, Webster's Chapel Volunteer Fire Department, First Baptist Church of Williams, Mt. Olive Volunteer Fire Department in Ohatchee and the Ellis Community Fire Department.
-Hardin's Chapel Church in Ragland is an official EMA site
-Free first aid station is open in Pleasant Grove from 9am to 6pm at 615 Pleasant Grove Road Monday through Friday
-Free medical clinic at Scott School in Pratt City 7am to 7pm
Shelters:
-Bethel Baptist Church in Pratt City is providing food and shelter to tornado victims in that community.
-The American Red Cross has set up shelters at the Belk Center in Tuscaloosa, First Baptist Church in Hanceville, the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, the Civic Center in Cullman and First United Methodist Church in Springville.
-American Red Cross shelter in St. Clair County is at Greensport Baptist Church in Ashville
Insurance office locations:
-Allstate Insurance has mobile claims centers set up at the Lowe's in Bessemer, the Winn-Dixie at River Square Plaza in Hueytown and the K-Mart on Skyland Boulevard in Tuscaloosa.
-State Farm has centers set up at Lowe's in Cullman, Tuscaloosa, Bessemer and Fultondale.
-ALFA has centers at the Save-a-Lot in Cullman and the ALFA Service Center in Gadsden.
-Farmers Insurance has centers at Home Depot in Tuscaloosa, the Forest Square Shopping Center in Forestdale, and the Farmers district offices in Vestavia Hills and Pell City.
Misc:
-A battery charging station is set up at the Walmart in Tuscaloosa. Flash lights are also being given away while supplies last.
-If you have loved ones who are still missing in the Birmingham area, call 205-787-1487 or 205-787-1488.
-Greater Birmingham Humane Society lost and found pet hotline open 8am to 5pm daily: 205-397-8534. Hotline is for Jefferson and Tuscaloosa counties
-Official FEMA mobile disaster recovery center in Sumter county: Geiger Town Hall 201 Broadway
-Victims in Pratt City are in need of trash bags and baskets to help collect their personal belongings
-Calhoun County needs rope, tools, gloves, masks, tarps, first aid supplies and baby supplies
-Some local contractors in Tuscaloosa are offering free debris removal. Call 205-248-5800.
-Samaritan's Purse in Tuscaloosa is providing free debris removal and free tarps. Call 205-345-7554.
-The McWane Center in Birmingham is offering free admission to anyone who brings supplies for tornado victims.
-A dusk to dawn curfew is in effect for all of Cullman County.
-An 8pm to 6am curfew is in effect in the city of Tuscaloosa.
I can't remember where or when I first heard about Nunhead Cemetery, but it has been on my list of places to visit.
Then a couple of weeks ago, a friend visited and took some shots, so put it front and centre in my mind. So, when I realised I had to take a week off, going to Nunhead was upmost in my plans.
And for some reason, I thought that going by train, on the slow train from Ashford, would be the best use of our time.
I say our time, as Jools had the day off too.
So, plans were made and timetables studied, and so we would leave Dover on the 08:52 train to Charing Cross, but getting out at Sevenoaks.
It was a bright morning, but was soon to cloud over. But no rain.
Which was nice.
We had breakfast and loaded the car at quarter past eight, driving into what counts as rush hour traffic around here, into Dover and finding a place to park on one of the narrow, steep streets overlooking the station.
I then hed to negotiate with lady in the ticket office about whether a journey could be broken on the outward or inbound leg. I have always thought it the outbound, and indeed have done so in the past, she said inbound only.
In the end she sold me a ticket and said it wouldn't be her fault.
In fact, it was my fault for wanting to take the slow train up and fast train back. But, hey ho.
We waiting for the slow train, watching the High Speed service leave before us, as travelling on that would have meant us paying double as it arrives in London five minutes before ten, thus making it a peak service. Had it arrived six minutes later, would be an off peak.
Sigh.
Anyway, our train rolled in, so we got our seats and prepared for the 90 minute journey into deepest, darkest Kent. Or Sevenoaks as we call it.
The train filled up as we got nearer London, until we reached Sevenoaks and so we got off as more got on. We crossed over to the far platform for the Thameslink service, but there was confusions, the display was showing the 10:52 cancelled, and that being the next planned departure, but the 10:22, as leaving after, but operating.
A train pulled in, so we got in to see where it would go. It was the 10:22 after all, so all good.
The train trundled along the Darent Valley, past places I knew through churches and/or orchids, until we crossed the M25 and into that London.
I can see for miles and miles We passed through places I have never heard of, parts of the urban sprawl of SE London: Swanley, St Mary Cray, Bromley, all of which are technically in Kent, and each having at least one parish church. Which could mean some urban crawling at some point, but I don't think I will do these historical Kent churches, as they are now London boroughs.
Two hundred and seventy six We arrived at Nunhead, and being just gone 11, were hungry. I knew from GSV there was a café, so we sought it out, and both ordered a medium breakfast and a brew.
Even though this is a few miles from the centre of London, traffic passed outside, sometimes an ambulance or police car with sirens blaring and lights flashing. Houses packed so close together than the selection of wheelie bins made the pavement almost impassable, especially as the London Plane Trees were so mature so that they took half the path.
All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead, Southwark, London After eating up, we made our way through a modern housing estate, through a passageway and found ourselves outside the cemetery.
All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead, Southwark, London Nunhead was one of the "magnificent seven" cemeteries built in the 1840s to find places to bury the city's dead when the churchyards near the centre of the city were full.
All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead, Southwark, London Nunhead is perhaps the least known, and the Victorian part has gotten overgrown, with nature reclaiming the land, with graves and monuments covered in plants and ivy.
All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead, Southwark, London It all makes for fine photography, but also a reminder that in death, we are all equal, as the grand tombs and memorials are claimed by nature now, or partially damaged at a time when it was even more wild than it is now.
All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead, Southwark, London We walked to the ruined chapel, locked, sadly, then up and round a rad, lined with grand tombs and memorials, some at alarming angles due to tree roots.
All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead, Southwark, London We stopped at a bench, and tried to spot the parakeets in the trees above. We could hear them, but not see them.
All Saints Cemetery, Nunhead, Southwark, London We had seen enough, so walked back down tot eh gate, through the estate to the station. We caught a train to Blackfriars, which as it neared the river, weaved through buildings and over roads, passing so close to some flats that I could have reached out and knocked on their windows as we went by.
At Blackfriars we crossed to the other platform to catch a train to Luton, going just two stops up the line, under The City to St Pancras.
We had a 50 minute wait, so I got us a coffee and some honey roast peanuts, so we sat on a bench and watched people passing by, all in a hurry and most carrying luggage.
It's funny, that from the same station you can catch trains to Dover and other places in Kent, Nottingham, Derby and other places in the midlands, trains to Brighton, Gatwick and Luton Airports, Cambridge, as well as Paris and Brussels. Quite an amazing place, and a wide selection of people and passengers.
We went up to the platforms above to wait for our train to come in, delays meant there was a shortage of platforms, so as soon as the Margate train left, some 15 minutes late, ours came in, filled up and we slipped back out, into the tunnel under London to Stratford, then out to Dagenham to Dartford, under the river into Kent.
Phew.
We arrived back in Dover at twenty to four, walked to the car and drive back home, getting back at just on the hour, time for Steve on the wireless.
As usual, we were pooped.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nunhead Cemetery is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London, England. It is perhaps the least famous and celebrated of them.[1] The cemetery is located in Nunhead in the London Borough of Southwark and was originally known as All Saints' Cemetery. Nunhead Cemetery was consecrated in 1840 and opened by the London Cemetery Company.[2] It is a Local Nature Reserve.
Consecrated in 1840, with an Anglican chapel designed by Thomas Little, it is one of the Magnificent Seven Victorian cemeteries established in a ring around what were then the outskirts of London. The first burial was of Charles Abbott, a 101-year-old Ipswich grocer; the last burial was of a volunteer soldier who became a canon of Lahore Cathedral.[5] The first grave in Nunhead was dug in October 1840. The average annual number of burials over the ten years 1868–1878 was 1685: 1350 in the consecrated, and 335 in the unconsecrated ground.[6]
In the cemetery were reinterred remains removed, in 1867 and 1933, from the site of the demolished St Christopher le Stocks church in the City of London.
The cemetery contains examples of the imposing monuments to the most eminent citizens of the day, which contrast sharply with the small, simple headstones marking common or public burials. By the middle of the 20th century the cemetery was nearly full, and so was abandoned by the United Cemetery Company. With the ensuing neglect, the cemetery gradually changed from lawn to meadow and eventually to woodland. It is now a Local Nature Reserve and Site of Metropolitan Importance for wildlife, populated with songbirds, woodpeckers and tawny owls. A lack of care and cash surrendered the graves to the ravages of nature and vandalism, but in the early 1980s the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery was formed to renovate and protect the cemetery.
The cemetery was reopened in May 2001 after an extensive restoration project funded by Southwark Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund. Fifty memorials were restored along with the Anglican Chapel.
Notable burials
Robert Abel, 1857–1936, England test cricketer
George John Bennett, 1800–1879, English Shakespearian actor
William Brough, 1826–1870, writer and playwright
Joseph Lemuel Chester, 1821–1882, American genealogist, poet and editor
Bryan Donkin, 1768–1855, engineer who developed a paper-making machine and food-canning process
Edward John Eliot, 1782–1863, Peninsular War soldier
Vincent Figgins, 1766–1844, typefounder
Sir Charles Fox, 1810–1874, civil and railway engineer
Jenny Hill, 1848–1896, music hall performer
Sir Polydore de Keyser, 1832–1898, lawyer and Roman Catholic Lord Mayor of London
Sir George Livesey, 1834–1908, engineer, industrialist and philanthropist
Cicely Nott, 1832–1900, singer and actress
John Proctor, 1836–1914, artist, illustrator and cartoonist
Charles Rolls, 1799–1885, engraver
Thomas Tilling, 1825–1893, bus tycoon
Alfred Vance, 1839–1888, English music hall performer
At 52 acres, Nunhead is the second largest of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries. Views across London include St Paul's Cathedral.[7]
The Victorian part of the cemetery is currently in a poor state of repair, being best described as an elegant wilderness; locals like to call it a nature reserve. Many areas of the cemetery are fairly overgrown with vines, as visible in newer tourist photos. Numerous tombstones lean to the side. Although the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery are doing their best to restore some parts of the cemetery it is badly in need of care and funding. It is about 52 acres (210,000 m2) and is a popular place to walk.
The lodges and monumental entrance were designed by James Bunstone Bunning. There is an obelisk, the "Scottish Political Martyrs Memorial", the second monument (the other is in Edinburgh) dedicated to the leaders of the Friends of the People Society, popularly called the Scottish Martyrs, including Thomas Muir, Maurice Margarot, and Thomas Fyshe Palmer, who were transported to Australia in 1794. It was erected by Radical MP Joseph Hume in 1837. It is immediately on the right on Dissenters Road, when entering through the North Gate.
A memorial commemorates nine Sea Scouts who died in the Leysdown Tragedy off the Isle of Sheppey in 1912, including Percy Baden Powell Huxford aged 12 (named after, but not related to, Lord Baden Powell). The original memorial, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was erected in 1914.[8] Most of this was removed after vandalism, and only the base remains.[9] The present replacement memorial was erected in 1992, on the initiative of the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery.
First World War CWGC Australian plot
There are a large number of First and Second World War war graves in the cemetery, the greater proportion (592 graves) being Commonwealth service burials from the former war. Most of those are concentrated between three war graves plots: the United Kingdom plot (Square 89), holding 266 graves, the Australian plot which holds 23 graves, and the Canadian plot (Square 52) which holds 36 graves, including burials of South African and New Zealand servicemen. Those buried in the UK plot and in individual graves outside the three plots are, because of not being marked by headstones, listed by name on a Screen Wall memorial inside the cemetery's main entrance. A second Screen Wall lists 110 Commonwealth service personnel of the Second World War who are buried in another war graves plot (Square 5), and elsewhere whose graves could not be marked by headstones. There is also a Belgian war grave of the First World War
Honoring Those Who Died for Their Country in the War Between the States
On the Town Green, Main Street, Colchester. Erected 1875. I live in a town adjacent to Colchester, and while we have several Revolutionary War monuments, eighty-five years seemed to have dimmed their patriotism.
Side Inscription:
ROLL OF HONOR
CAPT. CHAS. DOYLE
W.H. DOUGLASS
H.C. ROGERS
JOHN HEMAR
C.E.JAMES
SHERMAN VALENTINE
C.S. ARNOLD
TIMOTHY O'CONNELL
RALPH ALLYN
CHA'S BANGSTON
HORATIO CRANDALL
THOM. KINNEY
C.F. SHERIDEN
D.L. ADAMS
F.M. CARVER
J.H. MINER
G.R. BUELL
A.B. NEAL
GEO. RILEY
O.A. GILLETTE
C.H. POTTER
R.F. HARVEY
BISSELL
PO'KEEPSIE
The artist was sculptor George Edwin Bissell, a Washington, Connecticut native and himself a Civil War veteran. He lived for a time in Poughkeepsie, New York, where his father was a marble broker (how convenient was that). His work graces monuments in Western Europe and Eastern United States, including several more in Connecticut.
Pier 45 (Christopher Street Pier), Greenwich Village, Manhattan
The Empire State Building is today the best-known symbol of New York City. Its name, Its profile, and the view from its summit are' familiar the world over, and a visit to New York is generally conceded to be incomplete without a trip to the Empire State Building's observatory.
The Empire State was the final and most celebrated product of the skyscraper frenzy produced by the economic boom of the 1920s, and'the most prominent of the modernistic towers that created the midtown skyline in those years. Its completion in April, 1931, on the former sits of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, marked the transformation of midtown from New York's preeminent residential area for the social elite into the commercial center of the metropolis.
The engineering and construction of the Empire State Building were perhaps the most awesome accomplishments of its creators. Its design, in many ways shaped by the constraints of time, cost, and structure, was the finest work of architect William Lamb, chief designer for Shreve, Lamb 6 Harmon. The slender, modernistic silhouette he created fit the building so well that even today, when it is no longer the tallest, it remains one of the handsomest of New York's skyscrapers.
With the decline in construction which accompanied the Depression, and the tendency in the post-war period towards shorter, denser office buildings, the Empire State it 1250 fser remained the world's tallest building until the 1970s, when the Sears Building in Chicago took the title of the world's tallest, end the World Trade Center took the title of New York's tallest. Yet despite the loss of the title which was one of the sources of its original renown, the Empire State Building remains New York's most widely recognized symbol, and the city's quintessential landmark.
The Site Development of Midtown Manhattan into the commercial center of New York
The site of the Empire State Building was part of a farm, owned by John Thompson, which was acquired In 1827 by William B. Astor. The site remained in Astor hands over a hundred years of development until Its purchase, in 1929, by the Empire State Building Interests.
Astor was the second son of John Jacob Astor, founder of the Astor dynasty in America. Using the family fortune, he acquired a great deal of undeveloped property in Manhattan, foreseeing that the northward expansion of New York along the island would eventually make his property worth many times its original price. Over the next fifty years, the area around 34th Street and Fifth Avenue developed first into an outlying rowhouse neighborhood of New York, and then into the city's most fashionable residential area.
By the 1850s, Fifth Avenue was lined with the palaces of the Vanderbilts, A.T. Stewart (the "merchant prince," one of New York's wealthiest men), and other millionaires. The Astors themselves moved from Astor Place up to Fifth Avenue in 1859, when John Jacob Astor, Jr., built his house at the northwest corner of Fifth and 33rd Street; shortly thereafter his brother William Backhouse Astor built an adjoining house at the southwest corner of Fifth and 34th Street. The Astor houses soon became known as the central meeting place of New York society, and home to the famous balls thrown by Mrs. Astor for "the four hundred," New York's social elite.
Following the traditional pattern of Manhattan growth, the city's hotels, theaters, clubs, and restaurants followed the residential development up Fifth Avenue. By the 1890s, guides to the city identified "the great hotel district" as lying "between 23d and 59th Streets, and Fourth and Seventh Avenues.... in that territory, which is little less than two miles long by a half mile wide, are half of the leading hotels of the metropolis.
In 1890, William Waldorf Astor, son of John Jacob Astor, Jr., having decided to move to London, tore down his house and filed plans for the Waldorf Hotel, a thirteen-story building designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh and completed in 1893. in 18S7, the neighboring Astor house having been demolished, the Astoria Hotel was erected by Astor's aunt, and connected to the Waldorf to form the Waldorf-Astoria. The new hotel soon became a major social institution of New York.
Forty years later the area was changing again, largely because of the influx of department stores just before and after World War i. During the final decades of the 19th century New York's fashionable stores had clustered in the area called the "Ladies Mile," along Fifth and Sixth Avenues and Broadway between 11th and 23rd Streets.
Altman's started the new trend northward by moving in 1906 from Sixth Avenue and 18th Street to Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. Others followed, and by the early 1920s Fifth Avenue was lined from 34th Street north by stores such as Best s, Tiffany's, Franklin Simon, Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor and Arnold Constable. Along with the department stores came several tall
office buildings, beginning in 1902 with the Flatiron Building at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street.' Rider's New York City Guide noted that "Hotels and restaurants that have long been landmarks, such as the Manhattan, the Buckingham and Sherry's, have disappeared and tall office buildings are multiplying even on the side streets.
Newspapers picked up on the changes taking place in the area. Capt. William J. Pedrick, executive vice-president of the Fifth Avenue Association, was quoted extensively on the development of Fifth Avenue; he noted in particular the avenue's new tall commercial buildings: the 15-story New York Trust, the 34-story Squibb Building, the 58-story Salmon Jower (500 Fifth Avenue), and the plans for the Empire State Building.
To demonstrate the rate of change on Fifth Avenue, Rider's Guide gave a capsule history of the site across Fifth Avenue from the Waldorf-Astoria: a house belonging to Dr. "Sarsaparilla" Townsend, popularlzer of soft drinks, was replaced in 1867 by the "marble palace" of A.T. Stewart; in the 1890s the house was converted for use by the Manhattan Club; in 1901 it was demolished to make way for the four-story Knickerbocker Trust Building, to which, finally, in 1920-21 were added another twelve stories to create the Columbia Trust Building.
The changeover of Midtown Manhattan from social to commercial center was finally consummated by the demolition In 1930 of the Waldorf-Astoria Itself, and the opening on its site the following year of the Empire State Building, a speculative office building and the tallest In the world.
A New, Modernistic Midtown Skyline and the Skyscraper Race
A new skyline was created for the newly commercial Midtown by the progressively larger office buildings being erected during the 1920s, Since the beginnings of skyscraper development in New York in the last decades of the 19th century, architects had tried to adapt historical sty.es to the modern American invention of the skyscraper. The most successful and famous of these attempts produced the Woolworth Building (Cass Gilbert, 1913), the sixty-story Gothic tower christened the "Cathedral of Commerce." Towards the end of the 1920s, however, under the influence of a "modernism" derived in part from the European Art Deco, New York architects created a new "skyscraper style" which, it has been argued, more fully expressed the nature--the verticality, the metal structure, the sense of an industrial and technological future—of the skyscraper. The series of skyscrapers constructed in midtown, including ;be Chrysler, Daily News, McGraw-Hill, Chanin, RCA (now GE), Fuller, and Empire State buildings, helped Introduce the new modernistic Art Deco style to urban America, and defined midtown's characteristic look for the next several decades, until the new round of skyscraper buildings began in the 1960s.
At the same time, the builders of skyscrapers began to reach for progressively greater heights. The WooIworth Building's sixty stories
had rested unchallenged for a decade, and Its observatory was considered to have the finest view of New York.
In the late 1920s, however, the new commercial buildings began to challenge the title. A 110-story building announced in 1926 by developer John Larkin was never built, but in 1929 two towers, the Bank of Manhattan (927 ft, 70 stories) downtown on Wall Street, and the Chrysler Building (1,050 ft, 77 stories) in Midtown on East **2nd Street, competed in a race to see which would be the new tallest building in the world. The race was heightened by the rivalry between the architects of the two buildings, H. Craig Severance and William Van Alen, who had formerly been partners.
Chrysler won by arranging to have the building's spire secretly constructed inside the building and then jacked up through the top at the last minute. Shortly thereafter, however, the Chrysler Building lost Its title to the Empire State Building.
The Empire State Building was a speculative office building planned by John J. Raskob, who hired former New York State Governor A1 Smith to be president of the Empire State Company. As an executive of General' Motors, Raskob no doubt considered himself a rival in many ways of Walter Chrysler.
According to rental manager Hamilton Weber, the originally planned 86 stories of the Empire State Building were only four feet higher than the Chrysler Building, and "Raskob was worried that Walter Chrysler would pull a trick—like hiding a rod in the spire and then sticking it up at the last minute." Hence, according to Weber, the Idea for the 14-story dirigible mast which raised the building's height to 1250 feet but proved, in the end, to be unusable for its Intended purpose. The Chrysler and Woolworth buildings, seeing there could be no hope of competition with the Empire State, eventually closed their own observatories.
The 1920s procession of skyscrapers might have continued producing ever taller buildings: according to a Herald Tribune article discussing the Empire State project in 1930, "Charles F. Noyes let it be known some time ago that he was considering erecting 150 floors over two square blocks in the old mercantile district downtown."
The Depression put an end to any such plans, however, and the Empire State Building remained the tallest by far of the city's commercial towers.
John Jacob Raskob and Al Smith.
The man who conceived the idea for the world's tallest speculative office building was a self-made multi-millionaire industrialist named John J. Raskob.
Born Into a poor family in Lockport, New York, Raskob went to work early In life to support his widowed mother and family. He found work as a secretary for a small street railway company in Lorain, Ohio, that happened to be owned by Pierre Du Pont, of the Du Pont chemical industry family.
When Du Pont bought the Dallas Street Railway Company In Texas, he made Raskob treasurer, and eventually he took Raskob with him to Wilmington, Delaware, where Du Pont became president of E.I. Du Pont de Nemours and Raskob became vice president in charge of finance.
Early In the century, Raskob Invested heavily In the newly formed General Motors Corporation, and convinced Du Pont to do the same.
In 1915, Du Pont became chairman of General Motors, and in 1918 Raskob became chairman of its Finance Committee. The spectacular growth of the value of General Motors stock made Raskob a multi-millionaire, and one of the wealthiest men in the country. Shortly before the Depression Raskob co-authored an article in the Ladies' Home Journal entitled "Everybody Ought to be Rich."'
Aside from his organizational abilities, Raskob's chief contribution to General Motors was the invention of the installment plan for buying automobiles.
Like many businessmen of the time, Raskob was interested in politics, and like most millionaires he was a Republican. His entry into politics, however, was as a contributor to the gubernatorial campaign of populist Democratic governor A1 Smith. Raskob was introduced to Smith in New York City in 1926.16 The two men came from similar backgrounds--poor Irish Catholic famlies—and shared a dislike of the Prohibition amendment, an issue in Smith's later campaign for the presidency. They became friendly, and Raskob volunteered generous contributions to Smith's 1926 gubernatorial re-election campaign. Although many of Smith's closest aides distrusted Raskob, they were unable to prevent his appointment two years later as campaign manager for Smith's unsuccessful 1928 race with Hoover for the Presidency, an appointment which resulted in the anomaly of a conservative Republic millionaire becoming Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
(One of Raskob's first actions as Chairman was to move thecommittee to offices in the General Motors Building on West 57th Street.)
Although Raskob was blamed by some Smith aides for the loss of the 1928 election, and by others for Smith's gradual shift towards a more conservative political philosophy, the relationship between the two men remained strong. When Raskob decided to get into the real estate business, and to build the tallest building in the world, he offered Smith the $50,000 a year job of President of the Empire State Corporation.
Al Smith and the World's Tallest Building: Public Relations at the Highest Levels."
Raskob's rationale for building the world's tallest building, and for making Governor Smith its president, was never clearly stated, although several explanations have been offered. Unlike its immediate predecessors—the Woolworth Building for Frank W. Woolworth and his company, the Manhattan Company Building for the Bank of Manhattan, and the Chrysler Building for Walter Chrysler and his company—the Empire State was not built to symbolize one man or company: it was not the General Motors Building or Raskob Tower, for instance.
The Empire State Building was instead simply a speculative office building, and it was named for New York State, home of the building and the state of which Al Smith had been four times governor. Rather than being a corporate symbol, the building became identified as the world's tallest building and a venture of Al Smith's.
The explanation of its height offered by the company in Its various promotional brochures was simply that of a human adventure, carrying on "the Pharaoh's dream":
Down through the ages, men have yearned and toiled and planned, that they might build a structure nearer to the skies than ever had been built before. Something of this great desire burned in the souls of the Pharaohs of Egypt, when the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was erected, 451 feet high, equal to thirty-four stories. St. Peter's, at Rome, lifts its dome 435 feet toward the sky. That slender and marvelous minaret in Cairo spears the heights at 280 feet and the Cremona Campanile in Italy rises 396 feet above the earth. The famous Cathedral of Cologne attains an altitude of 512 feet; the Washington Monument is 555 feet high. Then came the era of steel, heralded by the world-famous Eiffel Tower in Paris, 984 feet high, useless except as an awe-inspiring demonstration of what men, steel and machinery can accomplish.
The Woolworth Tower was for long the world's tallest building, rising in beautiful Gothic design to a height of sixty stories, 792 feet. The Bank of Manhattan at last surpassed it with its height of 838 feet, only to be in turn surpassed by the 1046 foot elevation cf the Chrysler Building's topmost spire. But Empire State is higher than all these. It carries to triumphant completion the vaulting ambition of the Pharaohs, of Pope Julius when he began the building of St. Peter's.
As for bringing ex-Governor Smith into the project, Raskob apparently suggested at the time that he was going to build the Empire State Building to give his old friend a job. Smith, having lost the presidential election and retired from the governorship of New York, faced an uncertain future.
His friend, actor and producer Eddie Dowling, recalled being present at the moment of Raskob's offer, the occasion being a dinner thrown by the New York State Democratic party for newly elected Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. Smith and Dowling had gone to the men's lounge during a lull in the proceedings, and Smith was telling him of his worries, when Raskob appeared and announced, "Don't worry, A1, I'm going to build a new skyscraper--biggest in the wor!d--and you're going to be president of the company," maintaining that he was doing it all to give Smith a high-paying job.
The key to understanding the actual motives behind the height of the building and the involvement of Governor Smith seems to involve a newly developing science that was becoming more and more important to the art of architecture: advertising.
Advertising seems to have become an accepted function of office buildings in the 1920s. Arthur Tappan North, writing on the subject, noted:
The incorporation of publicity or advertising features in a building is frequently an item for consideration.... This feature, when possessing intrinsic merit, is consonant with and is a legitimate attribute of good architecture. It stimulates public interest and admiration, is accepted as a genuine contribution to architecture, enhances the value of the property and Is profitable to the owner in the same manner as are others forms of legitimate advertising.
The Empire State Company in fact launched an extensive advertising campaign capitalizing on several features of the building: its "historic site," formerly that of the Astor Mansion and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; its convenience ot the two rail terminals in midtown; "a board of directors that inspires confidence;" and its advertising campaign, run by the public relations firm of Belle Moscowitz, former political aide to Al Smith, hit all the leading New York newspapers 'week after week with very clever ads.
The value of advertising for the Empire State Building was picked up by the Real Estate Magazine, in an article entitled "Good Publicity Something More Than 'Hitting1 Front Page," in which the Empire State Building was singled out as an excellent example of how it should be done:
The Empire State Building has received extensive newspaper attention because of former Governor Smith's connection with the enterprise and through a number of clever creative publicity stunts, notable the mast which will top the building as a mooring spot for Zeppelins duly authorized by official Washington with reporters and cameramen obligingly on hand.-1
The two primary subjects of the advertising, however, the two attributes most closely identified with the building, were the involvement of Al Smith, and the building's unmatched height.
Al Smith's relationship to the enterprise was frankly stated In the booklet released on May ], 1931> for the building's opening ceremonies:
Raskob and his associates selected a leader, a man so well known to the public that his very presence placed the seal of integrity upon their undertaking. He was Alfred E. Smith, four times Governor of New York State, Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.... known and beloved by his countrymen. He became president of Empire State, Inc. even while the mighty structure was only a dream.
Lists of the building's board of directors invariably began with Alfred E. Smith, and ended humbly with John J. Raskob. A New Yorker article of early
1931 noted that the building was "inevitably associated with ex-Governor Al Smith, fn its earlier stages his picturesque statements made excellent publicity and drew all New York's attention to the steelwork as it grew to dizzy heights."
Smith's biographers have noted that his functions at the building were "largely ceremonial.... The staff handled all the rental and maintenance problems, while Smith served as attention getter, greeter, and publicity man delux." To the public, however, the building was Al Smith's, and from the opening ceremonies, when his grandchildren, as representatives of "posterity," cut the ribbon at the main entrance, through the following years of giving tour upon tour to visiting royalty, politicians, sports heroes, and celebrities of every kind, he remained the building's symbol.
Similarly, the building's height played a major role in the company's public relations campaign. Besides constantly comparing the building's height to other tall monuments, the company emphasized the extraordinary daring of the construction workers involved in erecting the world's tallest building by commissioning photographer Lewis Hine to document the work.
The Company arranged for a special mechanical cage that would enable Hire to be swung out into the air to photograph the most difficult feats. The photographs were then used in advertisements, and put on display in the ground floor store windows.
The publicity value of tall buildings was apparently considered to be great enough that it could actually be figured in as a legitimate "expenditure," designed to bring increased prestige and, presumably, income. R.H. Shreve, one of the Empire State Building's architects, wrote in 1930 that the constraints of zoning, wind-bracing, and general costs of a very tall building determine a point...
...where the balance begins to swing back and the rate of return on capital investment begins to diminish as the building goes higher, unless the owner gets a markedly greater unit return for the higher space, or charges the decrease in the direct net return to "advertising."
Justification for this approach was probably found in the tremendous public interest which developed during the late twenties in skyscraper heights.
The New York Sun published a list of the fifty tallest buildings in New York, arranged by height, and shortly afterwards the architectural journal Pencil Points found It necessary to reprint it, in January 1931, noting that "Interest in the heights of New York skyscrapers does not seem to abate, if we may judge by the inquiries concerning them received in this office."
A cartoon in the same issue showed an architect with a rendering of a pointed skyscraper and a caption reading: "Enthusiastic Architect: 'You See, This Spike Runs Down the Entire Length of the Building and if Anyone Builds a Taller Building We Can Jack Up the Spike and Still Be the Tallest!"
In short, Raskob's strategy was based on an aggressive advertising campaign to market the Empire State Building, a speculative real-estate venture, as the world's tallest building, headed by the world's most popular former politician, with the world's most competent board of directors, on the world's most prestigious site, and the world's most
daring engineering feat, with Ai Smith personally conducting the world's famous to see the world's most overwhelming view.
If advertising was indeed the goal of the builders of the Empire State Building, they were extraordinarily successful. Twenty years later, Collier's described the effect of the building on the publicity-minded:
Douglas Leigh, who makes those superspectacular signs for Broadway, is itching to transform the top into a giant soft-drink bottle, or a glowing cigarette. Human flies want to walk up the front, flagpole sitters want to sit on the lightning rod, and high-wire artists want to traipse through space over to the Chrysler tower at Forty-second Street,
The effort spent on public relations paid off much sooner than the building's promoters imagined. Two weeks after the project was announced the stock market crashed, and throughout the early years of the Depression the building remained seriously undertenanted. The Empire State Building was saved from bankruptcy, in part, by the million or so visitors to the observation decks each year who paid one dollar a piece admissions.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
John J. Raskob was no doubt attracted to Shreve, Lamb 6 Harmon by their business-like approach to architecture. Raskob first encountered Shreve S Lamb in 1926 when his company, General Motors, commissioned a new headquarters on West 57th Street from the firm. He must have been impressed by their performance; he may also have considered it an advantage that Shreve, Lamb £ Harmon had been called in as consulting architects for the Bank of Manhattan Building, and therefore had some experience in races for the "tallest building" title, as well as experience working with the Starrett & Eken construction company which built the^Bank of Manhattan and which was later awarded the Empire State contract.
Richmond Haroid Shreve (1877" 1946) was born in Cornwall is, Nova Scotia, son of a former Dean of Quebec Cathedral. He studied architecture at Cornell University, graduated in 1502, and spent the next four years on the faculty of the College of Architecture there. While at Cornel! he supervised construction of Goldwiri Smith Hall, designed by the prominent New York firm of Carrere £ Hastings, and at the conclusion of the work he joined the firm.
William Frederick Lamb (1883-1952), son of New York builder William Lamb, was born in Brooklyn. After graduating from Williams College in 1904, he studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture, and then went to Paris to study at the Atelier Deglane. Having received his diploma from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1911, he returned to New York and joined Carrere S Hastings. in 1920, both Shreve and Lamb became partners in the new firm of Carrere £ Hastings, Shreve & Lamb.
Four years later they broke away to form Shreve & Lamb, and in 1925 they were joined by Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958) to form Shreve, Lamb & Harmon.Harmon, born in Chicago, had studied at the Art Institute there, and graduated from the Columbia University School of Architecture in .1901. From 1902 to 1911 he was a designer in the office of McKim, Head & White, in 1912-13 an associate of the firm of Wall is & Goodwlllie, and then practiced under his own name until joining Shreve £ Lamb. His work alone included battle monuments at Tours, Cantigny and Somme-Py in France, a YMCA in Jerusalem, and the award-winning Shelton Hotel in New York.
Of the three architects in the firm, Lamb was generally acknowledged to be the designer, and Shreve the administrator. Shreve was also active as a planner outside the firm's work; he was the director of the Slum Clearance Committee of New York after its formation in 1933, and chief architect of the group preparing plans for the Williamsburg Housing Project, as well as chief architect of the Vladeck Houses on the Lower East Side and also of Parkchester in the Bronx.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon worked principally on commercial office buildings, although they also designed a number of estates and residences in the New York suburbs, and a few apartment houses in Manhattan, Their residential work largely in the neo-Tudor and other popular styles of the 1920s, while their commercial work tended to be spare and functional, reflecting little of the Beaux-Arts ornament for which Carrere & Hastings had been famous.
Their buildings in New York, including 500 Fifth Avenue, 14 Wall Street, the Lefcourt National Building, and the Mutual of New York Building, and also their commissions outside the city, such as the Standard Oi! Building in Albany, the Reynolds Tobacco Company building in Winston-Salem, and the Chimes Building In Syracuse, are all similarly designed with unadorned limestone cladding, metal framed windows, and simple set-back massing, occasionally with Art Deco or Streamlined ornamental motifs.
The spareness and economy of the firm's designs were a reflection of several architecturai notions gaining currency in the 1920s. As office buildings grew larger and their engineering and financing more complex, the nature of architecture had to adapt to new conditions, Many architects in the 1920s and 1930s, recognizing new constraints, adapted the language of the international Style and functionalist schools of thought and wrote about a new art of architecture.
All three architects in the firm wrote on the subject of the changing nature of architecture. Harmon listed the various forces at work on design as: steel construction, congested business areas, the need for light and air, property shape, internal lighting, zoning, the ratio of rentable area to overall area, the cost of steel, wind bracing, and elevators. William Lamb, the partner concerned least with organization and most with design, concurred:
An interesting development in the planning of present day office buildings is the change in the conception that the architect has of his work. The day that he could sit before his drawing board and make pretty sketches of decidedly uneconomic monuments to himself has gone. His scorn of things "practical" has been replaced by an intense earnestness to make practical necessities the armature upon which he moulds the form of his idea. Instead of being the intolerant aesthete, he Is one of a group of experts upon whom he depends for the success of his work, for the modern large building with its complicated machinery is beyond the capacity of any one man to master, and yet he must, in order to control the disposition and arrangement of this machine, -have a fairly accurate general knowledge of what it is all about. Added to this he must know how to plan his building so that it will "work" economically and produce the revenue for which his clients have made their investment.39
Lamb's design inclinations corresponded very well to the kind of work that Shreve brought into the office. Mrs. Lamb recalls that his tastes in most matters tended to the simple and classical. The architecture he loved best was the spare Romanesque of the southern French cathedrals. Among his contemporaries he greatly admired Raymond Hood, particularly his spare, vertical Daily News Building; HoGd also wrote about the practical side of architecture, dismissing fantastic design as unnecessary. The two men were close friends. Although Lamb's "work had much of the Modernistic to it, his opinion of the flamboyant variety of Moderne represented by the Chrysler Building was rather low—he referred to it once as the "Little Nemo school of architecture," meaning fancy and fantastic, like the comic strip. He never considered his work to be in any way describable as "Art Deco."
Precisely because the firm was a well-organized producer of practical and unadorned office buildings, it was able to organize the myriad elements involved and produce a striking, handsome, but still economical design for the Empire State Building, which was above all a creation of business considerations and an unrivalled engineering feat.
Conception and Design
According to the architects, the Empire State Building was largely shaped by the various economic and engineering considerations involved.
The program was short enough—a fixed budget, no space more than 28 feet from window to corridor, as many stories of such space as possible, an exterior of limestone, and completion by May 1, 1931, which meant a year and six months from the beginning of sketches, The first three of these requirements produced the mass of the building and the latter two the characteristics of its design.
Planning of the building's layout — involving the placement of elevators, utilities, ventilation, and pipe shafts in such a way as to obtain the maximum amount of rentable office space-~centered on a prototypical plan for the 30th floor, at which point the tower legally began to rise with a zoning-mandated floor-area of one-quarter the lot size.
The principles, established by these cooperative investigations, which covered a period of four weeks, together with the owner's requirements... formed the complete program. The "parti" was arrived at in two hours, the evening before a meeting of the owner's corporation. An all-night "charette" produced the next day a series of five or six of the essential plans, an elevation, a perspective, and a fairly accurate tabulation of rentable areas and cube.
Lamb described the plan arrived at through the various consultations:
The logic of the plan is very simple. A certain amount of space in the center, arranged as compactly as possible, contains the vertical circulation, toilets, shafts and corridors. Surrounding this is a perimeter of office space 28 feet deep. The sizes of the floors diminish as the elevators decrease in number. In essence there is a pyramid of non-rentable space surrounded by a greater pyramid of rentable space....^
The massing of the building was to a great extent affected by the elevator system. The elevators were placed in four banks parallel to the building's main axis, with those on the east and west sides being the low-rise group. The low-rise elevators drop off as the building rises, enabling the tower to step back...
...from the long dimension of the property to approach the square form of the shaft, with the result that instead of being a tower, set upon a series of diminishing setbacks prescribed by the zoning law, the building becomes all tower rising from a great five-story base.^
Elevators and budget were said to be the determining factors of the building's height. The elevator contractor, and Starrett Brothers and Eken, asked independently to calculate the height limit of the building based on their economic priori tie:;, each arrived at a limit of eighty stories plus five for the executive offices.
Floor-plan, massing, and height arrived at, the architects turned to the building's exterior. The spare design, based on massing and vertical window strips, was a product of both the building program's practical needs, and Lamb's aesthetic preferences.
The exterior is defined almost entirely by a system of vertical strips of windows, projecting slightly beyond the limestone walls, set in continuous vertical metal surrounds, and separated by dull aluminum spandrels; these strips are arranged singly, in pairs, and in sets of three, and run continuously from bottom to top. There is almost no ornamental detail, other than modernistic ripples in the aluminum spandrels and modernistic caps where the window strips terminate at building setbacks.
The practical source of the window system was "the last and perhaps_ the most important item in the owner's program-speed of construction."
Completion of the building by May 1st was required because that was the traditional day for the signing of new commercial leases in the city, and therefore of crucial importance in the economic planning of a speculative office building. With such a complex building program, construction had to proceed smoothly and as quickly as possible. The advantages of the system were outlined by Shreve in a special article.
The total effect of the massing, height, and window-spandrel-wall design is of a very tall tower, rising from a five-story base, and topped by a modernistic spire. The window strips break up the mass of the building, and emphasize its verticality, while the elimination of reveals creates effectively a smooth glass, metal, and stone skin. The expression
of the building's taliness is simple arid elegant, the epitome of the kind of design most admired by William Lamb.
On the question of the building's style, Lamb wrote:
Whatever "style" it may be is the result of a logical and simple answer to the problems set by the economic and technical demands of its unprecedented program.
He never thought of it as Art Deco. Much of the ornament can only be described as "modernistic," especially the glass and steel dirigible mooring mast, and in that sense would fall under the generic term "Art Deco" or "Moderne," but the design of the building has little in common with that of the flamboyant Chrysler Building, almost its contemporary and the generally accepted prototypical Art Deco skyscraper.
In its reliance on stacked massing, vertical window strips, and simplicity of materials, and in the public insistence by its architects that these elements were largely determined by sheer practical necessity, the Empire State Building seems closer to Raymond Hood's Daily News Building, also contemporary with it.
It is quite possible that Lamb discussed his work with his close friend Hood; he admired his work, and the Daily News was Hood's most recent success at the time. The Daily News Building is also riot a purely Art Deco creation, but in some respects an International Style slab; similarly, Hood's contemporary McGraw-Hill Building combines aspects of both, If the Empire State Building, a spare tower on a base with some modernistic details, belongs In a line of succession, it might be that of the News and McGraw-Hill Buildings, followed by the RCA tower in Rockefeller Center, of which Hood was a chief designer.
By contrast with the News Building, however, the Empire State is thoroughly symmetrical, and not treated with bright colors. Unlike many skyscrapers, it does not present an overwhelming mass: in midtown, pedestrians are conscious only of its five-story base, which blends into the scale of the area, while from a distance It presents 3 slender silhouette, rising from the center of the metropolis, which Is visible and recognizable from almost every point in the city and some beyond. In this sense, the Empire State Building is in its own class, and its design reflects what it, uniquely, is.
Description
Although the 1250-foot high Empire State Building is often described as 102 stories tall, that is not quite accurate. The major portion of the building is comprised of 80 stories of commercial office space, with five stories above that for the building's executive offices, and the observatory at the 86th floor. The enormous metal "mooring mast" above the building contains only an elevator encircled by a staircase, and no floors per se; its height, however, is considered by the Empire State Building management to be the equivalent of 14 stories; these, added to the 86 offices floors and two basement levels, produce the figure of 102 stories.
The building's tower sits on a five-story base, with facades at the lot line on West 33rd Street, Fifth Avenue, and West 34th Street. The base is a monumental modernistic version of a classical scheme: basement, colonnade, and attic. The basement is formed by the first floor shops and entrances •> the colonnade is approximated by a giant order of molded stone piers piers flanking vertical window strips; and the attic consists of small windows alternating with molded stone panels.
The Fifth Avenue facade centers on the building's main entrance which consists of a central pair of doors flanked on either side by a revolving door; a three-story high, three-bay wide set of windows set in modernisticalIy-designed patterns; and an attic story of a pair of windows, all set off from the rest of the facade by two giant molded-stone piers topped by stylized stone eagles above which are inscribed the words EMPIRE STATE. The rest of the facade is comprised of monumental bays, three on either side.
Each bay consists of a storefront of chrome-metal and glass at the first floor levei, two three-story vertical window strips separated by a narrow stone mull ton and flanked by a wide stone pier with a modernistic top in place of a capital, and two windows at the fifth-floor level separated by a narrow squat molded-stone mull ion and flanked by wide squat stone piers. These three bays are set off from the central*-entrance bay by a half-bay comprising one vertical strip of windows, and end at either corner with a half-bay set between two monumental stone piers.
The identical 33rd and 34th Street facades each comprise three sections of monumental bays, similar to those on the Fifth Avenue facade, separated by two entrance bays. The three sections consist of six, seven, and six bays, slightly emphasising the central section. The two entrance bays on either facade, which project slightly outward, are less elaborate versions of the main Fifth Avenue entrance bay: doors at the first floor level, three vertical window strips, and a three-window attic story, all enframed by a wide stone surround.
The two West 33rd Street entrances, however, are actually recessed; these entrances have sets of side doors perpendicular to the building front, and front revolving doors; a moderne light fixture hangs In the center of the recess; the doors are aluminum, set in marble walls.
Streamlined metal marquee-type canopies with curving corners project over the entrances on West 33rd and West 34th Streets; each is ringed by three sets of continuous horizontal metal bands. The original storefronts are almost entirely glass-fronted. Each has a black-granite base, a cornice of horizontal molded-aluminum bands framing a black-granite panel, and a central recessed entrance, and each is separated from the next by narrow molded aluminum mull ions topped by modernistic finials.
The storefronts form a glass wall which projects three feet beyond the five-story base and forms a banding around it; the continuous black-granite cornices are at the same level as the metal canopies over the 33rd and 34th Street entrances and form a black band course at that level. Several of the storefronts have been unsympathetically altered.
The design scheme above the five-story base is determined simply by massing and fenestration. On both the eastern, Fifth Avenue, facade and the western, rear, facade, the tower is dramatically set back above its base, and rises, with shallow setbacks at the 21st and 25th floors, to the 30th floor; from there It rises unobstructed to a .shallow setback at the 72nd floor, then to the 81st floor setback, somewhat more pronounced, which marks the top of the commercial office portion of the building--wi th corresponding elevator banks—and the beginning of the five-story executive suite; a final setback at the 85th floor marks the observatory. Above the tower rises the metal-faced dirigible mooring mast, topped by an enormous television broadcasting antenna.
The tower on the east and west facades is nine bays wide from the sixth to the 25th floor, seven bays wide to the 72nd floor, six bays wide to the 81st floor, and five bays wide to the mooring mast.
The north (34th Street) and south (33rd Street) facades, wider than the east and west facades, are fifteen bays wide from the sixth to the 21st floor, eleven bays wide to the 30th floor, and nine bays wide to the mooring mast; the nine bays from the 30th floor up are divided into three sections of three bays each: a central section enframed by two projecting side sections; the central section rises unbroken to the 85th floor, while the flanking projecting sections rise to a shallow setback at the 72nd floor and another at the 81st. The various setbacks produce a symmetrical massing that emphasizes the verticality of the building, and creates at the lower levels the effect of a tower rising from a layer of surrounding tapered masses.
A fenestration pattern of long vertical window strips is used to break up the mass of the building and emphasize Its verticality. Each window In the vertical strips protrudes slightly from the Indiana limestone cladding of the tower, and is enframed by a strip of nickel-chrome-steel ; each window is separated from the one above by a dull aluminum spandrel with modernistic molding. Where the vertical window strips rise to a setback, they end in simple modernistic metal caps, and begin again above the setback. The three central window strips on the north and south sides end at the 85th-floor level in much larger and more elaborate modernistic metal plates.
The strips on most of the building are arranged in pairs, each level comprising two adjacent windows separated by a nickel-chrome-steel mull ion and enframed by nickel-chrome-steel surrounds, each window having an accompanying dull aluminum spandrel; several bays however comprise triple window strips, while others comprise single window strips. The alternation between paired, triple, and single strips Is used to create a horizontal rhythm of vertical lines accentuating the center of each facade.
On the east and west facades, all windows are arranged in paired vertical strips, with these exceptions: the outer bay on either side from the sixth to the 25th floor, and the outer four bays on either side from the 21st to the 25th floor, consist of single vertical window strips; the outer bay on either side from the 72nd to the 81st floor likewise consists
Sf a single vertical window strip, and also the outer two bays from the 81st to the 84th floods. The arrangement on the wider north and south fronts Is more complicated. The outer two bays, on either side, which rise from the sixth to the 21st floor, are paired vertical window strips.
The next five bays on either side, rising from the sixth floor to a shallow setback at the 25th, and projecting out past the central section, are symmetrically arranged with a centra! paired-window strip bay in the center flanked on either side by two single window strips; these bays above the 25th floor setback to the 30th floor are rearranged as two paired vertical strips and a triple strip. The central five bays, from the sixth to the 30th floors, are paired vertical window strips. Above the 30th floor, where these facades are divided into two projecting sections flanking a central section, the latter comprises three paired window strips, while the former are symmetrically arranged as a triple-window strip flanked on either side by a paired window strip.
Rising above the 86-story office building is the aluminum, chrome-nickel-steel and glass mast, originally designed to be used for mooring dirigibles but now serving only as a support for the upper observatory tower, and housing for display lights, Four progressively smaller rectangular levels form a base from which springs a cylindrical shaft rising to a conical top. The sides of the levels forming the base are ringed by continuous horizontal metal banding. At each of the four corners of the cylindrical shaft, rising to half its height, Is a set of three overlapping metal wings from which the shaft appears to grow; the four sides of the shaft are formed by continuous glass walls.
The top is Jr. three sections: a cylindrical enclosed observation level, still used, of the same circumference as the shaft; a second, smaller cylindrical level surrounded by an open-air observation area, no longer in use, originally Intended as a landing platform for dirigible passengers; and a top section In the shape of a truncated cone--pierced by eight circular openings--which houses the mooring mechanism and beacon lights, and which is topped by a metal mooring pole; each of these three sections is ringed by continuous tubular metal bands. The mooring mast Is now the base for a 200-foot high television antenna, added In 1953, which completes the silhouette of the building as It has been known since that year.
Empire State Building: Symbol of New York
Following the uncertain first years of the Depression, during -which the half-tenanted building was nicknamed "Smith's Folly*" or the "Empty State Building," the Empire State became a successful commercial office building. The continuing northward trend of Midtown took the prime corporate tenants whom Raskob had hoped to attract away to office buildings north of 42nd Street; the tenancy of the building therefore has since bean largely drawn from the surrounding garment district. Among others housed In the building are the notions, shoe, shirt and hosiery industries, as well as many international corporations and banks.
The Empire State Building, however went beyond the aspirations of
Raskob for a prestigious and profitable commercial office building. The success of the observatory in drawing crowds of tourists, arid the guided tours by Governor Smith for all visiting celebrities, started a process which helped make the building famous the world over. March 1940 saw the building's four-millionth visitor (actor Jimmy Stewart), and May 1971 its forty millionth. "
The Empire State Building's place as symbol of New York derives perhaps equally from its function as a place to visit, from where the most spectacular view of Mew York can be had, and its function as a centrally located landmark, whose slender, pointed silhouette can be seen literally from miles around, marking out midtown Manhattan, the center of the metropolis. The famous silhouette has been reproduced in countless images, and small statues of the. building have been spotted in Far-Eastern bazaars 55 as well as In Times Square tourist shops. The building has figured In television and movies--most famous of these being King Kong—as a symbol of the summit of New York, the greatest creation of a great city.
In the 1970s, when the building lost Its title as world's tallest, the office of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon announced a plan to remove the mooring mast above the 86th floor observatory and replace it with twenty stories of office space, to reestablish the building's position as world's greatest skyscraper. The plan—apparently more a public relations ploy than a serious proposal —was quickly forgotten, and indeed would have been counter-productive, as It would have destroyed the silhouette by which the building is known.
Despite the loss of Its "world's tallest." title, In fact, the Empire State Building has lost none of Its original distinction or renown. Its design, its history, and perhaps also its position In the center of the city, have all helped it retain Its symbolic significance.
On the occasion of its 50th anniversary—May 1, 1981--a special proclamation was Issued by the Mayor of New York, declaring the week of May 1-8, 1981, to be "Empire State Building Week."
The Empire State Building remains New York's preeminent landmark.
- From the 1981 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Armyworms are those annoying worms that show up in late summer/fall, falling out of trees all over. Then they turn into those small drab moths that crowd around your porch lights and get in your house every time you open the door. Happy to see something putting them to good use. Jumping spiders are awesome at eating pest insects.
Female Bronze Jumper (Eris militaris)
Armyworm (Spodoptera sp.)
My photos can also be found at kapturedbykala.com
The court of Amenhotep III. These pillars were better quality stone than those used by Ramses II. Luxor, Egypt
Those heads show hardly any use. They must be pretty hard as this recorder has seen quite a lot of use. I noticed that the plastic around the capstan is slightly melted showing that the bearing must have run dry while the recorder was being used for an extended period. Even the shaft has changed colour but luckily the pinch roller is undamaged. It play perfectly despite this sign of overuse. Not bad for an almost 50 year old recorder. I have oiled this bearing plus the ones on the motor and replaced all the belts to get it back in top condition.
Those who know Snettisahm RSPB will know this little island where the Great Black-backed gulls have nested for about 4 years now. It is in middle of the pit about 100 yards away. Did an experiment by reducing IQ to 8mp to give an EFL of 2500mm by using the EZ+IZ & TC on my camera. To see what I could get as a full frame shot @ that distance. Like to try an experiment sometimes.
#POTD 304/366 (October 10): Look at all those colors! As I walked my butt back from the repair shop I was greeted with more cold of the fall season. This does have a bit of #lightroom editing for using their app but that was to help the blue sky shine through. LOL Still though, fall is such a cool time to watch the trees change color. via Instagram www.instagram.com/p/BLk8MEpguw7/
In the early part of 2011 I had the chance to visit Crich Tramway Village. Its some where I had been many years as a young boy and lets face it a local mecca to those with a lens :)
These are the few shots that made it from that day to give a flavour of whats on offer. I fully intend to go back later in the year but this time on a family trip rather than a tog day out.
Crich (pronounced /ˈkraɪtʃ/ ( listen), with a long I) is a village in Derbyshire in England. It is the home of the National Tramway Museum inside the Crich Tramway Village, and at the summit of Crich Hill above, a Memorial Tower for those of the Sherwood Foresters regiment who died in battle, particularly in World War I.
Built in 1923 on the location of an older tower called Crich Stand, the Memorial Tower is the destination of an annual pilgrimage on the first Sunday in July. Set 1,000 feet above sea level, it has 52 steps to the top, from which eight counties can be seen, including landmarks such as the Humber Bridge and Lincoln Cathedral.
In 1009 Æþelræd Unræd (King Ethelred the Unready) signed a charter at the Great Council which recognised the position and boundaries of Weston-on-Trent and several other manors including Crich.[2] The charter shows that Weston controlled the nearby crossings of the Trent. The land was listed as eight hides at Weston upon Trent, and a hide at Crich, Morley, Smalley, Ingleby and Kidsley. This land was then given to Morcar, the King's chief minister, and he was unusually given rights that were normally reserved for the King alone. He was given the responsibility for justice and exemption from the Trinoda necessitas, he alone could decide a fate of life or death without the need of the authority of the King or his sheriff. Morcar was given further lands in Derbyshire. Weston (and Crich?) again come under the control of Æþelræd Unræd, when Morcar and his brother were murdered by Eadric in 1015.
A workhouse was opened in 1734 on the edge of Nether Common. It could accommodate 40 inmates, and accepted paupers from other parishes, including Melbourne, Pentrich, Willington, Mercaston and Denby.
Crich was the setting for the ITV drama series Peak Practice (along with Ashover for a time). Crich is home to 'The Briars', a residential youth centre for the Catholic Diocese of Nottingham. It hosts approximately 5000 young people a year from across the East Midlands, working with them on personal, social and spiritual themes. Images of the village also appear in the 2007 film "And When Did You Last See Your Father" starring Colin Firth. In the film Firth is seen riding a motorbike up Chapel Lane.
Geologically, Crich lies on a small inlier of Carboniferous limestone (an outcrop on the edge of the Peak District surrounded by younger Upper Carboniferous rocks).
Quarrying for limestone probably began in Roman times. In 1791 Benjamin Outram and Samuel Beresford bought land for a quarry to supply limestone to their new iron works at Butterley. This became known as Hilt's Quarry, and the stone was transported down a steep wagonway, the Butterley Company Gangroad, to the Cromford Canal at Bullbridge. Near there they also built limekilns for supplying farmers and for the increasing amount of building work. Apart from a period when it was leased to Albert Banks, the quarry and kilns were operated by the Butterley Company until 1933.
Quarrying in the early 1900s
The gangroad, descending some 300 feet in about a mile, was at first worked by gravity, a brakeman "spragging" the wheels of the wagons, which were returned to the summit by horses. However, in 1812 the incline was the scene of a remarkable experiment, when William Brunton, an engineer for the company, produced his Steam Horse locomotive.
In 1840, George Stephenson, in building the North Midland Railway, discovered deposits of coal at Clay Cross and formed what later became the Clay Cross Company. He realised that burning lime would provide a use for the coal slack that would otherwise go to waste. He leased Cliff Quarry and built limekilns at Bullbridge. They were connected by another wagonway including a section known as "The Steep", a 550-yard self-acting incline at a slope of 1 in 5.
Cliff Quarry closed in 1957, although a small amount of limestone extraction still occurs at the western end; it was bought by the Tramway Museum in 1959.
Hilt's Quarry closed in 1933 and is derelict. For 38 years, Rolls-Royce used it for dumping low-level radioactive waste such as enriched uranium, cobalt-60 and carbon-14. Following a campaign and blockades by villagers in the Crich and District Environment Action Group, dumping ceased in 2002. In 2004 the Government backed an Environment Agency document banning further dumping, and Rolls-Royce will be required to restore and landscape the site
Attached to a large boulder that will stop anyone from trying to drive a car down the path that leads down to the old tree.
Classic Ford Galaxie with a semi-retro A&W setup. I'm sure those were the days.
Classic Car Show & Shine - Middleton, Nova Scotia
Taken at Cars and Cantina in The Colony near Dallas, Texas
I just made an Instagram for those interested:
Remember laser-discs - those LP-sized platters that offered the best picture and sound quality? They've got 'em in Seoul, along with plenty of VHSs of course. ;-) Go retro!
Rempstone Steam Fair #7
Thanks for your visit and comments, I appreciate them very much! Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © Nigel Stewart all rights reserved
I love those eyes. I love the way his hand is resting across his face. I love those irresistably squeezable cheeks. I love the sunlight on his hair. I love the slight hint of a smirk on those lips and how he couldn't hold back a smile right after this was taken. I love that I know he is wearing his favorite Batman shirt (even though you can't see it) and his workboots that are "just like Daddy's". I love him.
A sunburn is not worth those tan lines. Protect you skin from burning -- use Industrial Sunscreen. Formulated with all natural “clear” zinc oxide, Industrial Sunscreen creates a protective layer on your skin that reflects both UVA and UVB rays. With Full Line of Industrial Strength Sun Care Products, your skin can stay healthy. Contact us today at 888-860-7424 or visit us online at bit.ly/17KbET4
CIVILIANS KILLED BY
ENEMY ACTION
1939 – 1945
Note: This plaque on the War memorial commemorates those civilians whose death was a result of an air raid on Southwold on 15th May 1943 – Unless stated otherwise all died on 15th May 1943(GWF)
**I am indebted to the work of Chris Harley of the Great War Forum for providing a starting point. Any information taken from that source is marked (GWF)**********
1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=60444
Southwold in the Second World War.
But the most dangerous attacks Southwold suffered were from low-flying aircraft that swept in from the North Sea below radar cover. The first bombs to hit the town were dropped on 20th August 1940, causing little damage and no casualties. The German Focke-Wulfs returned the next afternoon dropping 1,000lb bombs which demolished three houses in Lorne Road and damaged 100 houses and shops.
The following May during a night raid, bombs damaged houses on Barnaby Green, York Road and the High Street, and later that month more than 500 incendiary bombs were dropped. A bomb hit St Edmund’s Hall, which was burnt out.
.
The air raids were stepped up in 1943. In February a lone German bomber dropped one 1,000lb bomb near houses in Pier Avenue destroying one of them, partially demolishing seven others and damaging a further twelve, though no one was killed.
May saw the worst raid of the war. Seven fighter-bombers targeting Lowestoft spotted barrage balloons over the port, turned south and flew at 100 feet above Southwold. One bomb destroyed a building in the grounds of St Felix School. Four more hit the town, blowing out the windows of St Edmund’s Church and destroying nearby houses in Hollyhock Square, killing six people. The Marlborough and Dunwich Hotels were also hit.
There were few other such raids until February 1944 when more than 1000 incendiary bombs were dropped on The Common where anti-aircraft guns were placed. But in October when German flying bombs known as ‘Doodle Bugs’ began passing over the town on their way to London, one was hit by the guns and exploded, damaging more than 600 buildings
www.southwoldmuseum.org/war_worldwar2.htm
LAND C W Charles William Land – aged 39. A.R.P. Ambulance Service; of 8 Church Green. Son of the late Mr. Land, of Barneby; husband of Mildred Laura Land. Died at 8 Church Green. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148999/LAND,%2...
LAND A C Alan Land – aged 12. Of 8 Church Green. Son of Charles William and Mildred Laura Land. Died at 8 Church Green. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148998/LAND,%2...
LAND M L Mildred Laura Land – aged 38. Of 8 Church Green. Daughter of W. J. Sowter, of The Street, Peasenhall; wife of Charles William Land. At 8 Church Green. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3149000/LAND,%2...
BARNES E Ernest Barnes – aged 53. Of 9 School Lane, Southwold. Husband of Olive Barnes. Injured May 1943, at Southwold; died at East Suffolk Hospital, Ipswich 16th May 1943 (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148644/BARNES,...
KETT M C No further information currently. (GWF)
Same forum
I know of a civillian named Kett who was blown up by a mine during the 2nd world war on Dunwich beach would this possibly be the one you have listed? If so i'll attempt to look for the info.
Looking at the inscription and comparing the C’s and G’s used as lettering, then this looks more like an M G Kett.
The death of a Maurice G Kett, aged 27, was recorded in the Blyth District of Suffolk in the July to September 1940 Quarter. Was this possibly related to the August 1940 raids which caused so much damage?
FIELD F Frank Field – aged 50. Special Constable. Husband of Edna Joyce Field, of 64 Pier Avenue, at 64 Pier Avenue. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148994/FIELD,%...
MARTIN E Emma Martin – aged 68. of 6 Hollyhock Square, Southwold. Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Martin, of Sudbury. Injured 15 May 1943, at Southwold; died at East Suffolk Hospital, Ipswich 27th May 1943. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148680/MARTIN,...
PEARCE A Alice Pearce – aged 75. Of 23 Marlborough Road. Widow of H. Pearce. Died at 23 Marlborough Road. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3149002/PEARCE,...
FRANCIS B Blanche Francis – aged 80. Of York House, Marlborough Road. Died at York House. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148995/FRANCIS...
NAPTHINE L M Leslie Myall Napthine CH/X187 Sergeant Royal Marines – aged 37. Son of Samuel and Katie Ann Napthine, of Wrentham; husband of Daisy May Napthine, who died in the same incident. Buried Wrentham Cemetery Sec Q Grave 78. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/2721303/NAPTHIN...
RM School of Signals, Southwold
NAPTHINE, Leslie M, Sergeant, RM, CH/X 187, killed
www.naval-history.net/xDKCas1943-05MAY.htm
NAPTHINE D M Daisy May Napthine – aged 44. A.R.P. Ambulance Attendant; of 6 School Green. Daughter of George and Laura Garrod, of Henstead, Beccles; wife of Sgt. Leslie Myall Napthine, Royal Marines (killed in same incident). Died at 6 School Green. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3149001/NAPTHIN...
KATINAKIS G D George Demetrius Katinakis – aged 69. Of 23 Marlborough Road. Son of the late Demetrius Michael and Harriet Fanny Katinakis, of 22 Cleveland Gardens, Kensington, London; husband of Eva Mary Katinakis. Died at 23 Marlborough Road. (GWF)
George Demetrius Katinakis (25 July 1873 – 15 May 1943) was an English cricketer. Katinakis was a right-handed batsman.
Katinakis made his first-class debut for Hampshire in 1904. Katinakis represented the club in the 1906 County Championship, playing in three matches, the last of which came against Somerset.
Katinakis died in Southwold, Suffolk on 15 May 1943.
Born Bayswater, London.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Katinakis
Career Statistics
www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/player/15834.html
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148997/KATINAK...
KATINAKIS E M Eva Mary Katinakis – aged 45. Of 23 Marlborough Road. Daughter of the late H. and Alice Pearce; wife of George Demetrius Katinakis. Died at 23 Marlborough Road. See Alice Pearce above who died in the same raid. (GWF)
CWGC www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/3148996/KATINAK...
Those of you who pay attention might remember me saying a few weeks ago that St Peter is one of the nearest churches to our house, in fact we can see it from our front garden, and yet I have never been inside.
And so a few weeks ago I decided to make a concerted effort to try to get in and to photograph it.
I spoke with a neighbour about this, as he is a warden at St Margaret's of Antioch, and remarked that a lady living nearby who regularly walked her dogs along our street was a warden at St Peter. This left me the simple task of waiting until I next saw her walking the dogs, 'accidently' go and speak to her and raise the subject
Not only could I get the key from her, but I could also get it at another location, that because of thefts they don't like to publicise, so no one knows or could find out. So, saturday afternoon I get the key, let myself in and snap it.
a church well worth waiting to see, but not 5 years I fear....
----------------------------------
WEST CLIFFE
IS so called from its situation westward of the adjoining parish of St. Margaret at Cliffe last described, and to distinguish it from that of Cliff at Hoo, near Rochester.
THIS PARISH lies very high on the hills, and much exposed; it is partly inclosed and partly open, arable and pasture downs; it extends to the high chalk cliffs on the sea shore, and the South Foreland on them, where the light-house stands. The high road from Dover to Deal leads through it. Its greatest extent is from north to south, in the middle of which stands the church, and village adjoining to it. As well as the adjoining parishes it is exceedingly dry and healthy, the soil is mostly chalk, notwithstanding which there is some good and fertile land in it. The height and continuance of the hills, and the depth and spacious width of the valleys, added to a wildness of nature, which is a leading feature throughout this part of the country, contribute altogether to its pleasantness; and the variety of propects, as well over the adjoining country, as the sea, and the coast of France beyond it, are very beautiful.
THE MANOR OF WEST CLIFFE, alias WALLETTSCOURT, was, in the time of the Conqueror, part of those possessions with which he enriched his halfbrother Odo, bishop of Baieux, and earl of Kent, under the general title of whose lands it is thus entered in the survey of Domesday, taken in the 15th year of that reign:
Hugo (de Montfort) holds of the bishop, Westclive. It was taxed at two sulings. The arable land is. . . . . In demesne is one carucate, and seventeen villeins, having two carucates. In the time of king Edward the Con sessor it was worth eight pounds, when he received it six pounds, now eight pounds. Of this manor Hugo de Montfort holds two mills of twenty-eight shilings. Edric held it of king Edward.
Four years afterwards the bishop was disgraced, and all his possessions were confiscated to the crown, upon which this manor was granted to Hamon de Crevequer, a man of much note at that time, who was succeeded in it by the eminent family of Criol, and they continued in the possession of it in the reign of king Henry III. in the 48th year of which, John de Criol, younger son of Bertram, died possessed of it, leaving Bertram his son and heir, and he alienated it to Sir Gilbert Peche. He soon afterwards conveyed it to king Edward I. and Eleanor his queen, for the use of the latter, who died possessed of it in the 19th year of that reign. How long it afterwards continued in the crown I have not found; but in the 20th year of king Edward III. Gawin Corder held it by knight's service of the honor of Perch, viz. of the constabularie of Dover castle.
Sir Gawin Corder possessed this manor only for life, for the next year the king granted the reversion of it to Reginald de Cobham for his services, especially in France, being the son of John de Cobham, of Cobham, by his second wife Joane, daughter of Hugh de Nevill. (fn. 1) His son Reginald was of Sterborough castle, whence all his descendants were called of that place.
Reginald de Cobham, his son, possessed this manor, whose eldest surviving son Sir Thomas Cobham died possessed of this manor held in capite, in the 11th year of king Edward IV. leaving an only daughter and sole heir Anne, who carried it in marriage to Sir Edward Borough, of Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, (fn. 2) the lands of whose grandson Thomas, lord Burgh, were disgavelled by the act passed in the 31st year of king Henry VIII. His son William, lord Burgh, succeeded to it, holding it in capite, and in the 15th year of queen Elizabeth alienated it to Mr. Thomas Gibbon, who resided here; and it should be observed that though the coat of arms assigned to the Gibbons, of Westcliffe, by Sir William Segar, Sable, a lion rampant, guardant, or, between three escallops, argent—bears a strong resemblance to that assigned by him to the Gibbons, of Rolvenden, and is identically the same as those allowed to the Gibbons of Frid, in Bethersden, who were undoubtedly a branch of those of Rolvenden, yet I do not find any affinity between them; but I should rather suppose, these of Westcliffe were descended of the same branch as those of Castleacre abbey, in Norfolk; Matthew, the eldest son of Thomas Gibbon, the purchaser of this manor, rebuilt this seat in 1627, as the date still remaining on it shews. He resided in it, as did his several descendants afterwards down to Tho. Gibbon, gent. (fn. 3) who in 1660 sold it to Streynsham Master, esq. and he alienated it to admiral Matthew Aylmer, afterwards in 1718 created lord Aylmer, of the kingdom of Ireland, whose descendant Henry, lord Aylmer, devised it to his youngest son the Hon. and Rev. John Aylmer, and he alienated it to George Leith, esq. of Deal, who passed it away by sale to the two daughters and coheirs of Mr. Thomas Peck, surgeon, of Deal; they married two brothers, viz. James Methurst Pointer, and Ambrose Lyon Pointer, gentlemen, of London, and they are now, in right of their wives, jointly entitled to this manor.
BERE, or BYER-COURT, as it is sometimes written, situated in the southern part of this parish, was once accounted a manor, and was parcel of the demesnes of a family of the same name; one of whom, William de Bere, was bailiff of Dover in the 2d and 4th years of king Edward I. After this name was extinct here, this manor passed into the name of Brockman, and from thence into that of Toke, a family who seem before this to have been for some time resident in Westcliffe, (fn. 4) and bore for their arms, Parted per chevron, sable and argent, three griffins heads, erased and counterchanged. John Toke, a descendant of the purchaser of this manor in the fourth generation, lived here in the reigns of king Henry V. and VI. as did his eldest son Thomas Toke, esq. who by Joane, daughter of William Goldwell, esq. of Godington, in Great Chart, whose heir-general she at length was, had three sons, Ralph, who succeeded him in the family seat of Bere; Richard, who died s. p. and John, the youngest, who had the seat and estate of Godington, where his descendants remain at this time. Ralph Toke, esq. the eldest son above-mentioned, resided at Bere in king Henry VIII.'s time, in whose descendants this manor continued till the latter end of the last century, when Nicholas Tooke, or Tuck, as the name came then to be spelt, dying possessed of it, his heirs conveyed it afterwards by sale to the trustees of George Rooke, esq. of St. Laurence, who died possessed of this estate, which had long before this lost all the rights of having ever been a manor, in 1739, s. p. leaving it to his widow Mrs. Frances Rooke, (fn. 5) who alienated it to Thomas Barrett, esq. of Lee, who died in 1757, and his only son and heir Thomas Barrett, esq. of Lee, is the present owner of it. (fn. 6)
SOLTON is an estate in the northern part of this parish, which was once accounted a manor; it was part of the possessions of Odo, bishop of Baieux, under the general title of whose lands it is entered in the survey of Domesday, as follows:
Hugo (de Montfort) holds Soltone of the bishop. It was taxed at one suling. The arable land is . . . . . In demesne there is one carucate, and three villeins, with one borderer, paying four shillings and seven pence. In the time of king Edward the Consessor, it was worth fifteen ponnds, and afterwards and now thirty shillings. In this manor Godric dwelt, and holds twenty acres as his own fee simple.
Four years after the taking of the above survey, the bishop was disgraced, and all his possessions were confiscated to the crown.
Soon after which this manor was granted to Jeffry de Peverel, and together with other lands elsewhere, made up the barony of Peverel, as it was then called, being held of the king in capite by barony, for the defence of Dover castle, to which it owed ward and service. Of the heirs of Jeffery de Peverel, this manor was again held by the family of Cramaville, by knight's service, and it appears by the escheat rolls, that Henry de Cramaville held it in capite at his death, in the 54th year of king Henry III. by yearly rent and ward to the castle of Dover; after which, though part of this estate came into the possession of the Maison Dieu hospital, in Dover, yet the manor and mansion of Solton became the property of the family of Holand, who bore for their arms, Parted per fess, sable and argent, three fleurs de lis, counterchanged. Henry Holand died possessed of this part of it in the 35th year of king Edward I. holding it in capite, as of the honor of Peverel, and it continued in that name till Henry Holand dying anno 10 Richard II. his daughter and heir Jane became possessed of it; after which it passed into the name of Frakners, and then again into that of Laurence, from whom it was conveyed to Finet, and Robert Finet resided here in queen Elizabeth's reign, being descended from John Finet, of Sienne, in Italy, of an antient family of that name there, who came into England with cardinal Campejus, anno 10 Henry VIII. They bore for their arms, Argent, on a cross engrailed, gules, five fleurs de lis of the field. His son Sir John Finet, master of the ceremonies to king James and king Charles I. likewise resided here, and died in 1641. He left by Jane his wife, daughter of Henry, lord Wentworth, two daughters and coheirs, Lucia and Finette, who became entitled to this manor, which at length was afterwards alienated to Matson, whose descendant Henry Matson, about the year 1720, devised it by his will, with other estates, to the value of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, to the trustees of Dover harbour, for the use, benefit, and repair of it for ever, but the discharging of the trust in Mr. Matson's will being attended with many difficulties, his affairs were put into the court of chancery, and a decree was made, that the commissioners of Dover harbour should have Diggs-place, Solton, Singledge, and other lands, to make up the one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, they paying forty pounds a year out of these estates to the poor relations of his family, as long as any such of the name should remain according to the devise in his will, and the trustees above-mentioned, are at this time entitled to the fee of it.
There are no parochial charities. The poor constantly maintained are about sixteen, casually six.
THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Dover.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, is small, consisting of only one isle and a chancel. In the chancel is a stone, about one foot square, (not the original one, I apprehend) to the memory of Matthew Gibbon the elder, son of Thomas Gibbon, who built Westcliffe house, and dying in 1629, was buried here. Service being performed in it only once a month, little care is taken of it. This church was given by queen Alianor, wife to king Edward I. together with one acre of land, and the advowson, with the chapels, tithes and appurtenances, to the prior and convent of Christ-church, in pure and perpetual alms, free from all secular service, among other premises, in exchange for the port of Sandwich, which was confirmed by king Edward I. After which, in 1327, anno 2 king Edward III. the parsonage of this church was appropriated to the almnery of the priory, for the sustaining of the chantry founded there by prior Henry de Estry. In which situation it remained till the dissolution of the priory, in the 31st year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered, among the other possessions of it; after which, this appropriation and the advowson of the vicarage were settled by the king in his 33d year, among other lands, on his new-erected dean and chapter of Canterbury, part of whose possessions they remain at this time.
On the sequestration of the possessions of deans and chapters, after the death of king Charles I. this parsonage was valued in 1650, by order of the state, when it appeared to consist of the parsonage-house, a large barn and yard, with the parsonage close, of three acres, and four acres lying in Westcliffe common field, together with the tithes of corn and grass, and all other small tithes within the parish, of the improved yearly value of sixty-two pounds. (fn. 7) The lessee repairs the chancel of the parsonage. Thomas Barrett, esq. of Lee, is the present lessee, on a beneficial lease.
The vicarage of Westcliffe is not valued in the king's books. In 1640 it was valued at ten pounds, communicants twenty. It is now of the clear yearly value of twenty-four pounds per annum, which is the augmented pension paid by the dean and chapter, the vicar not being entitled to any tithes whatever, nor even to the profits of the church-yard, all which are demised by the dean and chapter as part of the parsonage.
Maurice Callan, curate in 1466, was buried in this church, and by his will ordered his executors to pave the body of this church with paving tile.
www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63585
----------------------------------------------------------
A great surprise meets the visitor who is lucky enough to gain admittance here! The church is entered by walking up a hill, but you actually step down into the interior as the hill drops away steeply to the north, with the church set into its ridge. A Norman flint church of nave, chancel and later south tower, it is a haven of peace and light. Much of the latter floods in through the huge Decorated west window (its lancet predecessors may be seen in the wall outside). The church has a rare interior indeed – box pews run down north and south walls and there is a huge alley between, designed for the benches that still survive dotted about the building. Box pews were rented; the benches were for the non-paying poor. In pride of position is the pulpit. All this woodwork dates from the early nineteenth century, although the chancel was refurnished in the 1877s by the Church Commissioners and is standard fare. The lovely east window, the stonework of which is surely of the 1870s, contains some Georgian coloured glass edging – most delightful. Beautifully cared for and much loved, it is a shame that it is not more accessible to the casual visitor.
Der Grünling - The European Greenfinch aka Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris = Chloris chloris) - Обыкнове́нная зелену́шка или Лесная канарейка - male
Mark Glessner sells records (those thin, grooved, vinyl discs, remember?).
Owner of Stan's Record Bar, Lancaster, he was born in Meyersdale, PA, and attended grade school through 7th grade in Shanksville. His family then moved to Lititz where he attended Warwick schools. Two years of training for restaurant management (Paul Smith College, New York) followed, then two years working as a restaurant manager in Lancaster. Mark then took a job at the record store Harmony Hut in Park City mall. Harmony Hut was later bought by Sam Goody's.
In 1979, Stan Selfon was planning to retire and sell his record store business in downtown Lancaster. Mark worked with Stan to see what it was like. The record business was good and Mark bought Stan's in 1980. In 1983, the Compact Disc was introduced. It wasn't until 1989 that Mark saw sufficient interest in CDs to begin stocking them. By the spring of 1990, "the store became a museum". He says it was like someone flipped a switch and suddenly no one wanted records - a "sad event". But about October of 2012, the switch seemed to flip the other way. "Now I can't give a CD away", and vinyl is selling again. Mark doesn't do internet sales, preferring interaction with customers in the store.
To Mark (and others), the sound of a record is far superior to that of a CD. Many kids from the Ipod era coming into the store hear a record and for them it's like hearing music for the first time. "If you give a record a 10 out of 10 (for sound quality), a CD is 4.5 , and downloads are 3". Not all records are '10' quality though. "If you take a 16 bit recording and put it on vinyl, it sounds like a CD". He's noticed changes other than sound quality over the years. Styles are always changing - Hair bands are replaced by Grunge that's then replaced by Punk. He wonders why they can't coexist. And while recently listening to a Britney Spears CD, he found only 2 'musicians' listed on the cover: Britney for vocals, someone else for 'programs'. "Those auto-tuned notes combined with the CD sound - how much more sterile can it get"? Shopping habits changed too. In the '70s and '80s, people would take time to browse albums in the store. When CD's became popular he says people usually came in looking for only 1 item and then leaving.
In addition to selling records, Mark collects them, deciding to do that while still a teen. The first 3 albums bought for his collection were Steppenwolf ("Born to be Wild"), Cream ("Wheels of Fire"), and Strawberry Alarm Clock ("Incense and Peppermint"). He still has them. Asked how many albums were in his collection, he says that the latest count (1993) was 15,000. He's a 'completist' - has all 17 AC/DC albums, and 127 recordings of his favorite artist, Glenn Hughes. That's all but one, which was sold only at concerts. His earliest musical influence was probably AM radio. Growing up on a dairy farm, he remembers a choice of maybe 1 pop and 2 country music stations. A later huge event for him was hearing the album Led Zeppelin 1 - it was "a mind blower".
Asked if he plays an instrument, Mark claims to be a 'wannabe'. He played trumpet and baritone in school, and has a guitar which he says he plays for 5 minutes every 5 years. But he is recorded! A box of records recently brought to the store included a recording of the Warwick High School band. Listed on the album cover is baritone player Mark Glessner!
Those who dare to bare were there on the Great Hill, Central Park January 12th 2014. Improv Everywhere's No Pants Subway Ride 2014 New York City!
Always been a fan of standard cabs and these ex-North Western brutes fit right in on the Range. Here a pair shove back to spot inside the loadout at Thunderbird North under crisp Code Blue conditions.
So being disapointed with todays batch and allready knowing that two things will prevent me from going out for awhile . The first being this time of year I work 70hrs a week to pay off the years debt, and secondly its supposed to rain and be all warmish killing what snow that has fallen. So I decided to mess around with some black and white and I kinda like the dark effect, maybe something I'll expieriement with more when I get the time.
We were recently commissioned to do a big canvas to celebrate someone's clubbing history. An interesting commission and no doubt about it. Our in-depth quizzing of them revealed that they felt they were getting a little long in the tooth for the kind of shenanigans they used to regularly engage in when they were younger and wanted a little something to commemorate the fact that all those weekends spent wasted weren't in fact wasted weekends.
Considering what we were trying to convey there were plenty of false starts and aborted designs and I feared this one would languish in development hell until we could come up with something suitable. After percolating in my brain for long enough a quote from comedian Marcus Brigstocke came to mind that would lay the foundations for the design: “If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.” We were finally off and running.
We then had to come up with some way of celebrating the specific clubs that our commissioner used to frequent. We've used QR codes before and with the proliferation of smartphones we thought they'd be perfect for our needs. The codes link to classic mixes from the clubs involved and I had to go to a great deal of trouble to find a cassette to digitise from his earliest clubbing days way back in 92. Go ahead and test them (although you may have to click on the pics to bring up versions that are big enough to read). Eagle eyed readers will notice the small Mitsubishi logo concealed in the centre of the QR codes. How delightfully subversive...
Cheers
id-iom
I led them around the tree farm doing as many trails as possible for 5 hours, got spat out on a driveway late in the game and climbed back in on singletrack
Those who dare to bare were there on the Great Hill, Central Park January 12th 2014. Improv Everywhere's No Pants Subway Ride 2014 New York City!
My wife and I have many milestones in our lives, what with all those little grandkids growing up so fast but this was one of our own BIG milestones ... we celebrated our Ruby Anniversary on August 21st, this year! We married very young!!
Our Daily Challenge ~ Milestone ....
Thanks to everyone who views this photo, adds a note, leaves a comment and of course BIG thanks to anyone who chooses to favourite my photo .... thanks to you all.