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Urbex Benelux -
Accessible from the street via a lane of young birch trees and wrought iron gates encased in brick pillars flanked by holly bushes. The slightly ascending path, the last part of which is lined with beech trees, forms the central axis along which the graves are arranged on the left and right. Halfway along the path is the neo-Gothic funerary monument of Guillaume Poll, the first director of the institution and who died in 1867.
Forest path, wheel chair accessible, in western Norway. Also of note: the path was constructed by volunteers.
My friend Dan uses the employee entrance with an automatic door and card reader access. Before the card reader was installed, he could roll up to the post and hit the foot switch with his foot rest for the door to open. Now, a card reader was installed (see the black box posted below the hand switch). His employee ID card has a microchip in it. When he rolls near the card reader, the card reader reads his card and sends the signal to the door to open.
This system was installed after Dan's advocacy for accessibility. It's not hard to do, and not expensive - just takes the willingness to look at new ideas.
This location (off the A57 Snake Pass) is accessible only during the week as the road is closed at weekends. It is looking down one arm of the Howden reservoir in the Upper Derwent Valley and is the uppermost of the three.
Work commenced on the dams construction on 16 July 1901 and completed in July 1912. The works involved constructing a temporary village at Birchinlee, or "Tin Town", for the workers, a temporary railway line from the main line at Bamford, construction of a link aqueduct to the Derwent Dam. The dam is of solid masonry construction, and 117 ft tall (36 m), 1,080 ft long (330 m), and impounds 1,900,000 imperial gallons (8,600 kl) of water, from a catchment area of 5,155 acres (20.86 km2). The workers who died during the construction of the dam were buried in Bamford Church.
Accessible PowerScape 3D play system with shade structures, adaptive whirl and swings, musical instruments, motion activities and much more.
The KOM League
Flash Report
for
Friday, November 13, 2020
For those who care, this Flash Report is accessible by going to: www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/50597060261/
In a note shared with a few readers on November 12 the following statement was made. “Can you imagine having a Friday 13th in the year 2020? I’m optimistic and believing it will not be a bad omen—Amen?” That message elicited many responses. However, around 5:00 a. m. a message was received from a faithful reader that stated “Charlie Pride RIP.” That was news to the old batboy and this response was sent in response to that terse e-mail. “He and Mickey Mantle used to run around together in Dallas. Mickey's mother-in-law told him she'd like to meet Charlie. Mrs. Johnson told me that around two in the morning, shortly thereafter, Mickey came into her bedroom and announced that Pride was in the living room and to get out of bed and meet him.”
Since it was now Friday the 13th a decision was made to look further into the Charlie Pride story and as a result this message was sent to the person apprising me of Pride’s passing.
“Charlie's death has been greatly exaggerated. He is not dead nor doth he sleep in Biblical jargon” www.wideopencountry.com/charley-pride-death-hoax/
With that rumor out of the way it might bode well that this Friday the 13th will be a great day.
_____________________________________________________________________________
A great loss
In the October 18, 2020 edition of this publication the following paragraph concluded that report. “This publication regrettably carries the news of many deaths. Someone who has read this and other KOM league publication since their inception is now facing the end of their days. That person happens to have known me longer than anyone currently living. It has become my task, duty, honor or whatever to write that person’s obituary. It is a difficult assignment to reduce to a few paragraphs the scope of a life that has now reached 85 years and if the Good Lord permits will be 86 within the next five weeks.”
On Halloween the person mentioned in the previous paragraph left this world for a much better place. The obituary along with a picture of the deceased is carried on this link: www.knellmortuary.com/obituaries/Janice-Elaine-Pinter?obI...
If you availed yourself of perusing that link you will know that the deceased was the sister of this here guy writing the story. But, there is more to the story. Very few people had as much confidence in the KOM league publications than the deceased. When it was opined the writing effort should come to an end my sister would always have a reason why that shouldn’t happen. On one occasion her opinion was that her little brother did more good befriending the old ballplayers and helping them than he ever did in the various churches he pastored. After thinking over that observation for a little while the little brother concurred.
It was always “Little Brother’s” idea that something would cause the KOM league reports to come to a merciful end if not by death but due to another happenstance. When my sister departed, although she hadn’t read any of the material for a few years, the first inclination was that now was the time to shut it down.
A coincidence?
On the same day of the death of Janice Pinter a letter was penned by a long time reader. It didn’t reach the “KOM League Office and Dusty Baseball Register Archives” until November 2. The letter, which was sent in place of an e-mail, had some things that are direct quotes. “A strong suggestion—quit attempting to stop writing. It is not possible to stop.”
Since the aforementioned came from a guy calling himself “Ol Clark” it was necessary to keep reading. Bill Clark is the real name and he has been around the sports world and the actual world many times. He is a living storehouse of great stories which he promises he’s going to share with the world in the form of three books. This writer is dubious that three will be sufficient.
Much of Clark’s baseball archives were destroyed in a fire, two years ago, but I’m sure much of that remains in his total recall memory bank. So, I await his upcoming literary works as much as pondering what to do about continuation of these reports. However, a constant reminder will be ever present. Clark concluded his remarks by stating “So—writers write even when no one reads them.” And for clinchers he said “No charge for the sermon.”
______________________________________________________________________________
In the spirit of the times
With the spread of the Chinese plague one is always concerned about the elderly and those with immune deficient conditions. As readers are aware most of the former KOM leaguers are either at least 90 or are so close to it they can see it on the horizon.
At the start of 2020, the top five oldest living former KOM leaguers included Nicholas Timothy Kucher. In going through the listing of Nick or Nicholas Kucher’s, who passed away, there wasn’t anything located in an obituary listing. On a whim his name was entered into Ancestry.com and there was a Find-A-Grave citation for the former KOM leaguer. www.findagrave.com/memorial/214613060/nicholas-kucher
At that juncture an even more concentrated effort was made to find an obituary for the former Ponca City Dodger was undertaken. Even the standby source, Jack Morris, couldn’t locate one either. At that point Morris was advised that an attempt would be made to come up with some information on the deceased.
Nicholas Timothy Kucher was born November 1, 1924 in New York City to Alex and Mary Kucher who were Polish immigrants. On his Sporting News card the word “Ukrainian” is typed on the top of that document as shown here. digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll3/id/112856...
Upon reaching the age of 18 he signed up for the draft and was listed as living at 315 E. 9th St. in New York and was employed by the Baker and Taylor Company at 55 5th Avenue. He filled out his card as being 6’ and weighing 170 with a scar on his left forehead. It would not have been possible for him to call his employer to report being unable to come to work, for any reason, since the family didn’t own a telephone.
Upon reporting to Ponca City in late April of 1947 this profile was shared under the heading “Meet the Dodgers.” Nick Kucher—is an outfielder, 22 years old and played his first competitive baseball with the Seward Park high school in his home town, New York city. A first baseman in prep school, he worked both the initial sack and the outfield with a semi-pro club last season (1946). He served three years in the marines, including duty at Okinawa and Saipan, and was discharged in 1945. He stands an even 6 feet, weight 172 pound and is single. A lefthanded batter and thrower, Kucher trained at Thomasville, N. C. this spring.”
What led to Kucher coming to Ponca City is contained in this late April, 1947 edition of the Ponca City News. “…Business Manager Owen Martinez announced the trade of George Schneider, 18-year-old New York city lad who has been here since last weekend, for Nick Kucher of the class C Three Rivers, Quebec, club. Schneider left Ponca City by plane in an effort to arrive at Three Rivers in time for the Canadian-American league’s opening game today. Kucher is due here this weekend.”
Upon Kucher’s arrival the KOM league season had not commenced but the Ponca City club was playing exhibition contests around the area. The first game he ever saw was from the bench as his new team was playing the Oklahoma A & M Agvets at Stillwater. This was long before that school was known as the Oklahoma State Cowboys. The Ponca City News reported “Nick Kucher, an outfielder who came in last weekend from Thomasville, N. C., on a trade with Three Rivers, Quebec was on the bench at Stillwater with a sprained ankle will probably be out of play a week, his doctor says.”
When the KOM league season began Kucher was in the outfield playing both right and centerfield but not at the same time. In his first nine games he hit nearly .300 but by his 18th contest his average slipped to the .200 level and his baseball days in the KOM league were history. In a long ago conversation with Kucher he blamed the bad ankle for his not being able to perform at the level he wanted.
Not long after leaving Ponca City Kucher returned to New York and married Anne Zatowsky on January 16, 1948. They lived happily ever after until her death in 2017. When this source communicated with the Kucher’s they lived in East Northport, New York at 154 Cedar Road. They later moved to Commack, New York. I believe that Nick even lived in Scottsdale, Arizona for a time in his later years.
It can’t be determined the day and month Kucher passed away but it was in 2020. Thus, he was either 95-96 when St. Peter came calling.
The ninety two year-old penny
Most of what is contained in this article came from scrapbooks kept by a young female fan of the 1946-48-49 and 1950 Ponca City Dodgers. It is my belief she fell in and out of love with someone on each of those teams. Her scrapbooks followed her to California where they were kept for over 60 years before she finally contacted Gale Wade and offered them to him. Wade, who had played at Ponca City in 1947 and 48, didn’t want those items and suggested she get in touch with a fellow who writes about the KOM league.
In those scrapbooks are hundreds of photos of Ponca City and other KOM league players that included future big leaguers Jim Baxes, Chris Kitsos, Gale Wade and former Dodger Boyd Bartley. The scrapbooks featured many social events such as picnics. Most every box score of Ponca City home games is in those scrapbooks along with a comment about the game inserted by the “keeper of the scrapbooks.” In some places a memento of a game or from a social gathering was included.
For over a decade Yours truly has looked at those scrapbooks, from time to time. One item placed under a box score was a penny scotch taped thereto. It dawned on me, in looking at that page, to decipher the number of games in which Nick Kucher played, that the tape was still holding the penny in place. Peeling back the taped it was a bit exciting to anticipate the date on the penny knowing it had to have been minted in 1947 or earlier. What was on the front of the Lincoln head—wheat ear coin was “1928-D.” On top of that it was in good condition. At the time it was placed in the scrapbook it was only 19 years old.
So, I guess I could offer that penny to some reader for their thoughts. Do I have to say “A penny for your thoughts?”
Who remains?
When a former KOM leaguer passes away a quick check is made to see how many of his teammates remain. As of this moment I believe the list includes: William Skeen, Dale Hendricks, George Fisher, Larry Tarbell and Gale Wade. Robert Clark Taylor and Phillip Adams were never located although there is a high level of suspicion where they currently reside.
In reviewing the list of the members of the 1947 Ponca City Dodgers who were once contacted and then nothing being heard from or about them in a long time included John Dominic Ferluga and Donald Andrew Tisnerat.
John Ferluga was a native of Seattle, Washington born 10/28/1926. He graduated from Queen Ann High School in 1946 and was the opening day hurler for the 1947 Ponca City Dodgers. That was the only game in which he played with them. There has never been an obituary located for him but a listing from his high school alumni publication shows he passed away on 2/13/2017 in Renton, WA.
Donald Andrew Tisnerat was born 4/14/1927 in Long Beach, CA . He also pitched for the 1947 Ponca City Club. He had graduated from David Starr Jordan high school in Long Beach and served in the U. S. Navy during WW II. He lived in a number of places and when this source contacted him a couple of decades ago he was living in Las Vegas, NV. That is where he passed away on 6/29/2014. He was buried at the Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, CA. That is a spectacular and somber place. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_National_Cemetery
Accessible Pedestrian Signal: lean entire body weight, I mean, press black button for count of 5, feel a click, feel the button vibrate when walk light comes on and hear the chirps telling you it's OK to go cross the road.
These seem to often be broken - button won't click, sound won't chirp. So if you want to help your fellow citizens get around easily - press one of these buttons to see if it works. If not, call or tweet 311! Easy, quick! :)
From City of St.Catharines Guide to Accessible information & Communication training. December 5, 2011
Regardless of their disabilities, all Ontarians have the same rights to communicate as individuals without a disability; rights that are protected by the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Organizations must be prepared to provide alternative formats of traditional communication tools. This includes written documents, reports, brochures, and forms and also extends to multi-media tools, such as videos and website.
Must provide accessible formats
Upon Request
In a Timely Manner
At NO extra cost!
The Information and Communications Standard section under the Integrated Accessibility Regulation provides guidance for providing accessible communication.
Not just the law but good customer service, too
StatsCan estimates that by 2026 one of every five people living in Canada will be a senior. As people age, they have greater incidences of hearing loss, low vision, cognitive impairments and lessened mobility and dexterity.
Approximately 836,000 Canadians identified themselves as having a seeing disability in a 2007 StatsCan study, while approximately 10 per cent of Canada’s population suffers from some form of hearing lost.
Add to this the 10 per cent of Canadians who have a learning disability and it is easy to see that in the future increasing numbers of residents and customers will require some kind of alternative format to access information from the City.
By providing accessible communications, we will increase the number of people who can access information, reaching a greater number of our residents.
And that is good customer service.
Use Plain Language
Plain Language is text that the reader can read and understand the first time.
It sounds easy enough, but text is often cluttered with acronyms, jargon and complex sentence structure.
Text that is clear and easy to read benefits customers with learning disabilities and low literacy skills. It improves comprehension for all users and allows for easy adaptation to other formats.
When writing plain language, remember to:
•Keep your intended audience in mind
•Use an active voice
•Shorten sentences
•Use everyday words
•Eliminate jargon
•Use simple sentence structure and grammar
Other notes:
Align Left (justified text causes problems)
Watch Font size (no less than 12 point font)
Use styles / style sheets for formatting
Use Tables for data not formatting
Provide alternative text for charts and pictures
Caption videos
Hornstrandir nature reserve was established in 1975. It covers around 58.000 ha of the northernmost part of the Westfjord peninsula, a diverse landscape with fjords, mountains and abandoned settlements.
The area was inhabited from the 9th century, when the first settlers arrived in Iceland and was originally valued for easily accessible fishbanks with abundant amounts of fish. Later, excursions were also made to the area from other parts of the country to collect some of the driftwood that characterizes the shores of Hornstrandir and to hunt for the seabirds that nest there in large colonies.
During the centuries the population of the area fluctuated according to climatic conditions and it seems that the traditional subsistence farming and fishing on small boats was on the verge of supporting the settlements. The farms were small, 5-10 sheep and a cow. Unimproved grassland and wetland was used for haymaking, a necessity in the harsh winter conditions.
The area was abandoned between the 1930's and 1952 when the last inhabitants decided to move from the area. It has since been one of the tourist attractions of Iceland, equally visited by Icelandic and foreign tourists. There are no roads in the area and it is only accessible by boat or by traditional trekking routes.
The vegetation of the area has changed dramatically during the last 50 years, grassland has turned into flower meadows or in some cases a monoculture of Angelica archangelica. Heavy snowcover during the winter and an intensive, if short, growing season with 24 hrs sunlight create special conditions for rare species and the absence of grazing ruminants gives a new perspective on the capacity of many common species in these harsh conditions.
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Have returned to Iceland after five years for a 10-days hike in the abandoned, awesome and exceptional area of Hornstandir. This is a place where the toughest of mankind finally failed to permanently dominate the nature.
Fjords, mountains, lonely houses, lost graveyards; no villages, no roads, no shops, nothing. Just an unspoiled nature, beautiful flowers, arctic foxes giving good night and seals peacefully playing close to the coastline.
(For those who are interested – the itinerary was as follows: Fljótavík -> Hlöðuvík -> Hornvík -> Hornbjargsvíti -> Bolungarvík -> Reykjafjörður -> Hrafnfjörður -> Grunnavík.)
This is a shot taken in the evening during our 7th day in the area - we were hiking from Reykjafjörður across Furufjörður to finally reach Hrafnfjörður fjord where we spent a night.
In the past the farm in the valley was considered one of the most attractive choices in the Hornstrandir area. When the area was left desolate in 1950, three farms had been inhabited in the valley at the same time. A few houses, an old prayer chapel (1900) and an emergency shelter of the National Life Saving Association are still standing.
ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2022. Dr. Claudio Parisi Presicce, the Via Dell’ Impero: Exhibit - “1932, the Prehistoric Elephant and the Lost Velia Hill.” The Markets of Trajan & the Museum of the Imperial Fora in Rome (8 April thru 20 May 2022). RARA 2022 (08/04/2022). wp.me/pbMWvy-2Az
Foto: The Markets of Trajan & the Museum of the Imperial Fora in Rome (8 April 2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991671340
1). ROMA - Mostra: Dott. Claudio Parisi Presicce, “1932, l’elefante e il colle perduto.” Mercati di Traiano Museo dei Fori Imperiali. (08/04 - 24/05/2022).
Foto: Maria Barosso (1879-1960), Veduta dell’abside della Basilica di Massenzio e del Colosseo durante gli sventramenti della Velia 1932; in: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991172388
Una selezione di circa 100 opere, tra reperti archelogici, progetti grafici, oggetti d’arte e video, alcuni esposti per la prima volta, racconta la storia della perduta Velia e del “suo” elefante.
A 90 anni dalla scoperta, sono stati restaurati i resti fossili di elefante (Elephas antiquus) trovati alla base della collina Velia. L’intervento ha costituito l’occasione per proporre un insieme di opere, che gettano luce su un settore dell’area archeologica centrale interessato negli anni Trenta del Novecento da distruzioni e trasformazioni urbanistiche profonde. Un centinaio di queste opere, tra cui reperti archeologici, progetti grafici e opere d’arte, interamente provenienti dalle collezioni capitoline, alcuni dei quali identificati in occasione di recenti ricerche ed esposti al pubblico per la prima volta, compongono questa mostra.
Foto: Roma, I Fori Imperiali & Via Dell’ Impero (1930-32); in: SIMARTWEB (04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991671005
Fonte / source:
— Mercati di Traiano Museo dei Fori Imperiali (07/04/2022).
www.mercatiditraiano.it/node/1010561
S.v., Roma - Claudio Parisi Presicce: "1932, l’elefante e il colle perduto." Mercati di Traiano Museo dei Fori Imperiali; in: UTV artivisive / You-Tube (07 April 2022) [1:32].
Roma - Il sovrintendente Claudio Parisi Presicce spiega il ritrovamento nel 1932 dell'elefante (Elephas antiquus) sull'antica collina Velia a Roma, durante il suo sbancamento verso il Colosseo per la costruzione di via dei Fori Imperiali.
Fonte / source:
— UTV artivisive / You-Tube (07 April 2022) [1:32].
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mectu34sY-M
2). ROME - Dr. Claudio Parisi Presicce, The Via Dell’ Impero: Exhibit - “1932, the Prehistoric Elephant and the Lost Velia Hill.” The Markets of Trajan & the Museum of the Imperial Fora in Rome (8 April thru 20 May 2022).
Foto: cla_green, Su Via dei Fori Imperiali; in: Instagram (06/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991394239
New Exhibit of Architectural Remains, Archaeological Evidence - Antiquity to the Modern Era & Historical Documentation for the Clearing and Removal of the Velia Hill and the Systemization of the Via Dell’ Impero in the Early 1930s. The Markets of Trajan & the Museum of the Imperial Fora in Rome (8 April thru 20 May 2022).
Foto: Plan 1 - Rome, the Via Dell’ Impero & the Velia Hill (1931-32): General topographical plan of Ancient & Modern Rome; in: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022). With additional photos by M. G. Conde (08/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51990114002
Rome, the construction of the Via Dell’ Impero / now Via dei Fori Imperiali - In just two years, between 1931 and 1932, a hill was excavated in the heart of Rome, the Velia, which extended between the slopes of the Oppian Hill and the Palatine Hill, separating the area of the Imperial Forums from the Colosseum.
Foto: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51990114097
The price paid by the artistic and archaeological heritage, due to this excavation, was very high: the archaeological stratification was affected, which proved to be very rich in evidence from the Roman era. But the most surprising discovery was made on May 20, 1932, when numerous remains of fossil fauna came to light, including the elephant skull and tusk Elephas Palaeoloxodon antiquus, which is the most famous find. The exhibition was directed by Claudio Parisi Presicce, Nicoletta Bernacchio, Isabella Damiani, Stefania Fogagnolo & Massimiliano Munzi, The Markets of Trajan & the Museum of the Imperial Fora in Rome (8 April thru 20 May 2022).
Foto: Plan 2: Rome, the Via Dell’ Impero & the Velia Hill & the Palazzo Rivaldi (1931-32): General topographical plan of Ancient & Modern Rome; in: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022). With additional photos by M. G. Conde (08/04/2022). www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51990114002
The new exhibit - "1932, l’elefante e il colle perduto” = “1932, the Prehistoric Elephant and the Lost Velia Hill,” at the Museum of the Imperial Fora in Rome (8 April thru 20 May 2022), with the aim of the exhibit to present a brief historical overview of the early 1930s Fascist era clearing and removal of the Velia Hill and the systemization of the Via Dell’ Impero & displaying a variety of the archaeological evidence dating from Antiquity to the Modern Era, then, hurriedly recovered during the course of the very rapid & limited excavations.
Foto: MOSTRE – STORIA – Al tempo non si nasconde. 1932 L’ELEFANTE E IL COLLE PERDUTO. A Roma dall’8 Aprile 2022 Mercati di Traiano (07/04/2022). www6367.wordpress.com
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51990114012
The exhibition also has on display a collection of a variety of historical documentation (= general plans, illustrations, photographs & paintings) from the early 1930s, as Italian archaeologists - Antonio M. Colini, Guglielmo Gatti, Giuseppe Marchetti-Longhi & Antonio Munoz; along with Italian Architects - Italo Gismondi & S. De Angelis & Italian illustrators - Maria Barosso and Odoardo Ferretti, and others, all attempting to record and report as best as possible on what archaeological artifacts and architectural remains that were recovered during the face-paced demolishing & clearing process of the area of the Velia Hill.
Foto: Mimmo Frassineti, Exhibition L’Elefante e il Colle Perduto, Mercati di Traiano. Rome, Italy – 07 Apr 2022; in:
Shutterstock (07/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991394414
Fortunately, since early 2021 onwards, a great deal of much of the work of these Italian scholars etc, as mentioned above, their formerly unpublished historical documentation & works from the early 1930s, now on display the current exhibit - “1932, the Prehistoric Elephant and the Lost Velia Hill’ (2022), as well other related historical documentation & works on the 1930s Fascist era systemization of the Via Dell’ Impero,, has been recently converted into new publicly accessible online digital archives by the various Archives and Museums of the City of Rome (2021 onwards), for instant, see:
Foto: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991172373
— ROMA — Maria Barosso (1879-1960), Veduta dell'abside della Basilica di Massenzio e del Colosseo durante gli sventramenti della Velia 1932 sec. XX secondo quarto; in: SIMARTWEB: ROMA CULTURE / SOVRINTENDENZA CAPITOLINA / COMUNE DI ROMA (01/ 2020 [= 04/2022]).
www.simart.comune.roma.it/dettaglio-bene/-427503963
Foto: Maria Barosso (1879-1960), Veduta dell’abside della Basilica di Massenzio e del Colosseo durante gli sventramenti della Velia 1932 sec. XX secondo quarto; in: SIMARTWEB (04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991110476
Notizie storico-critiche
Tra gli anni Venti e Trenta, Maria Barosso realizza una serie di acquerelli che illustrano i lavori per l'isolamento del Campidoglio, per l'apertura dei Fori Imperiali e della Via del Mare. L'artista si colloca, quindi, accanto alla schiera di disegnatori e fotografi, incaricati dal Governatorato di Roma di documentare l'opera di modernizzazione urbanistica della capitale. Nel disegno Maria viene celebrato il valore estetico dell'operazione di sventramento della Velia, considerata allora indispensabile per ottenere un panorama grandioso come sfondo del Colosseo.
Foto: Roma, I Fori Imperiali & Via Dell’ Impero (1930-32); in: SIMARTWEB (04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991394189
Riferimenti bibliografici
Ecole romaine 1925-1945, Milano 1997, pp. 136-137 n.37.
The Villa of the mysteries in Pompeii: ancient ritual, modern muse, (a cura di Gazda, Elaine K.), Ann Arbor 2000, pp. 129-137.
Leone, Rossella, Fori Imperiali demolizioni e scavi: fotografie 1924-1940, (Roma sparita e Roma che sparisce: iconografia delle demolizioni nelle raccolte del Museo di Roma), (a cura di Leone, Rossella; Margiotta, Anita), Milano 2007, pp. 26-45.
Fonte / source:
ROMA — Maria Barosso (1879-1960) [04/2022]); in:
Foto: Roma, I Fori Imperiali & Via Dell’ Impero (1930-32); in: SIMARTWEB (04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51990113802
— SIMARTWEB: Presenta una selezione del sistematico lavoro di catalogazione scientifica condotto dalla Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali. ROMA CULTURE / SOVRINTENDENZA CAPITOLINA / COMUNE DI ROMA www.simart.comune.roma.it/ (early January 2021 onwards).
Foto: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991671290
Fonte / source, foto:
— MOSTRE – STORIA – Al tempo non si nasconde. 1932 L’ELEFANTE E IL COLLE PERDUTO. A Roma dall’8 Aprile 2022 Mercati di Traiano (07/04/2022).
www6367.wordpress.com/2022/04/07/mostre-storia-al-tempo-n...
— Raffaella Ciofani, Giornalista pubblicista e architetto a Rivista: "Eventi Culturali Magazine". Facebook (07/04/2022). www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100079088525767
— Mimmo Frassineti, Exhibition L'Elefante e il Colle Perduto, Mercati di Traiano. Rome, Italy - 07 Apr 2022; in: Shutterstock (07/04/2022).
www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/exhibition...
— cla_green, Su Via dei Fori Imperiali; in: Instagram (06/04/2022).
www.instagram.com/p/CcD4i-BtuYM/
Foto: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991671250
Fonte / source, foto; in:
RARA 2010-2022 romaarcheologiaerestauroarchitettura.wordpress.com/ =
— Plan 1: Rome, the Via Dell' Impero & the Velia Hill (1931-32): General topographical plan of Ancient & Modern Rome; in: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
With additional inserted images:
--- ROMA - Armando Bruni, "Resti di elefante preistorico rinvenuti durante i lavori per la costruzione di Via Dell'impero (05/1932); RARA 2010-22 (03/2013).
--- ROMA - “Il Nuovo Volta Di Roma – Quale ampiezza per la Via del Monte? IL GIORNALE D’ITALIA (06/07/1932): 3.
--- ROMA – “I resti di elefante preistorico nello scavo accanto al Colosseo.” IL GIORNALE D’ITALIA (24/05/1932): 3.
--- ROMA - Arch. Italo Gismondi (1941) - I FORI IMPERIALI RICOSTRUZIONE DI I. GISMONDI / AMBIENTAZIONE VOLUMETRICA, FORI IMPERIALI E VELIA (ASSAR P. ALTEMPS, INV. 1955). [published in B/W in the exhibit catalogue]; cited from: F. Fedora (ed.), Ricostruire l' antico prima virtuale Italo Gismondi Un architetto per l' archeologia (1887-1974). Rome (2007), pg. 68 / fig. 3. With the Colored vision of I. Gismondi, "AMBIENTAZIONE VOLUMETRICA, FORI IMPERIALI E VELIA," courtesy of ELECTA UFFICIO NEWS Mostra - Italo Gismondi (04/2007).
--- ROMA - Antonio Munoz & Italo Gismondi, "Ipotesi di sistemazione del muro di contenimento di Villa Rivaldi su progetto di Antonio Muñoz (disegno di S. De Angelis). Museo di Roma, MR-42232" [c. 1930?], in: Pier Federico Caliari (2017), "De prospectiva muniendi" [Italiano | English], p. 88; in: Luca Basso Peressut & Pier Federico Caliari (eds.), Piranesi Prix de Rome Progetti per la nuova Via dei Fori Imperiali. Rome: AIÓN EDIZIONI (2017) [PDF 1-16]. RE.PUBLIC@POLIMI Research Publications at Politecnico di Milano (2017).
--- ROMA - Arch. Italo Gismondi & Domus Praefecti Urbi | Velia: Roma, I Fori Imperiali / Velia / Via dell' Impero (1932): La Domus di età Imperiale ritrovata (e distrutta) sulla Velia durante gli scavi per la realizzazione di Via dell' Impero nel 1932. (Da: Sartorio), in: Archeologia Viva, n. 6, 1986 [2011].
--- ROMA - "Lungo La Via Dell'Impero - La Ricostruzione di un'antica templetto." Il Messaggero (10/11/1932):5. S.v., Maria Barosso, "Avanzi di edicola rinvenuti durante gli scavi per la realizzazione di via dell'Impero." (1932a); in: Museo di Roma - Gabinetto delle Stampe / SMART (04/2021).
Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51991394474
Fonte / source, foto; in:
RARA 2010-2022 romaarcheologiaerestauroarchitettura.wordpress.com/ =
— Plan 2: Rome, the Via Dell' Impero, the Velia Hill & the Palazzo Rivaldi (1931-32): General topographical plan of Ancient & Modern Rome; in: Dr. Raffaella Ciofani / Facebook (07/04/2022).
With additional inserted images:
--- ROMA – Forse qui la Collezione Torlonia? Il Palazzo Silvestri Rivaldi costituisce un’opportunità irripetibile per l’auspicata realizzazione del nuovo museo. Il Giornale dell’Arte, No. 404 (01/2020).
--- ROMA - Aerial view of the Velia Hill and Palazo Rivaldi (c. 1911); in: Roma - “Confronto tra un’immagine aerea del 1910 circa della zona compresa tra il Colosseo e il Vittoriano; tra le differenze più evidenti si notano il Vittoriano ancora in costruzione, la presenza della Meta Sudans vicino all’Arco di Costantino, e soprattutto gli edifici ancora in piedi, demoliti successivamente per l’apertura di Via dell’Impero (oggi Via dei Fori Imperiali).”
ROMA IERI OGGI REPHOTOGRAPHY (11 June, 2014).
--- ROMA - Attraverso le Cartoline d’Epoca… (Le Cartoline Originali appartengono all’autore degli articoli). Via dell’Impero vista con le cartoline d’epoca, da Maurizio Giorgi & Mauro Pecchioli, TorrinoNews.com - TorrinoNews.it (09/08/2009).
---ROMA - John Henry Packer, The Archaeology of Rome: 2: The Forum Romanum and the via sacra. J. Packer & Company (1876).
--- ROMA - Via dell'Impero, nascita di una strada - Musei Capitolini / Musei in Comune Roma: FLICKR (22 July 2009). www.flickr.com/photos/museiincomuneroma/
--- ROMA - Camilla Capitani, "Santa Maria della Neve al Colosseo. Dal primo insediamento al prospetto settecentesco." Bollettino d'Arte No. 124 (aprile-giugno 2003): 67-90 [in PDF].
--- ROMA - Foto: Donatella al ninfeo di villa Silvestri-Rivaldi; in: LA SAPIENZA / CITERA & IUC-CINA (02/2021) = Progetto Ad Templum Pacis / Progetto integrato di gestione, fruizione e valorizzazione di villa Silvestri-Rivaldi in via del Colosseo a Roma. MIBACT/DGERIC, LA SAPIENZA/CITERA & IUC-CINA (02/2021).
Foto: Antonella Aquiloni, Museo Paleontologico Montevarchi (AR) & Fb (30/10/2021).
www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/51986240782
3). ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2022. VIA DELL’ IMPERO e “1932, L’ELEFANTE E IL COLLE PERDUTO”; in: Museo di Fori Imperiali (07/04/2022).” ROMATODAY (07/04/2022). S.v., Vedi anche: Roma e l’era pliocenica e i resti di elefante scoperti sul Campidoglio (fine del XIX secolo?), il Foro Romano ([ = una zanna di un ippopotamo] c. 1900-07?), la Velia (1932) e il Foro di Cesare (1941?). Anche: Antonella Aquiloni, Museo Paleontologico Montevarchi (AR) & Fb (30/10/2021) & Dott.ssa Rossella Rea, La Repubblica (10/10/2009): 1 & 27. wp.me/pbMWvy-2Am
More accessible than Sveti Stefan, its elitist neighbour, the charming village of Petrovac has been appreciated since Ancient times/Antiquity. The pretty fishing port, houses built of stone from Venice, and shady arbors contribute to the delight of holidaymakers, who go as far as the castle to admire the panoramic views.
Petrovac is a small coastal place with mild Mediterranean climate and almost 300 sunny days in the year, it has got many coves, long beaches and small sandy gulfs which are the most beautiful ones in this part of the Adriatic.
Petrovac abounds in olive trees, oranges, laurels, oleanders. Wood growing from the rocks surrounds every cove and every single one out of dozen villages which are situated on the south slopes of the surrounding hills. The surrounding landscape is rich and green.
Platform 15 at Bristol Temple Meads was never normally accessible by the Public, however on occasions it was!
Here, we see Bescot's 31 167, dragging Bath Road's 56 031 'Merehead', and Old Oak Common's 50 024 'Vanguard' onto Bath Road, on a bitterly cold January 3rd 1985.
TOPS info:-
31167 BS 0 XA
56031 BR S M 0 AA
50024 OC E XA.
31 167 was built by Brush as D5585, entering service on March 25th 1960.
31B March 25/01/1960
30A Stratford 06/1961
31B March 06/1962
41A Darnall 04/1963
34G Finsbury Park 06/1963
41A Darnall 07/1963
41F Mexborough 09/1963
Allocated to Wath, sub-shed of Mexborough
41C Wath 11/1963
41A Tinsley 10/1965
41C Wath 01/1966
41A Tinsley 06/1966
Converted to Cl. 31 09/1967
55B York 10/1972
Allocation recoded 55B to YK 05/1973
TI Tinsley 09/1973
Renumbered 31 167 03/1974
IM Immingham 03/1974
TI Tinsley 02/1976
SF Stratford 05/1976
TE Thornaby 01/1979
Withdrawn 31/05/1981
Stored at TI 5/81 - 6/81, then to ZL (Swindon Works) on 19/6/81 for store. Left on 4/3/82 following re-instatement.
Reinstated 21/02/1982
TO Toton 21/02/1982
BS Bescot 05/1983
Withdrawn 27/09/1988
Stored at Tyseley until moved to Leicester Humberstone Road on 19/1/89, and into Vic Berry the same day. partly cut up by 19/2/89, and only bits remained by 15/3/89, which
were gone by 24/3/89.
56 031 was built at Doncaster, entering service on May 24th 1977.
TO Toton 24/05/1977
TI Tinsley 10/1978
HM Healey Mills 05/1980
BR Bristol Bath Road 04/1983
Named Merehead at Foster Yeoman's Quarry, Merehead Stone Terminal on 16/9/83
CF Cardiff (Canton) 10/1987
SL Stewarts Lane 09/1991
TO Toton 03/1992
SL Stewarts Lane 11/1992
TO Toton 01/1994
IM Immingham 03/1994
TE Thornaby 07/1995
The nameplates were removed at Thornaby TMD on 30/5/96
IM Immingham 01/1997
WQ EWS Headquarters Pool 26/11/1999
IM Immingham 02/03/2000
Returned to Service 02/03/2000
WQ EWS Headquarters Pool 02/07/2002
Store 02/07/2002
WQ as stored (S) 2/7/02, at IM, then to store (U) 8/8/02, and to store (S) 3/2/03.
To WQ store (U) 9/2/04, to WQ French Projects 21/ 1/05, and moved from Immingham to Toton on 21/1/05, to Bescot on 25/1/05 and then to Wembley 25-26/1/05, then delivered to Old Oak Common on 27/1/05 for preparation.
Freshly painted and outshopped in Fertis colours on 26/4/05, but was not released from Old Oak Common to Wembley until 27/6/05, to Dollands Moor on 28/6/05 and
through the tunnel to France later the same day .
56 031 Arrived back in the UK at Dollands Moor via the Channel Tunnel on 23/12/06 and then on to Wembley Yard later the same day. Next reported as returned to service 15/5/07.
TO Toton 15/05/2007
Returned to Service 15/05/2007
Store 15/05/2007
Hauled to Warrington on 4/11/08, then tripped back to Crewe EMD on 6/11/08 and then hauled round to the Diesel Depot and pushed inside the closed depot on 9/12/08.
Stored (u) (French Projects) 3/4/09, stored (u) 22/9/10
loco sold 7/12/11.
It remained inside Crewe DD until hauled from there to European Metal Recycling, Kingsbury on 14/9/12 and deregistered on 23/1/13
Reregistered 17/4/13 and sold to Ed Stevenson and moved from EMR to Burton-upon-Trent on 9/5/13 for overhaul, also TO (Nemesis Rail stored) the same day, to privately owned locos 14/5/13.
Moved to the reopened Leicester TMD on 3/12/13. Apparently transferred to HQ at some stage, date unknown
HQ Headquarters Pool 10/2013
LR Leicester 07/2015
Store 07/2015
PG Peterborough GBRf 07/2018
Sold to GBRf for its class 69 conversion programme and moved to EMD, Longport 6/7/18. Stripped body moved to Marcroft Engineering, Stoke-on-Trent 25/4/19, returned to
EMD, Longport 28/5/19. Deregistered 9/2/21
Converted to 69001, renumbered on 9/2/21.
50 024 was built by Vulcan Foundry as D424, entering service on May 21st 1968.
LMWL LM Western Lines 21/05/1968
D05 Stoke Division 17/06/1968
CE Crewe Diesel 05/1973
Allocation recoded CE to CD 12/1973
BR Bristol Bath Road 05/1974
Renumbered 50 024 08/05/1974
LA Laira 05/1976
Named Vanguard on 15/5/78.
OC Old Oak Common 03/1983
LA Laira 07/1990
Store 23/01/1991
Withdrawn 01/02/1991
Caught fire near Westbury while working a Waterloo-Exeter passenger train 23/1/91 and moved to Westbury.
Moved to Old Oak Common on 2/2/91, where all spares were removed, then it was broken up on site by staff from Coopers Metals Ltd., Cardiff between 25/6/91 and 6/7/91.
I hope you enjoy looking through my Flickr images. Please consider helping me pay for my Flickr subscription, and to help me buy-back some of the 4000 of my slides from the past that I'd like to get back.
I'll rescan all of my older uploads in the fullness of time.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
The Naksan section of the Seoul fortress trail covers an enjoyable scenic route from Hansung University Station and the Hyehwa Gate travelling south alongside Naksan Park and Ihwa Mural Village until you arrive in the crowded, neon streets of Dongdaemun with the landmark Dongdaemun Gate at the foot of the pathway. The route itself doesn’t take too long to cover with sunset a recommended time to visit so as to enjoy the spectacular views across the city at their finest.
Accessible from:
Hansung University Station, Seoul Subway Line 4. Exit 4.
Dongdaemun Station, Seoul Subway Line 1 or 4. Exit 1.
Dongdaemun History and Culture Station, Seoul Subway Line, 2, 4, or 5. Exit 1
“Els jardins de Claude Monet”, Girona, España.
“Girona, Temps de Flors” arranca hoy la 70 edición con 146 proyectos repartidos en 114 espacios que se pueden visitar hasta el 18 de mayo. El Ayuntamiento de Girona ha dado el pistoletazo de salida a la muestra floral esta mañana con un recorrido por algunos de los espacios de la muestra, así como la visita a la exposición "Maestros del arte catalán del siglo XX. Colección Bassat" del Museo de Arte de Girona.
Uno de los espacios que se ha visitado es el patio del Ayuntamiento, donde existe un proyecto conmemorativo de los 40 años de hermanamiento con la ciudad de Albi.
" Esta edición de Tiempo de Flores quiere ser más inclusiva y accesible, pensada especialmente para los gerundenses y las gerundenses. Se han hecho mejoras para personas con movilidad reducida y se ha creado un Espacio Calma para personas neurodivergentes. También se han ampliado los horarios para favorecer una visita más tranquila y adaptada a los ritmos. invitar a todo el mundo a disfrutar de la muestra ”, ha destacado el alcalde Lluc Salellas i Vilar.
“Girona, Temps de Flors” kicks off its 70th edition today with 146 projects spread across 114 spaces that can be visited until May 18. Girona City Council kicked off the floral exhibition this morning with a tour of some of the spaces in the exhibition, as well as a visit to the exhibition “Masters of 20th-century Catalan art. Bassat Collection” at the Girona Art Museum.
One of the spaces visited is the City Council courtyard, where there is a commemorative project for the 40 years of twinning with the city of Albi.
“ This edition of Temps de Flors aims to be more inclusive and accessible, especially designed for Girona residents. Improvements have been made for people with reduced mobility and a Calma Space has been created for neurodivergent people. Opening hours have also been extended to encourage a more peaceful visit adapted to local rhythms. Finally, I would like to thank the public for their involvement and invite everyone to enjoy the exhibition ”, highlighted Mayor Lluc Salellas i Vilar.
Paved, accessible trail in the Lava Lands Trail of Molten Lands in Newberry Volcano National Monument
New Year's Day 2026 and Avanti 'Everos' 805002 & 805012 pass Ward Street, Lostock Hall with the diverted 1Z37 10.39 Wolverhampton to Carlisle. Engineering work at Preston brought the rare sight of scheduled passenger trains along the little used line between Farington and Lostock Hall Junctions. This being the only readily accessible spot for a picture.
In the background, a Class 150 can be seen waiting to cross over and return to Bamber Bridge which was acting as a temporary terminus for trains from East Lancashire and West Yorkshire.
Accessible only via the sea, the cave opens up inside for at least 50 meters with skylights that make the blue water glow. Supernatural.
The Bara Gumbad, or "big dome," is a large domed structure grouped together with the Friday mosque of Sikander Lodi and a mehman khana (guesthouse), located in New Delhi's Lodi Gardens. The buildings were constructed at different times during the Lodi era and occupy a common raised platform. Formerly an outlying area of Delhi, the Lodi Gardens are a British-planned landscaped garden which includes a number of monuments (primarily tombs) from the Sayyid and the Lodi dynasties. Originally called Willingdon Park, the gardens were located in the former village of Khairpur, now on the edge of Lutyen's Delhi, the colonial capital built by the British in the early 20th century. The gardens, which cover approx. 70 acres, have come to be surrounded by institutional buildings and some of contemporary Delhi's most expensive real estate.
Although they were built under the same dynasty, each of the three structures was undertaken separately. The Bara Gumbad, completed in 1490, is considered to have the first full dome constructed in Delhi. Its original purpose is contested; although it appears to be a freestanding tomb, it contains no tombstone. This causes the speculation that the building might have been intended as a gateway for the Friday mosque; however, their respective placements, stylistic differences, and construction dates do not support this theory. The Friday mosque, completed in 1494, is the first example of the new mosque type that developed during the Lodi era. Characterized by a relatively simple five bay prayer hall building adjacent to a simple open courtyard, this type was an important precedent for mosque architecture in the Lodi and Mughal eras.
The complex can be accessed from various points along the roads bordering the Lodi Gardens, with the access from the Lodi road towards the south most prominent. The buildings are situated at a distance of about 300 meters from Muhammad Shah's tomb towards the south and about 380 meters from Sikander Lodi's tomb towards the north. Another prominent structure, the Shish Gumbad, is located facing the Bara Gumbad at a distance of about seventy-five meters towards the north. The area surrounding the buildings is landscaped with manicured grass lawns. Few trees are planted in the immediate vicinity, leaving the view of the structures unobscured. The path winding through the Lodi Gardens approaches the buildings axially from the north, although the building plinth is accessible all from all sides.
The buildings are sited on a three-meter-high platform, measuring approximately 30 meters (east-west) by 25 meters (north-south). The Friday mosque is located along the western edge of the platform; the guesthouse is sited opposite it, occupying the eastern edge, while the Bara Gumbad is located along the southern edge. Stone masonry walls, about six meters high, connect the three structures along the southern edge. The northern edge is provided with staircases for accessing the platform. A centrally located straight flight comprising of eight steps, about ten meters wide, connects the ground to a generous mid landing. Another 'C' shaped flight of eight steps wraps around the landing, creating an amphitheatre-like space and reaching the top of the platform. The current arrangement of steps appears to be more recent, and the remains of walls adjoining the southern face of the guesthouse and the mosque indicate that the northern edge might have originally been walled. In the center of the raised court, with its southern edge along the staircase, are the remains of a square shaped platform, 8 meters wide, which appears to be a grave.
Friday mosque:
The Friday mosque is a single aisled, rectangular building, approx. 30 meters (north-south) by 8 meters (east-west). The mosque is organized in five unequal bays, which correspond to the five arched doorways on the eastern (entry) elevation. The width of the arched doorways decreases from the center towards the sides. The arches span across grey granite piers. The central arch is framed within a projecting rectangular portal, measuring about 8 meters in height by 6 meters wide. The piers of the rectangular frame are cased in dressed granite and have three shallow arched niches in red sandstone, occurring vertically above the springing point of the arch, on either side. The doorway itself is described by four receding planes of ogee arches, the outermost one being in line with the external face of the rectangular portal. The doorways immediately to the side of the central portal are about 5 meters wide, while those at the two ends are approx. 1.5 meters wide with two receding planes of ogee arches, adding to the prominence of the central doorway. The apex of each innermost arch is constant, measuring approx. 5 meters from the top of the platform. Each arch is finished in plaster and embellished with intricate carved Arabic inscriptions. The spandrels are also heavily carved with geometric motifs, and their the corners are adorned with round inscribed plaster medallions. Red sandstone eaves (chajjas) on stone brackets top the arches, interrupted only by the central projecting portal that extends above them. There is a blank plastered frieze above the eaves, followed by the projecting horizontal bands of the cornice that is topped by a blind masonry parapet adorned with petal shaped crenellations with inscribed plaster medallions.
The interior of the prayer hall reflects the five bay division of the eastern elevation. It is a rectangular space, measuring about 27 meters (north-south) by about 7 meters (east-west). Additional arches spanning between the piers on the eastern elevation and the engaged piers of the western wall emphasize the demarcation of the interior space into bays. These internal ogee arches reach a height of about five meters. They are finished in plaster and profusely decorated with carvings of Arabic inscriptions. The piers are unornamented, dressed gray granite.
The qibla (western) wall of the prayer hall is a blind wall divided into five unequal bays expressed as recessed ogee arched niches, reflecting the arched openings on the eastern wall. The two bays adjacent to the central bay have three equal niches carved out from the portion below the springing line of the main arch. These niches are separated by granite piers, which have smaller arched niches in the top third of their elevation. The three niches are made of two layers of ogee arches framed by the piers. The external layer is in gray-yellow granite, while the interior arch is made of red sandstone. The central niche is mildly distinguishable from the others because its arched portion is curved and the imposts are engraved, while those of the adjacent arches are plain. The innermost rectangular portion of the central niche is blank, while that of the adjoining niches has the carving of a vase and flora inscribed in it. The tympanum of the main outer arch is finished in plaster and has an additional niche directly above the central niche which is embellished heavily with plaster carvings of Arabic inscriptions. A band of similar inscriptions runs along the interior perimeter of the arch and around the upper niche in a closed loop. The voussoirs of the outer arch are plastered and embellished with another layer of carvings. The central bay of the western wall also has three niches, each made of four recessed planes of alternating rectangular and arched profiles. The central mihrab niche is taller and wider. It is also shallower and the innermost plane is blank, while the other two niches are deeper set with relief work. A stone minbar with three steps has been provided abutting the northern pier of the central niche.
Hemispherical domes cover the three central bays, while the terminal bays are covered by low flat vaulted ceilings. The square plan of the three central bays transitions into an octagonal drum through the application of corbelled pendentives at the corners. The corbelling occurs in four layers, which increases in width from the bottom up. The layers are further embellished with curved niches set into rectangular frames, which also increase in number, the lowest corbel having one and the last corbel having five such niches. The last layers of the pendentives form alternate edges of the octagonal drum; the remaining edges being formed by the extension of the walls and are also provided with similar curved niches. The octagonal drum transitions into a hexadecagon, followed by a thirty-two-sided polygon by the provisions of small struts. Each face of the hexadecagon is provided with shallow niches, while the thirty-two-sided polygon is described by a projecting band of red sandstone, followed by a band of inscriptions finally topped by the hemispherical dome. The dome is finished in plain plaster. The voussoirs of the arches, the pendentives and the tympanum are all covered by intricate stucco Arabic inscriptions. The central dome is relatively higher that the other two domes.
The northern and southern walls of the mosque are punctured by ogee arch doorways below the springline of the main arch. Each opening leads to a projecting balcony, comprising of red sandstone posts supporting a tiered roof. The balconies protrude out from the faade and are supported on red sandstone brackets, whose profiles and carvings are characteristic of Hindu architecture. An elaborately carved arched niche is provided above each opening on the interior wall. It is set into a rectangular frame embossed with Arabic text.
The plasterwork on the external northern and southern walls of the mosque has fallen off, exposing the stone masonry, while that on the western wall has survived. The central bay of the western wall projects out and is marked by two solid towers at the corners. These towers are divided vertically into four layers; the first two layers from the bottom are orthogonal, while the third layer has alternating curved and angular fluting; the top layer, extending over the parapet of the mosque, has a circular section. The corners of the mosque are marked by similar tapering towers, which are divided into four layers. Each layer is circular in plan except the third layer, which is described by alternating curved and angular fluting. All the towers have the remains of finials at their apex. The central projecting wall has four red sandstone brackets in its upper third portion, which may have supported a projecting balcony similar to those on the north and south elevations.
The plasterwork on the walls of the plinth is now gone, exposing the rubble masonry construction below. The western face of the plinth is punctured by five ogee arch openings set into rectangular frames, one in the center and two each on the sides. These openings provide access to the basement within the plinth.
The roof has three domes corresponding to the three central bays of the prayer hall and the three central arches on the eastern elevation. The extrados of the domes are finished in plaster. The octagonal drums supporting the domes protrude out over the roof level, above which the circular bases of the domes are decorated with blind crestings having floral motifs. The central dome is marginally larger than the adjacent domes and all three have the remains of lotus finials at their apex.
Bara Gumbad:
Square in plan, the Bara Gumbad measures approx. 20 meters per side. Set on a plinth 3 meters high, it joins the common plinth on the north and projects beyond it to the south. Its plinth is decorated on the east, south, and west with ogee arch openings set into rectangular frames. These provide access to a basement.The walls of the Bara Gumbad are approx. 12 meters tall, above which a hemispherical dome on a hexadecagonal drum extends another 14 meters from the roof level, for a total building height of 29 meters above ground level.
Each of its elevations is nearly identical and divided into 2 horizontal sections. A projecting portal composed of an ogee arch set in a rectangular frame (approx. 8 meters wide), is centered in each elevation and rises approximately 75 cm above the parapet line of the building. The 1.5 meter wide frame is made of dressed gray granite. Each vertical pier of the frame has six shallow red sandstone niches arranged atop one another at varying heights; nine niches continue in a line along the horizontal portion of the frame. The portal is described by two receding planes of grey granite ogee arches; the spandrels are cased with black granite with a thin projecting edge of red sandstone. Two round plaster medallions adorn the spandrels. The lower layer of the portal has a central doorway, spanned by two red sandstone brackets that form a trabeated arch supporting a black granite lintel. These brackets are supported on grey granite posts. An intricately carved red sandstone frame adorns the brackets and the lintel; it starts at the springing point of the arch and frames the lintel of the doorway. The entire composition is set in a rectangular yellow sandstone frame. An ogee arch window has been provided above the trabeated entrance. The portal is crowned by the arched crenellations of the blind parapet. Solid turrets mark the projecting corners of the portal.
The remainder of the elevation, that flanking the central portal on either side and recessed behind it, is divided vertically into two equivalent parts by projecting horizontal bands of stone. Each part is described by two equal arched panels set into rectangular frames. Both the panels of the upper part on either side of the portal are blind and filled with granite masonry. The lower panels located adjacent to the portal are windows, while the lower panels at the edges are filled in. The parapet, like the portal, is decorated with arched crenellations, and the roof has solid turrets at each corner.
A single hemispherical dome surmounted on a sixteen-sided drum crowns the building. Each face of the drum is described by an ogee arched niche set in a rectangular frame. The voussoirs of the arches are gray granite, while the spandrels are clad with red sandstone. The top edge of the drum is decorated with a band of arched crenellations, similar to those on the roof parapets, running above a projecting band of stone that surrounds the drum. Below this projection is band of leaves carved in relief. The extrados of the dome are finished in smooth plaster. The lotus base, possibly for a vanished calyx finial, is still extant.
The structure can be entered either from the raised courtyard via the north elevation or from a double flight of steps located on the western elevation. Inside, the square building measures about seven meters per side. An 80 cm high, 45 cm wide solid seat runs continuously along the interior perimeter of the building. Light streams in from all four walls, which are punctured by the openings of the doorway at the ground level and the ogee arch window above. The interior surfaces of the Gumbad are unornamented and finished in dressed granite. The square plan of the room transitions into an octagon via squinches, which then support the thirty-two-sided drum and the dome. The apex of the dome has two bands of floral inscriptions; otherwise, the dome is finished in plaster. The absence of historical inscriptions has contributed to the confusion over the original purpose of the Bara Gumbad.
Mehman Khana:
The third structure in the group is rectangular in plan, measuring about 27 meters (north-south) by 7 seven meters (east-west). Located along the eastern edge of the common plinth, it faces the mosque and is connected to the Bara Gumbad by a masonry wall along its northern face. The structure is believed to have either been a mehman khana, (guesthouse) or a majlis khana (assembly hall).
The building is accessed from the common plinth through its western wall, which is divided into five bays, mirroring the eastern elevation of the mosque opposite it. The three central bays are considerably larger and have ogee arch doorways, giving access to the interior, while windows puncture the smaller end bays. The arches are set in rectangular frames, which are recessed from the face of the elevation. Each opening is composed of two recessed planes of arches. The spandrels are clad in red sandstone, contrasting with the gray granite of the elevation, and are decorated with round plaster medallions with lotus motifs. The window openings have an additional tie beam or lintel at the springline. The tympanum of the window towards the south has been filled with stone, while that of the window towards the north has been left open. A continuous chajja, supported on equidistant stone brackets, projects from the western wall above the rectangular frame. The cornice is unornamented and is topped by the projecting horizontal band of the parapet, which reaches a height of approximately five meters from the top of the raised plinth. The roof of the structure is flat. The exterior of the building lacks decoration and is finished in dressed granite.
The interior is divided into seven chambers occurring from north to south; the central chamber is the largest, measuring about 5 meters (north-south) long. It is abutted by relatively narrow chambers (approx. 2.5 meters long). The outside chambers which flank the 2.5 meter wide chambers on either side are approximately the size of the central chamber, and correspond to the arched openings in the western wall. The chambers are separated from each other by gray granite walls, punctured by simple ogee arched doorways set in rectangular frames. Square in plan, the outer rooms are separated from the adjacent chambers by stone walls with rectangular door openings with blind ogee arches and rectangular frames. Each doorway has shallow rectangular recesses on either side, as well as a small arched window set into a rectangular recess and a stone jali screen set above the doorway within the tympanum of the main arch. The eastern wall of the building has blind ogee arches, occurring as two successive planes, reflecting the arched openings of the western elevation.
The roof of the central chamber is flat and supported on arches located on four sides; flat stone brackets appear at the corners. The two adjacent rooms are covered by shallow domes supported on squinches. The interior domes are finished in plaster with carved concave fluting. The exterior of the domes has been filled to blend with the flat roof of the central room.
Certain stylistic continuities are recognizable in the three buildings; each was constructed with (local) gray granite and lime mortar. However, the degree and type of embellishment, both interior and exterior, on the mosque differs substantially from that found on the other two, relatively unadorned, buildings.
Apart from the grouping of the three structures and their stylistic similarities, the buildings do not appear to have been planned as a complex. The Friday mosque is the first example of the panchmukhi building type, where "panch" (five) and "mukhi " (facade) characterize a five-bay prayer hall. This approach was influential in both the Lodi and the Mughal periods. The Bara Gumbad is significant for having the first complete hemispherical dome in Delhi.
The differences in the surface ornament of the buildings suggest that the buildings were constructed at different times, with the Bara Gumbad and the guesthouse being similar in style and decoration, without the multilayered arches of the Friday mosque. The function of the Bara Gumbad is still unknown; its geometry and form aligns with the predominant tomb architecture of the period (like the neighboring Shish Gumbad). However, there is no grave or cenotaph in the building, and rather than being blank, its qibla wall (like its other walls) is punctured by an entrance. While the continuous stone bench in the interior is also found in gateway architecture, (as in the Alai Darwaza at the Quwat-ul-Islam Mosque in Mehrauli), the size of the Bara Gumbad vis-a-vis the Friday mosque does not support this conjecture. Some scholars surmise that the structure might have been a gateway to the larger complex of tombs within the Lodi Gardens.
Lodi Dynasty
-----------------
The Lodi dynasty in India arose around 1451 after the Sayyid dynasty. The Lodhi Empire was established by the Ghizlai tribe of the Afghans. They formed the last phase of the Delhi Sultanate. There were three main rulers in the history of Lodi dynasty. All three of them have been discussed in detail in the following lines. So read on about the Lodi dynasty history.
Buhlul Khan Lodi
Buhlul Khan Lodi (1451-1489) was the founder of the Lodi dynasty in India and the first Afghan ruler of Delhi. He was an Afghan noble who was a very brave soldier. Buhlul Khan seized the throne without much resistance from the then ruler, Alam Shah. His territory was spread across Jaunpur, Gwalior and northern Uttar Pradesh. During his reign in 1486, he appointed his eldest son Barbak Shah as the Viceroy of Jaunpur. Though he was an able ruler, he really couldn't decide as to which son of his should succeed him as the heir to the throne.
Sikandar Lodi
After the death of Buhlul Khan, his second son succeeded him as the king. He was given the title of Sultan Sikander Shah. He was a dedicated ruler and made all efforts to expand his territories and strengthen his empire. His empire extended from Punjab to Bihar and he also signed a treaty with the ruler of Bengal, Alauddin Hussain Shah. He was the one who founded a new town where the modern day Agra stands. He was known to be a kind and generous ruler who cared for his subjects.
Ibrahim Lodhi
Ibrahim Lodhi was the son of Sikander who succeeded him after his death. Due to the demands of the nobles, his younger brother Jalal Khan was given a small share of the kingdom and was crowned the ruler of Jaunpur. However, Ibrahim's men assassinated him soon and the kingdom came back to Ibrahim Lodhi. Ibrahim was known to be a very stern ruler and was not liked much by his subjects. In order to take revenge of the insults done by Ibrahim, the governor of Lahore Daulat Khan Lodhi asked the ruler of Kabul, Babur to invade his kingdom. Ibrahim Lodhi was thus killed in a battle with Babur who was the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. With the death of Ibrahim Lodhi, the Lodhi dynasty also came to an end.
MTA New York City Transit President Richard Davey, MTA Chief Accessibility Officer Quemuel Arroyo, and MTA Arts & Design Director Sandra Bloodworth announce the completion of an entrance to Penn Station on the northwest corner of West 33 St & 7 Av, with a new elevator and glass mosaic “The Time Telling,” by Diana Al-Hadid on Thursday, Jan 26, 2023.
(Marc A. Hermann / MTA)
Rotterdam - Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, the world’s first fully accessible art depot, will open its doors in September 2021 at Museumpark in the centre of Rotterdam. With this construction completion, now the museum and the users can start to inhabit the building and fill its spaces with priceless art. Although it will take another year before the real opening, the completion is a special moment . 7,000 lucky persons can make a safe quick visit in 3 days in September 2020.
The assignment for MVRDV Architects was to offer a glimpse behind the scenes of the museum world and make the whole art collection accessible to the public. The reflective round volume responds to its surroundings. The Depot features exhibition halls, a rooftop garden, and a restaurant, in addition to an enormous amount of storage space for art and design.
Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen is the first depot in the world that offers access to a complete collection. The dynamics of the depot are different from those of the museum: no exhibitions are held here, but you can - independently or with a guide - browse through 151,000 art objects. You can also take a look at, for example, conservation and restoration.. Surface 15,000 m²
MVRDV has completed the bowl-like Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam's Museumpark, which is covered in mirrored glass and topped by a rooftop forest. The art storage facility, which will open to the public in autumn 2021, has been built to house the art collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in one place for the first time since 1935. Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen contains a mix of storage spaces alongside areas for art maintenance, both of which will be made accessible to visitors after the artwork has been moved there. This makes the facility the first publicly accessible art depot in the world, according to MVRDV Architects, and will offer a new type of experience for museum-goers in the Netherlands.
The Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen measures 12 metres in height and encompasses 15,000 m2. The budget was € 55,000,000. To help reduce its visual impact, MVRDV clad the depot in 1,664 reflective glass panels so that it blends in with its surroundings in the OMA-designed Museumpark. Its bowl-shape was also developed to minimise its footprint. The rooftop features 75 birch trees. Its reflective facade wears the trappings of whatever surrounds it: people passing by, Museumpark's leafy grounds, the clouds, and Rotterdam's dynamic city skyline. Thanks to this reflection, the building is already fully integrated into its surroundings, despite its not insignificant size.
Inside, the building contains several storage spaces alongside studios for the curators and areas for the maintenance of the art. The storage spaces are divided into five different climate zones so that the artefacts can be stored and exhibited according to their specific temperature and humidity requirements, which can vary depending on the materials used to make them. According to MVRDV, the focal point of the depot is its central atrium, which is filled with overlapping staircases and suspended glass display cases that will eventually be filled with art chosen by the museum's curators. This atrium will connect the storage and exhibition spaces to the curators' studios, and offer visitors rare access and insights into how the museum cares and maintains its collection. Once open to the public, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen's artwork will be displayed throughout the entire building, including on its rooftop restaurant and sculpture garden. The rooftop forest is covered with 75 tall birch trees and was incorporated by the studio to make up for the lost green space and provide views across the city.
Jordan Kay at Twitter tweeted to say that "when Apple sends out their standard 'Make Your App Accessible' email", they link to my blog post on accessibility.
I asked him to forward me a copy, and sure enough, they do!
The full content of the email is quoted below.
==============
We are excited to hear about your interest in expanding your app's marketability by addressing the needs of individuals with disabilities. There are benefits for developers who choose to enhance their apps to take advantage of accessibility APIs that drive the VoiceOver feature in iOS including....
* Make your app stand out from the crowd
* Expand your user base (approximately 1 in 6 individuals in the US have some type of disability, but that doesn't preclude them from wanting to use your app. Even those that don’t identify themselves as disabled can also benefit from accessibility features)
* Improve User Interface testing through automation
* Easy to implement using Apple's developer tools
* Appropriate for almost every app
Read Matt Legend Gemmell’s blog post about his experience writing apps that support the visually impaired: Accessibility for iPhone and iPad apps
Here are some great resources to help you make your app more accessible. Please note many of these pages require an iDP developer account to access them.
1) The best place to start is with our iOS Accessibility page: developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/accessibility.html
2) Another great place to learn more about how to program your app for Accessibility is the Accessibility Programming Guide for iOS.
3) You can download the WWDC 2011 Session Videos for free by logging into WWDC 2011 Videos using your Apple ID and password. There you will find a few accessibility sessions which include podcasts and a copy of the presentation slides, but additionally, we would like to highlight the one below for iOS:
iOS Accessibility
Description: iOS devices are incredibly popular for blind and low vision users, and those with other disabilities. Learn how to make your apps accessible to everyone, as well as how to make apps that are tailored expressly for users with disabilities. This talk will cover new and existing UIAccessibility APIs, and it will provide tips and tricks for making all apps more usable by everyone.
4) On our public Apple website, we have a dedicated page discussing our commitment to Accessibility: www.apple.com/accessibility/
5) Finally, here are some great examples of apps that take advantage of VoiceOver:
* Shazam
* itunes.apple.com/us/app/dictionary.com-dictionary/id36474...
* Inkling
MTA Chief Accessibility Officer and Senior Advisor Quemuel Arroyo Tours OMNY Call Center on Friday, November 4, 2022
MTA
Being the kind of nerd I am, I had to analyse this button panel in the elevator at ARoS art museum in Aarhus, Denmark. I think I was overwhelmed at all the options at first.
The typography was hard to read - tiny black letters on the matte steel.
Kudos to all the Braille.
But... why were there "close doors" and "open doors" buttons in two spots? I wonder if the lower set was for someone in a wheelchair or someone who was unable to reach the higher buttons? I didn't think about that at the time that I photographed this panel. That could explain it. But that makes the lower buttons look built-in and not built-in. We know what that means. Not designed for inclusion from the beginning!
Kudos, too, to the museum for having signs outside the elevator encouraging people who did not have any special needs (wheelchairs, canes, etc.) to use the stairs and leave the elevator to those who really needed it.
Accessible PowerScape 3D play system with shade structures, adaptive whirl and swings, musical instruments, motion activities and much more.
MTA Construction & Development President Janno Lieber announces the completion of elevators at the West 55th St. end of the 57 St-7 Av Station on the N/Q/R/W lines on Tue., June 1, 2021.
MTA Chief Accessibility Officer Quemuel Arroyo, Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities Commissioner Victor Calise.
(Marc A. Hermann / MTA)
Syracuse Village, affordable housing: flats from $100s, this building appears to be eight apartments. (Model homes had those American flags out front.) Note the subtle ramps on the side; even though everything appeared to be slab on grade, some of the market-rate homes seemed to thwart accessibility with weird stairs. link to Stapleton houses for sale page
« Accessibility comunity is not an angry mob. » -- Billy Gregory during his conference « Things I wish I knew when I started in Digital Accessibility » at Paris Web 2014.
Holkham parish church is one of Norfolk's 'less obvious' churches being on the Holkham Hall estate and only accessible from the coast road from the Burnhams to Wells-Next-The-Sea via a large and heavy wrought-iron gate which has to be opened manually to let cars on to the church drive.
The church stands on a tall circular mound - which might be man-made - and is dedicated to Saint Withburga, the youngest of four daughters of one of the last pagan kings of Mercia. She later founded a Benedictine nunnery at East Dereham and was eventually buried at Ely. The dedication to a Saxon saint often implies a church has Saxon origins. Excavations at Holkham have found Saxon remains near the west end which may be a tower. Holkham itself was originally called Wihtburgstowe. Later it was called holc-ham - 'homestead in a hollow'.
www.flickr.com/photos/barryslemmings/sets/72157632459709103/ to see the full set.
Norman remains have been found incorporated into the present building which implies that the Normans expanded the Saxon building - as they did at other churches. In turn this Norman church made way for an Early English building (13th century). The tower and the western part of the south aisle date from this period. The guidebook notes that the tower gets progressively younger as it goes up. The lower sec ion is Early English up to the sill of the belfry windows. The belfry itself is Decorated (14th century) while the battlements and pinnacles are Perpendicular (15th to 16th century).
During restoration work at least six 12th and 13th century coffin lids with foliated crosses were found on site and are now on show inside the church.
The north aisle and north transept are thought to have been added later than the 13th century as burials and parts of coffin lids were found under the foundations. The church is known to have been enlarged in the 14th century and many of the internal arches are Decorated period.
By the early 18th century the church had fallen into decay but the development of Holkham Hall estate led to renewed interest in the church. In 1767 the Countess Dowager of Leicester put up £1,000 for its repair. She had overseen the completion of Holkham Hall after the death of the 1st Earl of Leicester in 1759.
A major renovation of the church was completed in 1869 at the expense of Juliana the wife of the 2nd Earl. This cost £9,000. She died the following year and has a striking sculpted memorial in the north chapel of the church. There are several other memorials to various members of the Coke family from whom the Earls of Leicester are descended.
The unusual mausoleum in the west wall of the churchyard was built for Juliana but her body was later transferred to the family plot on the south side of the churchyard.
***
Holkham is a church where I have a close family connection as my six-greats grandfather and his descendants are all buried here from at least 1734 onwards. The family moved into nearby Wells Next The Sea in the 1870s. My great-grandfather was born here illegitimately in 1861 as George Davidson Lack and it is supposed that his natural father was a Davidson. There is a large Davidson plot in the churchyard and one or two males are born at the right date to have been his father. His mother was the daughter of an agricultural labourer while the Davidsons were clearly more affluent. One worked for the Coastguard service while others were farm bailiffs or managers.
Holkham was a port in its own right in medieval times and had a staithe near the Victoria Hotel, Holkham, until coastal reclamation work meant that the port became redundant and all trade was diverted to Wells-Next-The-Sea. The present 'Holkham Gap' in the dunes was the entrance to the former tidal harbour creek.
PART 2:
We were already in to October 2nd, but I didn’t get to sleep that night. At 6am I headed downstairs to change into deck work clothes. We tended to wear a variety of boiler suits carried over from previous ships. Some cadets had orange or grey boiler-suits, but most had one that had started life as white when first made, or navy blue. Mine was navy blue, but I had torn off the sleeves for extra cooling. We were used to changes in routine and so were prepared for something new in the orders of the day that were being passed from cadet to cadet that morning. As in any survival situation the priority was to provide shelter and the cadets were instructed to raid the ship’s lockers, and anywhere else we could think of, and strip out every available, non-essential, bit of canvas, burlap and other weather proof sheeting we could find to make a shelter for the vulnerable people exposed on top of No.5 hatch.
That meant the white canvas screening, with plastic windows, that went around the swimming pool was lashed on top of the games net that enclosed No. 5 hatch. And there were spare winch covers, lifeboat covers, even the ship’s dinghy’s sail, tied haphazardly across the net too. It ended up as an untidy arrangement that gave puny protection from the elements. But fortunately the climate was warm and there was no rain. Even the tropical sun was weaker than usual letting us off with our miserable attempt to make a decent canopy.
Drinking water was made available in buckets, and extra drinking cups provided made out of cut down soft drink and beer cans. The ship simply didn't have enough eating and drinking utensils to go round. Most of the Vietnamese had lost their shoes in their escape and as the sun rose higher in the sky the steel deck began to heat up. Some fire hydrants on the deck were opened to allow salt water for washing, but also to cool the deck which was now painful for the Vietnamese to walk on in bare feet
Most of the Vietnamese lay, curled up under blankets on the bare steel hatch cover. Some were stirring, sitting up, looking about and a few made the short walk to and from the couple of toilets that were accessible from the deck. They seemed in a daze, exhausted and drained of life by their experience. And they were quiet, not even a noise from the children. Slowly they seemed to come to their senses as the ship’s catering staff came out with food. It was a strange mish-mash of food, our cooks prepared, unsure how to provide for so many of diverse cultures and different ages. Here was a ship equipped and provisioned to feed less than 50, but now had almost 400 mouths to feed. So at breakfast the cadets were surprised to find that the customary choice had gone, and in its place was one ‘hot’ course. Peering at the plate we could see potatoes, beans of various types, meat balls, rice, peas, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms all boiled into a red-brown stew. It was an unrecognisable meal that I’m sure has no name in a cookery book. As the stewards put the food on our plates, our reactions must have given our thoughts away! What’s this?! But actually to our energy sapped bodies it was good wholesome food and tasted better than it looked, and as the cook explained, it was the same as everyone got……….Vietnamese refugees and Wellpark crew alike.
That breakfast was the big one. It was the first proper meal the Vietnamese had had for at least four days. Already the ship’s whole supply of baked beans and oranges had disappeared at the first meal.
Outside the sun shone down on the ship. Now it rhythmically rolled gently on the swell as its bow cut through the sparkling waters at full speed. Out of sight of land, our heading was northerly towards Taiwan, but the crew were told that fact must remain secret and could not be divulged to the Vietnamese. There was the risk they might fear being repatriated to Vietnam or held in detention camps and trapped into a life worse than that they had fought to escape from. The Vietnamese were not known to us, and they outnumbered us seven to one. We could not discount the possibility they might wish to over-power us and take control of the ship.
That morning we set up a one-way system. The Vietnamese lined up the stairs on the starboard side of the ship and filed, one at a time, into a cabin set aside for medical checks. It had been discovered two of the Vietnamese were professional doctors and it was a priority to check everyone over after the trauma of their escape. Basic personal details such as name, sex, date of birth were recorded, before they were asked to carry on back down to the deck via the staircases on the port side of the ship. There were a few cases of measles and they were confined to the ship’s hospital, and a family which included their grandmother were accommodated in a more private part on the rear of the ship’s accommodation.
We were amazed to discover we had 343 ‘passengers’ on board, and as dribs and drabs of their journey before being rescued came out, we were incredulous that so many could have survived such a journey on a boat we seen for ourselves the night before was less than 70 feet long. It was hard to comprehend how they had come to be on that boat. From one cadet I would hear they started on three boats, but two sank and the survivors clambered on the remaining one – hence why it was so cramped. Another would say that they were at sea for three days without food and water. We had found them more than 120 miles from the nearest land. I had been told the boat’s steering had failed. From somewhere else I would hear they had been in concentration camps and that lots of other ships had passed them by. Apparently the Wellpark had spotted what was their last remaining flare. They had had to pay large amounts of gold to corrupt officials to be ‘allowed to escape’. As the cadets passed each other as they worked around the ship they exchanged information, so that as the day went on we had a better picture of who these people were and the terrible experience they had endured.
As we organised and arranged we spoke to the people, but only a few spoke English. Communication was hard but gradually their trepidation and fear dissipated and we began to see some smiles. To us they were all Vietnamese and when we asked one ‘Vietnamese’ to tell another to do something we could not understand why they could not do it. It took some time to appreciate the mix of Vietnamese and Chinese peoples on our ship.
But things improved fast, particularly when in the afternoon we erected screens of burlap around the ship’s small swimming pool. It was a less than perfect arrangement but it allowed everyone to wash and feel a little bit better in themselves.
That evening, after it had gone dark I heard that some of the cadets were out sitting on No.5 hatch amongst the Vietnamese. There they were, some sitting talking, others playing with children. And one had got his guitar out and a few had gathered around for a bit of a sing-song. It was a holiday camp-fire atmosphere, but without the camp-fire. It was a happy time, and I thought at the time it did a huge amount to lift the Vietnamese souls, and engender their trust in us.
Elsewhere the Captain was having to do a lot more thinking. He brought together a committee of Vietnamese leaders, six of them, each one an English speaker. It was essential that he had their co-operation to ensure their safety and security on Wellpark. They agreed on what would be expected of the refugees during their stay on the ship with particular emphasis on hygiene, sanitation, fire-risks and discipline amongst their people. A strict control over cleanliness was kept by both the working Committee of Wellpark’s Officers and the Vietnamese. With limited provisions on the ship, fresh water for drinking purposes would only be provided at 0900, 1300 and 1700 hours daily. Meal times were arranged for 0700, 1200 and 1700 hours. And a doctor’s surgery was set up twice daily 0900-1000 hours and 1600–1700 hours.
I hurriedly updated my letter to my parents that night, telling them the whole story as it had unfolded. Having retired to my bunk late, after joining in the sing-song on deck I was desperate for a few hours sleep, the first rest in 39 hours.
Life was a little more normal for us on the 3rd October, the second full day the Vietnamese were on board. We were still at sea, closing in on Kaohsiung, our next port of call. The day started with the Vietnamese mainly restricted to life on the hatchcover, away from the side railings of the ship. But as time moved on new friendships were being formed. Inevitably the Committee were meeting with the Captain to gain a better idea of their future. Some were working with the Captain acting as interpreters, and administering the personnel records. Elsewhere we already had the doctors helping out with medical aid where it was required. And some of the Vietnamese volunteered to contribute by working in the galley, helping to prepare food. Some Vietnamese who had an engineering background put themselves forward to help down in the ship’s engine room. And out on deck they were just as keen to help. I had just headed down the deck with a couple of other cadets and some brushes and tins of white paint. Our orders were to re-paint the railings where the paintwork had been damaged and spoiled by the actions during the rescue. We had barely started when a few Vietnamese men approached ready armed with paintbrushes. They must have gone to the ship’s stores and requested them, for now they took our paint-tins and started painting with two brushes each, one in each hand. We were somewhat bemused, not knowing whether to accept their help or demand that they returned to the hatchcover. But then a small group of little boys cautiously approached, unsure if they would be shouted at, but their curiosity had the better of them. As I painted, they watched me, all the time inching forward. As I paused to turn round and see who was behind me their little faces would crack into big wide smiles. And then one stretched out his arm pointing to the railing. I looked. The cheeky mite was telling me where I had missed a bit!! And then they were all pointing, all over the place to bits I had missed with my paintbrush! That day they followed me everywhere, only being summoned back to the hatchcover later by their anxious parents.
And that evening more of the cadets and crew came to sit on the hatchcover to talk, play and sing. Tomorrow we would arrive in Taiwan, not knowing what would happen to these people we were already so deeply attached to. Rumour had it we could end up taking them from Taiwan to Hong Kong or the Philippines. And it might take some time before a country would take them in.
Other chapters of this story are here:
PART A www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/1438584566/in/set-72...
PART 1 www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/1436299943/in/set-72...
PART 3 www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/1461744696/in/set-72...
PART 4 www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/1460893557/in/set-72...
PART 5 www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/1437563459/in/set-72...
PART 6 www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/1438381480/in/set-72...
You can also join the Wellpark Reunion site here : wellparkreunion.ning.com/main/authorization/signIn?target...
See www.shipsnostalgia.com/Guides/MV_Wellpark for the rest of the story
I found this sign at the British Museum. It lets the patrons know how many steps it will be. The elderly can then better judge for themselves if they can handle this amount of steps or should take the lift. When you can't see the end of the stair case, you need other affordances, in this case, a sign.
From the autumn 2016 trip to Vietnam:
Touchdown brings me ‘round again to find…solid ground. Though I sometimes do feel like a rocket man. Including layovers, this trip to Vietnam consisted of 8 separate flights. The third one brought me to tiny Phu Quoc Island, a tropical island 40 kilometers west of the southern tip of Vietnam (and less than 5 kilometers from Cambodia on the mainland). The island, then, is actually west of the southern tip of Vietnam, and less than an hour flight from Saigon. The flight goes something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated as it’s time for take…and now we’re landing.”
There are actually two tropical islands off the southern coast of Vietnam that I would have liked visiting, Phu Quoc being the more appealing of the two. (The other, for those curious, are the Con Dao Islands which actually are south of the mainland…but there doesn’t seem to be daily flights to/from there, which took it out of this trip’s consideration.)
Compared with Thailand, you would probably never think of coming to Vietnam for a tropical island experience – mainly because it’s not developed – and you’d be correct. I can easily name a handful of islands in Thailand (or Malaysia) that I would prefer to visit from an island standpoint.
However, that’s not to say that I was disappointed by Phu Quoc. On the contrary, I love the island. I found myself thinking, many times, “If I were an investor interested in developing a tourist resort, this would almost be at the top of my list.” (So, any investors reading this…feel free to take a slightly closer look at this island.)
It’s an easily accessible island with many daily flights to Saigon, and also flights to Hanoi. It claims to be an international airport, so I assume there are flights from Cambodia, as well, though I can’t say for certain. I can only say…it’s easy to get here.
Once you get here, you’ll find Vietnam’s largest island (though not large in comparison with many others). It’s 50 kilometers from north to south and 25 kilometers at its widest. It’s triangular in shape and, poetically speaking, can be said to look like a tear drop. Located in the Gulf of Thailand, the island also includes smaller neighboring islands as well.
Phu Quoc has slightly over 100,000 full-time residents, mostly living in Duong Dong, the island’s main town on the midpoint of the west coast of the island. Other than tourism, the economy here is driven, obviously, by the sea. Fishing, seafood, and so on are the staple here. Phu Quoc is the producer of the most famous fish sauce coming out of Vietnam. (Phu Quoc’s fish sauce can be found on grocery store shelves around the world.)
It’s also an island of hills. Our tour guide claimed that Phu Quoc has 99 mountains and, while I can’t (or won’t) dispute that, it struck me as a curious claim. There are hilly parts, though, and they include two waterfalls, one of which we visited on a day trip.
I mention that Phu Quoc struck me as being somewhat underdeveloped. I’ll elaborate by saying that they have a solid foundation – lots of restaurants (catered to foreigners; western food, pizza joints, etc., in addition to local/Vietnamese cuisine) – and hotels ranging from budget to top end. The basic utilities on the island (electricity, internet, etc.) are also completely stable and reliable. Where they could develop more is in the following: infrastructure and the actual amenities of tourism.
The roads weren’t shoddy, by many standards, though there’s still a lot of room for development. Once this is improved, it’ll make getting around more comfortable for anyone who wants to be completely insulated from “natural.”
The other thing that struck us as a little odd is that there doesn’t seem to be much going on at night (unless you’re a fisherman). It’s still a very quiet island and there weren’t many options for bars, clubs, live music, for example. (This is a huge difference between here and, say, Koh Chang in Thailand; the only other nearby island I have for comparison.) There aren’t convenience stores here that are open 24 hours a day and they don’t have much to offer after dark…besides the Night Market. Perhaps that’s the way they want to keep it, but there’s certainly potential here.
During the daytime, though, there’s plenty for tourists. As a photographer not equipped with waterproof gear, I was much more limited, but for the typical tourist you have options of fishing, diving, snorkeling, and swimming. The beaches were, in my opinion, a little dirty, but there are others on the island that are better, I think. (All in all, it would be nice to see things cleaned up a bit…)
In addition to water pursuits, there’s Phu Quoc National Park (that we didn’t visit; apparently better other times of the year) and – though the crux of the economy is tied to the sea – there are also other aspects of the economy that they represent well: pearl farms, pepper farms, cashew plantations, fish sauce factories, and local wine (wine aficionados, don’t get your hopes up).
For the land-loving folks, this is far from a crowded island. There are a number of beaches, the national park in the northern part of the island, and a few small waterfalls (one a classic, the other more of a rapids where you can swim). In short, there’s not a lack of things to do during the day.
With the long-winded generalities about the island out of the way, time to carry on with our experience. We took an early flight out of Saigon, around 9 or 10 o’clock. Flying into the airport, in the heart of the island (on the south side), my first impressions were “green” and “hilly.”
Naturally, it’s a small airport – everything here is small – which made it easy to get our things and be on our way to the hotel. I paid about $5 for the ride into Duong Dong. Our hotel, the Sea Breeze, had very friendly staff. (I can actually say that about every hotel we stayed at, with the New Moon in Danang being the least friendly…and they weren’t bad by any means at all.)
Anyway, the Sea Breeze was a fine place to sleep, though the Cat Huy was slightly nicer. But, for three nights, this hotel was perfect. Comfortable bed…and they did same day laundry service. I don’t remember the cost, but it was probably between $20-30 USD/night.
The hotel wasn’t one that had a restaurant or breakfast included (Saigon, Hoi An, Hue, and Hanoi all did), but there was a restaurant attached and a few feet away. I had breakfast there two of the three mornings and, while not the best western breakfast I’ve had, the staff were exceptionally friendly. I think that’s a Vietnamese quality…be really cordial to folks.
We had most of Friday on the island, plus the entire weekend, with a Monday morning flight to Danang (via Saigon) around 10:00 in the morning. Friday, then, was a completely unplanned day. So we spent Friday toddling around Duong Dong.
The first place we went (besides the hotel, obviously), was to find something to eat. We ended up going with was a decidedly non-Vietnamese restaurant named Buddy’s, walking there via the Night Market street. For me, I loved ‘em because they had milkshakes with real ice cream. Didn’t matter what else they had. That was enough to get me to go back 2-3 times.
After lunch and sitting around Buddy’s for a while, we walked across the street and followed the river out to its mouth in the Gulf of Thailand. (The river is why the main town was built at this spot.)
At the river’s head is a curiously named spot called Dinh Cau Castle. There is nothing about this place that shouts out “castle” if you were to just chance upon it. It’s actually a combination lighthouse-temple. The temple aspect is just a small room with a statue dedicated to the Goddess of the Sea. The lighthouse, obviously, has its practical purposes. It’s more a light station, though; there’s no house for a keeper.
However, this was a very enjoyable spot (much nicer than the Thien Hau “Pagoda” in Saigon) and would end up being the spot where we watched the sunset on Friday and Saturday. The lighthouse-station-temple was built in 1937. There are a few tables benches on an upper platform to sit and enjoy the view of the sea (or the river mouth with its fishing fleet behind you) and there’s also a jetty going out into the sea that gives some nice perspectives. I can only say that I was surprisingly pleased with both Friday and Saturday’s sunsets.
Staying at Dinh Cau well past sunset, we strolled back towards the Sea Breeze via the Night Market, which is rather clean as far as Asian markets go. (I mention this to contrast it with Phu Quoc’s Day Market, mentioned below.)
Before getting back to the hotel, we stopped at the recently (2015) established Crab House (Nha Ghe Phu Quoc) on the main road at the south end of the market. The owner was – as all seem to be – very friendly and talkative. I was curious to know why the interior had banners from a handful of SEC schools (US folks will know what this is) along with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Turns out, the guy used to live in Muskegon, Michigan, which isn’t terribly far from where I was born (and a town I’ll be passing near in about 3-4 weeks’ time).
Junebug & I split the Crab House battered garlic pepper fries (65,000 VND); miniature crab cakes with sweet mango coulis (175,000 VND); and com ghe: hot, steamy jasmine rice with fresh, sweet crab meat, julienne cucumber, and nuoc mam cay (Phu Quoc fish sauce) for 175,000 VND. Add in two cans of Sprite at 20,000 VND a pop and that’s a happy stomach. (The exchange rate, while we were there, was around 21,000-22,000 VND to the US dollar, so we’re looking at…$20-25 for a fresh seafood dinner for two.) With a thoroughly happy stomach, it was time to call it a night, even though it was barely 8:00.
Saturday brought with it another day trip with a small group. This was similar to the Saigon trip with Bao in terms of time and what we did, though I think Bao was a better guide than the girl here. She seemed disinterested half the time, though was never rude or mean, per se. Anyway, at $11/person, it wasn’t a bad way to spend the day.
Since the one part of this tour I was looking forward to most was a waterfall, I was grateful that it was overcast almost the entire day. For parts of it, rain was pretty heavy. (It even made me mildly – albeit very mildly concerned about the flight out on Monday as it was the first of two for the day.)
First up, though, was a pearl farm where I found it interesting to see them pulling pearls out of oysters. That thrill lasted for about a minute or two. However, we were scheduled to be here for close to an hour. (They were hoping that people would buy pearl jewelry.) Given that we were in a fairly heavy rain, I was surprised that there were so many people here. It made me think the entire day would be like this with overcrowded spots. (Forunately, that didn’t come to pass.)
With no interest in buying jewelry, I spent the hour on the back patio looking out at the very rough and stormy sea, and a few of these shots are from there. Finally ready to go, we were waiting on two Vietnamese women from the group (a recurring theme for the day) before we headed off to the next stop: a pepper farm.
To call it a pepper farm would be to stretch one’s imagination to its utmost. It was about 5 rows of pepper trees with each row being no more than 10 meters long. (I’d like to hope this is just the “sample” section they show us dopey tourists.) Much more attractive was the attached shop where they hoped you’d buy pepper. This time around, I pulled out my wallet. There’s one of us born every minute, you know. I bought four separate jars of pepper, one of which wasn’t a powder (and was subsequently confiscated in Guangzhou as I rarely check luggage and this trip was no exception). At about a dollar a jar, it wasn’t a bad deal.
From the pepper farm we were off to the wine shop. This tour was beginning to feel like just going from one spot to another to buy local goods. This wasn’t grape wine, but was a berry wine and was, for the most part very sweet. Don’t think port or sherry, though. It wasn’t quite that sweet, but it was close. Certainly not bad, but also something I could’ve done without. However, they seemed proud of their wine, and I don’t blame them. (It’s better than most of what I had in Korea.) Once again being held up by the Vietnamese ladies, we finally all settled back into the van and went off to Suoi Tranh.
The waterfall was actually much nicer than I expected. Apparently, half the year, it’s dry, so it worked out well that we came at the end of the rainy season. The fall is a classic cascade in a very nice, wooded setting. (Even if it were sunny, it probably would’ve photographed rather well because it had enough cover to give it shade.) We were given 45 minutes to walk the 600 meters up to the falls and back, which meant a bit of a rush for me, but…fortunately, the Vietnamese ladies were even slower than I was.
The creek leading up to the falls had some nice rapids, too, but it also had some unfortunate eyesores: a manmade fall at the entrance (why would you need that when you have the real thing a few minutes away?) and, worse, some fake animal statuary. Count my lucky stars, but these all disappeared after the first 100-200 meters, and you were left with a tasteful and well-made natural path leading up to the falls.
After this – it was around 12:00 or 12:30 by this point – we hopped in the van and headed to Sao Beach at the southern tip of the island. To get here required driving down a very bumpy road for a few minutes at the end. (As I said…they can still do a little infrastructure work here unless one of the unstated tourist goals is to make people feel like they’re bouncing around in a bag of popcorn.)
The beach was…pleasant, I guess I can say. It wasn’t a large beach. In length, it covered a small cove, so it had a nice setting. It also isn’t a wide beach; only about 30 meters from the restaurant to the water, and maybe even less than 20 meters. I saw a little too much trash around which disheartened me, though we aren’t talking dirty to levels that I’m accustomed to seeing in China. I didn’t go swimming, and the lunch at the restaurant here – though Vietnamese – was among the most unimpressive meals we had in the entire two weeks here. The best part of the time at the beach is that the weather cleared up from overcast and rainy to mostly cloudy. So it wasn’t crowded here, nor was it raining.
We left the beach at 2:00 and drove to a nearby fish sauce factory. This was a lot like the pearl farm, pepper farm, and wine shop. “We make this here. Please buy it.” Of the four of these places, the pearl farm is the only one who actually had some kind of “demonstration,” and that lasted about a minute.
If it seems I’m being critical of the roped in commercialism of these types of tours, perhaps I am a little jaded. The spots in and of themselves are actually quite interesting and I just accept this as an unnecessary evil. They need to survive somehow, and for that, I guess I’m grateful that they do this. Back to the actual tour, the fish sauce factory was quick and interesting. (Though I don’t like seafood that much, I do like fish sauce to add flavor.)
The last “scheduled” stop was Nha Tu Phu Quoc – Coconut Tree Prison – right across the street. This isn’t a place that I would otherwise go out of my way to visit, though in conjunction with the beach and the fish sauce factory, it was perfect. (Individually, none of the three spots amazed me, but as a whole, they were quite pleasing.)
The prison was built by the French in the 1940s and this was one of the ARVN’s POW camps during the Vietnam War. Apparently, prisoner treatment here was quite inhumane, as detailed by the signs around the barracks. The recreations of people, though, aren’t the most lifelike I’ve ever seen and seem kind of cheap. There aren’t any period photographs, so there’s a little “oomph” missing here, but it’s still a good effort all around.
Our last stop before being dropped off back in Duong Dong was at Ham Ninh, a small fishing village on the east coast of the island (almost directly across the island from Duong Dong. We didn’t do anything here except have 15-20 minutes to walk to the end of the pier and come back. As uneventful as that may sound, I enjoyed it a lot because the surrounding scenery and seeing the fishing fleet up close (along with a lot of small floating restaurants) made it unique and worthwhile to me.
When we got dropped off, we went right back to Buddy’s and repeated the same thing from Friday night (minus eating at the Crab House). I can’t recall what we ate for dinner on Saturday night and perhaps we didn’t. Lunch at Buddy’s was late enough that I doubt we were terribly hungry by evening except for some snacks.
The only difference between Friday & Saturday was my positioning to photograph the sunset. Friday night was from up near the lighthouse, and Saturday was a little ways out on the jetty. Skies were equally moody both nights.
I’m easy like Sunday morning. No rush to wake up since there was absolutely nothing whatsoever on the agenda. Brunch, around 9:00 or 10:00, after stopping by the post office to send off some postcards, was at Buddy’s. From there, we crossed the river to the day market and spent about an hour or so wandering up and down the street photographing a variety of things.
Going back to the west side of the river, we spent a little while at Dinh Cau, but decided not to watch the sunset there for the third night in a row. We had a late (and small) lunch of a wood-fired pizza, which was surprisingly delicious – so much so that I considered going back for dinner.
Instead, we went to one of the few access points for Long Beach (the beach nearest the hotel) to watch the least spectacular of the three sunsets in my opinion. Sunday night’s was cloudier than Friday and Saturday’s. However, there are still some interesting pictures. It’s just the most muted of the three, by far, and there’s simply less to work with.
After sundown, we walked the few hundred meters north up the main road, passing the Sea Breeze, and stopped at a local restaurant. (I suggested it not because it was local, but because they proudly talked of the ice cream that they have.) The food was not terribly great. I had fish and chips that didn’t have enough tartar and was a bit bland. I also ordered some smoked cheese that, when they brought it, they didn’t say what it was and, since it looked more like noodles than cheese, didn’t eat it. The ice cream, however, was sorbet, and it was wonderful.
All in all, Phu Quoc was about as good as I wished it would be, and I was lucky enough to have three reasonably good sunsets and decent weather for the weekend. Also, the waterfall was actually nicer than I had expected, we ate well (for the most part), and it was a relaxing weekend. Not a bad way to spend life.
After breakfast Monday morning, we grabbed our bags and headed to the airport at 9:00 for the first of two flights on the day.
As always, thanks for dropping by and viewing these pictures. Please feel free to leave any questions or comments and I’ll answer as I have time.
The Roger Maris Museum is in a Mall in Fargo, No. Dakota. Part of the deal was that it would be easily accessible for people and remain on display. The collection has a lot of value.
During his career, Roger Maris played in seven World Series and seven All-Star games. He hit 275 career home runs and won the Gold Glove Award for outstanding defensive play. The New York Yankees retired his number "9" in 1984.
Roger founded Maris Distributing Company, an Anheuser-Busch distributorship, in 1967 with his brother Rudy, which he operated until his death in 1985.
In 1998, Roger's home run record was surpassed by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both from the National League, 37 years after the 1961 season.
Roger Maris became one of the few baseball players ever featured on a United States postage stamp when the United States Postal Service issued its "Roger Maris, 61 in 61" stamp in 1999.
Billy Crystal's acclaimed film, 61*, starring Barry Pepper and Thomas Jane, about the home run race in 1961, premiered in 2001. The film was re-released on blue ray DVD in 2011.
In 2011, the New York Yankees celebrated the 50th year of Roger's American League Home Run record, which remains unbeaten.
Mott Haven East Historic District, Mott Haven, Bronx, New York City, New York, United States
The Mott Haven East Historic District consists of a small enclave of rowhouses and tenements on East 139th and East 140th streets, between Willis and Brook avenues, in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx. This section is one of the oldest settled areas of the Bronx and the first in the borough to be developed with rowhouses. Though common in Manhattan and Brooklyn, rowhouses from the nineteenth century are relatively rare in the Bronx.
Within the area of the district are three groups of single-family rowhouses (one row including a small multiple dwelling) and two groups of tenements. Erected between 1889 and 1903, these buildings serve as a virtual catalogue of speculatively-built housing types common to the South Bronx building boom of the 1880s and '90s. Complementing these residential buildings are the neo-Gothic St. Peter's German Evangelical Lutheran Church and Parsonage of 1911-12. As a whole, the buildings in the historic district include fine examples of neo-Grec, Queen Anne, Renaissance-inspired, and Flemish Revival design, illustrating the stylistic trends in residential architecture in New York City in the final decades of the nineteenth century.
Mott Haven, located in the historic township of Morrisania, takes its name from the village developed early in the nineteenth century by industrialist Jordan L. Mott, who opened an ironworks on the Bronx side of the Harlem River in 1828 and built his own house near the foundry. Industrial expansion occurred during mid-century, accompanied by sporadic residential construction, but the area remained relatively undeveloped until the opening of rapid transit lines in the early 1880s made it more accessible to Manhattan. Mott Haven was one of the few sections of the Bronx to attract nineteenth- century speculative developers, who sought to capitalize on the demand for new housing brought on by the increasing immigrant population in the metropolitan region. Soon the area became an urban extension of Manhattan and was known in the period as the "North Side," drawing middle-class families to its rowhouses, and working-class families to its numerous tenements and flats buildings.
The first two groups of rowhouses built in the Mott Haven East Historic District, one on the south side of East 140th Street (1889) and the other on the north side of East 139th Street (1892), were constructed by local developers William O'Gorman and Hermann Stursberg, who built other similar rows in the immediate area of the historic district. For these rows, O'Gorman acted as his own architect, designing the houses in a style known as neo-Grec. Typical of the style, the uniform brick facades are adorned with incised geometric ornament in stone and topped by bracketed metal cornices. As built, the long handsome rows of forty-nine two-and-one-half-story houses were terminated at each end by a house with an additional story; the eastern twenty-nine buildings of each of these rows were demolished to make way for the construction of P.S. 40 in the 1960s.
The third group of rowhouses, on the north side of East 140th Street, was built by O'Gorman in 1897-1900 to the designs of architect William Hornum. The picturesque row includes pairs of two- and-one-half-story houses separated by single three-story houses, and is terminated at the west end by a four-story tenement. The shorter paired houses are somewhat simply designed, with modest stone trim, door enframements, and modillioned cornices; by contrast, the three-story houses have varied window patterns, pedimented lintels, carved details, and stepped and gabled rooflines. O'Gorman's own house, distinguished from the others by its greater width and different face brick, was built as part of this row, at No. 427.
Further east on the north side of East 140th Street are two matching groups of "New Law" tenements built in 1902-03, one designed by the firm of Neville & Bagge and the other by George F.
Pelham; these architects were active practitioners in the field of multiple dwellings, designing numerous buildings throughout the city at the turn of the century and into the 1920s. Faced in brick with stone trim, each Renaissance-inspired building has an elaborate entranceway with a shallow projecting canopy, round-arched fifth-story windows, and an imposing metal cornice. Between the tenements and Hornum's row to the west stands the attractive, neo-Gothic St. Peter's German Evangelical Lutheran Church (1911- 12), designed by Louis A. Allmendinger. Faced with brick and stone trim, it has a central tower which adds to the picturesque character of the streetscape.
The buildings of the Mott Haven East Historic District, like those of surrounding areas, were initially inhabited by immigrant or second-generation families of European origin. By the mid-twentieth century, demographics in the area shifted to include African-Americans; the neighborhood now has a predominantly Hispanic-American population. Throughout the twentieth century to the present time, residential redevelopment, increased industrial usage, and demolition have eliminated many of the South Bronx's examples of original nineteenth- and early twentieth-century improvements; however, the blockfronts of the district retain their architectural integrity to a high degree. The Mott Haven East Historic District remains a vibrant residential enclave dating to the region's original phase of urban development.
HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL INTRODUCTION
The History of Morrisania
Prior to its incorporation into New Netherland in the early seventeenth century, the land corresponding to Morrisania was occupied by Native Americans in the Weckquaesgeek and Manhattan branches of the Mohegan tribe, who had named the region Laaphawachking. In 1641, Jonas Bronck, a Danish Lutheran, bought from Native Americans a 500-acre tract at the very southern reaches of what is now the borough named for him, between the Harlem River and the Aquahung (Bronx) River. Bronck constructed a house and outbuildings near the mouth of the Harlem River, southwest of the area of the Mott Haven East Historic District. From 1664 to 1673, while the Duke of York had control over New Netherland, the area became the dominion of the English. "Broncksland" was made subject to the government of the city of New York and Harlem.
In 1670, the English holding known as "West Farms," located between the Harlem River and Bungay Creek to the west and extending north to about the present 150th Street, was purchased by two brothers: Captain Richard Morris and Colonel Lewis Morris, Englishmen of Welsh descent. The Morrises had served in Cromwell's army, and upon the restoration of the monarchy (1660) in England, they immigrated to Barbados, where they became estate-owners and merchant sugar-planters. After falling from favor with local authorities, Captain Richard Morris moved to New York in 1668. He relocated to West Farms upon its purchase in 1670, and died two years later, leaving a wife and baby son, named Lewis after his uncle. Over the next few years, during a brief return of Dutch rule and ensuing resumption of English control, Colonel Morris secured claims to his holdings as well as adjacent unclaimed parcels, which totaled nearly two thousand acres. (The colonel also purchased at this time thirty-five hundred acres in New Jersey, later known as Morris County.)
The county of Westchester, including the Morris land and all of what is now the borough of the Bronx, had been formed in 1683 under an English charter, with the town of Westchester, east of the Morris property, as the county seat. Westchester became a borough-town in 1696, when a mayoral court was established. Colonel Morris's nephew and heir, Lewis, who became known as Lewis Morris, Sr., as well as Lewis Morris, Jr., and Lewis Morris III (who was actually the fourth Lewis Morris), all in turn served as Westchester county representatives to the Provincial Assembly.
Lewis Morris, Sr., settled for a time in New Jersey and became its first provincial governor. He returned to New York and secured in 1697 a royal patent for the manor of Morrisania, which he had inherited from his uncle. Judge Morris's second son, Lewis Morris, Jr., inherited the entire Morrisania estate. Lewis Morris, Jr., died in 1762, leaving his son, Lewis Morris III, to become the lord of the Morris manor. At that time, the vast majority of inhabitants of the relatively more-populated Westchester townships to the east of Morrisania, along the Long Island Sound, were conservative Loyalists. In contrast, Morris was a vocal critic of British taxation and control tactics, and he dominated a 1774 borough meeting held to elect delegates to a county convention. He was chosen as a representative, and later became a brigadier-general in the Congressional army; he resigned his army post to become a member of the Continental Congress, and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
During the first hundred years following the original Morris land purchase, or up until around 1770, the upper sections of Westchester County were fairly uniformly settled with farms and villages, while virtually no development occurred in the lower portions. Only a few houses, barns, and mills, on the banks of Mill Brook, which divided the Morris estate in two, had been extant. In about 1760, General Morris had developed a mill at the western recess of his lands.
In 1788, an act of the state legislature caused Westchester County to be divided into twenty-one townships, one of which was called Morrisania, corresponding to the Morris lands and reaching north to what is now East 170th Street. At this time Morrisania was the least populated township in the county, and Lewis Morris HI was one of only thirteen heads of families there. By 1790 there were a total of only 103 free persons and thirty slaves - seventeen of which were owned by the Morrises — in Morrisania.
Lewis Morris HI had lobbied for township status and the rights to make other improvements to Morrisania, concurrent with his unsuccessful campaign to have the new nation's capital established there. In 1790, the state legislature granted him permission to construct a stone-piered wooden dam-bridge at the base of present-day Third Avenue, to connect Harlem with the northerly Post Road; these improvements were known as the Coles Bridge and Road. Traffic through the northern Kingsbridge crossing slowed dramatically, as travelers to West Farms, Eastchester and beyond chose the more convenient and shorter route across the Coles Bridge and Morris estate lands. Despite Morris's efforts, however, the township of Morrisania was merged into the older, neighboring town of Westchester in 1791. Nevertheless, a village, known as Morrisania, had been formed on the Westchester side of the Coles Bridge.
Port Morris, at the southeast edge of Morrisania and southeast of the present-day Mott Haven East Historic District, was another early Morris manor improvement and a proposed site of the new national capital. The Morris family also hoped that Port Morris would rival the port of New York on Manhattan island, because of adjacent deep water, and for a time the port had its own custom house. However, the community was located in a lowland area which experienced regular tidal flooding. It remained a small anchorage and ferry terminal throughout the nineteenth century and, at the end of the century, was filled in and laid with sewers and streets to accommodate several large factories.
Soon after 1791, when it had been merged into the neighboring township of Westchester, Morrisania became part of the contiguous West Farms township. In general, development in what is now the southwest Bronx remained limited throughout the next half-century to the construction of estate structures and scattered frame houses, and the laying of additional private farm roads. When Lewis Morris m died in 1798 at the age of sixty-two, the division and redivision of the Morrisania manor lands, and resulting nineteenth-century urban development, began.
The Early Development of Mott Haven
Substantive development began in the southwest corner of Morrisania in 1828 when Gouverneur Morris II sold a large tract to the inventor of the coal-burning stove, Jordan L. Mott, and several co- investors. Mott, the first major industrialist to locate in the Bronx, established the Mott Iron Works on the Harlem River at Third Avenue and 134th Street, west and south of the present-day Mott Haven East Historic District. Mott built a residence near the foundry, and named his pocket of Morrisania "Mott Haven." Questioned about Mott's new designation of land linked historically with the Morris family, Gouverneur Morris II is said to have stated "I don't care what he calls it; while he is about it, he might as well change the name of the Harlem [RiverJ and call it the Jordan. "
By 1839, the population of Westchester County as a whole was just over 3,000 people. Evidence of Morrisania's slow development and rural character is provided by the fact that the area's first religious structure was not built until 1840. In a field near the Mill Brook, Gouverneur Morris, Jr., founded St. Ann's Episcopal Church (now a designated New York City Landmark) at the site of his parents' tomb, at what is now St. Ann's Avenue and East 140th Street, just to the east of the present-day Mott Haven East Historic District.
Mott Haven proper, in contrast to the rest of Morrisania, began to grow steadily in the mid- nineteenth century. Mott's firm was incorporated and expanded into new buildings constructed throughout the neighborhood. The Mott Ironworks began to manufacture a wider range of goods, including kitchen and bathroom fixtures as well as stable fittings, gates, statuary, and garden furniture, produced in brass, bronze, and nickel-plate, in addition to iron.
Though some considered his ventures an unwanted intrusion, in 1850 Mott proceeded with plans for the lower part of the Mott Haven Canal, which followed an underground stream running parallel to Morris Avenue, about halfway between it and the Harlem River. The canal enabled boats to travel inland as far north as 138th Street, about the distance of a dozen blocks, and encouraged local industrial development. New enterprises included other metal works, lumber yards, saw mills, stone yards, enamel works and a notable concentration of impressively-built piano factories. A corresponding residential building boom, resulting from the need for worker housing, occurred in areas immediately north and east of the burgeoning canal zone.
Mott Haven's industrial and residential growth was facilitated by the advent of the railroad, and preceded a period of intense development following the introduction of mass transit lines which transformed the farmlands of Morrisania into the urban environment that remains today. The introduction of the railways and additional bridges over the Harlem River in the 1840s linked Morrisania and Westchester county with the city of New York to the south. The New York & Harlem Railroad, incorporated in 1831, had taken over the New York and Albany line in 1838 and received authorization from the state legislature to bridge the Harlem River in 1840. Thus, the first railroad in what is now the borough of the Bronx passed in 1841 through Morrisania along Mill Brook, to West Farms and northward. The industrial community of Mott Haven, with its own rail-line station-stop, was firmly established.
In the following decades, a railroad and streetcar boom resulted in a web of crossing lines, many radiating from the Harlem (previously Coles) Bridge. Morris family members and other local landholders pushed for infrastructure improvements which would stimulate interest in speculative land purchases, and began selling off their acreage to builders. Mott Haven's industrial and commercial development and its proximity to Manhattan made it a favorable environment for real estate speculation. The earliest known rowhouses in the area, dating from the early 1860s, are located at 276 to 294 Alexander Avenue between East 139th and East 140th streets, in the Mott Haven Historic District. Though commonplace in Manhattan and Brooklyn, rowhouses were unusual in what is now the Bronx, where homes were customarily freestanding frame structures. Throughout the nineteenth century, Mott Haven contained the only concentration of rowhouses in the borough.
The new rail system was responsible for the evolution of a number of other South Bronx villages into well-established towns. By contrast, the area now constituting the Mott Haven East Historic District had yet to be developed by 1860. On a contemporary map, only the street grid plan, devoid of built improvements, characterized this section east of Third Avenue. After 1856, the new township of Morrisania was consolidated, with its town hall located at 160th Street and Third Avenue.
By 1858, traffic over the old Harlem Bridge had far surpassed the structure's capacity. The second Harlem (or Third Avenue) Bridge, another drawbridge made of cast iron, was erected in place of the earlier structure in 1860. This bridge was extant until the 1890s, when the much larger, surviving drawbridge of steel and iron was constructed to accommodate the markedly increased traffic, which included trolley cars. The earliest streetcar rail line in the Bronx ran up Third Avenue to Fordham from the Harlem Bridge as of 1863. In 1870, the New York-New Haven freight yards moved to Port Morris and spread along the waterfront in the South Bronx.
The Urbanization of Mott Haven
In 1874 the townships of Morrisania, West Farms and Kingsbridge split from Westchester County and became the 23rd and 24th wards of the City of New York, and thus part of New York County. (The southeastern portion of Westchester County was joined to the city in 1895.) New Yorkers referred to the area as "The Annexed District."
The severe Financial Panic of 1873 caused a city-wide building hiatus which lasted most of the decade. In the late 1870s, as the depression lifted, construction resumed slowly in what had become known as New York City's "North Side," encompassing Mott Haven. Development began to creep inward from the loose ring of towns in the southwest Bronx toward the open area of the present-day historic district, adjacent to Mill Brook. Directly to the south, along East 136th Street, three adjoining rowhouses were built as early as 1877-78 (located in what is now the Bertine Block Historic District).
Large-scale improvements to the infrastructure in the Annexed District advanced the pace of development. Businessmen formed booster organizations such as the North Side Association, active through the 1880s, which pushed for the improvements. As a result, streets were paved, sewers dug, parklands purchased, and perhaps most importantly, rapid transit lines laid. In 1884, the Madison Avenue Bridge was built at East 138th Street to provide a further connection between Manhattan and the North Side. Rows of housing, churches, offices, a school, and a fire station appeared along Alexander Avenue and above 141st Street. Industrial works and manufactories continued to surround the lower Mott Haven Canal west of Lincoln Avenue. Spanning the two blocks between Lincoln and Willis avenues, below 132nd Street, was the vast Harlem River station rail yard of the New York, New Haven & Hartford line. Still, at this time, very little had been developed between Willis Avenue and the newly- formed Brook Avenue just to the east of the Mott Haven East Historic District.
The first mass transit line to travel to the Annexed District was the Suburban Rapid Transit Company's Third Avenue El, begun in the early 1880s, which passed two blocks west of the area of the Mott Haven East Historic District. In 1886 the SRT began work on an additional North Side transit line, running through the blocks between Alexander and Willis avenues. The line incorporated a stop at 138th Street, just south of the Mott Haven East Historic District. It reached 145th Street in 1887, and then swerved westward to Third Avenue. A network of streetcars leading to and from the transit line stops was soon established. In response to an act of the New York State Legislature which was implemented in 1890 to coordinate the borough's improvements, the Commissioner of Highways of the Bronx Department of Street Improvements ordered a grid-type street layout for remaining unpaved areas and worked quickly to complete the borough's network of roadways and sewers.
Seventy-five percent of the area's population in the 1890s lived in close proximity to the El, which first served as a magnet for concentrated tenement construction south and west of the area of the
Mott Haven East Historic District. Development, however, soon fanned out from the rail line. Single-family rowhouses, and then more lucrative apartments and tenements, were built in surrounding areas. Examples of these building types exist in both the Mott Haven and the Bertine Block Historic Districts, as well as in this historic district. The South Bronx region at the end of the nineteenth century is described by historian Evelyn Gonzalez as follows:
By 1897, just a decade after the el began operation, the once vacant blocks east of Third Avenue were almost completely built over with solid brick buildings. This area held a mixture of building types: single-family town houses built in the late 1880s; multi-story apartment houses, built with increasing frequency in the 1890s; and to complete the picture, various industrial and manufacturing establishments along the neighborhood's southern fringe. This newly built-up area demonstrated the importance of the urban features the North Side had so painstakingly acquired.
The Bronx held the record as the fastest growing borough in the city between 1890 and 1940. The population of the North Side was 89,000 in 1890; ten years later it had more than doubled to over 200,000. By 1915, the number had increased threefold, to 616,000.
The Mott Haven East Historic District
Within the compact, one- and one-half-block area of the Mott Haven East Historic District are three groups of single-family rowhouses and two groups of tenements. Erected between 1889 and 1903, these buildings serve as a virtual catalogue of speculatively-built housing types common to the South Bronx building boom of the 1880s and '90s. Complementing these residential buildings are the St. Peter's German Evangelical Lutheran Church and Parsonage of 1911-12.
In 1887 and 1888, subsequent to the opening of the new transit line just west of Willis Avenue at the western edge of the historic district, speculative-building veterans William O'Gorman and Hermann Stursberg filed New Building applications for the construction of single-family houses in parallel rows along the entire south side of East 140th Street and north side of East 139th Street, between Willis and Brook avenues. At the time the rows were constructed, there were vast, undeveloped tracts east of the area of the historic district, farther from the rail line and past the grounds of nearby St. Ann's Church, and many blocks neither demarcated by paved streets nor subdivided into lots. The rows were completed in 1889 and 1892, respectively.
As built, the long handsome rows of forty-nine two-story-and-basement houses were anchored at each end by a house with an additional story; possibly multiple dwellings, the taller end buildings appear to have been planned in the course of construction. The eastern twenty-nine buildings of each of the rows were demolished to make way for the construction of P.S. 40 in the 1960s. Surviving structures
are Nos. 406 to 450 East 140th Street and Nos. 403 to 445 East 139th Street. No. 447 East 139th Street, once adjacent to the school property, was demolished in 1973 due to unsafe conditions, and is now an empty lot within the boundaries of the district.
For these rows, O'Gorman acted as his own architect, designing the houses in a style known as neo-Grec. Typical of the style, the uniform Philadelphia brick facades are adorned with bold, incised geometric ornament in stone and topped by bracketed metal cornices having coved fascias decorated with large spade-shaped leaf motifs. The bold articulation and uniformity impart a strong, repetitive rhythm to the streetscapes. All of the houses in the two rows are sixteen feet, eight inches wide; the three-story houses were designed to project from the facade plane of the two-story houses by means of angled end bays. Each house is fronted by a stone stoop with heavy, ornate, cast-iron newels, balusters, and handrails. Sidewalks appear to have been originally bluestone, as bluestone pavers remain in front of empty lots just to the east of No. 403 East 139th Street.
O'Gorman seems to have based his design for the houses in these two rows on that of an earlier group of eight neo-Grec houses he and Stursberg erected in 1885 on the south side of East 139th Street, directly south of the historic district. The lone survivor from that prototype row is in every detail a match to the 1889 and 1892 rows included in the district. Neo-Grec houses with uniform cornice lines, flat facades, and even fenestration patterns, while less expensive to construct, were somewhat outdated by this time. In Manhattan, the style was supplanted in favor of the variegated and irregular forms of the Queen Anne style by 1880.
O'Gorman and Stursberg had completed other projects in the neighborhood in addition to the 1885 row across East 139th Street from the historic district. By 1885, they had erected a row of twelve houses along the east side of Willis Avenue between East 138th and 139th streets (demolished). In addition, the partners appear by 1885 to have developed both sides of the block between East 141st and 142nd streets (demolished), also bounded by Willis and Brook Avenues, due north of the Mott Haven East Historic District.
Little is known about Hermann Stursberg except that conveyance records show that his family had owned land in the southern block of the Mott Haven East Historic District as early as 1874, and that he formed a South Bronx building partnership with William O'Gorman. He later owned property under the name of Hermann Stursberg Realty Company. The Department of Buildings documentation for the rows on East 139th and 149th streets lists his address as Staten Island.
William O'Gorman is known to have immigrated to New York from Ireland in 1863 or '64, at the age of 17. He obtained work with Daniel Crimmins, a builder, and quickly became his superintendent. In 1866 O'Gorman started his own architectural practice in Manhattan's Yorkville. He was the architect of two known rows of Italianate brownstone rowhouses in the same block in the Upper East Side - a row of six at 165 to 175 East 70th Street (1871, two demolished; two altered), and a row of seven at 150 to 162 East 71st Street (one demolished; two altered) ~ both for speculative builders. In 1875, after the annexation of the 23rd and 24th wards, O'Gorman joined Stursberg, transferred his business to the Bronx, and presumably began designing and building the rows of houses he planned with his new partner.
At least as early as 1887, O'Gorman and his family are known to have resided at 252 Willis Avenue just north of East 138th Street, in a house which was part of one of the rows that he had developed with Stursberg. The 1890 New York City Police Department census lists O'Gorman, age 45; his wife Julia, 43; sons William Jr., 22, Joseph, 16, Mort, 11, and Edward A., 5; daughters Lillie, 14, and Gertrude, 6; and Minnie Kane, 30, presumably a servant, as residents of 252 Willis Avenue. According to an 1897 New Building application for the erection of the row on the north side of East 140th Street, O'Gorman appears to have lived at 406 East 140th Street for some time between 1897 and 1900, when he is known to have moved to 427 East 140th Street. The U.S. census of 1900 shows that the developer's son, William J. O'Gorman, a thirty-one-year-old "Builder," lived at 497 East 139th Street. O'Gorman, Jr.'s house was demolished together with others at the east end of the block.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mott Haven was inhabited predominantly by people of either Irish birth or descent, while lower Melrose, to the north, was populated by Italian immigrants and their families. The two rows on East 139th and 140th streets in the Mott Haven East Historic District, which were occupied as rentals when first developed, contained both American-born residents and immigrant populations of European heritages. Turn-of-the-century census records show that occupants of these single-family rentals were typically first or second-generation German or Irish immigrants living with extended families and often a single servant. Head-of-household occupations included draughtsman, clerk, salesman, iron worker, assessor, wool importer, road inspector, tailor, picture framer, examiner, wood worker, adjuster, insurance agent, painter, horse dealer, glue broker and pilot. In addition, there was one fire chief, one newspaper editor, and a physician.
Before O'Gorman and Stursberg had finished construction on the neo-Grec style rows, builder Edward D. Bertine had begun erecting three more fashionably-styled rows of houses on East 136th Street, in what is now the Bertine Block Historic District. In contrast to those of O'Gorman and Stursberg, Bertine's first houses, begun in 1891, were designed in the Queen Anne style, and were constructed of light-colored brick with an assortment of eclectic design features, a variety of textured facade materials, and picturesque rooflines including mansards, gables, and chimneys. Bertine's second group, begun in 1892, was designed in the Romanesque Revival style, with molded-brick and stone trim. The third Bertine group, constructed in 1895, exhibits Renaissance Revival design elements.
The next group of rowhouses built in the Mott Haven East Historic District exhibits stylistic elements found on the Bertine rows, including Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, and Renaissance Revival design features. This group, located at 407 to 427 East 140th Street toward the Willis Avenue end of the block, was built in 1897-1900. The houses were constructed on land also owned and developed by William O'Gorman, Sr., or perhaps by or with his son William, Jr. Records of the Department of Buildings show a William O'Gorman, of 662 (later 406) East 140th Street, as owner/developer of the row, which seems to refer to the younger O'Gorman. The architect for the row, in any case, was not the elder O'Gorman, as in the earlier rows, but rather Walter H.C. Hornum, who had offices in Harlem.
Having begun an architectural practice on lower Broadway in Manhattan in 1886, Walter H.C. Hornum (dates undetermined), apparently moved to East 125th Street to work with his brother, Louis A. Hornum, in 1888. According to New York City directories, the firm of Hornum Brothers seems to have dissolved by the turn of the century, when Walter moved first to midtown and then in about 1907 to West 125th Street, while his brother had set up in midtown as Louis A. Hornum & Co. By 1917 the brothers' addresses were again listed together in midtown. Walter Hornum's known work includes 425 to 451 West 162nd Street, two rows of Romanesque Revival style residences built in 1894-95 (now included in the Jumel Terrace Historic District).
Begun in June, 1897, and completed in January, 1900, the row Hornum designed was planned as part of a larger development including eleven buildings to be built on through-the-block sites directly to the north, along the south side of East 141st Street. Construction on this parallel row, however, was suspended in 1899, and officially abandoned the next year. Area maps of 1893 and 1897 show the block divided into lots of equal size for rowhouses. However, the lots along East 141st Street were soon combined and larger, more profitable tenement buildings were constructed instead.
The completed row on 140th Street consisted of a varied yet harmonious group of two- and three- story-and-basement single-family dwellings, constructed of brick and stone and set back fifteen feet from the front lot line. The house at No. 409, toward the west end of the row, is only eight feet behind the lot line and adjacent to the end building at No. 407, a four-story brick multiple dwelling set back just five feet from the lot line. This "Old Law" tenement — constructed in accordance with regulations in Tenement House Act of 1879 — was built to house five families, each in one apartment per floor.
The two-story houses, grouped in pairs, the three-story residences, and the single multiple dwelling vary in width from about seventeen feet to twenty-two feet; No. 427, the three-story building at the east end of the row, is the widest house and the only structure in the group faced in Roman brick. It is probable that this house was built for William O'Gorman, Sr., for his family's use. The U.S. census of 1900 shows that William O'Gorman, a "Builder," now aged 55, owned and lived in No. 427.M
O'Gorman's residence has a rock-faced, rusticated stone basement, and has a red tile mansard roof, with a stone-trimmed pedimented gable. It is embellished with a rock-faced stone stoop having integrated carved newels, a carved stone entrance surround, and decorative stone trim. Windows contained stained glass sash. At the first story is a tripartite window with carved, figural wood mullions. At present, the building is in use as a school and staff residence. The neighboring lot to the east (No. 429), combined with this lot in 1966, remains undeveloped.
The projecting four-story tenement at the west end of the row joins the plane of its neighbor to the east by means of a curved corner return. The building, the darkest in color and heaviest in design detail, also contains a short, shallow stoop meeting the sidewalk. No. 409, the three-story-and-basement rowhouse to the east of the tenement, has a projecting bay that steps back to meet the flat plane of the
building's neighbors to the east. All of the rowhouses have stone stoops set back from the sidewalk, which ascend from paved landings within the houses' large, planted areaways. The six paired, two-story- and-basement rowhouses have flat roofs and matching galvanized metal crested cornices (see No. 413). Facades contain slender lateral reveals anchored by carved stone bosses at the second story (see No. 417). Each pair is distinguished from the others by variations in brick color, trim design, and decorative detail. The even cornice lines are level with the bases of the tiled mansards atop the three-story buildings, each of which has a differently-styled stone-trimmed gable.
Typical of the fanciful late-nineteenth century fashion in residential design, buildings in this row combine classically-inspired carved, molded, incised and rock-faced detailing and decorative wrought-iron window and door grilles. A variety of window shapes, including shouldered and flat-, segmental-, and round-headed types, are found throughout the row. The three-story buildings generally exhibit decorative motifs that are more elaborate than those of the neighboring paired buildings — these are nonetheless distinctively ornamented. Together, the group comprises a lively ensemble.
Upon its completion in 1900, the tenement building contained four rental households. They were composed of Seigmund Levey, a German-born furniture store proprietor, and his New York-born wife and daughter; Eli Partrige, an English real estate manager, and his New York-born wife and two daughters; James Morris, a club custodian from Virginia, his New York-born wife, who had one German-born parent, and his daughter, also born in New York; and the sixty-year old Charles Bates, a dry goods superintendant, and his wife Rachel, both New Yorkers.
Besides O'Gorman's own residence, completed houses in the row in 1900 were owned and occupied by an Irish-born undertaker, his wife, four children and a servant; another undertaker, born in New York, his wife, son, a servant, and one roomer; and a linen store manager and his wife and brother- in-law, all German-born, with their four sons, the two eldest employed as a traveling salesman and a clerk, and a servant.
In 1898, the entire annexed portion of Westchester County became the Borough of the Bronx within Greater New York City, in keeping with the terms of the city charter of that year. Highly influential in the turn-of-the-century development of the southwest Bronx was an organization called The North Side Board of Trade. Founded in 1894 as a successor to the North Side Association in order to attract manufacturing and other enterprises and a "superior class of residents," its membership included leading business and professional men with interests in borough. The Board lobbied successfully for further improvements in the district, and the development of remaining open lands in the Mott Haven vicinity was soon accomplished with the erection of higher-density tenements and apartment buildings. Many such tenement buildings were constructed throughout the South Bronx at this time.
In the Mott Haven East Historic District, examples of such tenement construction appear on the north side of East 140th Street, several lots to the east of the O'Gorman/Hornum row. While an earlier New Building application reveals that three-story buildings, thirty-five feet in width, may have been planned for the row, nine five-story tenements, each over thirty-seven feet in width, were constructed in two groups in 1902-03; each building was planned to house ten families. The first group (Nos. 465 to 481) was designed by Thomas P. Neville of the firm of Neville & Bagge; plans for the second group (Nos. 441 to 461) were filed by architect George F. Pelham.
These buildings were erected for Gaines, Roberts & Co.; little is known about the firm's President, Furman V. Gaines, and Vice-President, Hugh L. Roberts. The structures were designed and built in accordance with the provisions of the Tenement Law of 1901, which marked the end of the narrow, rowhouse-sized tenement building and mandated the construction of larger, better ventilated multiple dwellings, complete with hot water, heat, and electricity.
After practicing on his own for two years at 47 West 66th Street, architect George A. Bagge (dates undetermined) formed a partnership in 1892 with Thomas P. Neville (dates undetermined) and set up offices at No. 250 and then No. 213-217 West 125th Street. In 1915 the firm moved south to midtown, and then from 1919 to 1930 to Bergen Avenue in the Bronx. After 1923 and until 1936 Bagge headed George A. Bagge & Sons, first located at 299 Madison Avenue and then at 157 and 7 East 44th Street.
Neville and Bagge were prolific designers of a number of building types, including stores and lofts, hotels, banks, and churches, but specialized in tenements and apartment houses. Although examples of the firm's work exist throughout Manhattan and the Bronx, most are in the residential neighborhoods of Manhattan's Upper West Side and Harlem. Neville & Bagge's rowhouses and apartment buildings appear in the Chelsea, Hamilton Heights, Jumel Terrace, Mount Morris Park, West End Collegiate, and Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic Districts. Individually designated New York City Landmarks designed by the firm include the freestanding Shuttleworth residence at 1857 Anthony Avenue (1896) in the Bronx and the facade (1907) of St. Cecilia's Convent at 112 East 106th Street, Manhattan.
Neville & Bagge's tenements at Nos. 465 to 481 East 140th Street form a unified row of four five-story tan brick buildings with limestone trim, designed in the popular neo-Renaissance style. George F. Pelham, a prolific practitioner in the field of multiple dwellings, was the architect of record for the adjacent five buildings at Nos. 441 to 461, the design of which matches that of the four Neville & Bagge structures to the west. The buildings are topped by metal cornices and feature centered, ground-story entrances having a sequence of harmonious yet slightly varying limestone surrounds, with projecting stone canopies and low stoops. At the time of designation, original entrance doors and window sash had been replaced.
Each steam-heated building was planned with two six-room apartments per floor plus a four-room janitor's apartment and storage space in basement. Lots are a standard 100 feet deep, and the buildings extend back about eighty-six feet. Fire escapes were placed on the rear elevations.
Other types of buildings were constructed in the neighborhood to serve the needs of the residents. The Mott Haven East Historic District contains an example of a small, early-twentieth century religious complex, in this case, intended to serve a local congregation of Lutherans of German birth or descent. In the center of the north side of East 140th Street, separating the rowhouses to the west and the tenements to the east, are the church (No. 435) and parsonage (No. 437), designed by Louis A. Allmendinger, and constructed in 1911-12 for the Second St. Peter's German Evangelical Lutheran Church, previously located at 374 East 141st Street. Today, a Lutheran congregation continues to occupy the church, now known as St. Peter's-in-the-Bronx.
The one-story-and-basement neo-Gothic church, punctuated by a tower, is a freestanding gray brick structure set on a stone base course, with a peaked slate roof, terra-cotta and copper cornices, and tile coping. The church's facade is set back from the building line of the adjacent tenements to the east, but forward of the neighboring parsonage to the west. Steel lintels support the low, square tower, originally decorated with a group of attenuated spires. A low stoop leads to a pair of wood entrance doors hung on metal strap hinges. Surmounting the entrance is a stained-glass pointed-arch Gothic window.
The church's two-story-and-basement parsonage is also freestanding, and contains Gothic design elements. The gray brick facades are ornamented with brownstone, limestone, and terra-cotta trim. The brownstone stoop is lined with iron railings and posts, and leads to an entrance door surmounted by a round-shouldered transom. Round-shouldered window openings have one-over-one double-hung sash and stained-glass transoms. The galvanized iron cornice is decorated with Gothic arches pressed into the fascia.
Little is known about the life and career of Louis Allmendinger, whose address is listed as 926 Broadway, Brooklyn, on Department of Buildings documentation for the St. Peter's Lutheran Church and Parsonage. Allmendinger took over the commission after an initial design by architects Schaefer & Jaeger had been approved and withdrawn in 1911. It is not known how much of the original scheme was used in the Allmendinger design. One other known building attributed to Allmendinger is the Byzantine style Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration of our Lord, constructed between 1916 and 1921 on North 12th Street in Brooklyn (a designated New York City Landmark).
Subsequent History
During the early twentieth century, the population of the Bronx continued to expand. The United States census of 1900 reports the total borough population at 200,507; the 1910 census shows that number more than doubled, with the population at 430,980. This constituted the greatest percent increase for the decade — 115 percent - of any borough in the city. To contend with escalating road and rail traffic between Manhattan and the South Bronx, the Willis Avenue bridge had been erected in 1901 and the Madison Avenue bridge was replaced in about 1910 with a larger structure. Two additional railroad bridges brought the total number of early twentieth-century crossings to the South Bronx to five.
The subway came to the Bronx in 1905, and caused a further real estate boom in the borough. Development spread north, as it had in Manhattan in the previous century. One subway branch reached Morrisania at 149th Street east of Third Avenue. This crossroads, nine blocks north of the historic district, became a major shopping hub. In 1912, historian Stephen Jenkins wrote that the subway was "the most important factor in causing the enormous increase in the population of the borough." Industrial development also increased markedly, and by 1910 the South Bronx contained hundreds of factories of varying types, and was considered the nation's piano manufacturing capital. Industry was concentrated just south and east of the area of the Mott Haven East Historic District.
Although the South Bronx contained a growing African-American population in the 1920s and '30s, the 1940 U.S. census findings for Census Tract 39 (bounded by East 138th and East 141st streets, Third and St. Ann's avenues), indicate that the population in the immediate vicinity of the Mott Haven Historic District was virtually all white, with nearly one-half of the population foreign-born. Of the foreign-born white heads of families in the tract, the largest percentage, nearly half, were from the Irish Free State (Eire), with Germans, Italians, and Russians together comprising another quarter. Latin Americans and other non-Europeans were only a fraction.
Recent Trends
By the 1970s, a clear change in the population of the area of the Mott Haven East Historic District neighborhood was discernible. Spanish-speaking residents comprised well over one-half of the population of the census tract, with those of Puerto Rican birth or parentage about fifty percent. African- Americans now made up forty-three percent of the total population. The 1990 U.S. census reported that the Hispanic population has grown to represent nearly eighty percent of the population of Tract 39.
In the 1960s and '70s, when many residential buildings in the South Bronx were abandoned or demolished, the area became synonymous with urban decay. In the midst of the disintegration, the neighborhood of the Mott Haven East Historic District, and its historic structures, endured. The Mott Haven East Historic District remains a vibrant residential enclave. Its century-old rows of solid houses and tenements, representative of the area's first phase of urban development, are important as anchors for current and future renewal.
- From the 1994 NYCLPC Historic District Designation Report