Doctor Margaret Norris Patterson: First Woman Police Magistrate in Eastern Canada - Toronto January 1922 to November 1934

Loraine Gordon Downsview, Ontario

On 4 January 1922, the government of E. C. Drury (United Farmers of Ontario) appointed Doctor Margaret Norris Patterson as the Junior Police Magistrate for the City of Toronto. Although women had previously served as magistrates in western Canada, Patterson's appointment was the first of its kind in eastern Canada.1 It was the crowning achievement of a career which had already encompassed ten years of service as a medical missionary in India and another decade of volunteer social work in Dr. Patterson's adopted city of Toronto. The following is a short and unavoidably incomplete account of that career.2

Margaret Rebecca Norris was born in 1876 on the family farm in Hibbert Township, Perth County, Ontario. Sarah and Robert Norris were Irish Protestants who farmed land which produced sufficient income to pay for the collegiate education of three of their six children. Margaret was educated in rural schools in Ontario prior to entering the Toronto Medical College for Women in 1895 at the age of twenty. Her medical degree was obtained in 1899 from the Woman's Medical

School of Northwestern University in Chicago.3 After one year of internship in Detroit's Woman's Hospital, Margaret Norris volunteered as a medical missionary to India. She was employed by the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the United States and was sent to the Seward Memorial Hospital for Women in Allahabad, India, where she served from 1900 to 1906. She did further medical work in Ludhiana, India, from 1906 to 1910.

Missionary work, as a career for single women, was a late development of the whole overseas missions movement. Although Catholic missionaries arrived in India in the sixteenth century and Protestant missionaries followed in the late eighteenth century, the mission fields were initially considered an inappropriate place for women. Eventually, it was realized that male missionaries, who were limited to dealing only with Indian men, were failing to reach half of the population. Moreover, as teaching and medical service became part of missionary activity in the mid-nineteenth century, the need for trained— and preferably low paid—labourers in the field

DR. MARGARET NORRIS PATTERSON, circa 1918. (Archives of Ontario Picture Collection No. S 17412), original 1 %" x 2

became obvious. As early as 1876 Canadian Methodists were commenting:

There are many foreign fields of labour, in which the employment of intelligent Christian ladies as teachers and workers is recommended, both on the grounds of efficiency and economy."4

Unmarried women, properly trained and motivated, were cheaper to support than a missionary family and, unlike men, they were able to go into the native homes to reach women and children. Women with medical skills were particularly well received. Female missionary doctors then were the answer to the problem of Protestant denominations determined to provide medical and spiritual help to the women and children of India.

Foreign mission work was also the answer to the problems of the first generation of Canadian women doctors who had little real scope for independant work at home. As general practitioners, women doctors in North America tended to be confined to the treatment of women and children. A few female doctors worked successfully in the Public Health field or as "House Doctors" in hospitals especially for women and children, but all too often they married professional men and retired from active practice, perhaps turning their energies to social service and suffrage work.5 Given the restricted environment at home, it is not surprising that many Canadian women doctors in the late nineteenth century went to India and China to serve their church and 'less fortunate' foreign sisters.6 Margaret Norris, later Patterson, is a good example of what could be and was accomplished by many Canadian missionary doctors serving overseas.

When Dr. Norris volunteered as a medical missionary to India in 1900, she was following an already well established path. In 1899 the Western Division (Ontario and Western Canada) of the Women's Foreign Mission Society of

the Presbyterian Church in Canada was supporting seventeen missionary women in India and four more in China.7 In 1900 there were 4,891 Canadian and American men and women overseas, 21% of the total missionaries in foreign missions. Ten years later, the numbers had increased to 7,219,34% of the total overseas, most found in India and China. Women as missionaries were supported morally and financially by women at home who were gaining their first organizational experience in the women's mission societies.8

Norris worked at the Seward Memorial Hospital for Women from 1900 to 1906. In addition to her regular hospital work Dr. Norris was involved in a number of other activities. She attended secluded Hindu and Muslim women in their own homes on a private patient basis, and when bubonic plague struck Northern India in 1901, she organized open air plague hospitals, relief camps and innoculation stations at Allahabad. She was awarded the Kaiser-I-Hind Medal for her work.9 During Lord Kitchener's investigation of the Indian Army (1903-1905), with particular emphasis on camp-followers, Dr. Margaret Norris served as one of his medical advisers. At this time she used her savings from private patient fees and her hospital salary to open a Rescue Home for camp-followers at Allahabad.10 She served as an expert medical witness in cases involving women and children in the High Court at Allahabad, gaining an early introduction to women's legal and court problems,11 and at one point she was also in charge of a Leper Asylum.12

The years in Allahabad (1900-1906) ended with Norris' marriage to John Patterson, a fellow Ontarian, who had worked as a Professor of Physics at the University of Allahabad from 1902 to 1904 and then as an Imperial Meterologist for the Indian government. After their wedding early in 1906, the Pattersons left Allahabad for Ludhiana in the Punjab. There Margaret Patterson continued to work as a medical doctor and,

in addition, became an instructor of Obstetrics at the Ludhiana Christian Medical College for Women. She taught at Ludhiana from 1906 to 1910. A career in higher education was one of the advantages of medical work in foreign countries. Teaching positions in medical faculties were not open to women in Canada after the closure of the Ontario Women's Medical College in 1906 and university faculties did not accept married women as instructors until much later. While in Ludhiana Margaret Patterson lost her first born to the 'rigors of the Indian climate.' She kept busy by teaching, by doing hospital work and by writing a public school level textbook on physiology and hygiene in the Indian context.

In May 1910, the Pattersons returned to Canada due to John Patterson's ill health. They settled in Toronto where John found work in the Dominion Meterological Service. Dr. Patterson did not practice as a medical doctor in Ontario, but she was by no means inactive.13 In addition to caring for her husband and one surviving child, she became deeply involved in the activities of a number of Toronto area women's volunteer groups.14 Patterson's experience in India and her religious values would make her open to the reform currents which convulsed church and society in the early twentieth century.15 Middle class Ontario citizens at the time perceived that their society faced a number of major social problems. As identified by women these problems included: 'feeblemindedness,' especially in potential mothers, the use and abuse of alcohol, social diseases and prostitution.To a lesser extent, women also worried about domestic relations, juvenile crime and the lack of respectable lodgings and recreation facilities for women and girls. Since many of these problems resulted in women and girls coming into open court, the judicial system became a focus of interest for women's reform groups.16

In 1910, the Toronto Local Council of Women and the National Council of Women sponsored a survey of the courts in Toronto with emphasis

on the treatment of women and girls. Several Toronto women attended the open Police Court every day over a period of months and then presented a report to the Board of Police Commissioners. One of those women was Dr. Margaret Patterson.17 The reason for their concern was later expressed by the National Council of Women:

Whereas, in the present practice of law, women offenders are arrested by men, tried by men, before men, and Whereas, in many cases disastrous results follow, which easily might have been averted by contact with women officials, and Whereas, the Standing Committee of the National Council of Women on Equal Moral Standards is of the opinion that the ideals, for which it stands would be more quickly attained if three agencies were more generally available, namely the Woman's Court, Woman Magistrate, and Policewoman, Therefore, this Committee recommends that the National Council of Women advocate the establishment of these valuable moral agencies in every community where they do not already exist.18

The Toronto City Council authorized the city's first Police Women and a separate court for women in January 1913. The members of the Toronto Local Council of Women were pleased that the Women's Court was created but they were disappointed that the first magistrate was a man.19 Despite the appointment of a male presiding officer, the new Women's Court was a decided improvement on the old open court system. It admitted only those who were actually concerned with its cases. To satisfy the need for a 'public' court process, the Local Council of Women started a system whereby women went to court everyday as witnesses to the fairness of the Women's Court proceedings. Often these

women offered a 'helping hand' to the women and girls who appeared in court.

With the beginning of World War One, Patterson's activities were temporarily re-directed. In common with many social service oriented women she put most of her time into war activities. She firmly believed that women could and should help with the war effort:

I think there are a great many of us who would be willing to take a man's place in any line that is necessary and there are a great many things we can do if the men only give us places in which to work, and we can, by showing our united determination to let nothing, absolutely nothing, interfere with attaining our object, win that victory for which we are all longing.20

She lectured to trainees of the St. John's Ambulance Brigade and eventually became Lady Division Surgeon in 1919. From 1914 to 1919 she gave summer lectures to from 25 to 36 Women's Institute groups. She spoke mainly on practical subjects such as emergency first aid, home care of the sick and Red Cross work and wrote articles for the Women's Institutes Annual Reports on the same subjects. In 1916 Patterson was in charge of the nursing at a convalescent hospital for soldiers returned from Europe. All through the war years she gave lectures to substantial numbers of Red Cross workers. On the national level she served from 1914 to 1921 as Convenor of the National Council of Women's Standing Committee on Equal Moral Standards and Prevention of Traffic in Women.21

As the First World War was drawing to a close, a Pandemic of Influenza struck with dire consequences. Canada suffered severely, losing 30,000 to the disease and its complications; in addition, at least one sixth of the population was infected to one degree or another. Ontario saw nearly 9,000 dead and 300,000 diagnosed cases of the 'flu' from July to December of 1918.22 Since the

medical profession was as severely affected as the general population, volunteer help was desperately needed. In this exigency prominent medical men and women, senior officers of the women's groups, social service officers and other interested parties organized The Ontario Emergency Volunteer Health Auxiliary. Dr. Margaret Patterson agreed to give a special course to young women volunteers in committee rooms at Queen's Park.23 Her lectures were designed to train volunteers how to treat people in their own homes thereby taking the strain off the overburdened hospitals. The government made arrangements to have the lectures reported via the telegraph system all across the province, reprinted by the local press in outlying communities and printed in pamphlet form. Surviving records indicate about 250 women attended Patterson's course.24 After completing their course they were given a special pin and the title 'Sisters of Service,' a title suggested by Dr. Patterson.

The war over, women's groups in Toronto continued to press for the appointment of a woman magistrate to the bench of the Women's Court. They eventually received a favourable hearing from the 'Farmer-Labour' government of E. C. Drury which had been elected in 1919. The result was the appointment of Patterson as the 'Junior Police Magistrate' for Toronto on January 4,1922,25 the actual nomination decided by the Toronto Local Council of Women.

The Local Council met on December 13, 1921 to decide on their nominee. There were three official candidates ready to present themselves. A Mrs. Sinclair sent a letter asking for support but it was simply tabled at the meeting and ignored. The actual candidates were Charlotte Whitton, Mrs. O'Sullivan and Dr. Margaret Patterson. Mrs. O'Sullivan was a prominent member of the Local Council of Women. Miss Whitton was j ust beginning her spectacular career as a professional social worker in Ontario. The minutes of the December 13th meeting provide little information as to exactly how or why Dr. Patterson

was chosen as the nominee for the position.26 Newspaper accounts after the actual appointment indicate that Dr. Patterson was probably supported by the executives of the Local Council of Women, by the Big Sister's Association and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In general terms, she was the first choice of the more social service oriented groups within the Local Council rather than the patriotic and literary groups. She was also supported by locally prominent women such as Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen and Mrs. Sidney Small.27

The officers of several Toronto women's groups saw Patterson's appointment as a victory. Mrs. R. G. Smy the, president of the Toronto Local Council of Women commented to the newspapers that:

We worked for the appointment of a woman magistrate, we recommended the appointment of Dr. Margaret Patterson and now we certainly will stand behind her.28

Mrs. Fred C. Ward, president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union told the same reporter:

We believe that Dr. Margaret Patterson is the right woman in the right place. We'll back her up and help in any way we are able.29

Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen, herself one of the earliest women doctors and the daughter of the pioneer sufferage leader in Canada, commented:

I am pleased because I feel Doctor Patterson to be so eminently fitted for the position. It is so necessary to have a woman to work among the women and children who come within the jurisdiction of the court, but more necessary that it should be the right sort of woman.30

The general attitude to Dr. Patterson's appointment was summed up shortly after she started on the bench:

Toronto has been fortunate in claiming many energetic welfare workers but it would be difficult to find among them a woman with a greater will to serve or keener insight into the social and moral complexities of modern life than Dr. Patterson.31

Patterson's own comments on the appointment were of a somewhat different tone: "I told my husband that it was not a medical person they want but a chiropractor, because the work is largely one of making adjustments."32 She told reporters on 5 January, 1922, the day her appointment was announced that:

I should like to see it (the court) as a sort of social readjustment bureau. I believe that its function should be to prevent and correct wrong, rather than to distribute punishment.33

In the summer of 1922 she continued the medical metaphors when describing her court:

Crime is but a symptom of some maladjustment, physical, mental or social, and we can never hope to do away with crime by punishment alone. It can only be cured by removing the causes producing it.34

Despite the enthusiasm over her appointment, Patterson faced the usual bureaucratic problems. A dispute between the City of Toronto and the provincial government erupted over her salary. She was a provincial appointee but she was to be paid by the city. The Order-in-Council stated that she was to be paid $3500.00 per year. The City Council was determined that she would be paid $3200.00 which was the maximum that their By-laws would allow.35 The second problem was a lack of court room and office space which delayed her first day on the bench until 5

March, 1922. Doctor Patterson initially held court in the lower level of the now 'Old City Hall' of Toronto. The room had already been described as inadequate for the purpose but Patterson made no direct complaint to the City. Instead she asked the Local Council of Women to work quietly behind the scenes to see if something could be done.36

In the years immediately prior to Patterson's appointment there had been an average of more than 2,000 cases a year in which women were accused of a crime and many more cases in which they were the victims.37 As the new magistrate for the Toronto Women's Police Court, Patterson would be dealing with all the cases involving women, whether as offender or victim. Magistrate Patterson came to her position determined to bring about a few changes.

One of her earliest actions was to attempt to reach an understanding with the newspaper reporters who sat in the court each day.

I hope that I shall be able to come to an agreement with the police court reporters and that we'll be able to play fair with each other. There are many cases which should not be described to the public especially in the joking way they are at present. It tends to make people regard crime with levity and it stamps the people who appear in court with criminal labels which many of them never lose because their neighbours never forget.38

Aware of how cruel people could be, especially when they only heard or read part of the story, she waged a losing battle to raise the level of male-biased court reporting. Margaret Patterson also brought new ideas on the treatment of those women who came before her in the court. In many ways she was ahead of her time. She saw some domestic problems as rooted in the position of women in the marriage.

As long as the wife and mother is regarded as non-productive in a commercial sense and dependant upon the charity of her husband for her food and clothes, to say nothing of any spending money she may receive, it is surely an unbusiness-like partnership. The wife is in partnership with her husband in the conservation if not the production of the wealth that supports the home, and as such is entitled to some part of the profits of that partnership. At his death she is entitled to one-third of his property, why not during his life.39

She believed that Ontario should have laws that gave greater economic security to married women and a right to the municipal vote on the basis of the husband's property if wives had none of their own.

Dr. Patterson was to see many of the most pressing problems of the first third of the twentieth century on her bench. Massive changes in living patterns in rural areas and lure of the Big City with its greater opportunities for jobs and meeting people, brought young people into Toronto at an alarming rate. Neither the migrants nor urban institutions were equipped to handle the problems that arose.40 Many young women had no notion of where to find a job, no idea of even where they were going to sleep and often no friends or relatives to turn to for help. The lucky ones were met at the bus and train stations by volunteers from the Traveller's Aid Society and told where to find safe, respectable lodgings. They were also advised on how to look for work and which churches sponsored 'get-together rooms' for young women to make safe friends and relax in supervised surroundings.41

Patterson saw the unlucky or the unwary among these young 'travellers.' Most young women were brought into court under charges of vagrancy but a few were not that fortunate.42 If the charge was simple vagrancy and the women had a home to go back to, she was ordered to

leave Toronto and stay away. The alternative was anything from 30 days to two years less a day in the local 'House of Refuge' or the Reformatory. If the charge was for an offense other than vagrancy then the sentence would not be so lenient. Dr. Patterson had a reputation in her own time and later as a magistrate who handed down 'stiff penalties to the women and girls who faced her. A survey of her sentences indicates that her reputation for being somewhat harsher than her male counterparts in Toronto was, at least, partially true. Her sentences appear to be similar to those meeted out by Police Magistrates in a number of cities and towns outside of Toronto, suggesting that she agreed with the prevailing norms of small-town Ontario.43

The Toronto Women's Police court saw mainly female defendants, but men were also present if the victim was female. Other than vagrancy, women were most often charged under categories designated: Drunk, Breaches of the Ontario Temperance Act/Ontario Liquor Control Act, Breaches of the Veneral Disease Act, Keeping a Common Bawdy House/House of 111 Fame, Inmate or Frequenter of same, Prostitution, Theft, Having Drugs, Neglect of Children and Bigamy. Men appeared in Women's Police Court on many of the above noted charges plus Indecent Assault/Exposure, Living on the Avails of Prostitution, Procuring, Carnal Knowledge/ Seduction, Drunk and Assault on a female. Dr. Patterson tended to sentence men guilty of the latter group of charges to longer sentences than in other courts in Toronto, but, again, her sentences in these cases were similar to those of Police Magistrates across the province. Certain charges, such as Having Drugs, Indecent Assault and Carnal Knowledge were subject to long sentences from virtually all Police Magistrates.

In dealing with women defendants, Patterson usually did not convict on the first offense if she had any choice. First offenders were either released to their families or remanded for a few days to get a taste of jail and their possible future

and then released.44 Sometimes women and girls were placed in the hands of the various social service organizations such as the Salvation Army or the Big Sisters Association. When dealing with prostitutes Dr. Patterson tended to hand down an indeterminate sentence (which could be any term up to two years less one day) in the hopes that the unannounced release date would enable the women to elude the pimp attempting to regain control over her. Male Police Magistrates in Toronto and other centres usually gave the woman a choice of jail for two to six months or a relatively small fine, usually less than $25.00. Those who kept a Bawdy House, or the like, received a variety of sentences from Dr. Patterson, often ranging from three months or a fine to nine months without the option of a fine. On rare occasions an indeterminate sentence would be given to a Bawdy House keeper. The remaining Toronto Police Magistrates normally sentenced such women to two to three months or a fine, Rural Police Magistrates from six months to one year.

Women who faced Patterson on charges of "Having Drugs" could expect to receive a sentence of six months plus a fine of $204.00 or an additional six months. Occasionally the sentence for possession of drugs was from nine to twelve months. Male Magistrates in Toronto and other centres handed down virtually identical sentences but would sometimes hand down a sentence of two years less a day. Bigamy by a woman was an offense which periodically appeared in the Toronto Women's court and other similar courts across the province. Patterson usually sentenced women to Indeterminate terms, but they generally did not serve the maximum period. Male Magistrates gave similar sentences. The offense was universally decried for women. Male offenders, however, received substantially lower sentences from Patterson (three to twelve months) and from the other Toronto and rural Magistrates.

Men who were charged with offenses against women and certain general moral offenses were tried in the Toronto Women's Police Court. The charges were Indecent Assault/Exposure, Living on the Avails of Prostitution, Procuring and Carnal Knowledge/Seduction. Patterson generally handed down sentences of six months to two years plus a fine for Indecent Assault. Men who were Living on the Avails were given terms from three to fifteen months, repeat offenders often were given two years less a day. A Carnal Knowledge conviction before Patterson often resulted in a sentence of twelve to twenty-four months. Men convicted of Procuring regularly received a three month sentence with no option of a fine. The male Police Magistrates of Toronto tended to give substantially lighter sentences for Living on the Avails and Procuring although they did give sentences similar to Dr. Patterson's for Indecent Assault and Carnal Knowledge.

Margaret Patterson reacted harshly to men who injured or used women and girls. In such cases she regularly gave sentences more severe than her male counterparts in Toronto but similar to sentences prevailing elsewhere in Ontario. Only when the crime was universally decried as in the case of bigamy did the sentences of Dr. Patterson generally compare with the remaining Toronto Magistrates. As she held a very high opinion of a woman's responsibilities to herself and society, Patterson also tended to be somewhat harsher with her own gender than male Magistrates were. Her stiffest sentences were reserved for those women who had failed in their responsibilites as wives and mothers.

Doctor Patterson saw two types of women on Vagrancy charges, the young ones who were new to the city and the elderly who were no longer able to care for themselves. Often elderly women had been in the care of the Salvation Army or similar organizations for a period of time but were unwilling or unable to abide by the 'house rules' and left. Patterson often found herself in the unpleasant position of having to send such

women to the 'Houses of Refuge' or the Concord Industrial Farm for Women (a jail farm) so that they could receive medical care, good food and a warm bed. This was particularly true when the winter months were approaching. Concord registers show many such women in their care.49 It was a most unpopular sentence and one for which Patterson was occasionally severely criticized, but in such cases her concern was for life and limb rather than pride and freedom.

Another problem which brought many women into court was the use and abuse of alcohol. In 1921 the Toronto courts saw 381 women charged with liquor offenses including 'drunk.'46 The Women's Court also saw its share of men brought up on liquor charges. The Ontario Temperance Act was passed in 1916 as a province-wide measure intended to curb the use of all alcoholic beverages but it was open to many abuses. Approximately 14% of the case load of the Women's Court involved liquor charges. The fines and sentences imposed were based upon whether it was a first, second or third conviction. Conviction on a third offense could be very expensive if the charge was 'liquor for sale in the home': a third conviciton carried a $500.00 fine and costs. It was not at all uncommon for women in need of money (often they had been deserted) to earn some semi-respectable money by selling liquor in their homes. Another method of making ends meet was to run a 'resort' in their homes (not quite 'houses of ill fame') where men could come to drink and carouse. The usual penalty for a conviction on a 'resort' charge was $ 100 or 60 days and the loss of the liquor permit.

Prostitution was a major problem for most large cities in North America and Toronto was no exception. It was a generally held belief, by social workers, the general public, legal officials and Patterson, that the majority of prostitutes were both diseased and" feebleminded.47 Many sources from the period quote the feebleminded rate among prostitutes as 60% to 80%. According to the 1923 Provincial Board of Health Report

(Ontario), of the 167 new inmates in the Mercer Reformatory, 37% were found to have Syphillis and 41% to have Gonorrhea, while a few were infected with both. There was provision in the Mercer Reformatory Act and the Female Refuges Act to detain all inmates found to have one of the communicable diseases, especially veneral diseases, and have them treated. The ruling provided that such inmates were to be detained until they were pronounced cured even if they had to be held after their sentences had expired.

Throughout her career on the bench, Patterson complained that there was no proper place to care for the mentally retarded. They could only be jailed or sent to the 'Houses of Refuge.' Neither of those institutions was capable of dealing properly with the 'feebleminded' but they were all that was available. As early as 1917 she had been one of two 'Representative Women' on the executive of the Toronto Branch of the Provincial Association for the Care of the Feebleminded. In April of 1922 when discussing the feebleminded, she said:

It seems both cruel and unchristian to send a person with the mental age of nine out into the world and expect her to take care of an adult body and compete with those who are not labouring under such a handicap. Until our province will realize the economic as well as the moral benefit of proper farm colonies, with the cottage system of housing, where these people can be protected and have as far as possible useful lives, and where they are safe from themselves and no longer a menace to society -until this is done, our courts cannot be other than circumlocution offices."48

On 5 January, 1923 she was dealing with a confused and possibly mentally retarded young woman in her court. Patterson was upset about this case and she lamented that:

The heartbreaking thing is that there is no place that looks after people of this kind. If we get half a dozen more of these cases perhaps we shall get some place for them.49

She did not like having to sentence the feebleminded to the Industrial Farm or the Refuges but she was more or less powerless to do anything else with them once they had been convicted. Public opinion at the time was firmly convinced that the feebleminded, especially women and girls, should be kept in some form of custodial care at least until they were past their fertile years. Significantly, Dr. Patterson did not suggest sterilization, an increasingly more widely accepted method of control of the mentally retarded, but suggested 'farm colony' segregation instead.50

The Women's Court also saw those who were being ill-treated at home. Patterson heard many cases of family disputes; husbands who mistreated their wives, cases of desertion by the husband, cases of desertion by the wife which sometimes resulted in bigamy charges. When such cases came into court Dr. Patterson tended to determine what should be done that was best for everyone, not just the husband. If it was obvious that spouces were better away from each other for a period of time or permanently, the verdict could be an order to the husband to stay away from home. The time of short term absences could be a few weeks, a few months, or even a year. If there were any children, the husband was ordered to pay the wife a specific sum each week.

Another problem which often found its way into Patterson's court was the problem of the run-away girl. There was considerable concern over girls leaving home especially those who were considered too young to work or take care of themselves. When a run-away was caught every effort was made to send her back home or, if that was not possible, to put her in the care of the Salvation Army. These girls were a somewhat different group than the young women

being picked-up as vagrants. Those charged as vagrants were generally 20 years old or more, the run-aways were teenagers. The courts were only too well aware of what could happen to adolescent women who were too trusting. The courts and service organizations, as well as the police, kept an open eye for any young women who might be run-aways and did everything in their power to send such women home.

A March 1929 Chatelaine article by Anne Elizabeth Wilson describes two types of run-aways, one from a good home and the other from a bad home and explains why each type runs away. Wilson also gives details of some of the methods used to trap such girls into 'White Slavery.' She had high praise for the Toronto Women's Court:

One of the greatest arguments used in bringing into being the Toronto Women's Police Court was the established fact that women brought into the publicity of the general court were noted and trailed by men who came to court for no other purpose. The privacy of the women's court has helped to overcome this to a great extent, but reports of sentences in the papers still furnish information utilized by men in locating girls for immoral traffic.

She was also very much in favour of Doctor Patterson:

Social workers are agreed that purveyors of vice more greatly fear coming before Toronto's woman police magistrate, than facing a month of ordinary sessions.

Despite criticism from the accused and the court reporters, public service groups were in complete support of Patterson's efforts on the bench, particularly during the early years. In a letter to Premier Ferguson on 14 November, 1924 (which may have been response to newspaper criticism of Dr. Patterson) the Child Welfare Council of Toronto said the following:

The consensus of opinion was, that Dr. Margaret Patterson was working very wisely and courageously, in spite of much opposition, and that she was accomplishing most of the changes that had been hoped for by socially minded people when they asked for her appointment. A resolution was passed unanimously commending her work and expressing most hearty support of her efforts to improve the Women's Court.51

This same letter also included comments made during the meeting of the council by such prominent people as Robert E. Mills, Director of the Toronto Children's Aid Society. A statement was read to the meeting that was sent in by Wm. Horkins, a Barrister who said:

I approve very highly of Magistrate Patterson's work in the Women's Court and I don't mind saying so to anyone. She is always willing to hear all sides of a case, she gets the whole thing before she makes up her mind, but when she does make it up there is no moving her. She sticks to her decisions; sometimes they are against you and sometimes they are the way you want, but it makes no difference. She does the fair thing. I handle forty percent of the cases in that court and I know. What she needs is to be let alone. She is doing good work.52

Patterson's attitudes on what should and should not be reported by the press continued to draw criticism. The preliminary hearing of a 'botched' abortion case was held in the Toronto Women's Court on 23 August, 1927. As the case would have to go to a higher court for a jury trial Patterson explained to the reporters that she could not allow the press into the hearing. The reporters complained bitterly about her actions arguing that other magistrates trying abortion cases allowed them into the court room.53 It is significant that the one reporter actually present in the court that day took a different position at the time. When Patterson told him that he could

not stay in the court he commented "I would rather be outside than inside, Your Worship." She said she would tell him the result of the findings and he commented "Thank you, very much, that is all right."54 Nevertheless, her actions had deprived the press of a potentially juicy story which they generally would have published with the names and considerable detail. Dr. Patterson's reputation with the Toronto Press Corps, already tarnished by her efforts to play down sensational reporting, continued to suffer.

Dr. Patterson would face two major problems in her last five years on the bench, both of which rested on her interpretation of the law. In 1928 she sentenced a man to three years in jail for 'procuring' and 'living off the avails of prostitution.' She took into consideration his past conduct and the result was a stiff sentence. Although the sentence was applauded by several social service groups in Toronto it was an unusual punishment for 'pimps' who were generally only fined. The sentence upon appeal was reversed by Chief Justice Mulock who freed the man because Patterson's verdict was 'unsupported by sufficient evidence.'55 Following this decision, all the male offenders were removed from the docket of the Women's Court, obviously a form of censure for Dr. Patterson. Although the Women's Court was back to its usual mixed docket of men and women within a few months, Dr. Patterson's knuckles had been publicly rapped. In January of 1929 Patterson spoke to the National Council of Women on the workings of the law:

While it is absolutely necessary that every accused person be tried strictly according to the rules of evidence, the Individual as well as his crime should be carefully studied before sentence is pronounced. I do not believe that anyone can deal out even approximate justice, based only on the testimony developed in open court. The ramifications of the actual cause of any so-called

crime are too intricate to reduce to a legal formula.56

Despite the criticism leveled at Patterson in the Toronto newspapers she was supported by women's groups and by commentators in the recently founded Chatelaine Magazine, who took a different view of the law than Chief Justice Mulock.

In 1932 Patterson was again in the 'lime-light' because of a court decision. According to newspaper accounts Patterson sentenced a man to jail under the 'Master and Servant Act,' because he had failed to pay the wages of a workman who had completed the job he was hired to do. The case was placed before a Justice of the Peace and then before Dr. Patterson. Due to the very small amount of money that was involved ($1.50) it was folly to send the man to jail. It is now impossible to even guess at what was on her mind when she passed sentence. The case was soon in the newspapers and was the subject of an investigation. Patterson was officially censured on October 19, 1932, some three months after the original case. She received a verbal 'dressingdown' from Attorney General Price.

For the next two years Dr. Patterson continued with her court activities much as she always had. She retired, or more accurately, was fired, from her position as a Police Magistrate on 21 November, 1934. The Hepburn administration, which was elected on 19 June, 1934 drastically revamped the judicial system in Ontario in August 1934, 'retiring' two-thirds of the Magistrates then on the bench as well as large numbers of Justices of the Peace.57 The City of Toronto magistrates had initially been immune to the changes because they were paid by the city. However, on 21 November 1934, Patterson, while sitting on the bench, was handed a three line note to the effect that her services were no longer required.58 Although the official announcement stated that she had been retired as a magistrate and named a Justice of the Peace, she flatly refused to accept

the appointment as a J.P. "As you have seen fit to dismiss me as a magistrate I decline to accept the position as a Justice of the Peace," she announced.59

In the first year of the Hepburn regime many people lost their jobs as a direct result of the premier's desire to cut government costs and to meet campaign promises. Doctor Margaret Patterson, a Drury appointee, was only one of many who faced unemployment. She chose at the age of fifty-nine to go gracefully into retirement after a long and useful career as a medical missionary, social worker and police magistrate.

Although she continued her voluntary activities, she eventually faded from the public eye with the passage of time. Her last few years were spent in a nursing home where she died in December 1962, at the age of eighty-eight. Now she is only remembered by those who are old enough to have lived in Toronto during her active years from 1910to 1934 and few realize that she was the first woman Police Magistrate in Eastern Canada and the only one in Ontario.60 Her career on the bench is an important one, if only as a measure of the feminist values which informed her decisions. Patterson was a woman of high principles who had a vision of what women should be. She was not a sentimentalist, few doctors are; she was an idealist who placed strong emphasis on women's potential and like other maternal feminists of her day stressed the responsibilities as well as the rights of women in the modern world:

I believe a girl's value to her country is infinitely greater than a boy's. It is the women who gives a nation its vision, and a nation is great or small as it has a vision, a purpose, and a will to serve. Because, to women is given the privilege and also the responsibility of setting the moral standards throughout the world....62

She tried to live up to these standards and expected other women to do so as well. Female defendants quickly learned that Dr. Patterson was not impressed by 'fainting spells' (which often worked on other magistrates) or by the appearance of large 'broods' of children at sentencing time.61 She recognized that the roots of an offense were as important as the actual crime in determining a sentence or conviction, and sometimes drew upon her overseas and medical experiences to reach fair decisions. Her methods went largely unnoticed due to the small size and relative unimportance of the Women's Court. Yet few courts in Canada at the time could boast an incumbent with such professional credentials and such a clear view of women's right both under and outside the law.

LEGO CON is happening today! The livestream virtual event is scheduled for 9am Los Angeles / 12pm New York / 5pm London and will take place at LEGO.com/lego-con. LEGO will be providing sneak peeks and other activities across a variety of themes. Here’s what’s on the docket: LEGO Minecraft: Q&As with LEGO designers and Lydia […]

www.fbtb.net/lego/2021/06/26/lego-con-is-happening-today/

CLASS ACTION

www.plainsite.org/dockets/4etiulzdr/california-northern-d...

Stack of three chocolate cake pizzas. Top pizza covered in buttercream and the boxes fondant along with the pizza toppings. Handpainted logos on the boxes and a order docket that reads

"1 x Anniversary special

Drinks all around"

This was an honour to make as its for one of our cities personalities. She has just celebrated 35 years in business. The top holds a likeness of her based upon a photo provided and she sits on a stack of pizzas ( pizza has been on the menu for as long as I can remember).

Here is a link about her start in business.

www.revas.co.nz/about-revas-restaurant-whangarei.html

Congratulations Reva for an outstanding achievement in business

A Chinaman was interred yesterday at the Waikomiti cemetery in the section set apart for the Chinese. There were about 25 carriages in the procession. All the way from town pieces of tissue-paper, pierced with six holes, were scattered from the cabs on the roadway. The funeral service was conducted by Mr Joseph Lue (Chinese missionary).

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS18970108.2.2

CHINESE RESURRECTIONISTS AT WAIKUMETE.

DISINTERMENT OF CORPSES.

A GRUESOME SPECTACLE.

Time, 5.30 a.m., on a bitterly cold morning, in Waikumete Cemetery. Half-frozen, a pressman and a photographer attached to the staff of the "Graphic" make their way from the sexton's house to the furthermost corner of the cemetery, where is situated the section for Chinese and Atheists and aliens unprovided for elsewhere. A noise of hammering comes from the section, which is a good half-mile from the Anglican and Presbyterian allotments, and on arrival work found to be in full operation. The reception of our reporter and his photographic confrere is the reverse of friendly, and an immediate wrangle ensues amongst the gravediggers, evidently on the subject of the camera fiend's presence. A Chinese halfcaste European insists on their instant ejectment. The sexton, however, who has been handed proper credentials, proves a firm friend, and insists that he, and not any Chinaman, or half-caste Chinaman, is in change of the cemetery, and that he has his instructions. Things then calm down a trifle, but the work is resumed amidst much grumbling, and many vindictive and malignant glances are cast at the camera, and muttered curses uttered at the photographer as he dodges round looking for a chance shot. Once, indeed, when the shutter clicks, a furious celestial raises his pick in menace, and mutters a threat to do for the intruders, but he thinks better of it, and at the intervention of the European coffinmaker a truce is declared until arrival of "the boss." That individual presently arrives. He scans the permit; gloomily enough, and bids that the photos be taken forthwith, and the photographer and pressman depart. It toeing pointed out that there is no picture yet to take, and seeing that bluff has no effect, all active opposition as at once and finally dropped, and no difficulty put in the way of obtaining pictures or witnessing the proceedings save in giving mendacious information, lighting fires to obscure the graves with smoke, and endeavouring to tire out the patience of the reporters, etc.

By ten o'clock four graves, are opened, but owing to the non-arrival of some solder and zinc from Auckland it, is decided to open only two coffins on this occasion. The first of these contained the corpse of one Kong Shang, who died in 1891, a young Celestial of 36. It was thought that there would be nothing but dry bones there, but the stiff white clay is evidently a preservative, for when the coffin, which is full of water, is opened, it is seen that the bones have a decided covering of what had once been flesh and though drenched in carbolic acid a sickening odour makes itself felt at intervals. Directly an attempt is made to stir the body it all falls to pieces, the decomposed flesh falling off in almost imperceptible flakes, which had doubtless been dust had the grave been dry. Very carefully the impassive Chinaman in the grave rinses and unconcernedly places on a sieve a thigh bone, then some ribs, and a skull, followed by the rest of the bones, minute search, indescribable in print, being made for the smaller bones and joints. It is an intensely gruesome spectacle, and the horror is added to by the indifference to sight and smell or sentiment evinced by the Celestial workmen. The venerable clerk, a fine old fellow, with the face of an ascetic and a student, carefully tallies the bones which, having been rescoured in a large white tub, are finally dried and wrapped up, each duly docketed by the methodical old gentleman, who is evidently a most conscientious and probably deeply religious man. He, too, is fastidiously clean, and does not, one notes, eat as the others do in the midst of their noisome labours. The next body is that of a man who must have been of exceptional stature and weight for a Chinaman, and who has been dead but two years and a-half. There is much difficulty in getting this coffin to the surface, and the opening thereof, and the awful stench which completely dominated all disinfectants when the body was removed to the zinc one prepared by the European tinsmith beggars description, and may be left to the imagination. None of those whose duty called them to be present are likely to forget the experience, or to desire a renewal of the same. The soldering having been completed, it must be admitted no effluvia was discernable. The zinc coffin was then put in a rude case and packed in sawdust ready for shipment. There is no reason to think the zinc coffins will not prove effective and inoffensive under ordinary ciroumstances, and careful usage, but a fall or any accident in loading would, one imagines, have very disastrous effects. The work ceased at noon to-day. Mr Winstanley, Government Sanitary Inspector, is present, and looks after his work in so thorough a manner that no fears need be entertained by settlers or the general public. The pictures secured by the "Graphic" protographer are of a unique nature and the most gruesome details having been omitted, are quite without offence. They will be published on Wednesday.

The custom of the Chinese at home is to disinter bodies after seven years, and place the main bones in a large jar alongside the grave. It is in order to forward the bones to China for relatives to do this that the present exporting of remains is undertaken.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19020929.2.45

THE CHINESE CORPSES

The disinterment of the bodies of the Chinese from cemeteries throughout the colony during last, and the early part of the present month excited a good deal of interest. In Greymouth nearly 200 bodies were "resurrected" and stored in a shed in the cemetery, much to the disgust of the residents, who unsuccessfully protested against the bodies being allowed to remain above ground until the arrival of the Ventnor. The expenses of the removal of the dead Chinese to their native land, where alone their spirits could find perfect peace, was borne by their friends, the undertaking being so costly that, only the wealthier relatives could afford the expenditure, many hundreds of unhappy Celestials being obliged "to lie in cold corruption and to rot" in the cemeteries of the "foreign devil."

The exhumation of all the bodies was carried out by the one party of "resurrectionists," Chinese with a half-caste leader and a European plumber. The Chinamen carried out their gruesome work with the utmost indifference, knocking off to eat their meals immediately after handling the bodies without a thought of nauseation.

Some bodies had been interred about twenty years ago, others within the last year. In the case of those which had been reduced to skeletons the bones were carefully sorted, and packed in boxes ready for shipment. In other cases the flesh had reached an advanced stage of putrefaction, and in these the bones were stripped and similarly, treated to the skeletons of older bodies. When the bodies were still whole they were packed in air-tight coffins, soldered down, and labelled with the name of the departed.

In all eleven corpses were taken from their graves at Waikumete. These were not shipped on the Ventnor at Auckland, but were taken down the coast in smaller vessels to Wellington, and there transhipped to the Ventnor.

The Chinese in Auckland were excited on the receipt of the news of the foundering, but when questioned as to what, according to Confucianism, would become of the spirits of the sunken Celestials, they professed ignorance.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19021029.2.54.5

LOSS OF THE VENTNOR.

FOUNDERED NEAR HOKIANGA.

BOAT AND CREW MISSING.

HOKIANGA, October 29.

The steamer Ventnor, which left Wellington for Hongkong on Sunday, foundered off the Hokianga Bar last night at about a quarter to nine.

The Ventnor left Wellington, as stated, on Sunday, with 500 Chinese bodies and 6400 tons of coal. She was owned by Gow, Harrison and Co., of Glasgow, her port of register, and was captained by H. G. Ferry. Before she had been long out, at forty minutes after midnight on Sunday, a shock which shook the vessel from stem to stern made manifest to everyone aboard that the steamer had struck a rock, a subsequent investigation showing that the reef hit was to the southward of Cape Egmont.

The engines were at once reversed, and in a short time the vessel managed to get off. The wells were then sounded, and it was found that the vessel was making water in No. 1 hold.

The vessel was headed off shore to a safe distance, and then proceeded up the coast.

Meanwhile, the steam pumps were got to work, but from the first it was found that they were unequal to the task of coping with the inflow, and gradually the water gained, rising higher and higher in the hold.

On Tuesday morning it was found that the ballast tanks in the peak were full, putting the steamer down by the head, and making it evident that she had but a short time to float.

In the evening her bow was so far under water that she became unmanageable, and it was seen that she was gradually sinking, despite every effort that could be made.

At about 9 p.m. it became evident that the vessel was going down fast, and all hands were ordered to the boats.

These were launched by their respective crews, who immediately pulled away from the sides of the doomed vessel.

Hardly had they reached a safe distance when the vessel's stern rose in the air, and she sank, bow first.

The Hokianga Heads light was seen at a distance of about ten miles, and the boats pulled in the direction of the light.

At daylight this morning two boats arrived on the Omapere Beach, bearing fourteen of the crew, including the chief mate, John Cameron, the second and third engineers, D. Bailee and K. Muir, and two cooks, and a messman.

Mr Martin, harbourmaster, has taken the small steamer Energy out off Whangape to pick up two more boats which were sighted from the pilot station. One of these was picked up at 10 o'clock, but the other had not been reached at the time of wiring, 10.30 a.m.

Besides her crew of 31 persons, including five Chinese, the Ventnor had six Chinamen as passengers. Of the coffins 489 were insured in the Alliance Company for £5490. The fungus was insured for about £320 in various offices. She was under the charge of Captain H. Ferry, who has been seventeen years in the employment of the same company. The steamer was under charter to W. Scott Fell and Co., of Sydney, contractors. Messrs John Mill and Co., of Dunedin and Wellington, were the colonial agents.

Of the coffins 489 were shipped by the Chong Shin Tong Society, which is a branch of the big society in China called the Tai Chuen. The other ten coffins were shipped by Yei Chong, of Manners-street, and did not belong to any society.

The Ventnor's crew numbered thirty-one, and those on board included nine Chinese body attendants. These attendants of the dead are old and decrepit Chinamen, who are being sent home to China by the Chong Shin Tong, and given sufficient money to keep them from work for the remainder of their lives.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19021030.2.87

SS Ventnor with details of final voyage:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Ventnor

Plot 79: Foo Get a.k.a. Chin Get Foo (46) 6/1/1897 – Chinese Merchant – Consumption *disinterred to China

Lower East Side. Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The four-story, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building, in todayís East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, was constructed in 1873 to the design of German-born architect August H. Blankenstein for this German-American professional orchestral musiciansí social and benevolent association. Founded informally in 1860, it had grown large enough by 1866 for the society to purchase this site and eventually construct the purpose-built structure. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side.

It counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, at a time when German-Americans dominated the orchestral scene. These included conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas and Walter Damrosch, and the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and Theodore Thomas Orchestras. After the Aschenbroedel Verein moved to Yorkville in 1892, this building was subsequently owned for four years by the Gesangverein Schillerbund, one of the cityís leading and oldest German singing societies. The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament by German-born architects [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composersí busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

After 1895, the building housed a variety of disparate uses, including a series of public meeting and dance halls, the Newsboysí Athletic Club, a laundry, and a meatpacking plant. Since 1969, it has been the home of the renowned La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, established in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, and today considered the oldest and most influential off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City. The building remains one of the significant reminders of 19th-century German-American cultural contributions to New York City, as well as the continuing vitality of off-Off-Broadway theater in the East Village.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The 19th-Century Development of East Village Neighborhood

The area of todayís Greenwich Village was, during the 18th century, the location of the small rural hamlet of Greenwich, as well as the country seats and summer homes of wealthy downtown aristocrats, merchants, and capitalists. A number of cholera and yellow fever epidemics in lower Manhattan between 1799 and 1822 led to an influx of settlers in the Greenwich area, with the population quadrupling between 1825 and 1840. Previously undeveloped tracts of land were speculatively subdivided for the construction of town houses and rowhouses. Whereas in the early 19th century many of the wealthiest New Yorkers lived in the vicinity of Broadway and the side streets adjacent to City Hall Park between Barclay and Chambers Streets, by the 1820s and 30s, as commercial development and congestion increasingly disrupted and displaced them, the elite moved northward into Greenwich Village east of Sixth Avenue.

To the east, during the 17th and 18th centuries, was Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesantís Bowery farm. In the vicinity were Native American trails, todayís Broadway and Bowery, that the Lenape Indians traversed from the southern tip of Manhattan to Inwood and Harlem. St. Markís-in-the-Bowery Church was built on a higher, dry piece of land, while the area to the east of todayís Second Avenue, known as Stuyvesant Meadows, remained an undeveloped marshy area. In the late 18th century, the area east of Second Avenue was the estate of Mangle Minthorn, father-in-law of Daniel Tompkins , governor of New York and

U.S. vice president under James Monroe . Both Stuyvesant and Minthorn were slave owners. In 1832, the Common Council created the 15th Ward out of the eastern section of the large 9th Ward, its boundaries being Sixth Avenue, Houston and 14th Streets, and the Bowery. According to Luther Harrisí history Around Washington Square, during the 1830s-40s ìthis ward drew the wealthiest, most influential, and most talented people from New York City and elsewhere. For a brief period beginning in the 1820s-30s, Lafayette Place, including the grand marble Greek Revival style LaGrange Terrace , St. Markís Place, and Bond, Great Jones, East 4th and Bleecker Streets were also among the cityís most fashionable addresses. Lower Second Avenue and adjacent side streets remained prestigious through the 1850s.

Commercial and institutional intrusions and the continual arrival of immigrants ended the fashionable heyday of these wealthier enclaves before the Civil War. In the 1850s, Broadway north of Houston Street was transformed from a residential into a significant commercial district. Also beginning in the 1850s, after the political upheavals in Europe of 1848 and the resulting influx of German-speaking immigrants to New York City, the Lower East Side became known as Kleindeutschland . Aside from their presence as residents, these immigrants contributed in significant ways to the vibrant commercial and cultural life of the neighborhood and the city at large. By 1880, this neighborhood constituted one-fourth of the cityís population and was the first major urban foreign-speaking neighborhood in the U.S., as well as the leading German-American center throughout the century. A massive exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe from the 1880s to World War I led to approximately two million Jewish immigrants settling in New York; most lived for a time on the Lower East Side, establishing their own cultural and religious institutions there.

Beginning in the 1850s-60s, the vicinity of 14th Street and Union Square developed into a center of musical and theatrical culture. The Academy of Music , East 14th Street and Irving Place, an opera house with the worldís largest seating capacity at the time, quickly became the center of musical and social life in New York, presenting such notable performers as Adelina Patti , and events such as the grand ball in honor of the Prince of Wales in the autumn of 1860. The building burned down in 1866, and was replaced by a new Academy of Music . Irving Hall , a ballroom, concert, and lecture hall annex to the Academy, served as the home of the New York Philharmonic in 1861-63. The Steinway piano company opened Steinway Hall , a combination showroom and recital hall at 109 East 14th Street, which for many years was the foremost concert hall in the country . By the mid-1860s, a number of legitimate theaters were also opening in the vicinity of Union Square, which during the last quarter of the nineteenth century became the center of New York theater. These included Wallack's Theater , 728 Broadway at 13th Street, the most prestigious dramatic theater in the country during this period; the Union Square Theater , an adjunct of the former Union Place Hotel; Chickering Hall , Fifth Avenue and 18th Street; and Amberg Theater , 11 Irving Place . The Germania Theater, which along with the Amberg catered to a specifically German clientele, was located in Tammany Hall in 1874-81, in Wallackís Theater in 1881-82, and until 1902 in the former Church of St. Ann, East 8th Street near Broadway. Union Square, after the Civil War, became the traditional site for workersí, union, and political protests and rallies.

As wealthier residents moved northward in the 1850s, their single-family residences were converted into multiple dwellings or boardinghouses, as well as other uses, such as clubs or community cultural institutions. For instance, the former Ralph and Ann E. Van Wyck Mead House at 110 Second Avenue in 1874 became the Isaac T. Hopper Home of the Womenís Prison Association, and, of the Federal style houses on the westernmost block of St. Markís Place: No. 29 became the Harmonie Club, a German-Jewish singing club ; Nos. 19-21 housed another German musical club, the Arion Singing Society , and these buildings, along with No. 23, became Arlington Hall, a ballroom-community center in 1887. Most of the remaining houses were demolished for denser development with French flats and tenements between 1874 and 1902.

Hastening the change in the residential character of this section of the Lower East Side after mid-century were a wide variety of major cultural, religious, commercial, and educational institutions, including the Astor Place Opera House , Astor and Lafayette Places; Astor Library , 425 Lafayette Street; Bible House , home of the American Bible Society and other religious organizations, Astor Place and Third Avenue; and Cooper Union , Astor Place and Third Avenue. The New York Free Circulating Library, Ottendorfer Branch, and German Dispensary , 135 and 137 Second Avenue, among others, catered to the German community. Assembly halls such as Webster Hall and Annex , 119-125 East 11th Street, became important neighborhood social centers. The Third Avenue elevated railroad opened in 1878.

The Aschenbroedel Verein

A social and benevolent association composed almost exclusively of German-American professional orchestral musicians, the Aschenbroedel Verein was founded informally in 1860, with its name, ìCinderella Society,î supposedly a play on the last name of one of its members , August Asche. After initially meeting at Schneiderís Hall, 371 Broome Street, by 1866 the group had grown large enough with some 300 members for it to acquire a building on East 4th Street. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side, and counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, including conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas, and Walter Damrosch, as well as all of the members of the Theodore Thomas Orchestra and most of the members of the New York Philharmonic. According to Groveís Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1880, this was also ìthe headquartersî of the New York Philharmonic Society, though the Philharmonicís Minutes books illustrate that this was one of several locations in the neighborhood where its directorsí and business meetings were held, between 1873 and 1888. Howard Shanet, in Philharmonic: A History of New Yorkís Orchestra , stated that the Aschenbroedel Verein was the first organization in New York to advance the unionization of musicians, as early as 1860, an effort that culminated later with the formation of the Musical Mutual Protective Union. Shanet called Aschenbroedel ìat once a cultural, a benevolent, a social, and a labor association.î He further emphasized the total domination of the symphonic world in New York by the German community, with nearly all of the Philharmonic men of German birth or parentage by 1892. The Aschenbroedel Vereinís motto was ìFreundschaft, Geselligkeit, Befoerderung der Kunstî .

By 1870, there were an estimated 64 German musical societies within New York City, and a number of them were located in the vicinity, either in converted structures or purpose-built ones. These included the Arion Singing Society ; Liederkranz , 31-35 East 4th Street; and Beethoven Maennerchor , located in a hall built in 1870 at 210-214 East 5th Street. In addition, Turnverein Halle , 66-68 East 4th Street, was built just down the block from the Aschenbroedel Verein.

In 1873, the Aschenbroedel Verein, under president George Matzka , constructed this purpose-built structure, clad in brick and four stories , at an estimated cost of $24,000. Construction began in June and was completed in October. The architect was August H. Blankenstein , who was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. in 1860. Active from 1872 to 1899, he designed tenement, flats, and factory buildings for a mostly German clientele, as well as the addition to the Centre Market Armory , Grand and Centre Streets; work on the 55th Regiment, 23rd Regiment, and First Cavalry 22nd Regiment Armories ; and St. Josephís R.C. Orphan Asylum School , Avenue A and 90th Street. A 1894 lawsuit indicated that Blankenstein had been a partner of architect Henry Herter prior to 1886 . Blankenstein was also listed as an architect in an 1890 directory in Buffalo, N.Y.

The Times reported on November 7, 1873, that the Aschenbroedel Verein had ìinaugurated its new club-house... last night, by an entertainment of music and social festivities.î Considered ìone of the most commodious German clubhouses in the city,î its amenities included a restaurant, a library, a billiard room, and a bowling alley in the basement. Among activities conducted here were meetings of the Ancient Lodge of Perfection in 1873, and the 1876 funeral of Philharmonic conductor and Aschenbroedel Verein member Carl Bergmann. For unknown reasons, the building was listed for sale in 1882, but the Aschenbroedel Verein remained here until it sold the building in September 1891. The society, then having some 700 members, moved in November 1892 into a new clubhouse at 144 East 86th Street in Yorkville.

The Gesangverein Schillerbund and Schillerbund Halle

In June 1892, the Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the Gesangverein Schillerbund , one of the cityís leading and oldest German singing societies. Founded in 1850 and named after the poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller , the Schillerbund had been meeting since 1872 in Turnverein Halle. The purchase price of its new building was $1.00, subject to $37,500 in mortgages held by the Bachmann Brewing Co. of Clifton, Staten Island. This structure was altered between September and October 1892 by the architectural firm of [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl. Interestingly, Kurtzer was a member of the Beethoven Maennerchor. In partnership from about 1888 until 1901, Kurtzer & Rohl specialized in tenements and flats buildings for a largely German clientele; examples of its work include Nos. 95 Bedford Street and 285 West 4th Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District, and No. 121 East 10th Street , located within the St. Markís Historic District. The firm was also responsible for the First German Reformed Church , 351 East 68th Street, and its Sunday School . Richard O.L. Rohl , an immigrant from Prussia in 1880, maintained an independent practice from 1902 until around 1919. No. 391 West Street , located within the Weehawken Street Historic District, was his first independent commission, and he also designed the double tenement buildings at Nos. 35-39 Christopher Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District. Frederick William Kurtzer , emigrated from Germany around 1870. He worked independently in 1901-02, then became a partner in Kurtzer & Rentz in 1903-06, with Charles Rentz, Jr. , an architect who was born in New York City of German descent. Rentz was extraordinarily prolific in the design of flats and tenement buildings in the 1880s, but is best known for the design of Webster Hall and Annex . Kurtzer continued to practice in Manhattan and the Bronx until around 1925.

The Dept. of Buildings 1892 alteration application for the Gesangverein Schillerbund Building, as well as the dockets, only listed $1,200 in work, involving interior partition alterations in the basement and second story. In an article on the buildingís opening in November 1892, however, the New York Times indicated that it had been ìalmost entirely rebuilt and refitted,î and that ìthe building cost in all about $45,000. ... On the ground floor are fine bowling alleys, the kitchen and restaurant. The second floor is used for assembly and meeting rooms, the third for lodge rooms, and the top of the house is occupied by the tenant.î The 1892 tax assessment for the property increased by more than 25 percent, and the structure was later described in the Times as ìone of the best Maennerchor clubhouses in that section of this city.î The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composersí busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

A Schillerbund Fair was held here December 10-20, 1892. By 1895, the membership of the Schillerbund was around 400, and the hall, managed by Gustav Schunemann, reportedly enjoyed ìmuch popularity among the merrymakers of that neighborhood.î In November 1896, however, the Gesangverein Schillerbund sold the property and moved to Yorkville . This building was purchased for $40,195 by the Bachmann Brewing Co., holder of the mortgage. The company was founded by the German-born Frederick Bachmann , who had immigrated to New York in 1859, and worked at the Lion Brewery in Manhattan, prior to moving to Staten Island, where he was employed by the Schmidt Brewery and Gabriel Meyer Brewery, becoming the co-owner with David Meyer until it was destroyed by fire in 1881. As indicated by Charles L. Sachs in Made on Staten Island, ìThe successful breweries were not just efficient manufacturing enterprises. To market and distribute their products the breweries acquired real estate holdings and developed close ties with the restaurant, recreation, and tourism businesses. The major breweries owned, operated, and rented saloons, taverns, beer gardens, hotels, and even resort complexes.î

This building became a rental assembly hall, and there are references in newspapers calling it ìSchillerbund Halleî as late as 1901. A sampling of meetings and events held here included: pattern makers ; Eastern Star chapter of the Order of Chosen Friends ; New York branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers ; New York Engineers & Machinists Society ; New York Engineersí Protective Association ; and Poles celebrating the 1863 insurrection .

Krywaczyís Hall, Saenger Hall, and McKinley Hall

The building continued to be used as a public rental hall and social center, under three different names, and like such sites as Webster Hall , was a venue for organizational meetings and political and union functions, particularly for the working-class and immigrant population of the Lower East Side. As opined by historian Kathy Peiss:

For the working-class population packed into small tenement apartments, large halls that could be rented for dances, weddings, mass meetings, and other gatherings were a requirement of social life. The number of public halls in Manhattan rose substantially in a short period; business directories listed 130 halls in 1895 and 195 in 1910, an increase of 50 percent. While some of these, like Carnegie Hall, were cultural spaces of the privileged, most were located in working-class districts. The largest East Side halls... were always in great demand.

In a September 12, 1901, New York Times announcement of a meeting here of the Polish community to denounce Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who had shot President William McKinley on September 6, the location was referred to as ìKrywaczyís Hallî . John Krywacsy was listed in directories as a liquor dealer on Forsyth Street. City directories in 1901-03, as well as the 1903 Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, called this ìSaenger Hall.î The Bachmann Brewing Co. leased the property in April 1903 to Max Sapiro and Ike Lifschitz. Sapiro was listed in the 1910 Census as a Polish/Austrian-born cafÈ proprietor, though he was not listed in directories in connection with this property, while Issac Lifshitz was Russian-born according to the 1900 Census, and was listed in directories in this building in 1903-05 operating a saloon. Among groups meeting here were the Heinrich Heine lodge , Smoking Pipe Makersí Union , and East Side Restaurant Keepers . Apparently in commemoration of the assassinated President, the name of the building was changed to ìMcKinley Hallî by 1904. Organizations that met here included the formation of the New-York Rent Payersí Protective Association , Lady Lining Makers , and Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America . Frederick Bachmann was judged to be incompetent in July 1904 ; in November 1904, Bachmannís trustees transferred this property to Combined Securities Co., which held an auction in January 1905. The auction advertisement listed ìBowling alleys in cellar. Store, meeting, lodge, music rooms, and apartments above.î After passing through several owners, the building was acquired in February 1906 by Malka Marder; the wife of Benjamin Marder, a cloak contractor in the 1910 Census, both were Polish/Austrian-born.

The Newsboysí Athletic Club

In September 1905, the three upper stories of the former McKinley Hall were leased for use as the Newsboysí Athletic Club, founded by Jack Sullivan , known as the ìKing of the Newsboys,î a former newsboy and prizefighter who then sold papers to newsboys. The Club had a gymnasium and showers, a reading/classroom, and a lodging room for over fifty boys. The club depended on donations from New Yorkís society ñ one benefit, held in March 1907 at the Academy of Music, was directed by impresarios George M. Cohan and Sam Harris. By May 1911, with the expiration of its lease, the Club, by that time serving some 2,000 newsboys, purchased the former home of the New-York Historical Society at Second Avenue and 11th Street. The basement and storefront of the Newsboysí Athletic Club building had been leased for use as a laundry in 1905-07 to Paul C. Port , and from 1908 to March 1912 to the New System Napkin, Towel Supply & Steam Laundry Co., until legal action against the company was taken by the Marders.

Floral Garden Hall

Malka Marder sold the building in February 1913, and it was purchased the following month by Sarah Hirsch, the wife of Charles Hirsch, proprietor of the Manhattan Lyceum at 66-68 East 4th Street; both Hirsches were born in Romania. Operated as Floral Garden Hall, it was altered into a dance hall on the ground story, with meeting and banquet rooms above. Among the many events held here were: the annual convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America ; Brotherhood Welfare Association gathering on behalf of New Yorkís hoboes ; Women Dressmakersí Association and Journeymen Barbersí League strike meetings ; a planned meeting of the Anti-Militarist League, which resulted in a riot after the owner reneged on the use of the hall ; Sheet Metal Workersí meetings ; garment workers strike meetings ; Messenger Boysí Union strike headquarters ; and Branch No. 578, Arbeiter Ring of the Socialist Party, and Sholom Aleichem Lodge of the Jewish National Workersí Alliance of America . In 1916, the ground story was altered for a storefront, incorporating 1892 cast-iron pilasters . The property was foreclosed in January 1919 and sold at auction.

Standard Provision Co./ Hygrade Food Products Corp.

After 45 years of use as a social and meeting hall, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building for the next four decades served as meatpacking plant. The property was purchased in February 1919 by the Standard Provision Co. at 102 Rivington Street. A Dept. of Buildings application indicated that the building would be used for meatpacking, with storage in the basement, shipping and receiving on the ground story, a meat provisions and drying factory on the second story, and offices on the third story. In December 1927, Standard Provision was acquired through a merger of nine wholesale provisions companies by the Hygrade Food Products Corp. , 152 Broadway. The Washington Post called this ìthe first consolidation of delicatessen food properties ever effected.î According to a notice in the New York Times, the constituent companies

manufacture and sell frankfurters, bolognas, salamis, smoked and cured tongues, spiced, pickled and corned beef and various other ready-to-serve meat products. The companies are among the most important serving New York and Philadelphia. Their success individually and collectively has established an enviable record in the industry. Their products are sold to over 5,000 customers, including delicatessen stores, chain stores, drug stores, meat markets, clubs, grocers, hotels, restaurants, steamship and railroad companies, etc., throughout the United States and in foreign countries.

City directories over the years variously listed divisions of the corporation here: Hebrew National Food Products ; Carmel Kosher Provision Co. ; and Hod Carmel Kosher Provision Co. . Hygrade sold this property in February 1960.

20th-Century History of the East Village

After a period of decline, Greenwich Village was becoming known, prior to World War I, for its historic and picturesque qualities, its affordable housing, and the diversity of its population and social and political ideas. Many artists and writers, as well as tourists, were attracted to the Village. By the 1910s, property owners and merchants attempted to improve the Villageís economy and rehabilitate its physical condition, with ìshrewd realtors beg[inning] to amass their holdings of dilapidated housing.î These various factors and the increased desirability of the Village to upper-middle-class professionals lead to a real estate boom ñ ìrents increased during the 1920s by 140 percent and in some cases by as much as 300 percent.î

After World War II, the ethnic make-up of the Lower East Side changed again, becoming dominated by Latin American immigrants, especially those from Puerto Rico. Their immigration was encouraged by the government as a source of cheap labor, particularly for the garment trades, hotels, and small manufacturing. The community named itself Loisaida to symbolize the second generation Hispanic roots that had developed in the context of the African-American and Latino movements for social and economic justice, equality, and identity. The residential and cultural desirability of the neighborhood that came to be known as the ìEast Villageî increased with the removal of the Third Avenue El in 1955. As indicated by Terry Miller,

the psychological barrier that had marked the eastern boundary of Greenwich Village was gone. Blocks that once had no prestige were suddenly seen as intriguing, and apartments here were less costly than those in Greenwich Village. ... As artists and writers moved east, the blocks from St. Markís Place to Tenth Street were the first to hint that the Lower East Side was being transformed. Realtors began marketing the area as ìVillage East,î and by 1961 as the ìEast Village,î a name that stuck.

From World War I to the 1940s, Second Avenue between East 14th and Houston Streets had been considered the heart of New Yorkís Jewish community, known as the ìYiddish Rialtoî for its role as the worldís center of Yiddish theater. As Yiddish theater declined, the East Village gave rise in the 1950s to ìOff-Broadwayî theater, including the Phoenix Theater in the former Louis N. Jaffe Art Theater building , 181-189 Second Avenue; the Tempo Playhouse and Pyramid, Key, Bowery, New Bowery, and Bridge Theaters in the former Hamilton-Holly House, 4 St. Marks Place; and the Orpheum Theater , 126 Second Avenue. An ìoff-Off-Broadwayî theater also emerged in the late 1950s, characterized by the small size of the venues and total avoidance of commercialism and its pressures. Joe Cinoís Caffe Cino , 31 Cornelia Street, is generally recognized as the first, and other significant early off-Off-Broadway theaters were Judson Memorial Church under Rev. Al Carmines; Ellen Stewartís CafÈ La Mama/ La Mama Experimental Theatre Club , 321 East 9th Street ; and Theater Genesis in St. Marks in the Bowery Church under Michael Allen and Ralph Cook. Off-Off Broadway theater coincided with the emergence of gay theater in New York.

In the 1950s, the East Village also became home to a number of key Beat Generation writers, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, and W.H. Auden, and was renowned for its protest art and politics, galleries, poetry and coffee houses, bookstores, clubs, with a ìcountercultureî scene centered on St. Markís Place.

Rodale Press, Inc.

The 74 East 4th Street building was purchased in February 1960 by Rodale Press, Inc., of Emmaus, Pa. Jerome Irving Rodale was a New York accountant who, with a brother, in 1923 founded Rodale Mfg. Co., which made commercial and residential electrical connectors. After relocating the firm to Emmaus, Rodale became interested in organic farming. Rodale Press began publishing Organic Farming & Gardening and Prevention , a magazine devoted to nutrition and personal health, and later, other magazines and health books. In order to promote his concepts, he was also a playwright and theatrical producer. Rodale apparently originally intended to use No. 74 as a theater ñ the Times listed building plans as such in 1960; instead, Rodale in 1962 purchased No. 64 East 4th Street with the intention to ìconvert it into an intimate playhouse, theatre workshop and acting school.î A directory in 1963 listed Rodale Press and the Rodale Theater at 62 East 4th Street, and Rodale Mfg. Co. at No. 60. Rodale sold the property in September 1967.

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club

In November 1967, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, an off-Off-Broadway theater company that had been founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart. After her arrival in New York in 1950, Ms. Stewart worked in retail clothing and fashion, becoming a freelance designer. She opened a basement CafÈ La Mama at 321 East 9th Street in 1961, intended as a combination boutique and theater, the latter partly inspired by the experience of a brother who was an aspiring playwright. The cafÈís first play in July 1962 was Tennessee Williamsí ìOne Arm,î and later that year Stewart put on the first American production of a Harold Pinter play, ìThe Room.î She was forced, however, to move several times: to 82 Second Avenue in 1963, after being closed by the Dept. of Buildings due to a zoning violation; and to a loft at 122 Second Avenue in 1964, after being closed twice by the Police, Fire, Licenses, and Health Departments. In March 1964, the company was renamed the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and Stewart was acclaimed during its first European tour in 1965. An Actorsí Equity crackdown in 1966 on coffee houses and theater workshops nearly ended the company, but the union relented in recognition of the importance in New York of experimental theater . By 1967, the Times called Ms. Stewart ìthe most active producer in New York City,î with a new American play every two weeks. Her abiding philosophy has been that La Mama is ìdedicated to the playwright and all forms of theater.î She notes that ìI started La Mama so there would be a place where a playwright could write, see and learn. Why should a new playwright be regarded on the same terms as an experienced playwright the very first time out ñ which is what most professional criticism does?î She has personally selected and invited these playwrights, who then act as their own producer, with La Mama considered an attractive venue due to its lack of censorship.

La Mama received major Ford and Rockefeller Foundations grants in 1967, allowing the purchase and renovation of the 74 East 4th Street building, which was then ìin ruins.î In June 1968, its Second Avenue theater closed, with plays temporarily produced at 9 St. Markís Place, while renovations occurred on East 4th Street. The current La Mama Experimental Theatre Club opened in March 1969, with repertory and ensemble theaters on the first and second stories, rehearsal space on the third story, and Stewartís apartment on the top story. The first two productions inaugurating the theaters were the musical ìCaution: A Love Story,î by Tom Eyen and Bruce Kirle, based on the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Julie Bovassoís ìGloria and Esperanza.î The first-story theater was renovated in 1972. A National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1974 allowed for the expansion into an Annex at 66-68 East 4th Street .

Today, La Mama, the oldest off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City, is widely considered the most influential and has been called ìthe most prolific of all the off off-Broadway stages,î to date having produced an estimated 1,900 plays in New York City, and countless more around the world. La Mama has received more than sixty Obie Awards for Off-Broadway theater , as well as dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards. Ellen Stewart, recognized as a pioneering African-American theater impresario, was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award and MacArthur Fellows Award , and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame . Though commercial theater has not been its focus, a number of La Mama plays achieved success on Broadway, including ìGodspellî and ìTorch Song Trilogy,î and its resident director, Tom OíHorgan, later produced the influential hit ìHair.î Among the notable playwrights associated with La Mama have been Jean-Claude van Itallie, Paul Foster, Ruth Yorck, Tom Eyen, Julie Bovasso, David Starkweather, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, William Hoffman, Adrienne Kennedy, Charles Ludlam, and Terence McNally; eminent directors have included OíHorgan, Joseph Chaiken, Andrei Serban, Wilford Leach, John Vacarro, Marshall Mason, and Meredith Monk; and performers of note have included Bill Irwin, Billy Crystal, Nick Nolte, Danny De Vito, Bette Midler, and Estelle Getty.

Description

The four-story and three-bay, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building was originally built in 1873; the front facade was altered in 1892 with the addition of cast-iron ornament that combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs.

Ground Story: Four 1892 cast-iron pilasters survive, which are fluted at the base, paneled above, and ornamented with incised blocks that are surmounted by bosses and inverted hearts. The iron entablature once supported by the pilasters has been removed ; the story is terminated by a painted stone stringcourse. Alterations dating from 1969 include: the central metal-and-glass entrance doors , which are surmounted by a wooden panel and sign; brick infill between and above the pilasters; announcement board on the east side of the facade; and two light fixtures placed above the entrance.

Second through Fourth Stories: The upper stories are flanked by vermiculated cast-iron quoins . All windows have cast-iron surrounds, ornamented with hearts on the sides and incised motifs on the sills, and are linked together and to the quoins by panels with fraktur-like incising. Many of the moldings once located above the hearts on the windows are missing. The second-story windows are double-height, are capped by round-arched pediments ornamented with three composersí busts, and have six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The third story windows have segmental broken-scroll pediments and six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The central fourth-story window is capped by a pediment, while the outer windows have entablatures . The prominent metal cornice has stylized modillions ornamented with hearts , rods, and incised ends and is surmounted by a large molded, broken pediment, ornamented at the ends by sunbursts.

Western Facade: This facade, currently visible above the first story, has keyed returns of the front facadeís quoins, and a portion of red brick facing; the rest of the facade is unarticulated and parged.

Eastern Facade: Attached to the eastern side of the building [and not on the designated Landmark Site] is a tan brick wall, constructed as part of a light court for No. 63-65 Second Avenue .

- From the 2009 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Ok. Straight up. I'm back from Michigan, back to dial up the drama this fall with imitable unapologetic swagger. Whats on the docket? How about George Nelson, Paul McCobb, and Vladimir Kagan. All day, baby. Every day. Kenny K. Email me-- kinzco@domain900.net.

Music www.hollywoodreporter.com/taxonomy/term/61/0/feed | Mario Millions www.mariomillions.com | rss.feedsportal.com/c/34793/f/641585/s/4cd142f2/sc/28/l/0...

I attended the Barrett Jackson Spring 2025 Car Show at WestWorld in Scottsdale with my son.

www.shelby.com/Vehicles/2025-Shelby-GT350

Sixty years ago, the Shelby GT350 redefined performance, launching a new era in motorsports. Shelby American transformed the 1965 Mustang into an international icon, and for 2025, they've done it again.

Teaming up with industry leaders, Shelby American has crafted the most powerful Shelby GT350 ever. The 5.0L V8 engine, available in 480 and 810 horsepower versions (supercharged), is complemented by performance-focused upgrades in suspension, exhaust, and aerodynamics. The result? A car that's thrilling on both the street and the track.

The GT350's styling is as purposeful as its performance. From 60th anniversary badges to carbon fiber accents and the functional aluminum hood with heat extraction, every detail honors the original GT350 while embracing modern performance.

In 1965, Shelby American produced 562 GT350s, and for 2025, the number remains the sameâmaking this model just as exclusive. Production begins in the second quarter of the year, with cars available through selected Ford dealers in the U.S., and a limited number of international models built by Shelby mod shops.

www.motortrend.com/news/2025-shelby-american-ford-mustang...

The new Shelby GT350 is based on the current Ford Mustang GT, and so the engine it builds off of is the excellent Coyote V-8 rather than the exotic flat-plane-crank Voodoo 5.2-liter found in Ford's homegrown GT350 and GT350R. Shelby American adds a supercharger which boosts output to 810 horsepower. There's a short list of other performance mods including lowering springs and sway bars. Naturally with it being a Shelby there is a host of aesthetic pieces thrown in as well like an aero package, wheels, and decals. If you want an idea of what itâs capable of, the team at HOT ROD spent a track day with an early prototype. Spoiler alert: they had a great time with it.

www.hotrod.com/features/2025-shelby-gt350-ford-track-drive/

Sixty years ago, the Shelby GT350 marked a new chapter in performance and motorsports history, said Joe Conway, CEO of Shelby American. It was Shelby's first model based on the Ford Mustang, the perfect follow-up to the groundbreaking Shelby Cobra. Shelby American poured its performance expertise into the 1965 Mustang, turning it into an iconic international sports car. We followed the same strategy for 2025 and collaborated with industry leaders to create this very special Shelby car.

The Shelby GT350 and the Shelby GT350R are back for 2025, said Gary Patterson, president of Shelby American. Just as Carroll Shelby envisioned in 1965, this sports car is designed to be exhilarating and competitive on both the street and track. The Shelby GT350 and Shelby GT350R each have unique personalities that are very different from our halo Shelby Super Snake. The 2025 Shelby GT350 models are pure sports car, while the Shelby Super Snake is the highest-performance supercar in our lineup.

finance.yahoo.com/news/barrett-jackson-kicks-off-2025-215...

"Barrett-Jackson delivered many magical experiences for everyone who joined us in Scottsdale," said Steve Davis, president of Barrett-Jackson. "From the excitement of the auction block to the thrill rides, exhibits, STEM Fest and live music, there was truly something that everyone in the family could enjoy. We filled our docket with so much diversity that collectors from every walk of life found something they loved. We stay on top of the trends and consign the vehicles that people want, proving once again that the car collector hobby is thriving. Those trends include the growing popularity of Resto-Mods, SUVs and trucks, which are gaining momentum because they appeal to such a broad cross section of people. Iâm especially proud of our support for important charities again this year. We not only raised millions of dollars but also critical awareness that will help make a positive impact on so many communities."

www.classic-car-auctions.info/usa/scottsdale/2025-barrett...

In 2025, Barrett-Jackson earned $198 million by selling 2013 car lots and $5.2 million from 957 pieces of automobilia. A further $6.2 million was raised for charity.

The first production 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 VIN001 achieved $3.7 million as a charity lot and the highest result at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale 2025 collector car auction in Arizona, USA. The most expensive regular lots were a 2023 Hennessey Venom F5 Roadster ($2,200,000) and a 2014 Pagani Huayra ($1,925,000). DJ Marshmelloâs 2020 Ford GT Liquid Carbon Special Edition achieved a strong $1,780,000.

The top four results at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale 2025 collector car auction were all for modern supercars. The top result was for charity (see below) while the most expensive regular car in the sale was for the nearly new 2023 Hennessy Venom F5 Roadster. This F5 Roadster was the second of only 30 produced and was sold with only 681 miles on the clock.

Special car

Barrett Jackson 2025

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenville,_Illinois

Greenville is a city in Bond County, Illinois, United States, 51 miles (82 km) east of St. Louis. The population as of the 2010 census was 7,000. It is the county seat of Bond County.

Greenville is part of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is also considered part of the Metro East region of Illinois.

Greenville celebrated its Bicentennial in 2015 as one of the oldest communities in Illinois. It is home to Greenville University, the Richard Bock Museum, the American Farm Heritage Museum, the Armed Forces Museum and the Demoulin Museum and a federal prison, Federal Correctional Institution, Greenville (FCI Greenville). It is also home to internationally known companies, including Nevco Scoreboard, the largest privately owned scoreboard company in the world, and DeMoulin Brothers, the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of band uniforms.

Source: www.americanfarmheritagemuseum.com/about-us.html

The American Farm Heritage Museum was one man's dream. The Museum became a reality when a group of men, mostly farmers, sitting in coffee shop, talked about the dream of building a museum to preserve the farm heritage. Sixty farmers, collectors, and civic leaders held a meeting to share their ideas with the public in April of 2002. It was agreed that Bond County, being near the middle of the state and right along 1-70, would be the perfect place. Meetings were conducted, fundraisers were held, and ideas were passed around. In 2002 the land for the museum was acquired and a name for the museum was chosen.

The American Farm Heritage Museum would sit on seventeen acres, along the south side of interstate 70, just east of the Route 127 overpass. Its goal would be to promote and share the heritage of America's rural life: living, farming and travel. One very generous family purchased the land and leased it for ninety-nine years to the American Farm Heritage Museum, NFP organization. After a year of planning, the first 32'x64' building, with a gambrel roof, was completed. It was finished just days before the first Heritage Days Show in July 2004. This building, originally was to be a tractor maintenance shop, but later became known as the Lil' Red Barn Museum.

In the winter of 2005, owners of a truck terminal building in St. Louis gave the building to the Museum, if we took it down. Several members went to work and got the 200'x100' building moved and rebuilt. Since then other buildings and groups have been added to the show grounds.

We are growing with each passing year. Our Main building is the site of numerous events throughout the year. The Lil' Red Barn is a little piece of history, with collections of items from the past. In 2009 this building received the Illinois Governor's Home Town Award. The Tractor Shed displays different makes of tractors and tools of the past. Our Christmas building, which operates as a work shop and houses all the Christmas boxes for The Christmas Lights Wonderland, partners with The Lil' Red Barn, Railroad, Hill's Fort and the Armed Forces Museum to put on a spectacular Christmas display.

The American Heritage Railroad, established in 2003 is a division of the American Farm Heritage Museum. Many rail-enthusiast members realized as farms were connected by the American Railroad so should the Museum have an operating railroad for its historic value, as well as provide a fun ride for visitors. May 10, 2005 the railroad division was officially formed and an intensive search began to procure equipment. Many thousands of hours of volunteer labor, by friends of the railroad, have resulted in over a mile of 13" gauge track being laid, on the grounds. It is our desire to honor the great railroads that have served Bond County, such as the Vandalia, Nickel Plate, Pennsylvania and CB & Q. In 2005 the Ben Winter's Museum railroad was purchased which provided a G-15 diesel train set. The final move of the Ben Winter's railroad was completed in November, in three days with 20 volunteers, 9 trailers and one semi-truck. The collection has grown to include both diesel and steam engines and a variety of rolling stock. The railroad owns three steam locomotives. It is hoped the 1926 Wagner 4-4-2 steam engine will be ready for operation for the 2015 season.

2005 Hill's Fort also joined the Museum. Hill's Fort played an important part in the opening of Northwest Territory. Hill's Fort may have started as early as 1806 when early settlers first arrived. The Fort's location appears on an 1808 survey map by Capt. Isaac Hill, leader of a team commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the Illinois Territory. The Legislature fixed Hill's Fort as the temporary county seat. Earliest records are preserved from Hill's Fort and include court and marriage dockets. The Bond County seat was later moved to Perrysville and, in 1821 to Greenville, Illinois. No longer useful as a fort or county seat, Hill's Fort was abandoned and fell to ruin.

Following excruciating study of the original site, a replica of the Fort has been recreated on the grounds of the Farm Museum. It is open to the public on the 1st Saturday of the month from May through October and also open, for tours and special occasions. At Christmas time they are open Friday and Saturday nights for the Christmas lights. They dress in period dress and cook over the open fireplace in the cabin, and are eager to answer questions.

In 2012 The Armed Forces Museum, "Memories of Steel", joined our Museum. It maintains as its sole mission, to preserve these important pieces of military history. The Museum houses one of the largest collections of military vehicles in the County. It currently watches over approximately 15 privately-owned and 25 museum-owned vehicles. The members are involved in a program called "Living history" which furnishes displays of t1istoric vehicles and memorabilia and, works with re-enactors at civil events like Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day. Each of these vehicles has an historic story and plays a very important role in connecting us with the soldiers who lived and died in their service to the country.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenville,_Illinois

Greenville is a city in Bond County, Illinois, United States, 51 miles (82 km) east of St. Louis. The population as of the 2010 census was 7,000. It is the county seat of Bond County.

Greenville is part of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is also considered part of the Metro East region of Illinois.

Greenville celebrated its Bicentennial in 2015 as one of the oldest communities in Illinois. It is home to Greenville University, the Richard Bock Museum, the American Farm Heritage Museum, the Armed Forces Museum and the Demoulin Museum and a federal prison, Federal Correctional Institution, Greenville (FCI Greenville). It is also home to internationally known companies, including Nevco Scoreboard, the largest privately owned scoreboard company in the world, and DeMoulin Brothers, the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of band uniforms.

Source: www.americanfarmheritagemuseum.com/about-us.html

The American Farm Heritage Museum was one man's dream. The Museum became a reality when a group of men, mostly farmers, sitting in coffee shop, talked about the dream of building a museum to preserve the farm heritage. Sixty farmers, collectors, and civic leaders held a meeting to share their ideas with the public in April of 2002. It was agreed that Bond County, being near the middle of the state and right along 1-70, would be the perfect place. Meetings were conducted, fundraisers were held, and ideas were passed around. In 2002 the land for the museum was acquired and a name for the museum was chosen.

The American Farm Heritage Museum would sit on seventeen acres, along the south side of interstate 70, just east of the Route 127 overpass. Its goal would be to promote and share the heritage of America's rural life: living, farming and travel. One very generous family purchased the land and leased it for ninety-nine years to the American Farm Heritage Museum, NFP organization. After a year of planning, the first 32'x64' building, with a gambrel roof, was completed. It was finished just days before the first Heritage Days Show in July 2004. This building, originally was to be a tractor maintenance shop, but later became known as the Lil' Red Barn Museum.

In the winter of 2005, owners of a truck terminal building in St. Louis gave the building to the Museum, if we took it down. Several members went to work and got the 200'x100' building moved and rebuilt. Since then other buildings and groups have been added to the show grounds.

We are growing with each passing year. Our Main building is the site of numerous events throughout the year. The Lil' Red Barn is a little piece of history, with collections of items from the past. In 2009 this building received the Illinois Governor's Home Town Award. The Tractor Shed displays different makes of tractors and tools of the past. Our Christmas building, which operates as a work shop and houses all the Christmas boxes for The Christmas Lights Wonderland, partners with The Lil' Red Barn, Railroad, Hill's Fort and the Armed Forces Museum to put on a spectacular Christmas display.

The American Heritage Railroad, established in 2003 is a division of the American Farm Heritage Museum. Many rail-enthusiast members realized as farms were connected by the American Railroad so should the Museum have an operating railroad for its historic value, as well as provide a fun ride for visitors. May 10, 2005 the railroad division was officially formed and an intensive search began to procure equipment. Many thousands of hours of volunteer labor, by friends of the railroad, have resulted in over a mile of 13" gauge track being laid, on the grounds. It is our desire to honor the great railroads that have served Bond County, such as the Vandalia, Nickel Plate, Pennsylvania and CB & Q. In 2005 the Ben Winter's Museum railroad was purchased which provided a G-15 diesel train set. The final move of the Ben Winter's railroad was completed in November, in three days with 20 volunteers, 9 trailers and one semi-truck. The collection has grown to include both diesel and steam engines and a variety of rolling stock. The railroad owns three steam locomotives. It is hoped the 1926 Wagner 4-4-2 steam engine will be ready for operation for the 2015 season.

2005 Hill's Fort also joined the Museum. Hill's Fort played an important part in the opening of Northwest Territory. Hill's Fort may have started as early as 1806 when early settlers first arrived. The Fort's location appears on an 1808 survey map by Capt. Isaac Hill, leader of a team commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the Illinois Territory. The Legislature fixed Hill's Fort as the temporary county seat. Earliest records are preserved from Hill's Fort and include court and marriage dockets. The Bond County seat was later moved to Perrysville and, in 1821 to Greenville, Illinois. No longer useful as a fort or county seat, Hill's Fort was abandoned and fell to ruin.

Following excruciating study of the original site, a replica of the Fort has been recreated on the grounds of the Farm Museum. It is open to the public on the 1st Saturday of the month from May through October and also open, for tours and special occasions. At Christmas time they are open Friday and Saturday nights for the Christmas lights. They dress in period dress and cook over the open fireplace in the cabin, and are eager to answer questions.

In 2012 The Armed Forces Museum, "Memories of Steel", joined our Museum. It maintains as its sole mission, to preserve these important pieces of military history. The Museum houses one of the largest collections of military vehicles in the County. It currently watches over approximately 15 privately-owned and 25 museum-owned vehicles. The members are involved in a program called "Living history" which furnishes displays of t1istoric vehicles and memorabilia and, works with re-enactors at civil events like Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day. Each of these vehicles has an historic story and plays a very important role in connecting us with the soldiers who lived and died in their service to the country.

Lower East Side. Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The four-story, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building, in todayís East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, was constructed in 1873 to the design of German-born architect August H. Blankenstein for this German-American professional orchestral musiciansí social and benevolent association. Founded informally in 1860, it had grown large enough by 1866 for the society to purchase this site and eventually construct the purpose-built structure. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side.

It counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, at a time when German-Americans dominated the orchestral scene. These included conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas and Walter Damrosch, and the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and Theodore Thomas Orchestras. After the Aschenbroedel Verein moved to Yorkville in 1892, this building was subsequently owned for four years by the Gesangverein Schillerbund, one of the cityís leading and oldest German singing societies. The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament by German-born architects [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composersí busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

After 1895, the building housed a variety of disparate uses, including a series of public meeting and dance halls, the Newsboysí Athletic Club, a laundry, and a meatpacking plant. Since 1969, it has been the home of the renowned La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, established in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, and today considered the oldest and most influential off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City. The building remains one of the significant reminders of 19th-century German-American cultural contributions to New York City, as well as the continuing vitality of off-Off-Broadway theater in the East Village.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The 19th-Century Development of East Village Neighborhood

The area of todayís Greenwich Village was, during the 18th century, the location of the small rural hamlet of Greenwich, as well as the country seats and summer homes of wealthy downtown aristocrats, merchants, and capitalists. A number of cholera and yellow fever epidemics in lower Manhattan between 1799 and 1822 led to an influx of settlers in the Greenwich area, with the population quadrupling between 1825 and 1840. Previously undeveloped tracts of land were speculatively subdivided for the construction of town houses and rowhouses. Whereas in the early 19th century many of the wealthiest New Yorkers lived in the vicinity of Broadway and the side streets adjacent to City Hall Park between Barclay and Chambers Streets, by the 1820s and 30s, as commercial development and congestion increasingly disrupted and displaced them, the elite moved northward into Greenwich Village east of Sixth Avenue.

To the east, during the 17th and 18th centuries, was Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesantís Bowery farm. In the vicinity were Native American trails, todayís Broadway and Bowery, that the Lenape Indians traversed from the southern tip of Manhattan to Inwood and Harlem. St. Markís-in-the-Bowery Church was built on a higher, dry piece of land, while the area to the east of todayís Second Avenue, known as Stuyvesant Meadows, remained an undeveloped marshy area. In the late 18th century, the area east of Second Avenue was the estate of Mangle Minthorn, father-in-law of Daniel Tompkins , governor of New York and

U.S. vice president under James Monroe . Both Stuyvesant and Minthorn were slave owners. In 1832, the Common Council created the 15th Ward out of the eastern section of the large 9th Ward, its boundaries being Sixth Avenue, Houston and 14th Streets, and the Bowery. According to Luther Harrisí history Around Washington Square, during the 1830s-40s ìthis ward drew the wealthiest, most influential, and most talented people from New York City and elsewhere. For a brief period beginning in the 1820s-30s, Lafayette Place, including the grand marble Greek Revival style LaGrange Terrace , St. Markís Place, and Bond, Great Jones, East 4th and Bleecker Streets were also among the cityís most fashionable addresses. Lower Second Avenue and adjacent side streets remained prestigious through the 1850s.

Commercial and institutional intrusions and the continual arrival of immigrants ended the fashionable heyday of these wealthier enclaves before the Civil War. In the 1850s, Broadway north of Houston Street was transformed from a residential into a significant commercial district. Also beginning in the 1850s, after the political upheavals in Europe of 1848 and the resulting influx of German-speaking immigrants to New York City, the Lower East Side became known as Kleindeutschland . Aside from their presence as residents, these immigrants contributed in significant ways to the vibrant commercial and cultural life of the neighborhood and the city at large. By 1880, this neighborhood constituted one-fourth of the cityís population and was the first major urban foreign-speaking neighborhood in the U.S., as well as the leading German-American center throughout the century. A massive exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe from the 1880s to World War I led to approximately two million Jewish immigrants settling in New York; most lived for a time on the Lower East Side, establishing their own cultural and religious institutions there.

Beginning in the 1850s-60s, the vicinity of 14th Street and Union Square developed into a center of musical and theatrical culture. The Academy of Music , East 14th Street and Irving Place, an opera house with the worldís largest seating capacity at the time, quickly became the center of musical and social life in New York, presenting such notable performers as Adelina Patti , and events such as the grand ball in honor of the Prince of Wales in the autumn of 1860. The building burned down in 1866, and was replaced by a new Academy of Music . Irving Hall , a ballroom, concert, and lecture hall annex to the Academy, served as the home of the New York Philharmonic in 1861-63. The Steinway piano company opened Steinway Hall , a combination showroom and recital hall at 109 East 14th Street, which for many years was the foremost concert hall in the country . By the mid-1860s, a number of legitimate theaters were also opening in the vicinity of Union Square, which during the last quarter of the nineteenth century became the center of New York theater. These included Wallack's Theater , 728 Broadway at 13th Street, the most prestigious dramatic theater in the country during this period; the Union Square Theater , an adjunct of the former Union Place Hotel; Chickering Hall , Fifth Avenue and 18th Street; and Amberg Theater , 11 Irving Place . The Germania Theater, which along with the Amberg catered to a specifically German clientele, was located in Tammany Hall in 1874-81, in Wallackís Theater in 1881-82, and until 1902 in the former Church of St. Ann, East 8th Street near Broadway. Union Square, after the Civil War, became the traditional site for workersí, union, and political protests and rallies.

As wealthier residents moved northward in the 1850s, their single-family residences were converted into multiple dwellings or boardinghouses, as well as other uses, such as clubs or community cultural institutions. For instance, the former Ralph and Ann E. Van Wyck Mead House at 110 Second Avenue in 1874 became the Isaac T. Hopper Home of the Womenís Prison Association, and, of the Federal style houses on the westernmost block of St. Markís Place: No. 29 became the Harmonie Club, a German-Jewish singing club ; Nos. 19-21 housed another German musical club, the Arion Singing Society , and these buildings, along with No. 23, became Arlington Hall, a ballroom-community center in 1887. Most of the remaining houses were demolished for denser development with French flats and tenements between 1874 and 1902.

Hastening the change in the residential character of this section of the Lower East Side after mid-century were a wide variety of major cultural, religious, commercial, and educational institutions, including the Astor Place Opera House , Astor and Lafayette Places; Astor Library , 425 Lafayette Street; Bible House , home of the American Bible Society and other religious organizations, Astor Place and Third Avenue; and Cooper Union , Astor Place and Third Avenue. The New York Free Circulating Library, Ottendorfer Branch, and German Dispensary , 135 and 137 Second Avenue, among others, catered to the German community. Assembly halls such as Webster Hall and Annex , 119-125 East 11th Street, became important neighborhood social centers. The Third Avenue elevated railroad opened in 1878.

The Aschenbroedel Verein

A social and benevolent association composed almost exclusively of German-American professional orchestral musicians, the Aschenbroedel Verein was founded informally in 1860, with its name, ìCinderella Society,î supposedly a play on the last name of one of its members , August Asche. After initially meeting at Schneiderís Hall, 371 Broome Street, by 1866 the group had grown large enough with some 300 members for it to acquire a building on East 4th Street. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side, and counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, including conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas, and Walter Damrosch, as well as all of the members of the Theodore Thomas Orchestra and most of the members of the New York Philharmonic. According to Groveís Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1880, this was also ìthe headquartersî of the New York Philharmonic Society, though the Philharmonicís Minutes books illustrate that this was one of several locations in the neighborhood where its directorsí and business meetings were held, between 1873 and 1888. Howard Shanet, in Philharmonic: A History of New Yorkís Orchestra , stated that the Aschenbroedel Verein was the first organization in New York to advance the unionization of musicians, as early as 1860, an effort that culminated later with the formation of the Musical Mutual Protective Union. Shanet called Aschenbroedel ìat once a cultural, a benevolent, a social, and a labor association.î He further emphasized the total domination of the symphonic world in New York by the German community, with nearly all of the Philharmonic men of German birth or parentage by 1892. The Aschenbroedel Vereinís motto was ìFreundschaft, Geselligkeit, Befoerderung der Kunstî .

By 1870, there were an estimated 64 German musical societies within New York City, and a number of them were located in the vicinity, either in converted structures or purpose-built ones. These included the Arion Singing Society ; Liederkranz , 31-35 East 4th Street; and Beethoven Maennerchor , located in a hall built in 1870 at 210-214 East 5th Street. In addition, Turnverein Halle , 66-68 East 4th Street, was built just down the block from the Aschenbroedel Verein.

In 1873, the Aschenbroedel Verein, under president George Matzka , constructed this purpose-built structure, clad in brick and four stories , at an estimated cost of $24,000. Construction began in June and was completed in October. The architect was August H. Blankenstein , who was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. in 1860. Active from 1872 to 1899, he designed tenement, flats, and factory buildings for a mostly German clientele, as well as the addition to the Centre Market Armory , Grand and Centre Streets; work on the 55th Regiment, 23rd Regiment, and First Cavalry 22nd Regiment Armories ; and St. Josephís R.C. Orphan Asylum School , Avenue A and 90th Street. A 1894 lawsuit indicated that Blankenstein had been a partner of architect Henry Herter prior to 1886 . Blankenstein was also listed as an architect in an 1890 directory in Buffalo, N.Y.

The Times reported on November 7, 1873, that the Aschenbroedel Verein had ìinaugurated its new club-house... last night, by an entertainment of music and social festivities.î Considered ìone of the most commodious German clubhouses in the city,î its amenities included a restaurant, a library, a billiard room, and a bowling alley in the basement. Among activities conducted here were meetings of the Ancient Lodge of Perfection in 1873, and the 1876 funeral of Philharmonic conductor and Aschenbroedel Verein member Carl Bergmann. For unknown reasons, the building was listed for sale in 1882, but the Aschenbroedel Verein remained here until it sold the building in September 1891. The society, then having some 700 members, moved in November 1892 into a new clubhouse at 144 East 86th Street in Yorkville.

The Gesangverein Schillerbund and Schillerbund Halle

In June 1892, the Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the Gesangverein Schillerbund , one of the cityís leading and oldest German singing societies. Founded in 1850 and named after the poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller , the Schillerbund had been meeting since 1872 in Turnverein Halle. The purchase price of its new building was $1.00, subject to $37,500 in mortgages held by the Bachmann Brewing Co. of Clifton, Staten Island. This structure was altered between September and October 1892 by the architectural firm of [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl. Interestingly, Kurtzer was a member of the Beethoven Maennerchor. In partnership from about 1888 until 1901, Kurtzer & Rohl specialized in tenements and flats buildings for a largely German clientele; examples of its work include Nos. 95 Bedford Street and 285 West 4th Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District, and No. 121 East 10th Street , located within the St. Markís Historic District. The firm was also responsible for the First German Reformed Church , 351 East 68th Street, and its Sunday School . Richard O.L. Rohl , an immigrant from Prussia in 1880, maintained an independent practice from 1902 until around 1919. No. 391 West Street , located within the Weehawken Street Historic District, was his first independent commission, and he also designed the double tenement buildings at Nos. 35-39 Christopher Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District. Frederick William Kurtzer , emigrated from Germany around 1870. He worked independently in 1901-02, then became a partner in Kurtzer & Rentz in 1903-06, with Charles Rentz, Jr. , an architect who was born in New York City of German descent. Rentz was extraordinarily prolific in the design of flats and tenement buildings in the 1880s, but is best known for the design of Webster Hall and Annex . Kurtzer continued to practice in Manhattan and the Bronx until around 1925.

The Dept. of Buildings 1892 alteration application for the Gesangverein Schillerbund Building, as well as the dockets, only listed $1,200 in work, involving interior partition alterations in the basement and second story. In an article on the buildingís opening in November 1892, however, the New York Times indicated that it had been ìalmost entirely rebuilt and refitted,î and that ìthe building cost in all about $45,000. ... On the ground floor are fine bowling alleys, the kitchen and restaurant. The second floor is used for assembly and meeting rooms, the third for lodge rooms, and the top of the house is occupied by the tenant.î The 1892 tax assessment for the property increased by more than 25 percent, and the structure was later described in the Times as ìone of the best Maennerchor clubhouses in that section of this city.î The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composersí busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

A Schillerbund Fair was held here December 10-20, 1892. By 1895, the membership of the Schillerbund was around 400, and the hall, managed by Gustav Schunemann, reportedly enjoyed ìmuch popularity among the merrymakers of that neighborhood.î In November 1896, however, the Gesangverein Schillerbund sold the property and moved to Yorkville . This building was purchased for $40,195 by the Bachmann Brewing Co., holder of the mortgage. The company was founded by the German-born Frederick Bachmann , who had immigrated to New York in 1859, and worked at the Lion Brewery in Manhattan, prior to moving to Staten Island, where he was employed by the Schmidt Brewery and Gabriel Meyer Brewery, becoming the co-owner with David Meyer until it was destroyed by fire in 1881. As indicated by Charles L. Sachs in Made on Staten Island, ìThe successful breweries were not just efficient manufacturing enterprises. To market and distribute their products the breweries acquired real estate holdings and developed close ties with the restaurant, recreation, and tourism businesses. The major breweries owned, operated, and rented saloons, taverns, beer gardens, hotels, and even resort complexes.î

This building became a rental assembly hall, and there are references in newspapers calling it ìSchillerbund Halleî as late as 1901. A sampling of meetings and events held here included: pattern makers ; Eastern Star chapter of the Order of Chosen Friends ; New York branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers ; New York Engineers & Machinists Society ; New York Engineersí Protective Association ; and Poles celebrating the 1863 insurrection .

Krywaczyís Hall, Saenger Hall, and McKinley Hall

The building continued to be used as a public rental hall and social center, under three different names, and like such sites as Webster Hall , was a venue for organizational meetings and political and union functions, particularly for the working-class and immigrant population of the Lower East Side. As opined by historian Kathy Peiss:

For the working-class population packed into small tenement apartments, large halls that could be rented for dances, weddings, mass meetings, and other gatherings were a requirement of social life. The number of public halls in Manhattan rose substantially in a short period; business directories listed 130 halls in 1895 and 195 in 1910, an increase of 50 percent. While some of these, like Carnegie Hall, were cultural spaces of the privileged, most were located in working-class districts. The largest East Side halls... were always in great demand.

In a September 12, 1901, New York Times announcement of a meeting here of the Polish community to denounce Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who had shot President William McKinley on September 6, the location was referred to as ìKrywaczyís Hallî . John Krywacsy was listed in directories as a liquor dealer on Forsyth Street. City directories in 1901-03, as well as the 1903 Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, called this ìSaenger Hall.î The Bachmann Brewing Co. leased the property in April 1903 to Max Sapiro and Ike Lifschitz. Sapiro was listed in the 1910 Census as a Polish/Austrian-born cafÈ proprietor, though he was not listed in directories in connection with this property, while Issac Lifshitz was Russian-born according to the 1900 Census, and was listed in directories in this building in 1903-05 operating a saloon. Among groups meeting here were the Heinrich Heine lodge , Smoking Pipe Makersí Union , and East Side Restaurant Keepers . Apparently in commemoration of the assassinated President, the name of the building was changed to ìMcKinley Hallî by 1904. Organizations that met here included the formation of the New-York Rent Payersí Protective Association , Lady Lining Makers , and Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America . Frederick Bachmann was judged to be incompetent in July 1904 ; in November 1904, Bachmannís trustees transferred this property to Combined Securities Co., which held an auction in January 1905. The auction advertisement listed ìBowling alleys in cellar. Store, meeting, lodge, music rooms, and apartments above.î After passing through several owners, the building was acquired in February 1906 by Malka Marder; the wife of Benjamin Marder, a cloak contractor in the 1910 Census, both were Polish/Austrian-born.

The Newsboysí Athletic Club

In September 1905, the three upper stories of the former McKinley Hall were leased for use as the Newsboysí Athletic Club, founded by Jack Sullivan , known as the ìKing of the Newsboys,î a former newsboy and prizefighter who then sold papers to newsboys. The Club had a gymnasium and showers, a reading/classroom, and a lodging room for over fifty boys. The club depended on donations from New Yorkís society ñ one benefit, held in March 1907 at the Academy of Music, was directed by impresarios George M. Cohan and Sam Harris. By May 1911, with the expiration of its lease, the Club, by that time serving some 2,000 newsboys, purchased the former home of the New-York Historical Society at Second Avenue and 11th Street. The basement and storefront of the Newsboysí Athletic Club building had been leased for use as a laundry in 1905-07 to Paul C. Port , and from 1908 to March 1912 to the New System Napkin, Towel Supply & Steam Laundry Co., until legal action against the company was taken by the Marders.

Floral Garden Hall

Malka Marder sold the building in February 1913, and it was purchased the following month by Sarah Hirsch, the wife of Charles Hirsch, proprietor of the Manhattan Lyceum at 66-68 East 4th Street; both Hirsches were born in Romania. Operated as Floral Garden Hall, it was altered into a dance hall on the ground story, with meeting and banquet rooms above. Among the many events held here were: the annual convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America ; Brotherhood Welfare Association gathering on behalf of New Yorkís hoboes ; Women Dressmakersí Association and Journeymen Barbersí League strike meetings ; a planned meeting of the Anti-Militarist League, which resulted in a riot after the owner reneged on the use of the hall ; Sheet Metal Workersí meetings ; garment workers strike meetings ; Messenger Boysí Union strike headquarters ; and Branch No. 578, Arbeiter Ring of the Socialist Party, and Sholom Aleichem Lodge of the Jewish National Workersí Alliance of America . In 1916, the ground story was altered for a storefront, incorporating 1892 cast-iron pilasters . The property was foreclosed in January 1919 and sold at auction.

Standard Provision Co./ Hygrade Food Products Corp.

After 45 years of use as a social and meeting hall, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building for the next four decades served as meatpacking plant. The property was purchased in February 1919 by the Standard Provision Co. at 102 Rivington Street. A Dept. of Buildings application indicated that the building would be used for meatpacking, with storage in the basement, shipping and receiving on the ground story, a meat provisions and drying factory on the second story, and offices on the third story. In December 1927, Standard Provision was acquired through a merger of nine wholesale provisions companies by the Hygrade Food Products Corp. , 152 Broadway. The Washington Post called this ìthe first consolidation of delicatessen food properties ever effected.î According to a notice in the New York Times, the constituent companies

manufacture and sell frankfurters, bolognas, salamis, smoked and cured tongues, spiced, pickled and corned beef and various other ready-to-serve meat products. The companies are among the most important serving New York and Philadelphia. Their success individually and collectively has established an enviable record in the industry. Their products are sold to over 5,000 customers, including delicatessen stores, chain stores, drug stores, meat markets, clubs, grocers, hotels, restaurants, steamship and railroad companies, etc., throughout the United States and in foreign countries.

City directories over the years variously listed divisions of the corporation here: Hebrew National Food Products ; Carmel Kosher Provision Co. ; and Hod Carmel Kosher Provision Co. . Hygrade sold this property in February 1960.

20th-Century History of the East Village

After a period of decline, Greenwich Village was becoming known, prior to World War I, for its historic and picturesque qualities, its affordable housing, and the diversity of its population and social and political ideas. Many artists and writers, as well as tourists, were attracted to the Village. By the 1910s, property owners and merchants attempted to improve the Villageís economy and rehabilitate its physical condition, with ìshrewd realtors beg[inning] to amass their holdings of dilapidated housing.î These various factors and the increased desirability of the Village to upper-middle-class professionals lead to a real estate boom ñ ìrents increased during the 1920s by 140 percent and in some cases by as much as 300 percent.î

After World War II, the ethnic make-up of the Lower East Side changed again, becoming dominated by Latin American immigrants, especially those from Puerto Rico. Their immigration was encouraged by the government as a source of cheap labor, particularly for the garment trades, hotels, and small manufacturing. The community named itself Loisaida to symbolize the second generation Hispanic roots that had developed in the context of the African-American and Latino movements for social and economic justice, equality, and identity. The residential and cultural desirability of the neighborhood that came to be known as the ìEast Villageî increased with the removal of the Third Avenue El in 1955. As indicated by Terry Miller,

the psychological barrier that had marked the eastern boundary of Greenwich Village was gone. Blocks that once had no prestige were suddenly seen as intriguing, and apartments here were less costly than those in Greenwich Village. ... As artists and writers moved east, the blocks from St. Markís Place to Tenth Street were the first to hint that the Lower East Side was being transformed. Realtors began marketing the area as ìVillage East,î and by 1961 as the ìEast Village,î a name that stuck.

From World War I to the 1940s, Second Avenue between East 14th and Houston Streets had been considered the heart of New Yorkís Jewish community, known as the ìYiddish Rialtoî for its role as the worldís center of Yiddish theater. As Yiddish theater declined, the East Village gave rise in the 1950s to ìOff-Broadwayî theater, including the Phoenix Theater in the former Louis N. Jaffe Art Theater building , 181-189 Second Avenue; the Tempo Playhouse and Pyramid, Key, Bowery, New Bowery, and Bridge Theaters in the former Hamilton-Holly House, 4 St. Marks Place; and the Orpheum Theater , 126 Second Avenue. An ìoff-Off-Broadwayî theater also emerged in the late 1950s, characterized by the small size of the venues and total avoidance of commercialism and its pressures. Joe Cinoís Caffe Cino , 31 Cornelia Street, is generally recognized as the first, and other significant early off-Off-Broadway theaters were Judson Memorial Church under Rev. Al Carmines; Ellen Stewartís CafÈ La Mama/ La Mama Experimental Theatre Club , 321 East 9th Street ; and Theater Genesis in St. Marks in the Bowery Church under Michael Allen and Ralph Cook. Off-Off Broadway theater coincided with the emergence of gay theater in New York.

In the 1950s, the East Village also became home to a number of key Beat Generation writers, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, and W.H. Auden, and was renowned for its protest art and politics, galleries, poetry and coffee houses, bookstores, clubs, with a ìcountercultureî scene centered on St. Markís Place.

Rodale Press, Inc.

The 74 East 4th Street building was purchased in February 1960 by Rodale Press, Inc., of Emmaus, Pa. Jerome Irving Rodale was a New York accountant who, with a brother, in 1923 founded Rodale Mfg. Co., which made commercial and residential electrical connectors. After relocating the firm to Emmaus, Rodale became interested in organic farming. Rodale Press began publishing Organic Farming & Gardening and Prevention , a magazine devoted to nutrition and personal health, and later, other magazines and health books. In order to promote his concepts, he was also a playwright and theatrical producer. Rodale apparently originally intended to use No. 74 as a theater ñ the Times listed building plans as such in 1960; instead, Rodale in 1962 purchased No. 64 East 4th Street with the intention to ìconvert it into an intimate playhouse, theatre workshop and acting school.î A directory in 1963 listed Rodale Press and the Rodale Theater at 62 East 4th Street, and Rodale Mfg. Co. at No. 60. Rodale sold the property in September 1967.

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club

In November 1967, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, an off-Off-Broadway theater company that had been founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart. After her arrival in New York in 1950, Ms. Stewart worked in retail clothing and fashion, becoming a freelance designer. She opened a basement CafÈ La Mama at 321 East 9th Street in 1961, intended as a combination boutique and theater, the latter partly inspired by the experience of a brother who was an aspiring playwright. The cafÈís first play in July 1962 was Tennessee Williamsí ìOne Arm,î and later that year Stewart put on the first American production of a Harold Pinter play, ìThe Room.î She was forced, however, to move several times: to 82 Second Avenue in 1963, after being closed by the Dept. of Buildings due to a zoning violation; and to a loft at 122 Second Avenue in 1964, after being closed twice by the Police, Fire, Licenses, and Health Departments. In March 1964, the company was renamed the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and Stewart was acclaimed during its first European tour in 1965. An Actorsí Equity crackdown in 1966 on coffee houses and theater workshops nearly ended the company, but the union relented in recognition of the importance in New York of experimental theater . By 1967, the Times called Ms. Stewart ìthe most active producer in New York City,î with a new American play every two weeks. Her abiding philosophy has been that La Mama is ìdedicated to the playwright and all forms of theater.î She notes that ìI started La Mama so there would be a place where a playwright could write, see and learn. Why should a new playwright be regarded on the same terms as an experienced playwright the very first time out ñ which is what most professional criticism does?î She has personally selected and invited these playwrights, who then act as their own producer, with La Mama considered an attractive venue due to its lack of censorship.

La Mama received major Ford and Rockefeller Foundations grants in 1967, allowing the purchase and renovation of the 74 East 4th Street building, which was then ìin ruins.î In June 1968, its Second Avenue theater closed, with plays temporarily produced at 9 St. Markís Place, while renovations occurred on East 4th Street. The current La Mama Experimental Theatre Club opened in March 1969, with repertory and ensemble theaters on the first and second stories, rehearsal space on the third story, and Stewartís apartment on the top story. The first two productions inaugurating the theaters were the musical ìCaution: A Love Story,î by Tom Eyen and Bruce Kirle, based on the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Julie Bovassoís ìGloria and Esperanza.î The first-story theater was renovated in 1972. A National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1974 allowed for the expansion into an Annex at 66-68 East 4th Street .

Today, La Mama, the oldest off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City, is widely considered the most influential and has been called ìthe most prolific of all the off off-Broadway stages,î to date having produced an estimated 1,900 plays in New York City, and countless more around the world. La Mama has received more than sixty Obie Awards for Off-Broadway theater , as well as dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards. Ellen Stewart, recognized as a pioneering African-American theater impresario, was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award and MacArthur Fellows Award , and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame . Though commercial theater has not been its focus, a number of La Mama plays achieved success on Broadway, including ìGodspellî and ìTorch Song Trilogy,î and its resident director, Tom OíHorgan, later produced the influential hit ìHair.î Among the notable playwrights associated with La Mama have been Jean-Claude van Itallie, Paul Foster, Ruth Yorck, Tom Eyen, Julie Bovasso, David Starkweather, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, William Hoffman, Adrienne Kennedy, Charles Ludlam, and Terence McNally; eminent directors have included OíHorgan, Joseph Chaiken, Andrei Serban, Wilford Leach, John Vacarro, Marshall Mason, and Meredith Monk; and performers of note have included Bill Irwin, Billy Crystal, Nick Nolte, Danny De Vito, Bette Midler, and Estelle Getty.

Description

The four-story and three-bay, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building was originally built in 1873; the front facade was altered in 1892 with the addition of cast-iron ornament that combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs.

Ground Story: Four 1892 cast-iron pilasters survive, which are fluted at the base, paneled above, and ornamented with incised blocks that are surmounted by bosses and inverted hearts. The iron entablature once supported by the pilasters has been removed ; the story is terminated by a painted stone stringcourse. Alterations dating from 1969 include: the central metal-and-glass entrance doors , which are surmounted by a wooden panel and sign; brick infill between and above the pilasters; announcement board on the east side of the facade; and two light fixtures placed above the entrance.

Second through Fourth Stories: The upper stories are flanked by vermiculated cast-iron quoins . All windows have cast-iron surrounds, ornamented with hearts on the sides and incised motifs on the sills, and are linked together and to the quoins by panels with fraktur-like incising. Many of the moldings once located above the hearts on the windows are missing. The second-story windows are double-height, are capped by round-arched pediments ornamented with three composersí busts, and have six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The third story windows have segmental broken-scroll pediments and six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The central fourth-story window is capped by a pediment, while the outer windows have entablatures . The prominent metal cornice has stylized modillions ornamented with hearts , rods, and incised ends and is surmounted by a large molded, broken pediment, ornamented at the ends by sunbursts.

Western Facade: This facade, currently visible above the first story, has keyed returns of the front facadeís quoins, and a portion of red brick facing; the rest of the facade is unarticulated and parged.

Eastern Facade: Attached to the eastern side of the building [and not on the designated Landmark Site] is a tan brick wall, constructed as part of a light court for No. 63-65 Second Avenue .

- From the 2009 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

CHINESE RESURRECTIONISTS AT WAIKUMETE.

DISINTERMENT OF CORPSES.

A GRUESOME SPECTACLE.

Time, 5.30 a.m., on a bitterly cold morning, in Waikumete Cemetery. Half-frozen, a pressman and a photographer attached to the staff of the "Graphic" make their way from the sexton's house to the furthermost corner of the cemetery, where is situated the section for Chinese and Atheists and aliens unprovided for elsewhere. A noise of hammering comes from the section, which is a good half-mile from the Anglican and Presbyterian allotments, and on arrival work found to be in full operation. The reception of our reporter and his photographic confrere is the reverse of friendly, and an immediate wrangle ensues amongst the gravediggers, evidently on the subject of the camera fiend's presence. A Chinese halfcaste European insists on their instant ejectment. The sexton, however, who has been handed proper credentials, proves a firm friend, and insists that he, and not any Chinaman, or half-caste Chinaman, is in change of the cemetery, and that he has his instructions. Things then calm down a trifle, but the work is resumed amidst much grumbling, and many vindictive and malignant glances are cast at the camera, and muttered curses uttered at the photographer as he dodges round looking for a chance shot. Once, indeed, when the shutter clicks, a furious celestial raises his pick in menace, and mutters a threat to do for the intruders, but he thinks better of it, and at the intervention of the European coffinmaker a truce is declared until arrival of "the boss." That individual presently arrives. He scans the permit; gloomily enough, and bids that the photos be taken forthwith, and the photographer and pressman depart. It toeing pointed out that there is no picture yet to take, and seeing that bluff has no effect, all active opposition as at once and finally dropped, and no difficulty put in the way of obtaining pictures or witnessing the proceedings save in giving mendacious information, lighting fires to obscure the graves with smoke, and endeavouring to tire out the patience of the reporters, etc.

By ten o'clock four graves, are opened, but owing to the non-arrival of some solder and zinc from Auckland it, is decided to open only two coffins on this occasion. The first of these contained the corpse of one Kong Shang, who died in 1891, a young Celestial of 36. It was thought that there would be nothing but dry bones there, but the stiff white clay is evidently a preservative, for when the coffin, which is full of water, is opened, it is seen that the bones have a decided covering of what had once been flesh and though drenched in carbolic acid a sickening odour makes itself felt at intervals. Directly an attempt is made to stir the body it all falls to pieces, the decomposed flesh falling off in almost imperceptible flakes, which had doubtless been dust had the grave been dry. Very carefully the impassive Chinaman in the grave rinses and unconcernedly places on a sieve a thigh bone, then some ribs, and a skull, followed by the rest of the bones, minute search, indescribable in print, being made for the smaller bones and joints. It is an intensely gruesome spectacle, and the horror is added to by the indifference to sight and smell or sentiment evinced by the Celestial workmen. The venerable clerk, a fine old fellow, with the face of an ascetic and a student, carefully tallies the bones which, having been rescoured in a large white tub, are finally dried and wrapped up, each duly docketed by the methodical old gentleman, who is evidently a most conscientious and probably deeply religious man. He, too, is fastidiously clean, and does not, one notes, eat as the others do in the midst of their noisome labours. The next body is that of a man who must have been of exceptional stature and weight for a Chinaman, and who has been dead but two years and a-half. There is much difficulty in getting this coffin to the surface, and the opening thereof, and the awful stench which completely dominated all disinfectants when the body was removed to the zinc one prepared by the European tinsmith beggars description, and may be left to the imagination. None of those whose duty called them to be present are likely to forget the experience, or to desire a renewal of the same. The soldering having been completed, it must be admitted no effluvia was discernable. The zinc coffin was then put in a rude case and packed in sawdust ready for shipment. There is no reason to think the zinc coffins will not prove effective and inoffensive under ordinary ciroumstances, and careful usage, but a fall or any accident in loading would, one imagines, have very disastrous effects. The work ceased at noon to-day. Mr Winstanley, Government Sanitary Inspector, is present, and looks after his work in so thorough a manner that no fears need be entertained by settlers or the general public. The pictures secured by the "Graphic" protographer are of a unique nature and the most gruesome details having been omitted, are quite without offence. They will be published on Wednesday.

The custom of the Chinese at home is to disinter bodies after seven years, and place the main bones in a large jar alongside the grave. It is in order to forward the bones to China for relatives to do this that the present exporting of remains is undertaken.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19020929.2.45

THE CHINESE CORPSES

The disinterment of the bodies of the Chinese from cemeteries throughout the colony during last, and the early part of the present month excited a good deal of interest. In Greymouth nearly 200 bodies were "resurrected" and stored in a shed in the cemetery, much to the disgust of the residents, who unsuccessfully protested against the bodies being allowed to remain above ground until the arrival of the Ventnor. The expenses of the removal of the dead Chinese to their native land, where alone their spirits could find perfect peace, was borne by their friends, the undertaking being so costly that, only the wealthier relatives could afford the expenditure, many hundreds of unhappy Celestials being obliged "to lie in cold corruption and to rot" in the cemeteries of the "foreign devil."

The exhumation of all the bodies was carried out by the one party of "resurrectionists," Chinese with a half-caste leader and a European plumber. The Chinamen carried out their gruesome work with the utmost indifference, knocking off to eat their meals immediately after handling the bodies without a thought of nauseation.

Some bodies had been interred about twenty years ago, others within the last year. In the case of those which had been reduced to skeletons the bones were carefully sorted, and packed in boxes ready for shipment. In other cases the flesh had reached an advanced stage of putrefaction, and in these the bones were stripped and similarly, treated to the skeletons of older bodies. When the bodies were still whole they were packed in air-tight coffins, soldered down, and labelled with the name of the departed.

In all eleven corpses were taken from their graves at Waikumete. These were not shipped on the Ventnor at Auckland, but were taken down the coast in smaller vessels to Wellington, and there transhipped to the Ventnor.

The Chinese in Auckland were excited on the receipt of the news of the foundering, but when questioned as to what, according to Confucianism, would become of the spirits of the sunken Celestials, they professed ignorance.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19021029.2.54.5

LOSS OF THE VENTNOR.

FOUNDERED NEAR HOKIANGA.

BOAT AND CREW MISSING.

HOKIANGA, October 29.

The steamer Ventnor, which left Wellington for Hongkong on Sunday, foundered off the Hokianga Bar last night at about a quarter to nine.

The Ventnor left Wellington, as stated, on Sunday, with 500 Chinese bodies and 6400 tons of coal. She was owned by Gow, Harrison and Co., of Glasgow, her port of register, and was captained by H. G. Ferry. Before she had been long out, at forty minutes after midnight on Sunday, a shock which shook the vessel from stem to stern made manifest to everyone aboard that the steamer had struck a rock, a subsequent investigation showing that the reef hit was to the southward of Cape Egmont.

The engines were at once reversed, and in a short time the vessel managed to get off. The wells were then sounded, and it was found that the vessel was making water in No. 1 hold.

The vessel was headed off shore to a safe distance, and then proceeded up the coast.

Meanwhile, the steam pumps were got to work, but from the first it was found that they were unequal to the task of coping with the inflow, and gradually the water gained, rising higher and higher in the hold.

On Tuesday morning it was found that the ballast tanks in the peak were full, putting the steamer down by the head, and making it evident that she had but a short time to float.

In the evening her bow was so far under water that she became unmanageable, and it was seen that she was gradually sinking, despite every effort that could be made.

At about 9 p.m. it became evident that the vessel was going down fast, and all hands were ordered to the boats.

These were launched by their respective crews, who immediately pulled away from the sides of the doomed vessel.

Hardly had they reached a safe distance when the vessel's stern rose in the air, and she sank, bow first.

The Hokianga Heads light was seen at a distance of about ten miles, and the boats pulled in the direction of the light.

At daylight this morning two boats arrived on the Omapere Beach, bearing fourteen of the crew, including the chief mate, John Cameron, the second and third engineers, D. Bailee and K. Muir, and two cooks, and a messman.

Mr Martin, harbourmaster, has taken the small steamer Energy out off Whangape to pick up two more boats which were sighted from the pilot station. One of these was picked up at 10 o'clock, but the other had not been reached at the time of wiring, 10.30 a.m.

Besides her crew of 31 persons, including five Chinese, the Ventnor had six Chinamen as passengers. Of the coffins 489 were insured in the Alliance Company for £5490. The fungus was insured for about £320 in various offices. She was under the charge of Captain H. Ferry, who has been seventeen years in the employment of the same company. The steamer was under charter to W. Scott Fell and Co., of Sydney, contractors. Messrs John Mill and Co., of Dunedin and Wellington, were the colonial agents.

Of the coffins 489 were shipped by the Chong Shin Tong Society, which is a branch of the big society in China called the Tai Chuen. The other ten coffins were shipped by Yei Chong, of Manners-street, and did not belong to any society.

The Ventnor's crew numbered thirty-one, and those on board included nine Chinese body attendants. These attendants of the dead are old and decrepit Chinamen, who are being sent home to China by the Chong Shin Tong, and given sufficient money to keep them from work for the remainder of their lives.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19021030.2.87

SS Ventnor with details on final voyage:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Ventnor

Plot 75: Ah Chee George (6) 18/5/1894 – unmarked

* disinterred to send to China

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas A. Blackmon

"I was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, exploring the possibility of a story asking a provocative question: What would be revealed if American corporations were examined through the same sharp lens of historical confrontation as the one then being trained on German corporations that relied on Jewish slave labor during World War II and the Swiss banks that robbed victims of the Holocaust of their fortunes?

". . . Certainly, the great record of forced labor across the South demands that any consideration of the progress of civil rights remedy in the U.S. must acknowledge that slavery, real slavery, didn't end until 1945. . ."

www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book/

Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel Corp.—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of "free" black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME is a moving, sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book/photo-gallery/

www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/profile2.html

Over the past 20 years, Douglas A. Blackmon has written extensively about the American quandary of race, exploring the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, lost episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and, repeatedly, the dilemma of how a contemporary society should grapple with a troubled past. Many of his stories in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation.

Lower East Side. Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The four-story, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building, in todayís East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, was constructed in 1873 to the design of German-born architect August H. Blankenstein for this German-American professional orchestral musiciansí social and benevolent association. Founded informally in 1860, it had grown large enough by 1866 for the society to purchase this site and eventually construct the purpose-built structure. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side.

It counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, at a time when German-Americans dominated the orchestral scene. These included conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas and Walter Damrosch, and the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and Theodore Thomas Orchestras. After the Aschenbroedel Verein moved to Yorkville in 1892, this building was subsequently owned for four years by the Gesangverein Schillerbund, one of the cityís leading and oldest German singing societies. The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament by German-born architects [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composersí busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

After 1895, the building housed a variety of disparate uses, including a series of public meeting and dance halls, the Newsboysí Athletic Club, a laundry, and a meatpacking plant. Since 1969, it has been the home of the renowned La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, established in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, and today considered the oldest and most influential off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City. The building remains one of the significant reminders of 19th-century German-American cultural contributions to New York City, as well as the continuing vitality of off-Off-Broadway theater in the East Village.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The 19th-Century Development of East Village Neighborhood

The area of todayís Greenwich Village was, during the 18th century, the location of the small rural hamlet of Greenwich, as well as the country seats and summer homes of wealthy downtown aristocrats, merchants, and capitalists. A number of cholera and yellow fever epidemics in lower Manhattan between 1799 and 1822 led to an influx of settlers in the Greenwich area, with the population quadrupling between 1825 and 1840. Previously undeveloped tracts of land were speculatively subdivided for the construction of town houses and rowhouses. Whereas in the early 19th century many of the wealthiest New Yorkers lived in the vicinity of Broadway and the side streets adjacent to City Hall Park between Barclay and Chambers Streets, by the 1820s and 30s, as commercial development and congestion increasingly disrupted and displaced them, the elite moved northward into Greenwich Village east of Sixth Avenue.

To the east, during the 17th and 18th centuries, was Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesantís Bowery farm. In the vicinity were Native American trails, todayís Broadway and Bowery, that the Lenape Indians traversed from the southern tip of Manhattan to Inwood and Harlem. St. Markís-in-the-Bowery Church was built on a higher, dry piece of land, while the area to the east of todayís Second Avenue, known as Stuyvesant Meadows, remained an undeveloped marshy area. In the late 18th century, the area east of Second Avenue was the estate of Mangle Minthorn, father-in-law of Daniel Tompkins , governor of New York and

U.S. vice president under James Monroe . Both Stuyvesant and Minthorn were slave owners. In 1832, the Common Council created the 15th Ward out of the eastern section of the large 9th Ward, its boundaries being Sixth Avenue, Houston and 14th Streets, and the Bowery. According to Luther Harrisí history Around Washington Square, during the 1830s-40s ìthis ward drew the wealthiest, most influential, and most talented people from New York City and elsewhere. For a brief period beginning in the 1820s-30s, Lafayette Place, including the grand marble Greek Revival style LaGrange Terrace , St. Markís Place, and Bond, Great Jones, East 4th and Bleecker Streets were also among the cityís most fashionable addresses. Lower Second Avenue and adjacent side streets remained prestigious through the 1850s.

Commercial and institutional intrusions and the continual arrival of immigrants ended the fashionable heyday of these wealthier enclaves before the Civil War. In the 1850s, Broadway north of Houston Street was transformed from a residential into a significant commercial district. Also beginning in the 1850s, after the political upheavals in Europe of 1848 and the resulting influx of German-speaking immigrants to New York City, the Lower East Side became known as Kleindeutschland . Aside from their presence as residents, these immigrants contributed in significant ways to the vibrant commercial and cultural life of the neighborhood and the city at large. By 1880, this neighborhood constituted one-fourth of the cityís population and was the first major urban foreign-speaking neighborhood in the U.S., as well as the leading German-American center throughout the century. A massive exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe from the 1880s to World War I led to approximately two million Jewish immigrants settling in New York; most lived for a time on the Lower East Side, establishing their own cultural and religious institutions there.

Beginning in the 1850s-60s, the vicinity of 14th Street and Union Square developed into a center of musical and theatrical culture. The Academy of Music , East 14th Street and Irving Place, an opera house with the worldís largest seating capacity at the time, quickly became the center of musical and social life in New York, presenting such notable performers as Adelina Patti , and events such as the grand ball in honor of the Prince of Wales in the autumn of 1860. The building burned down in 1866, and was replaced by a new Academy of Music . Irving Hall , a ballroom, concert, and lecture hall annex to the Academy, served as the home of the New York Philharmonic in 1861-63. The Steinway piano company opened Steinway Hall , a combination showroom and recital hall at 109 East 14th Street, which for many years was the foremost concert hall in the country . By the mid-1860s, a number of legitimate theaters were also opening in the vicinity of Union Square, which during the last quarter of the nineteenth century became the center of New York theater. These included Wallack's Theater , 728 Broadway at 13th Street, the most prestigious dramatic theater in the country during this period; the Union Square Theater , an adjunct of the former Union Place Hotel; Chickering Hall , Fifth Avenue and 18th Street; and Amberg Theater , 11 Irving Place . The Germania Theater, which along with the Amberg catered to a specifically German clientele, was located in Tammany Hall in 1874-81, in Wallackís Theater in 1881-82, and until 1902 in the former Church of St. Ann, East 8th Street near Broadway. Union Square, after the Civil War, became the traditional site for workersí, union, and political protests and rallies.

As wealthier residents moved northward in the 1850s, their single-family residences were converted into multiple dwellings or boardinghouses, as well as other uses, such as clubs or community cultural institutions. For instance, the former Ralph and Ann E. Van Wyck Mead House at 110 Second Avenue in 1874 became the Isaac T. Hopper Home of the Womenís Prison Association, and, of the Federal style houses on the westernmost block of St. Markís Place: No. 29 became the Harmonie Club, a German-Jewish singing club ; Nos. 19-21 housed another German musical club, the Arion Singing Society , and these buildings, along with No. 23, became Arlington Hall, a ballroom-community center in 1887. Most of the remaining houses were demolished for denser development with French flats and tenements between 1874 and 1902.

Hastening the change in the residential character of this section of the Lower East Side after mid-century were a wide variety of major cultural, religious, commercial, and educational institutions, including the Astor Place Opera House , Astor and Lafayette Places; Astor Library , 425 Lafayette Street; Bible House , home of the American Bible Society and other religious organizations, Astor Place and Third Avenue; and Cooper Union , Astor Place and Third Avenue. The New York Free Circulating Library, Ottendorfer Branch, and German Dispensary , 135 and 137 Second Avenue, among others, catered to the German community. Assembly halls such as Webster Hall and Annex , 119-125 East 11th Street, became important neighborhood social centers. The Third Avenue elevated railroad opened in 1878.

The Aschenbroedel Verein

A social and benevolent association composed almost exclusively of German-American professional orchestral musicians, the Aschenbroedel Verein was founded informally in 1860, with its name, ìCinderella Society,î supposedly a play on the last name of one of its members , August Asche. After initially meeting at Schneiderís Hall, 371 Broome Street, by 1866 the group had grown large enough with some 300 members for it to acquire a building on East 4th Street. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side, and counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, including conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas, and Walter Damrosch, as well as all of the members of the Theodore Thomas Orchestra and most of the members of the New York Philharmonic. According to Groveís Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1880, this was also ìthe headquartersî of the New York Philharmonic Society, though the Philharmonicís Minutes books illustrate that this was one of several locations in the neighborhood where its directorsí and business meetings were held, between 1873 and 1888. Howard Shanet, in Philharmonic: A History of New Yorkís Orchestra , stated that the Aschenbroedel Verein was the first organization in New York to advance the unionization of musicians, as early as 1860, an effort that culminated later with the formation of the Musical Mutual Protective Union. Shanet called Aschenbroedel ìat once a cultural, a benevolent, a social, and a labor association.î He further emphasized the total domination of the symphonic world in New York by the German community, with nearly all of the Philharmonic men of German birth or parentage by 1892. The Aschenbroedel Vereinís motto was ìFreundschaft, Geselligkeit, Befoerderung der Kunstî .

By 1870, there were an estimated 64 German musical societies within New York City, and a number of them were located in the vicinity, either in converted structures or purpose-built ones. These included the Arion Singing Society ; Liederkranz , 31-35 East 4th Street; and Beethoven Maennerchor , located in a hall built in 1870 at 210-214 East 5th Street. In addition, Turnverein Halle , 66-68 East 4th Street, was built just down the block from the Aschenbroedel Verein.

In 1873, the Aschenbroedel Verein, under president George Matzka , constructed this purpose-built structure, clad in brick and four stories , at an estimated cost of $24,000. Construction began in June and was completed in October. The architect was August H. Blankenstein , who was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. in 1860. Active from 1872 to 1899, he designed tenement, flats, and factory buildings for a mostly German clientele, as well as the addition to the Centre Market Armory , Grand and Centre Streets; work on the 55th Regiment, 23rd Regiment, and First Cavalry 22nd Regiment Armories ; and St. Josephís R.C. Orphan Asylum School , Avenue A and 90th Street. A 1894 lawsuit indicated that Blankenstein had been a partner of architect Henry Herter prior to 1886 . Blankenstein was also listed as an architect in an 1890 directory in Buffalo, N.Y.

The Times reported on November 7, 1873, that the Aschenbroedel Verein had ìinaugurated its new club-house... last night, by an entertainment of music and social festivities.î Considered ìone of the most commodious German clubhouses in the city,î its amenities included a restaurant, a library, a billiard room, and a bowling alley in the basement. Among activities conducted here were meetings of the Ancient Lodge of Perfection in 1873, and the 1876 funeral of Philharmonic conductor and Aschenbroedel Verein member Carl Bergmann. For unknown reasons, the building was listed for sale in 1882, but the Aschenbroedel Verein remained here until it sold the building in September 1891. The society, then having some 700 members, moved in November 1892 into a new clubhouse at 144 East 86th Street in Yorkville.

The Gesangverein Schillerbund and Schillerbund Halle

In June 1892, the Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the Gesangverein Schillerbund , one of the cityís leading and oldest German singing societies. Founded in 1850 and named after the poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller , the Schillerbund had been meeting since 1872 in Turnverein Halle. The purchase price of its new building was $1.00, subject to $37,500 in mortgages held by the Bachmann Brewing Co. of Clifton, Staten Island. This structure was altered between September and October 1892 by the architectural firm of [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl. Interestingly, Kurtzer was a member of the Beethoven Maennerchor. In partnership from about 1888 until 1901, Kurtzer & Rohl specialized in tenements and flats buildings for a largely German clientele; examples of its work include Nos. 95 Bedford Street and 285 West 4th Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District, and No. 121 East 10th Street , located within the St. Markís Historic District. The firm was also responsible for the First German Reformed Church , 351 East 68th Street, and its Sunday School . Richard O.L. Rohl , an immigrant from Prussia in 1880, maintained an independent practice from 1902 until around 1919. No. 391 West Street , located within the Weehawken Street Historic District, was his first independent commission, and he also designed the double tenement buildings at Nos. 35-39 Christopher Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District. Frederick William Kurtzer , emigrated from Germany around 1870. He worked independently in 1901-02, then became a partner in Kurtzer & Rentz in 1903-06, with Charles Rentz, Jr. , an architect who was born in New York City of German descent. Rentz was extraordinarily prolific in the design of flats and tenement buildings in the 1880s, but is best known for the design of Webster Hall and Annex . Kurtzer continued to practice in Manhattan and the Bronx until around 1925.

The Dept. of Buildings 1892 alteration application for the Gesangverein Schillerbund Building, as well as the dockets, only listed $1,200 in work, involving interior partition alterations in the basement and second story. In an article on the buildingís opening in November 1892, however, the New York Times indicated that it had been ìalmost entirely rebuilt and refitted,î and that ìthe building cost in all about $45,000. ... On the ground floor are fine bowling alleys, the kitchen and restaurant. The second floor is used for assembly and meeting rooms, the third for lodge rooms, and the top of the house is occupied by the tenant.î The 1892 tax assessment for the property increased by more than 25 percent, and the structure was later described in the Times as ìone of the best Maennerchor clubhouses in that section of this city.î The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composersí busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

A Schillerbund Fair was held here December 10-20, 1892. By 1895, the membership of the Schillerbund was around 400, and the hall, managed by Gustav Schunemann, reportedly enjoyed ìmuch popularity among the merrymakers of that neighborhood.î In November 1896, however, the Gesangverein Schillerbund sold the property and moved to Yorkville . This building was purchased for $40,195 by the Bachmann Brewing Co., holder of the mortgage. The company was founded by the German-born Frederick Bachmann , who had immigrated to New York in 1859, and worked at the Lion Brewery in Manhattan, prior to moving to Staten Island, where he was employed by the Schmidt Brewery and Gabriel Meyer Brewery, becoming the co-owner with David Meyer until it was destroyed by fire in 1881. As indicated by Charles L. Sachs in Made on Staten Island, ìThe successful breweries were not just efficient manufacturing enterprises. To market and distribute their products the breweries acquired real estate holdings and developed close ties with the restaurant, recreation, and tourism businesses. The major breweries owned, operated, and rented saloons, taverns, beer gardens, hotels, and even resort complexes.î

This building became a rental assembly hall, and there are references in newspapers calling it ìSchillerbund Halleî as late as 1901. A sampling of meetings and events held here included: pattern makers ; Eastern Star chapter of the Order of Chosen Friends ; New York branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers ; New York Engineers & Machinists Society ; New York Engineersí Protective Association ; and Poles celebrating the 1863 insurrection .

Krywaczyís Hall, Saenger Hall, and McKinley Hall

The building continued to be used as a public rental hall and social center, under three different names, and like such sites as Webster Hall , was a venue for organizational meetings and political and union functions, particularly for the working-class and immigrant population of the Lower East Side. As opined by historian Kathy Peiss:

For the working-class population packed into small tenement apartments, large halls that could be rented for dances, weddings, mass meetings, and other gatherings were a requirement of social life. The number of public halls in Manhattan rose substantially in a short period; business directories listed 130 halls in 1895 and 195 in 1910, an increase of 50 percent. While some of these, like Carnegie Hall, were cultural spaces of the privileged, most were located in working-class districts. The largest East Side halls... were always in great demand.

In a September 12, 1901, New York Times announcement of a meeting here of the Polish community to denounce Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who had shot President William McKinley on September 6, the location was referred to as ìKrywaczyís Hallî . John Krywacsy was listed in directories as a liquor dealer on Forsyth Street. City directories in 1901-03, as well as the 1903 Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, called this ìSaenger Hall.î The Bachmann Brewing Co. leased the property in April 1903 to Max Sapiro and Ike Lifschitz. Sapiro was listed in the 1910 Census as a Polish/Austrian-born cafÈ proprietor, though he was not listed in directories in connection with this property, while Issac Lifshitz was Russian-born according to the 1900 Census, and was listed in directories in this building in 1903-05 operating a saloon. Among groups meeting here were the Heinrich Heine lodge , Smoking Pipe Makersí Union , and East Side Restaurant Keepers . Apparently in commemoration of the assassinated President, the name of the building was changed to ìMcKinley Hallî by 1904. Organizations that met here included the formation of the New-York Rent Payersí Protective Association , Lady Lining Makers , and Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America . Frederick Bachmann was judged to be incompetent in July 1904 ; in November 1904, Bachmannís trustees transferred this property to Combined Securities Co., which held an auction in January 1905. The auction advertisement listed ìBowling alleys in cellar. Store, meeting, lodge, music rooms, and apartments above.î After passing through several owners, the building was acquired in February 1906 by Malka Marder; the wife of Benjamin Marder, a cloak contractor in the 1910 Census, both were Polish/Austrian-born.

The Newsboysí Athletic Club

In September 1905, the three upper stories of the former McKinley Hall were leased for use as the Newsboysí Athletic Club, founded by Jack Sullivan , known as the ìKing of the Newsboys,î a former newsboy and prizefighter who then sold papers to newsboys. The Club had a gymnasium and showers, a reading/classroom, and a lodging room for over fifty boys. The club depended on donations from New Yorkís society ñ one benefit, held in March 1907 at the Academy of Music, was directed by impresarios George M. Cohan and Sam Harris. By May 1911, with the expiration of its lease, the Club, by that time serving some 2,000 newsboys, purchased the former home of the New-York Historical Society at Second Avenue and 11th Street. The basement and storefront of the Newsboysí Athletic Club building had been leased for use as a laundry in 1905-07 to Paul C. Port , and from 1908 to March 1912 to the New System Napkin, Towel Supply & Steam Laundry Co., until legal action against the company was taken by the Marders.

Floral Garden Hall

Malka Marder sold the building in February 1913, and it was purchased the following month by Sarah Hirsch, the wife of Charles Hirsch, proprietor of the Manhattan Lyceum at 66-68 East 4th Street; both Hirsches were born in Romania. Operated as Floral Garden Hall, it was altered into a dance hall on the ground story, with meeting and banquet rooms above. Among the many events held here were: the annual convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America ; Brotherhood Welfare Association gathering on behalf of New Yorkís hoboes ; Women Dressmakersí Association and Journeymen Barbersí League strike meetings ; a planned meeting of the Anti-Militarist League, which resulted in a riot after the owner reneged on the use of the hall ; Sheet Metal Workersí meetings ; garment workers strike meetings ; Messenger Boysí Union strike headquarters ; and Branch No. 578, Arbeiter Ring of the Socialist Party, and Sholom Aleichem Lodge of the Jewish National Workersí Alliance of America . In 1916, the ground story was altered for a storefront, incorporating 1892 cast-iron pilasters . The property was foreclosed in January 1919 and sold at auction.

Standard Provision Co./ Hygrade Food Products Corp.

After 45 years of use as a social and meeting hall, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building for the next four decades served as meatpacking plant. The property was purchased in February 1919 by the Standard Provision Co. at 102 Rivington Street. A Dept. of Buildings application indicated that the building would be used for meatpacking, with storage in the basement, shipping and receiving on the ground story, a meat provisions and drying factory on the second story, and offices on the third story. In December 1927, Standard Provision was acquired through a merger of nine wholesale provisions companies by the Hygrade Food Products Corp. , 152 Broadway. The Washington Post called this ìthe first consolidation of delicatessen food properties ever effected.î According to a notice in the New York Times, the constituent companies

manufacture and sell frankfurters, bolognas, salamis, smoked and cured tongues, spiced, pickled and corned beef and various other ready-to-serve meat products. The companies are among the most important serving New York and Philadelphia. Their success individually and collectively has established an enviable record in the industry. Their products are sold to over 5,000 customers, including delicatessen stores, chain stores, drug stores, meat markets, clubs, grocers, hotels, restaurants, steamship and railroad companies, etc., throughout the United States and in foreign countries.

City directories over the years variously listed divisions of the corporation here: Hebrew National Food Products ; Carmel Kosher Provision Co. ; and Hod Carmel Kosher Provision Co. . Hygrade sold this property in February 1960.

20th-Century History of the East Village

After a period of decline, Greenwich Village was becoming known, prior to World War I, for its historic and picturesque qualities, its affordable housing, and the diversity of its population and social and political ideas. Many artists and writers, as well as tourists, were attracted to the Village. By the 1910s, property owners and merchants attempted to improve the Villageís economy and rehabilitate its physical condition, with ìshrewd realtors beg[inning] to amass their holdings of dilapidated housing.î These various factors and the increased desirability of the Village to upper-middle-class professionals lead to a real estate boom ñ ìrents increased during the 1920s by 140 percent and in some cases by as much as 300 percent.î

After World War II, the ethnic make-up of the Lower East Side changed again, becoming dominated by Latin American immigrants, especially those from Puerto Rico. Their immigration was encouraged by the government as a source of cheap labor, particularly for the garment trades, hotels, and small manufacturing. The community named itself Loisaida to symbolize the second generation Hispanic roots that had developed in the context of the African-American and Latino movements for social and economic justice, equality, and identity. The residential and cultural desirability of the neighborhood that came to be known as the ìEast Villageî increased with the removal of the Third Avenue El in 1955. As indicated by Terry Miller,

the psychological barrier that had marked the eastern boundary of Greenwich Village was gone. Blocks that once had no prestige were suddenly seen as intriguing, and apartments here were less costly than those in Greenwich Village. ... As artists and writers moved east, the blocks from St. Markís Place to Tenth Street were the first to hint that the Lower East Side was being transformed. Realtors began marketing the area as ìVillage East,î and by 1961 as the ìEast Village,î a name that stuck.

From World War I to the 1940s, Second Avenue between East 14th and Houston Streets had been considered the heart of New Yorkís Jewish community, known as the ìYiddish Rialtoî for its role as the worldís center of Yiddish theater. As Yiddish theater declined, the East Village gave rise in the 1950s to ìOff-Broadwayî theater, including the Phoenix Theater in the former Louis N. Jaffe Art Theater building , 181-189 Second Avenue; the Tempo Playhouse and Pyramid, Key, Bowery, New Bowery, and Bridge Theaters in the former Hamilton-Holly House, 4 St. Marks Place; and the Orpheum Theater , 126 Second Avenue. An ìoff-Off-Broadwayî theater also emerged in the late 1950s, characterized by the small size of the venues and total avoidance of commercialism and its pressures. Joe Cinoís Caffe Cino , 31 Cornelia Street, is generally recognized as the first, and other significant early off-Off-Broadway theaters were Judson Memorial Church under Rev. Al Carmines; Ellen Stewartís CafÈ La Mama/ La Mama Experimental Theatre Club , 321 East 9th Street ; and Theater Genesis in St. Marks in the Bowery Church under Michael Allen and Ralph Cook. Off-Off Broadway theater coincided with the emergence of gay theater in New York.

In the 1950s, the East Village also became home to a number of key Beat Generation writers, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, and W.H. Auden, and was renowned for its protest art and politics, galleries, poetry and coffee houses, bookstores, clubs, with a ìcountercultureî scene centered on St. Markís Place.

Rodale Press, Inc.

The 74 East 4th Street building was purchased in February 1960 by Rodale Press, Inc., of Emmaus, Pa. Jerome Irving Rodale was a New York accountant who, with a brother, in 1923 founded Rodale Mfg. Co., which made commercial and residential electrical connectors. After relocating the firm to Emmaus, Rodale became interested in organic farming. Rodale Press began publishing Organic Farming & Gardening and Prevention , a magazine devoted to nutrition and personal health, and later, other magazines and health books. In order to promote his concepts, he was also a playwright and theatrical producer. Rodale apparently originally intended to use No. 74 as a theater ñ the Times listed building plans as such in 1960; instead, Rodale in 1962 purchased No. 64 East 4th Street with the intention to ìconvert it into an intimate playhouse, theatre workshop and acting school.î A directory in 1963 listed Rodale Press and the Rodale Theater at 62 East 4th Street, and Rodale Mfg. Co. at No. 60. Rodale sold the property in September 1967.

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club

In November 1967, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, an off-Off-Broadway theater company that had been founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart. After her arrival in New York in 1950, Ms. Stewart worked in retail clothing and fashion, becoming a freelance designer. She opened a basement CafÈ La Mama at 321 East 9th Street in 1961, intended as a combination boutique and theater, the latter partly inspired by the experience of a brother who was an aspiring playwright. The cafÈís first play in July 1962 was Tennessee Williamsí ìOne Arm,î and later that year Stewart put on the first American production of a Harold Pinter play, ìThe Room.î She was forced, however, to move several times: to 82 Second Avenue in 1963, after being closed by the Dept. of Buildings due to a zoning violation; and to a loft at 122 Second Avenue in 1964, after being closed twice by the Police, Fire, Licenses, and Health Departments. In March 1964, the company was renamed the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and Stewart was acclaimed during its first European tour in 1965. An Actorsí Equity crackdown in 1966 on coffee houses and theater workshops nearly ended the company, but the union relented in recognition of the importance in New York of experimental theater . By 1967, the Times called Ms. Stewart ìthe most active producer in New York City,î with a new American play every two weeks. Her abiding philosophy has been that La Mama is ìdedicated to the playwright and all forms of theater.î She notes that ìI started La Mama so there would be a place where a playwright could write, see and learn. Why should a new playwright be regarded on the same terms as an experienced playwright the very first time out ñ which is what most professional criticism does?î She has personally selected and invited these playwrights, who then act as their own producer, with La Mama considered an attractive venue due to its lack of censorship.

La Mama received major Ford and Rockefeller Foundations grants in 1967, allowing the purchase and renovation of the 74 East 4th Street building, which was then ìin ruins.î In June 1968, its Second Avenue theater closed, with plays temporarily produced at 9 St. Markís Place, while renovations occurred on East 4th Street. The current La Mama Experimental Theatre Club opened in March 1969, with repertory and ensemble theaters on the first and second stories, rehearsal space on the third story, and Stewartís apartment on the top story. The first two productions inaugurating the theaters were the musical ìCaution: A Love Story,î by Tom Eyen and Bruce Kirle, based on the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Julie Bovassoís ìGloria and Esperanza.î The first-story theater was renovated in 1972. A National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1974 allowed for the expansion into an Annex at 66-68 East 4th Street .

Today, La Mama, the oldest off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City, is widely considered the most influential and has been called ìthe most prolific of all the off off-Broadway stages,î to date having produced an estimated 1,900 plays in New York City, and countless more around the world. La Mama has received more than sixty Obie Awards for Off-Broadway theater , as well as dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards. Ellen Stewart, recognized as a pioneering African-American theater impresario, was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award and MacArthur Fellows Award , and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame . Though commercial theater has not been its focus, a number of La Mama plays achieved success on Broadway, including ìGodspellî and ìTorch Song Trilogy,î and its resident director, Tom OíHorgan, later produced the influential hit ìHair.î Among the notable playwrights associated with La Mama have been Jean-Claude van Itallie, Paul Foster, Ruth Yorck, Tom Eyen, Julie Bovasso, David Starkweather, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, William Hoffman, Adrienne Kennedy, Charles Ludlam, and Terence McNally; eminent directors have included OíHorgan, Joseph Chaiken, Andrei Serban, Wilford Leach, John Vacarro, Marshall Mason, and Meredith Monk; and performers of note have included Bill Irwin, Billy Crystal, Nick Nolte, Danny De Vito, Bette Midler, and Estelle Getty.

Description

The four-story and three-bay, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building was originally built in 1873; the front facade was altered in 1892 with the addition of cast-iron ornament that combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs.

Ground Story: Four 1892 cast-iron pilasters survive, which are fluted at the base, paneled above, and ornamented with incised blocks that are surmounted by bosses and inverted hearts. The iron entablature once supported by the pilasters has been removed ; the story is terminated by a painted stone stringcourse. Alterations dating from 1969 include: the central metal-and-glass entrance doors , which are surmounted by a wooden panel and sign; brick infill between and above the pilasters; announcement board on the east side of the facade; and two light fixtures placed above the entrance.

Second through Fourth Stories: The upper stories are flanked by vermiculated cast-iron quoins . All windows have cast-iron surrounds, ornamented with hearts on the sides and incised motifs on the sills, and are linked together and to the quoins by panels with fraktur-like incising. Many of the moldings once located above the hearts on the windows are missing. The second-story windows are double-height, are capped by round-arched pediments ornamented with three composersí busts, and have six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The third story windows have segmental broken-scroll pediments and six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The central fourth-story window is capped by a pediment, while the outer windows have entablatures . The prominent metal cornice has stylized modillions ornamented with hearts , rods, and incised ends and is surmounted by a large molded, broken pediment, ornamented at the ends by sunbursts.

Western Facade: This facade, currently visible above the first story, has keyed returns of the front facadeís quoins, and a portion of red brick facing; the rest of the facade is unarticulated and parged.

Eastern Facade: Attached to the eastern side of the building [and not on the designated Landmark Site] is a tan brick wall, constructed as part of a light court for No. 63-65 Second Avenue .

- From the 2009 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenville,_Illinois

Greenville is a city in Bond County, Illinois, United States, 51 miles (82 km) east of St. Louis. The population as of the 2010 census was 7,000. It is the county seat of Bond County.

Greenville is part of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is also considered part of the Metro East region of Illinois.

Greenville celebrated its Bicentennial in 2015 as one of the oldest communities in Illinois. It is home to Greenville University, the Richard Bock Museum, the American Farm Heritage Museum, the Armed Forces Museum and the Demoulin Museum and a federal prison, Federal Correctional Institution, Greenville (FCI Greenville). It is also home to internationally known companies, including Nevco Scoreboard, the largest privately owned scoreboard company in the world, and DeMoulin Brothers, the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of band uniforms.

Source: www.americanfarmheritagemuseum.com/about-us.html

The American Farm Heritage Museum was one man's dream. The Museum became a reality when a group of men, mostly farmers, sitting in coffee shop, talked about the dream of building a museum to preserve the farm heritage. Sixty farmers, collectors, and civic leaders held a meeting to share their ideas with the public in April of 2002. It was agreed that Bond County, being near the middle of the state and right along 1-70, would be the perfect place. Meetings were conducted, fundraisers were held, and ideas were passed around. In 2002 the land for the museum was acquired and a name for the museum was chosen.

The American Farm Heritage Museum would sit on seventeen acres, along the south side of interstate 70, just east of the Route 127 overpass. Its goal would be to promote and share the heritage of America's rural life: living, farming and travel. One very generous family purchased the land and leased it for ninety-nine years to the American Farm Heritage Museum, NFP organization. After a year of planning, the first 32'x64' building, with a gambrel roof, was completed. It was finished just days before the first Heritage Days Show in July 2004. This building, originally was to be a tractor maintenance shop, but later became known as the Lil' Red Barn Museum.

In the winter of 2005, owners of a truck terminal building in St. Louis gave the building to the Museum, if we took it down. Several members went to work and got the 200'x100' building moved and rebuilt. Since then other buildings and groups have been added to the show grounds.

We are growing with each passing year. Our Main building is the site of numerous events throughout the year. The Lil' Red Barn is a little piece of history, with collections of items from the past. In 2009 this building received the Illinois Governor's Home Town Award. The Tractor Shed displays different makes of tractors and tools of the past. Our Christmas building, which operates as a work shop and houses all the Christmas boxes for The Christmas Lights Wonderland, partners with The Lil' Red Barn, Railroad, Hill's Fort and the Armed Forces Museum to put on a spectacular Christmas display.

The American Heritage Railroad, established in 2003 is a division of the American Farm Heritage Museum. Many rail-enthusiast members realized as farms were connected by the American Railroad so should the Museum have an operating railroad for its historic value, as well as provide a fun ride for visitors. May 10, 2005 the railroad division was officially formed and an intensive search began to procure equipment. Many thousands of hours of volunteer labor, by friends of the railroad, have resulted in over a mile of 13" gauge track being laid, on the grounds. It is our desire to honor the great railroads that have served Bond County, such as the Vandalia, Nickel Plate, Pennsylvania and CB & Q. In 2005 the Ben Winter's Museum railroad was purchased which provided a G-15 diesel train set. The final move of the Ben Winter's railroad was completed in November, in three days with 20 volunteers, 9 trailers and one semi-truck. The collection has grown to include both diesel and steam engines and a variety of rolling stock. The railroad owns three steam locomotives. It is hoped the 1926 Wagner 4-4-2 steam engine will be ready for operation for the 2015 season.

2005 Hill's Fort also joined the Museum. Hill's Fort played an important part in the opening of Northwest Territory. Hill's Fort may have started as early as 1806 when early settlers first arrived. The Fort's location appears on an 1808 survey map by Capt. Isaac Hill, leader of a team commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the Illinois Territory. The Legislature fixed Hill's Fort as the temporary county seat. Earliest records are preserved from Hill's Fort and include court and marriage dockets. The Bond County seat was later moved to Perrysville and, in 1821 to Greenville, Illinois. No longer useful as a fort or county seat, Hill's Fort was abandoned and fell to ruin.

Following excruciating study of the original site, a replica of the Fort has been recreated on the grounds of the Farm Museum. It is open to the public on the 1st Saturday of the month from May through October and also open, for tours and special occasions. At Christmas time they are open Friday and Saturday nights for the Christmas lights. They dress in period dress and cook over the open fireplace in the cabin, and are eager to answer questions.

In 2012 The Armed Forces Museum, "Memories of Steel", joined our Museum. It maintains as its sole mission, to preserve these important pieces of military history. The Museum houses one of the largest collections of military vehicles in the County. It currently watches over approximately 15 privately-owned and 25 museum-owned vehicles. The members are involved in a program called "Living history" which furnishes displays of t1istoric vehicles and memorabilia and, works with re-enactors at civil events like Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day. Each of these vehicles has an historic story and plays a very important role in connecting us with the soldiers who lived and died in their service to the country.

LoadingAwesome pic from our friends in North Carolina, Cape Lookout Charters waiting out the fog this morning on Bogue Sound NC. On the docket today is sore lipping some of those beautiful Carolina #redfish and #speckledtrout. Good morning, folks!

www.skifflife.com/2665377/foggy-with-cape-lookout-charters/

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenville,_Illinois

Greenville is a city in Bond County, Illinois, United States, 51 miles (82 km) east of St. Louis. The population as of the 2010 census was 7,000. It is the county seat of Bond County.

Greenville is part of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is also considered part of the Metro East region of Illinois.

Greenville celebrated its Bicentennial in 2015 as one of the oldest communities in Illinois. It is home to Greenville University, the Richard Bock Museum, the American Farm Heritage Museum, the Armed Forces Museum and the Demoulin Museum and a federal prison, Federal Correctional Institution, Greenville (FCI Greenville). It is also home to internationally known companies, including Nevco Scoreboard, the largest privately owned scoreboard company in the world, and DeMoulin Brothers, the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of band uniforms.

Source: www.americanfarmheritagemuseum.com/about-us.html

The American Farm Heritage Museum was one man's dream. The Museum became a reality when a group of men, mostly farmers, sitting in coffee shop, talked about the dream of building a museum to preserve the farm heritage. Sixty farmers, collectors, and civic leaders held a meeting to share their ideas with the public in April of 2002. It was agreed that Bond County, being near the middle of the state and right along 1-70, would be the perfect place. Meetings were conducted, fundraisers were held, and ideas were passed around. In 2002 the land for the museum was acquired and a name for the museum was chosen.

The American Farm Heritage Museum would sit on seventeen acres, along the south side of interstate 70, just east of the Route 127 overpass. Its goal would be to promote and share the heritage of America's rural life: living, farming and travel. One very generous family purchased the land and leased it for ninety-nine years to the American Farm Heritage Museum, NFP organization. After a year of planning, the first 32'x64' building, with a gambrel roof, was completed. It was finished just days before the first Heritage Days Show in July 2004. This building, originally was to be a tractor maintenance shop, but later became known as the Lil' Red Barn Museum.

In the winter of 2005, owners of a truck terminal building in St. Louis gave the building to the Museum, if we took it down. Several members went to work and got the 200'x100' building moved and rebuilt. Since then other buildings and groups have been added to the show grounds.

We are growing with each passing year. Our Main building is the site of numerous events throughout the year. The Lil' Red Barn is a little piece of history, with collections of items from the past. In 2009 this building received the Illinois Governor's Home Town Award. The Tractor Shed displays different makes of tractors and tools of the past. Our Christmas building, which operates as a work shop and houses all the Christmas boxes for The Christmas Lights Wonderland, partners with The Lil' Red Barn, Railroad, Hill's Fort and the Armed Forces Museum to put on a spectacular Christmas display.

The American Heritage Railroad, established in 2003 is a division of the American Farm Heritage Museum. Many rail-enthusiast members realized as farms were connected by the American Railroad so should the Museum have an operating railroad for its historic value, as well as provide a fun ride for visitors. May 10, 2005 the railroad division was officially formed and an intensive search began to procure equipment. Many thousands of hours of volunteer labor, by friends of the railroad, have resulted in over a mile of 13" gauge track being laid, on the grounds. It is our desire to honor the great railroads that have served Bond County, such as the Vandalia, Nickel Plate, Pennsylvania and CB & Q. In 2005 the Ben Winter's Museum railroad was purchased which provided a G-15 diesel train set. The final move of the Ben Winter's railroad was completed in November, in three days with 20 volunteers, 9 trailers and one semi-truck. The collection has grown to include both diesel and steam engines and a variety of rolling stock. The railroad owns three steam locomotives. It is hoped the 1926 Wagner 4-4-2 steam engine will be ready for operation for the 2015 season.

2005 Hill's Fort also joined the Museum. Hill's Fort played an important part in the opening of Northwest Territory. Hill's Fort may have started as early as 1806 when early settlers first arrived. The Fort's location appears on an 1808 survey map by Capt. Isaac Hill, leader of a team commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the Illinois Territory. The Legislature fixed Hill's Fort as the temporary county seat. Earliest records are preserved from Hill's Fort and include court and marriage dockets. The Bond County seat was later moved to Perrysville and, in 1821 to Greenville, Illinois. No longer useful as a fort or county seat, Hill's Fort was abandoned and fell to ruin.

Following excruciating study of the original site, a replica of the Fort has been recreated on the grounds of the Farm Museum. It is open to the public on the 1st Saturday of the month from May through October and also open, for tours and special occasions. At Christmas time they are open Friday and Saturday nights for the Christmas lights. They dress in period dress and cook over the open fireplace in the cabin, and are eager to answer questions.

In 2012 The Armed Forces Museum, "Memories of Steel", joined our Museum. It maintains as its sole mission, to preserve these important pieces of military history. The Museum houses one of the largest collections of military vehicles in the County. It currently watches over approximately 15 privately-owned and 25 museum-owned vehicles. The members are involved in a program called "Living history" which furnishes displays of t1istoric vehicles and memorabilia and, works with re-enactors at civil events like Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day. Each of these vehicles has an historic story and plays a very important role in connecting us with the soldiers who lived and died in their service to the country.

Aschenbroedel Verein (later Gesangverein Schillerbund / now La Mama Experimental Theatre Club) Building, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York

The four-story, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building, in today’s East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, was constructed in 1873 to the design of German-born architect August H. Blankenstein for this German-American professional orchestral musicians’ social and benevolent association. Founded informally in 1860, it had grown large enough by 1866 for the society to purchase this site and eventually construct the purpose-built structure. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side.

It counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, at a time when German-Americans dominated the orchestral scene. These included conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas and Walter Damrosch, and the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and Theodore Thomas Orchestras. After the Aschenbroedel Verein moved to Yorkville in 1892, this building was subsequently owned for four years by the Gesangverein Schillerbund, one of the city’s leading and oldest German singing societies. The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament by German-born architects [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs (including hearts), and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composers’ busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

After 1895, the building housed a variety of disparate uses, including a series of public meeting and dance halls, the Newsboys’ Athletic Club, a laundry, and a meatpacking plant. Since 1969, it has been the home of the renowned La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, established in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, and today considered the oldest and most influential off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City. The building remains one of the significant reminders of 19th-century German-American cultural contributions to New York City, as well as the continuing vitality of off-Off-Broadway theater in the East Village.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The 19th-Century Development of (Today’s) East Village Neighborhood

The area of today’s Greenwich Village was, during the 18th century, the location of the small rural hamlet of Greenwich, as well as the country seats and summer homes of wealthy downtown aristocrats, merchants, and capitalists. A number of cholera and yellow fever epidemics in lower Manhattan between 1799 and 1822 led to an influx of settlers in the Greenwich area, with the population quadrupling between 1825 and 1840. Previously undeveloped tracts of land were speculatively subdivided for the construction of town houses and rowhouses. Whereas in the early 19th century many of the wealthiest New Yorkers lived in the vicinity of Broadway and the side streets adjacent to City Hall Park between Barclay and Chambers Streets, by the 1820s and 30s, as commercial development and congestion increasingly disrupted and displaced them, the elite moved northward into Greenwich Village east of Sixth Avenue.

To the east, during the 17th and 18th centuries, was Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s Bowery farm. In the vicinity were Native American trails, today’s Broadway and Bowery, that the Lenape Indians traversed from the southern tip of Manhattan to Inwood and Harlem. St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery Church (1799) was built on a higher, dry piece of land, while the area to the east of today’s Second Avenue, known as Stuyvesant Meadows, remained an undeveloped marshy area. In the late 18th century, the area east of Second Avenue was the estate of Mangle Minthorn, father-in-law of Daniel Tompkins (1775-1825), governor of New York (1807-17) and

U.S. vice president under James Monroe (1817-25). Both Stuyvesant and Minthorn were slave owners. In 1832, the Common Council created the 15th Ward out of the eastern section of the large 9th Ward, its boundaries being Sixth Avenue, Houston and 14th Streets, and the Bowery. According to Luther Harris’ history Around Washington Square, during the 1830s-40s “this ward drew the wealthiest, most influential, and most talented people from New York City and elsewhere. For a brief period beginning in the 1820s-30s, Lafayette Place, including the grand marble Greek Revival style LaGrange Terrace (1832-33, attributed to Seth Geer), St. Mark’s Place, and Bond, Great Jones, East 4th and Bleecker Streets were also among the city’s most fashionable addresses. Lower Second Avenue and adjacent side streets remained prestigious through the 1850s.

Commercial and institutional intrusions and the continual arrival of immigrants ended the fashionable heyday of these wealthier enclaves before the Civil War. In the 1850s, Broadway north of Houston Street was transformed from a residential into a significant commercial district. Also beginning in the 1850s, after the political upheavals in Europe of 1848 and the resulting influx of German-speaking immigrants to New York City, the Lower East Side (the area bounded roughly by 14th Street, the East River, the Bowery/Third Avenue, and Catherine Street) became known as Kleindeutschland (“Little Germany”). Aside from their presence as residents, these immigrants contributed in significant ways to the vibrant commercial and cultural life of the neighborhood and the city at large. By 1880, this neighborhood constituted one-fourth of the city’s population (as one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the world) and was the first major urban foreign-speaking neighborhood in the U.S., as well as the leading German-American center throughout the century. A massive exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe from the 1880s to World War I led to approximately two million Jewish immigrants settling in New York; most lived for a time on the Lower East Side, establishing their own cultural and religious institutions there.

Beginning in the 1850s-60s, the vicinity of 14th Street and Union Square developed into a center of musical and theatrical culture. The Academy of Music (1853-54, Alexander Saeltzer), East 14th Street and Irving Place, an opera house with the world’s largest seating capacity at the time, quickly became the center of musical and social life in New York, presenting such notable performers as Adelina Patti (who made her debut here in 1854), and events such as the grand ball in honor of the Prince of Wales in the autumn of 1860. The building burned down in 1866, and was replaced by a new Academy of Music (1868, Thomas R. Jackson). Irving Hall (1860), a ballroom, concert, and lecture hall annex to the Academy, served as the home of the New York Philharmonic in 1861-63. The Steinway piano company opened Steinway Hall (1866), a combination showroom and recital hall at 109 East 14th Street, which for many years was the foremost concert hall in the country (it closed in 1890 and was demolished). By the mid-1860s, a number of legitimate theaters were also opening in the vicinity of Union Square, which during the last quarter of the nineteenth century became the center of New York theater. These included Wallack's Theater (1861, Thomas R. Jackson), 728 Broadway at 13th Street, the most prestigious dramatic theater in the country during this period; the Union Square Theater (1870), an adjunct of the former Union Place Hotel; Chickering Hall (1875), Fifth Avenue and 18th Street; and Amberg Theater (1888, Theodore G. Stein; Irving Place Theater after 1893), 11 Irving Place (all demolished). The Germania Theater, which along with the Amberg catered to a specifically German clientele, was located in Tammany Hall in 1874-81, in Wallack’s Theater in 1881-82, and until 1902 in the former Church of St. Ann, East 8th Street near Broadway. Union Square, after the Civil War, became the traditional site for workers’, union, and political protests and rallies.

As wealthier residents moved northward in the 1850s, their single-family residences were converted into multiple dwellings or boardinghouses, as well as other uses, such as clubs or community cultural institutions. For instance, the former Ralph and Ann E. Van Wyck Mead House at 110 Second Avenue in 1874 became the Isaac T. Hopper Home of the Women’s Prison Association, and, of the Federal style houses on the westernmost block of St. Mark’s Place: No. 29 became the Harmonie Club, a German-Jewish singing club (1856-59); Nos. 19-21 housed another German musical club, the Arion Singing Society (1870-87), and these buildings, along with No. 23, became Arlington Hall, a ballroom-community center in 1887. Most of the remaining houses were demolished for denser development with French flats and tenements between 1874 and 1902.

Hastening the change in the residential character of this section of the Lower East Side after mid-century were a wide variety of major cultural, religious, commercial, and educational institutions, including the Astor Place Opera House (1847; later Clinton Hall/Mercantile Library; demolished), Astor and Lafayette Places; Astor Library (1849-52, Alexander Saeltzer; 1856-69, Griffith Thomas; 1879-81, Thomas Stent), 425 Lafayette Street; Bible House (1852; demolished), home of the American Bible Society and other religious organizations, Astor Place and Third Avenue; and Cooper Union (1853-58, Frederick A. Petersen), Astor Place and Third Avenue. The New York Free Circulating Library, Ottendorfer Branch, and German Dispensary (1883-84, William Schickel), 135 and 137 Second Avenue, among others, catered to the German community. Assembly halls such as Webster Hall and Annex (1886-87, 1892, Charles Renz, Jr.), 119-125 East 11th Street, became important neighborhood social centers. The Third Avenue elevated railroad opened in 1878.

The Aschenbroedel Verein

A social and benevolent association composed almost exclusively of German-American professional orchestral musicians, the Aschenbroedel Verein was founded informally in 1860, with its name, “Cinderella Society,” supposedly a play on the last name of one of its members (and first president), August Asche. After initially meeting at Schneider’s Hall, 371 Broome Street, by 1866 the group had grown large enough with some 300 members for it to acquire a building on East 4th Street. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side, and counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, including conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas, and Walter Damrosch, as well as all of the members of the Theodore Thomas Orchestra and most of the members of the New York Philharmonic. According to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1880, this was also “the headquarters” of the New York Philharmonic Society, though the Philharmonic’s Minutes books illustrate that this was one of several locations in the neighborhood where its directors’ and business meetings were held, between 1873 and 1888. Howard Shanet, in Philharmonic: A History of New York’s Orchestra (1975), stated that the Aschenbroedel Verein was the first organization in New York to advance the unionization of musicians, as early as 1860, an effort that culminated later with the formation of the Musical Mutual Protective Union. Shanet called Aschenbroedel “at once a cultural, a benevolent, a social, and a labor association.” He further emphasized the total domination of the symphonic world in New York by the German community, with nearly all of the Philharmonic men of German birth or parentage by 1892. The Aschenbroedel Verein’s motto was “Freundschaft, Geselligkeit, Befoerderung der Kunst” (Friendship, Sociability, Advancement of the Art).

By 1870, there were an estimated 64 German musical societies within New York City, and a number of them were located in the vicinity, either in converted structures or purpose-built ones. These included the Arion Singing Society (founded 1854); Liederkranz (founded 1847), 31-35 East 4th Street; and Beethoven Maennerchor (founded 1859), located in a hall built in 1870 (William Graul, architect) at 210-214 East 5th Street. In addition, Turnverein Halle (1871), 66-68 East 4th Street, was built just down the block from the Aschenbroedel Verein.

In 1873, the Aschenbroedel Verein, under president George Matzka (died 1883), constructed this purpose-built structure, clad in brick and four stories (plus basement; the rear portion is only two stories), at an estimated cost of $24,000. Construction began in June and was completed in October. The architect was August H. Blankenstein (1830-1914), who was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. in 1860. Active from 1872 to 1899, he designed tenement, flats, and factory buildings for a mostly German clientele, as well as the addition to the Centre Market Armory (1873-74; demolished), Grand and Centre Streets; work on the 55th Regiment, 23rd Regiment, and First Cavalry 22nd Regiment Armories (c. 1878); and St. Joseph’s R.C. Orphan Asylum School (1883, demolished), Avenue A and 90th Street. A 1894 lawsuit indicated that Blankenstein had been a partner of architect Henry Herter prior to 1886 (Herter then became a partner in [Ernest W.] Schneider & Herter). Blankenstein was also listed as an architect in an 1890 directory in Buffalo, N.Y.

The Times reported on November 7, 1873, that the Aschenbroedel Verein had “inaugurated its new club-house... last night, by an entertainment of music and social festivities.” Considered “one of the most commodious German clubhouses in the city,” its amenities included a restaurant, a library, a billiard room, and a bowling alley in the basement. Among activities conducted here were meetings of the Ancient Lodge of Perfection (Scottish Rite) in 1873, and the 1876 funeral of Philharmonic conductor and Aschenbroedel Verein member Carl Bergmann. For unknown reasons, the building was listed for sale in 1882, but the Aschenbroedel Verein remained here until it sold the building in September 1891. The society, then having some 700 members, moved in November 1892 into a new clubhouse (George H. Griebel, architect; demolished) at 144 East 86th Street in Yorkville.

The Gesangverein Schillerbund and Schillerbund Halle

In June 1892, the Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the Gesangverein Schillerbund (Schillerbund Singing Society), one of the city’s leading and oldest German singing societies. Founded in 1850 and named after the poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), the Schillerbund had been meeting since 1872 in Turnverein Halle. The purchase price of its new building was $1.00, subject to $37,500 in mortgages held by the Bachmann Brewing Co. of Clifton, Staten Island. This structure was altered between September and October 1892 by the architectural firm of [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl. Interestingly, Kurtzer was a member of the Beethoven Maennerchor. In partnership from about 1888 until 1901, Kurtzer & Rohl specialized in tenements and flats buildings for a largely German clientele; examples of its work include Nos. 95 Bedford Street (1894) and 285 West 4th Street (1900), located within the Greenwich Village Historic District, and No. 121 East 10th Street (1899), located within the St. Mark’s Historic District. The firm was also responsible for the First German Reformed Church (1897, demolished), 351 East 68th Street, and its Sunday School (1901). Richard O.L. Rohl (1857-1923), an immigrant from Prussia in 1880, maintained an independent practice from 1902 until around 1919. No. 391 West Street (aka 8 Weehawken Street) (1902), located within the Weehawken Street Historic District, was his first independent commission, and he also designed the double tenement buildings at Nos. 35-39 Christopher Street (1907), located within the Greenwich Village Historic District. Frederick William Kurtzer (c. 1849- ), emigrated from Germany around 1870. He worked independently in 1901-02, then became a partner in Kurtzer & Rentz in 1903-06, with Charles Rentz, Jr. (1855-1906), an architect who was born in New York City of German descent. Rentz was extraordinarily prolific in the design of flats and tenement buildings in the 1880s, but is best known for the design of Webster Hall and Annex (1886-87, 1892). Kurtzer continued to practice in Manhattan and the Bronx until around 1925.

The Dept. of Buildings 1892 alteration application for the Gesangverein Schillerbund Building, as well as the dockets, only listed $1,200 in work, involving interior partition alterations in the basement (and a new bowling alley) and second story. In an article on the building’s opening in November 1892, however, the New York Times indicated that it had been “almost entirely rebuilt and refitted,” and that “the building cost in all about $45,000. ... On the ground floor are fine bowling alleys, the kitchen and restaurant. The second floor is used for assembly and meeting rooms, the third for lodge rooms, and the top of the house is occupied by the tenant.” The 1892 tax assessment for the property increased by more than 25 percent, and the structure was later described in the Times as “one of the best Maennerchor clubhouses in that section of this city.” The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs (including hearts), and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composers’ busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment.

A Schillerbund Fair was held here December 10-20, 1892. By 1895, the membership of the Schillerbund was around 400, and the hall, managed by Gustav Schunemann, reportedly enjoyed “much popularity among the merrymakers of that neighborhood.” In November 1896, however, the Gesangverein Schillerbund sold the property and moved to Yorkville (later returning to another building on East 4th Street). This building was purchased for $40,195 by the Bachmann Brewing Co., holder of the mortgage. The company was founded by the German-born Frederick Bachmann (1839-1905), who had immigrated to New York in 1859, and worked at the Lion Brewery in Manhattan, prior to moving to Staten Island, where he was employed by the Schmidt Brewery and Gabriel Meyer Brewery, becoming the co-owner with David Meyer until it was destroyed by fire in 1881. As indicated by Charles L. Sachs in Made on Staten Island, “The successful breweries were not just efficient manufacturing enterprises. To market and distribute their products the breweries acquired real estate holdings and developed close ties with the restaurant, recreation, and tourism businesses. The major breweries owned, operated, and rented saloons, taverns, beer gardens, hotels, and even resort complexes.”

This building became a rental assembly hall, and there are references in newspapers calling it “Schillerbund Halle” as late as 1901. A sampling of meetings and events held here included: pattern makers (1895); Eastern Star chapter of the Order of Chosen Friends (1897); New York branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (1897); New York Engineers & Machinists Society (1897); New York Engineers’ Protective Association (1900); and Poles celebrating the 1863 insurrection (1901).

Krywaczy’s Hall, Saenger Hall, and McKinley Hall

The building continued to be used as a public rental hall and social center, under three different names, and like such sites as Webster Hall (though on a smaller scale), was a venue for organizational meetings and political and union functions, particularly for the working-class and immigrant population of the Lower East Side. As opined by historian Kathy Peiss:

For the working-class population packed into small tenement apartments, large halls that could be rented for dances, weddings, mass meetings, and other gatherings were a requirement of social life. The number of public halls in Manhattan rose substantially in a short period; business directories listed 130 halls in 1895 and 195 in 1910, an increase of 50 percent. While some of these, like Carnegie Hall, were cultural spaces of the privileged, most were located in working-class districts. The largest East Side halls... were always in great demand.

In a September 12, 1901, New York Times announcement of a meeting here of the Polish community to denounce Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who had shot President William McKinley on September 6, the location was referred to as “Krywaczy’s Hall” (McKinley died on the day of the meeting). John Krywacsy (Krywaczy) was listed in directories as a liquor dealer on Forsyth Street. City directories in 1901-03, as well as the 1903 Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, called this “Saenger Hall.” The Bachmann Brewing Co. leased the property in April 1903 to Max Sapiro and Ike Lifschitz. Sapiro was listed in the 1910 Census as a Polish/Austrian-born café proprietor, though he was not listed in directories in connection with this property, while Issac Lifshitz (Ike Lifschitz) was Russian-born according to the 1900 Census, and was listed in directories in this building in 1903-05 (in 1903 as partner of Joseph Lublinsky) operating a saloon. Among groups meeting here were the Heinrich Heine lodge (1902), Smoking Pipe Makers’ Union (1903), and East Side Restaurant Keepers (1903). Apparently in commemoration of the assassinated President, the name of the building was changed to “McKinley Hall” by 1904. Organizations that met here included the formation of the New-York Rent Payers’ Protective Association (1904), Lady Lining Makers (1904), and Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America (1904-07). Frederick Bachmann was judged to be incompetent in July 1904 (he died in January 1905); in November 1904, Bachmann’s trustees transferred this property to Combined Securities Co., which held an auction in January 1905. The auction advertisement listed “Bowling alleys in cellar. Store, meeting, lodge, music rooms, and apartments above.” After passing through several owners, the building was acquired in February 1906 by Malka Marder; the wife of Benjamin Marder, a cloak contractor in the 1910 Census, both were Polish/Austrian-born.

The Newsboys’ Athletic Club

In September 1905, the three upper stories of the former McKinley Hall were leased for use as the Newsboys’ Athletic Club, founded by Jack Sullivan (ne Jacob A. Reich), known as the “King of the Newsboys,” a former newsboy and prizefighter who then sold papers to newsboys. The Club had a gymnasium and showers, a reading/classroom, and a lodging room for over fifty boys. The club depended on donations from New York’s society – one benefit, held in March 1907 at the Academy of Music, was directed by impresarios George M. Cohan and Sam Harris. By May 1911, with the expiration of its lease, the Club, by that time serving some 2,000 newsboys, purchased the former home of the New-York Historical Society at Second Avenue and 11th Street. The basement and storefront of the Newsboys’ Athletic Club building had been leased for use as a laundry in 1905-07 to Paul C. Port (also at 88 East 4th Street), and from 1908 to March 1912 to the New System Napkin, Towel Supply & Steam Laundry Co., until legal action against the company was taken by the Marders.

Floral Garden Hall

Malka Marder sold the building in February 1913, and it was purchased the following month by Sarah Hirsch, the wife of Charles Hirsch, proprietor of the Manhattan Lyceum (formerly Turnverein Halle) at 66-68 East 4th Street; both Hirsches were born in Romania. Operated as Floral Garden Hall, it was altered into a dance hall on the ground story, with meeting and banquet rooms above. Among the many events held here were: the annual convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America (1913); Brotherhood Welfare Association gathering on behalf of New York’s hoboes (1913); Women Dressmakers’ Association and Journeymen Barbers’ League strike meetings (1914); a planned meeting of the Anti-Militarist League, which resulted in a riot after the owner reneged on the use of the hall (1914); Sheet Metal (Automobile) Workers’ meetings (1914); garment workers strike meetings (1916); Messenger Boys’ Union strike headquarters (1916); and Branch No. 578, Arbeiter Ring (Workmen’s Circle) of the Socialist Party, and Sholom Aleichem Lodge of the Jewish National Workers’ Alliance of America (1917-18). In 1916, the ground story was altered for a storefront, incorporating 1892 cast-iron pilasters (which survive). The property was foreclosed in January 1919 and sold at auction.

Standard Provision Co./ Hygrade Food Products Corp.

After 45 years of use as a social and meeting hall, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building for the next four decades served as meatpacking plant. The property was purchased in February 1919 by the Standard Provision Co. (Isidor Chorney, president) at 102 Rivington Street. A Dept. of Buildings application indicated that the building would be used for meatpacking, with storage in the basement, shipping and receiving on the ground story, a meat provisions and drying factory on the second story, and offices on the third story. In December 1927, Standard Provision was acquired through a merger of nine wholesale provisions companies by the Hygrade Food Products Corp. (Hugo Slotkin, president), 152 Broadway. The Washington Post called this “the first consolidation of delicatessen food properties ever effected.” According to a notice in the New York Times, the constituent companies

manufacture and sell frankfurters, bolognas, salamis, smoked and cured tongues, spiced, pickled and corned beef and various other ready-to-serve meat products. The companies are among the most important serving New York and Philadelphia. Their success individually and collectively has established an enviable record in the industry. Their products are sold to over 5,000 customers, including delicatessen stores, chain stores, drug stores, meat markets, clubs, grocers, hotels, restaurants, steamship and railroad companies, etc., throughout the United States and in foreign countries.

City directories over the years variously listed divisions of the corporation here: Hebrew National Food Products (c.1928-29); Carmel Kosher Provision Co. (c. 1933-45); and Hod Carmel Kosher Provision Co. (c. 1950-57). Hygrade sold this property in February 1960.

20th-Century History of the East Village

After a period of decline, Greenwich Village was becoming known, prior to World War I, for its historic and picturesque qualities, its affordable housing, and the diversity of its population and social and political ideas. Many artists and writers, as well as tourists, were attracted to the Village. By the 1910s, property owners and merchants attempted to improve the Village’s economy and rehabilitate its physical condition, with “shrewd realtors beg[inning] to amass their holdings of dilapidated housing.” These various factors and the increased desirability of the Village to upper-middle-class professionals lead to a real estate boom – “rents increased during the 1920s by 140 percent and in some cases by as much as 300 percent.”

After World War II, the ethnic make-up of the Lower East Side changed again, becoming dominated by Latin American immigrants, especially those from Puerto Rico. Their immigration was encouraged by the government as a source of cheap labor, particularly for the garment trades, hotels, and small manufacturing. The community named itself Loisaida to symbolize the second generation Hispanic roots that had developed in the context of the African-American and Latino movements for social and economic justice, equality, and identity. The residential and cultural desirability of the neighborhood that came to be known as the “East Village” increased with the removal of the Third Avenue El in 1955. As indicated by Terry Miller,

the psychological barrier that had marked the eastern boundary of Greenwich Village was gone. Blocks that once had no prestige were suddenly seen as intriguing, and apartments here were less costly than those in Greenwich Village. ... As artists and writers moved east, the blocks from St. Mark’s Place to Tenth Street were the first to hint that the Lower East Side was being transformed. Realtors began marketing the area as “Village East,” and by 1961 as the “East Village,” a name that stuck.

From World War I to the 1940s, Second Avenue between East 14th and Houston Streets had been considered the heart of New York’s Jewish community, known as the “Yiddish Rialto” for its role as the world’s center of Yiddish theater. As Yiddish theater declined, the East Village gave rise in the 1950s to “Off-Broadway” theater, including the Phoenix Theater (1953-61) in the former Louis N. Jaffe Art Theater (Yiddish Art Theater) building (1925-26, Harrison G. Wiseman), 181-189 Second Avenue; the Tempo Playhouse and Pyramid, Key, Bowery, New Bowery, and Bridge Theaters (1955-67) in the former Hamilton-Holly House, 4 St. Marks Place; and the Orpheum Theater (1958), 126 Second Avenue. An “off-Off-Broadway” theater also emerged in the late 1950s, characterized by the small size of the venues and total avoidance of commercialism and its pressures. Joe Cino’s Caffe Cino (1958), 31 Cornelia Street, is generally recognized as the first, and other significant early off-Off-Broadway theaters were Judson Memorial Church (1961) under Rev. Al Carmines; Ellen Stewart’s Café La Mama/ La Mama Experimental Theatre Club (1961), 321 East 9th Street (after 1969 at 74 East 4th Street); and Theater Genesis (1964) in St. Marks in the Bowery Church under Michael Allen and Ralph Cook. Off-Off Broadway theater coincided with the emergence of gay theater in New York.

In the 1950s, the East Village also became home to a number of key Beat Generation writers, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, and W.H. Auden, and was renowned for its protest art and politics, galleries, poetry and coffee houses, bookstores, clubs, with a “counterculture” scene centered on St. Mark’s Place.

Rodale Press, Inc.

The 74 East 4th Street building was purchased in February 1960 by Rodale Press, Inc., of Emmaus, Pa. Jerome Irving Rodale (1898-1971) was a New York accountant who, with a brother, in 1923 founded Rodale Mfg. Co., which made commercial and residential electrical connectors. After relocating the firm to Emmaus, Rodale became interested in organic farming. Rodale Press began publishing Organic Farming & Gardening (1942) and Prevention (1950), a magazine devoted to nutrition and personal health, and later, other magazines and health books. In order to promote his concepts, he was also a playwright and theatrical producer. Rodale apparently originally intended to use No. 74 as a theater – the Times listed building plans as such in 1960; instead, Rodale in 1962 purchased No. 64 East 4th Street with the intention to “convert it into an intimate playhouse, theatre workshop and acting school.” A directory in 1963 listed Rodale Press and the Rodale Theater at 62 East 4th Street, and Rodale Mfg. Co. at No. 60. Rodale sold the property in September 1967.

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club

In November 1967, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, an off-Off-Broadway theater company that had been founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart. After her arrival in New York in 1950, Ms. Stewart worked in retail clothing and fashion, becoming a freelance designer. She opened a basement Café La Mama at 321 East 9th Street in 1961, intended as a combination boutique and theater, the latter partly inspired by the experience of a brother who was an aspiring playwright. The café’s first play in July 1962 was Tennessee Williams’ “One Arm,” and later that year Stewart put on the first American production of a Harold Pinter play, “The Room.” She was forced, however, to move several times: to 82 Second Avenue in 1963, after being closed by the Dept. of Buildings due to a zoning violation; and to a loft at 122 Second Avenue in 1964, after being closed twice by the Police, Fire, Licenses, and Health Departments. In March 1964, the company was renamed the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and Stewart was acclaimed during its first European tour in 1965. An Actors’ Equity crackdown in 1966 on coffee houses and theater workshops nearly ended the company, but the union relented in recognition of the importance in New York of experimental theater (La Mama then adhered to a policy of no formal admission charge – instead there was a $1 per week membership fee – and a maximum of ten performances). By 1967, the Times called Ms. Stewart “the most active producer in New York City,” with a new American play every two weeks. Her abiding philosophy has been that La Mama is “dedicated to the playwright and all forms of theater.” She notes that “I started La Mama so there would be a place where a playwright could write, see and learn. Why should a new playwright be regarded on the same terms as an experienced playwright the very first time out – which is what most professional criticism does?” She has personally selected and invited these playwrights, who then act as their own producer, with La Mama considered an attractive venue due to its lack of censorship.

La Mama received major Ford and Rockefeller Foundations grants in 1967, allowing the purchase and renovation of the 74 East 4th Street building, which was then “in ruins.” In June 1968, its Second Avenue theater closed, with plays temporarily produced at 9 St. Mark’s Place, while renovations occurred on East 4th Street. The current La Mama Experimental Theatre Club opened in March 1969, with repertory and ensemble theaters on the first and second stories, rehearsal space on the third story, and Stewart’s apartment on the top story. The first two productions inaugurating the theaters were the musical “Caution: A Love Story,” by Tom Eyen and Bruce Kirle, based on the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Julie Bovasso’s “Gloria and Esperanza.” The first-story theater was renovated in 1972. A National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1974 allowed for the expansion into an Annex at 66-68 East 4th Street (former Turnverein Halle).

Today, La Mama, the oldest off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City, is widely considered the most influential and has been called “the most prolific of all the off off-Broadway stages,” to date having produced an estimated 1,900 plays in New York City, and countless more around the world. La Mama has received more than sixty Obie Awards for Off-Broadway theater (including a Special Obie for its 20th anniversary in 1981), as well as dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards. Ellen Stewart, recognized as a pioneering African-American theater impresario, was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award (1985) and MacArthur Fellows Award (1991), and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame (1993). Though commercial theater has not been its focus, a number of La Mama plays achieved success on Broadway, including “Godspell” and “Torch Song Trilogy,” and its resident director, Tom O’Horgan, later produced the influential hit “Hair.” Among the notable playwrights associated with La Mama have been Jean-Claude van Itallie, Paul Foster, Ruth Yorck, Tom Eyen, Julie Bovasso, David Starkweather, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, William Hoffman, Adrienne Kennedy, Charles Ludlam, and Terence McNally; eminent directors have included O’Horgan, Joseph Chaiken, Andrei Serban, Wilford Leach, John Vacarro, Marshall Mason, and Meredith Monk; and performers of note have included Bill Irwin, Billy Crystal, Nick Nolte, Danny De Vito, Bette Midler, and Estelle Getty.

Description

The four-story (plus basement; the rear portion is only two stories) and three-bay, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building was originally built in 1873; the front facade was altered in 1892 with the addition of cast-iron ornament that combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs.

Ground Story: Four 1892 cast-iron pilasters survive, which are fluted at the base, paneled above, and ornamented with incised blocks that are surmounted by bosses and inverted hearts. The iron entablature once supported by the pilasters has been removed (post-1939); the story is terminated by a painted stone stringcourse. Alterations dating from 1969 (or after) include: the central metal-and-glass entrance doors (with stone threshold), which are surmounted by a wooden panel and sign; brick infill between and above the pilasters; announcement board on the east side of the facade; and two light fixtures placed above the entrance.

Second through Fourth Stories: The upper stories are flanked by vermiculated cast-iron quoins (many blocks and/or vermiculation are missing). All windows have cast-iron surrounds, ornamented with hearts on the sides and incised motifs on the sills, and are linked together and to the quoins by panels with fraktur-like incising. Many of the moldings once located above the hearts on the windows are missing. The second-story windows are double-height, are capped by round-arched pediments ornamented with three composers’ busts, and have six-over-six double-hung wood sash (the outer windows have transoms, while the central window has double pairs). The third story windows have segmental broken-scroll pediments (only the eastern window has a surviving acroterion ornament) and six-over-six double-hung wood sash (paired in the center). The central fourth-story window is capped by a pediment, while the outer windows have entablatures (the western window’s was replaced in pressed metal c. 1980s-90s; all have six-over-six double-hung wood sash (paired in the center). The prominent metal cornice has stylized modillions ornamented with hearts (the easternmost is missing), rods, and incised ends and is surmounted by a large molded, broken pediment, ornamented at the ends by sunbursts.

Western Facade: This facade, currently visible above the first story, has keyed returns of the front facade’s quoins, and a portion of red brick facing; the rest of the facade is unarticulated and parged.

Eastern Facade: Attached to the eastern side of the building [and not on the designated Landmark Site] is a tan brick wall, constructed as part of a light court for No. 63-65 Second Avenue (aka 76-82 East 4th Street) (1926, Charles B. Meyers).

- From the 2009 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

DENISON, GEORGE TAYLOR, lawyer, militia officer, author, politician, police magistrate, and imperialist; b. 31 Aug. 1839 in Toronto, eldest child of George Taylor Denison* and Mary Anne Dewson; m. first 20 Jan. 1863 Caroline Macklem (d. 1885) in Chippawa, Upper Canada, and they had three sons and three daughters; m. secondly 1 Dec. 1887 Helen Amanda Mair in Perth, Ont., and they had two daughters; d. 6 June 1925 in Toronto.

Known by contemporaries as the “watchdog” of the British empire, George Taylor Denison inherited a family legacy of antipathy to the United States, loyalty to the crown, conservative political values, and military service. His great-grandfather, a brewer and farmer from Yorkshire, was induced to immigrate to Upper Canada in 1792 by the province’s receiver and auditor general, Peter Russell*. For managing Russell’s estate at York (Toronto), he received a 1,000-acre grant. His grandfather George Taylor Denison I, who married the daughter of a prominent landowner and United Empire Loyalist, added to the family tradition of imperial service by enlisting with the 3rd York Militia during the War of 1812. The tradition continued with his father, George Taylor Denison II, who served during the rebellion of 1837–38, played an important role in the reorganization of the Canadian militia in 1855, and commanded the 1st Volunteer Militia Troop of Cavalry of York County (designated the Governor General’s Body Guard in 1866). As well, he was an alderman for St Patrick’s Ward in Toronto. The burden of tradition and expectation thus weighed heavily upon George Taylor Denison III.

As befitted his family’s social status, Denison was educated at Upper Canada College, where his performance was unspectacular. Expelled from Trinity College by provost George Whitaker* for insubordinate behaviour, he transferred to the University of Toronto and earned a degree in law. Called to the bar in 1861, he would later go into practice with his brother Frederick Charles*. The law, however, held no interest for him. His heart was with the militia. Gazetted cornet in his father’s troop in the fall of 1854, he rapidly rose through the ranks, from captain in 1857 to lieutenant-colonel and commander in 1866.

Denison’s passion for military matters and gift for polemics first became evident in 1861 when, in the wake of the Trent affair [see Sir Charles Hastings Doyle*], he anonymously published Canada, is she prepared for war? (Toronto). This pamphlet, which urged British North Americans to uphold their forefathers’ martial valour and to ready themselves against a possible attack from the United States, ignited a lively newspaper debate and soon resulted in another tract, The national defences . . . (Toronto, 1861), in which Denison argued for a properly trained and equipped mounted infantry. In A review of the militia policy of the present administration (Hamilton, 1863) he responded (under the pseudonym Junius) to the defeat of John A. Macdonald*’s Militia Bill of 1862 with a scathing attack on the government’s neglect and ignorance of military matters.

Denison aspired to a career as a professional soldier, but his sympathy for the South during the American Civil War ultimately cost him his ambition. His identification with the South came naturally: it represented an idyllic society that embodied the social order, conservative values, and chivalric traditions he wished to see maintained in British North America. He drew parallels between his loyalist ancestors, who had fought to uphold their principles against the demagoguery of American patriots, and the southerners, who were struggling to preserve their identity and way of life. Fearing the consequences of a northern victory for the future of British North America, Denison actively backed the Confederate cause despite Britain’s official neutrality. In September 1864 he received a visit from his uncle George Dewson of Florida, who had been commissioned to assess support for the Confederacy in British North America. Denison’s farm home, Heydon Villa, on his father’s estate in west Toronto, became a haven for Confederate agents, exiles, and sympathizers and a clearing house for smuggled documents. He also became involved in efforts to purchase the steamer Georgian, which was to be used as a raider on the Great Lakes. The diplomatic crisis and lawsuits that followed the discovery of this plan effectively ended his prospects for a full-time military career, a disappointment that repeated promises from politicians and his own tireless efforts could not reverse. A frustrated Denison entered local politics and served as a councilman for St Patrick’s Ward from 1865 to 1867. He commanded the Governor General’s Body Guard during the Fenian raids of 1866 and wrote Modern cavalry: its organisation, armament, and employment in war . . . (London, 1868), an impassioned case for mounted infantry based on his own experience and close study of the Civil War. He suffered another blow to his ego when British critics dismissed the book as the work of a mere colonial.

Appalled by the lack of national spirit following confederation, disillusioned by the state of Canadian politics, and fearful of the United States, Denison joined with Charles Mair, William Alexander Foster*, and others to found the Canada First movement in 1868. Inspired by Thomas D’Arcy McGee*’s vision of a northern nation, Canada First celebrated the new dominion’s rugged landscape and climate and its Anglo-Saxon/Protestant heritage. This small social group was hurled into national prominence by the Red River uprising of 1869–70. Seeing the actions of Louis Riel* and his followers as an affront to Canada’s territorial ambition, the group launched a vigorous assault upon the “traitors.” Denison led the charge, writing bellicose letters to the newspapers, organizing demonstrations, and appealing to all loyal English-speaking Canadians to defend their birthright. Special venom was reserved for Sir George-Étienne Cartier*, the militia minister who had blocked Denison’s advancement to the post of adjutant general of cavalry and who, in Denison’s eyes, represented French Canadian opposition to the force sent to Red River.

The success of these tactics had a lasting effect on Denison. The same belligerent rhetoric and fearmongering would characterize his later campaigns against closer economic relations with the United States and on behalf of imperial unity. His immediate priority, however, was ensuring the Anglo-Saxon character of the northwest. He and his Canada First associates created the North West Emigration Aid Society in 1870 to assist in the recruitment of desirable settlers. Denison outlined his national vision in an address he first delivered in Weston (Toronto) in early 1871, “The duty of Canadians to Canada,” in which he attacked British indifference and warned of the dominion’s vulnerability. Canada’s destiny, he insisted, depended on the cultivation of pride and patriotism, the development of its resources, and the creation of politics freed of faction and dedicated to the national good. Such a course would allow Canada to assume its rightful place as a full partner in the empire. Disillusioned with the governing Conservative party, he sought election to the House of Commons for Algoma as a Liberal in 1872. Defeated by John Beverley Robinson*, he was rewarded for his efforts by friends in the provincial Liberal government of Oliver Mowat* and made Ontario’s emigration commissioner in London. His exposure there to reviving imperialist feeling reinforced his Canada First sentiments. The position was temporary, however, and he returned to Canada in early 1874, with no immediate prospects before him.

As Denison approached middle age, he was haunted by his lack of personal accomplishment. “If a man does not make his mark in the world or be in a fair way of doing it before he is forty he will never do anything afterwards,” his father had once warned him. When he learned of the substantial cash prizes offered by the Russian government for the best history of cavalry, he decided to return to his first love, the military, and resolved to make his reputation as a military historian. He threw himself into the work, rising early to read and write, acquiring a large library on military history at great expense, and travelling to London and St Petersburg to do research. Denison completed his magnum opus in December 1876 and presented the manuscript to the prize committee in person, but it refused to consider his work on the grounds that the translation, done by a Russian woman in New York, was sub-standard. Only after the book appeared in English was he awarded the 5,000-rouble first prize. Although A history of cavalry from the earliest times, with lessons for the future (London, 1877) received mixed reviews at the time, it has since been hailed as the definitive work in the field.

On his return to Canada in 1877, Denison assumed the post of police magistrate for the City of Toronto, a position he would retain until the summer of 1921. He owed the appointment to Oliver Mowat. Denison’s contemporary seat on the Board of Police Commissioners was not seen as a conflict of interest. He ran his court like a well-oiled machine. Much to the annoyance of the city officials who paid his salary, he routinely cleared his docket in a couple of hours before lunch. Usually faced with an enormous caseload, and with little interest in the causes or prevention of crime, he had no use for legal technicalities or procedural niceties. His was “a court of justice, not a court of law,” he proudly asserted. By his own admission, he relied more on intuition than on evidence. Although he liked to boast that he judged impartially, some groups fared better than others: retired soldiers and members of Toronto’s respectable classes could expect leniency but striking workers, parvenus, Irishmen, and blacks invariably received harsh treatment. Denison nonetheless took a paternal interest in the unfortunate members of the lower classes who filed through his court. He championed legal aid, chastised the legal profession for profiting from people’s misfortunes and prolonging cases, and denounced moral reform groups that tried to impose their standards upon criminal elements “who offended their tender susceptibilities.” His unorthodox methods were notorious – his court even became something of a tourist attraction. By the time of his retirement, there were calls for a full overhaul of the then outmoded Police Court, which consisted of four magistrates, including Rupert Etherege Kingsford*, women’s and children’s divisions, and seven clerks.

Denison’s swift administration of justice freed him to pursue other interests. An Anglican of evangelical inclination, he helped found and served on the first board of management of the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School [see James Paterson Sheraton*]. He became one of the principal forces behind the revival of the loyalist tradition, as an organizer of the loyalist centennial celebrations in 1884 and a founding member in 1896 of the United Empire Loyalist Association of Ontario. He broadcast the tradition long and often. In his presidential address to the Royal Society of Canada in 1904, for instance, he spoke on the loyalist influence in Canadian history. He found in the tradition not only the reflected glory of his ancestors’ accomplishments but also a usable past, which could be called upon to justify closer ties to Britain and the empire and to attack opponents who advocated greater independence or closer economic and political relations with the United States. As constructed by Denison and others, the tradition served too to defend a social order threatened by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Denison’s rabid anti-Americanism, in fact, owed much to his fear that the social ailments afflicting the United States would soon infect Canada.

Denison’s patriotism had been tested in the spring of 1885, when he and the Governor General’s Body Guard saw service during the North-West rebellion. Because of his lingering hostility to the federal government, he had little enthusiasm for the conflict and had initially refused to volunteer his troop. He objected, he told Charles Mair in March, to the use of the militia “to defend a Government of land sharks who have villainously wronged the poor native and the actual settler.” Moreover, he had been deeply shaken by the death of his wife on 26 February. His fighting spirit returned with the formation in May of the Canadian branch of the Imperial Federation League; he was named chair of the branch’s organizing committee, and would later be vice-president and president. Although Denison and the league succeeded in whipping up nationalistic fervour, especially after the appearance in 1887 of the movement for commercial union with the United States [see Erastus Wiman*], they failed to convince the league’s British members of the virtue of imperial trade preferences. When internal divisions caused the league to collapse, Denison played an important role in 1895 in creating a new organization, the British Empire League, and he would serve as president of its Canadian branch for many years. Although military considerations dominated Denison’s imperial outlook, he frequently used the rhetoric of religious crusade in his speeches and writings, and his evangelical Anglicanism certainly helped shape his view of events. In this religious sense, his imperialism was comparable to that of George Monro Grant* and George Robert Parkin.

Colonel Denison remained in the vanguard of the imperialist cause throughout the remainder of his life. He championed Canadian participation in the South African War and contributions to the Royal Navy, he surpassed most imperialists by campaigning in 1902 for an imperial defence fund derived from duties on foreign imports into Britain and the colonies, and he vigorously opposed the efforts of Sir Wilfrid Laurier*’s government to negotiate reciprocity with the United States in 1911. A frequent speaker and newspaper commentator, he brought to the cause an unrelenting drive and a steely resistance to criticism. Passed over several times for imperial honours, he eventually claimed he had not wanted any. “His self-laudation has long been a standing joke in Canada,” Governor General Lord Minto [Elliot*] confided to Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain in 1900. As well, some British career soldiers regarded his Body Guard as a showy, lightweight outfit, top-heavy with officers and ncos. Unswayed, he chronicled his efforts on behalf of the empire, and his arguments for federation and against free trade, in The struggle for imperial unity . . . (Toronto, 1909). With the approach of war in Europe, he found a new demon, Germany. Although his combination of anti-Americanism, imperialism, and nationalism lost much of its force in the years following World War I, Denison remained unmoved in his convictions.

Despite his celebrity, relatively little is known about his private and family life. He kept a daily diary from 1864 until his death, but rarely recorded his deepest personal thoughts. In 1863 he had married the niece of the Reverend Thomas Brock Fuller*; in 1887 he married Charles Mair’s 22-year-old niece. He appears to have been a demanding but loving father who impressed on his sons the same spirit of loyalty, duty, and family pride that had been implanted in him during his own childhood. Extremely class-conscious, he raised his daughters to assume their rightful place at the top of respectable society.

His stern and headstrong manner notwithstanding, Denison had a great sense of humour and relished the caricatures drawn of him in the press. He was almost always portrayed in military uniform striking the pose of the stereotypical British officer and gentleman. He loved to entertain and Heydon Villa, which he rebuilt in 1880, became a regular stop for notables visiting Toronto. A man of boundless energy and ambition, he kept up an exhaustive correspondence with the public men of his day. He thoroughly enjoyed the cut and thrust of vigorous debate but his absolute faith in the correctness of his beliefs cost him several friendships, including that of Goldwin Smith*, whom he almost single-handedly had ostracized from polite Toronto society. By 1922 Denison’s health was failing and he died at Heydon Villa in 1925 at the age of 85.

George Taylor Denison had been raised to be a public man. Although few could match his contribution to the discussions of the great political issues of the day, his life was full of disappointments. Unable to achieve a military career or high elected office, he settled into a series of patronage appointments and crusades. His impact on Canadian opinion lay as much in the opposition he provoked as in the causes he advocated. In many respects, his life reflects the ideas and standards, the frustrations and anxieties, of a class and a generation whose values were fading before the forces that were transforming Canada into a North American nation.

Lower East Side. Manhattan, New York City, New York, United StatesThe four-story, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building, in today’s East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, was constructed in 1873 to the design of German-born architect August H. Blankenstein for this German-American professional orchestral musicians’ social and benevolent association. Founded informally in 1860, it had grown large enough by 1866 for the society to purchase this site and eventually construct the purpose-built structure. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side. It counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, at a time when German-Americans dominated the orchestral scene. These included conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas and Walter Damrosch, and the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and Theodore Thomas Orchestras. After the Aschenbroedel Verein moved to Yorkville in 1892, this building was subsequently owned for four years by the Gesangverein Schillerbund, one of the city’s leading and oldest German singing societies. The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament by German-born architects [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composers’ busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment. After 1895, the building housed a variety of disparate uses, including a series of public meeting and dance halls, the Newsboys’ Athletic Club, a laundry, and a meatpacking plant. Since 1969, it has been the home of the renowned La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, established in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, and today considered the oldest and most influential off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City. The building remains one of the significant reminders of 19th-century German-American cultural contributions to New York City, as well as the continuing vitality of off-Off-Broadway theater in the East Village. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS The 19th-Century Development of East Village Neighborhood The area of today’s Greenwich Village was, during the 18th century, the location of the small rural hamlet of Greenwich, as well as the country seats and summer homes of wealthy downtown aristocrats, merchants, and capitalists. A number of cholera and yellow fever epidemics in lower Manhattan between 1799 and 1822 led to an influx of settlers in the Greenwich area, with the population quadrupling between 1825 and 1840. Previously undeveloped tracts of land were speculatively subdivided for the construction of town houses and rowhouses. Whereas in the early 19th century many of the wealthiest New Yorkers lived in the vicinity of Broadway and the side streets adjacent to City Hall Park between Barclay and Chambers Streets, by the 1820s and 30s, as commercial development and congestion increasingly disrupted and displaced them, the elite moved northward into Greenwich Village east of Sixth Avenue. To the east, during the 17th and 18th centuries, was Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s Bowery farm. In the vicinity were Native American trails, today’s Broadway and Bowery, that the Lenape Indians traversed from the southern tip of Manhattan to Inwood and Harlem. St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery Church was built on a higher, dry piece of land, while the area to the east of today’s Second Avenue, known as Stuyvesant Meadows, remained an undeveloped marshy area. In the late 18th century, the area east of Second Avenue was the estate of Mangle Minthorn, father-in-law of Daniel Tompkins , governor of New York and U.S. vice president under James Monroe . Both Stuyvesant and Minthorn were slave owners. In 1832, the Common Council created the 15th Ward out of the eastern section of the large 9th Ward, its boundaries being Sixth Avenue, Houston and 14th Streets, and the Bowery. According to Luther Harris’ history Around Washington Square, during the 1830s-40s “this ward drew the wealthiest, most influential, and most talented people from New York City and elsewhere. For a brief period beginning in the 1820s-30s, Lafayette Place, including the grand marble Greek Revival style LaGrange Terrace , St. Mark’s Place, and Bond, Great Jones, East 4th and Bleecker Streets were also among the city’s most fashionable addresses. Lower Second Avenue and adjacent side streets remained prestigious through the 1850s. Commercial and institutional intrusions and the continual arrival of immigrants ended the fashionable heyday of these wealthier enclaves before the Civil War. In the 1850s, Broadway north of Houston Street was transformed from a residential into a significant commercial district. Also beginning in the 1850s, after the political upheavals in Europe of 1848 and the resulting influx of German-speaking immigrants to New York City, the Lower East Side became known as Kleindeutschland . Aside from their presence as residents, these immigrants contributed in significant ways to the vibrant commercial and cultural life of the neighborhood and the city at large. By 1880, this neighborhood constituted one-fourth of the city’s population and was the first major urban foreign-speaking neighborhood in the U.S., as well as the leading German-American center throughout the century. A massive exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe from the 1880s to World War I led to approximately two million Jewish immigrants settling in New York; most lived for a time on the Lower East Side, establishing their own cultural and religious institutions there. Beginning in the 1850s-60s, the vicinity of 14th Street and Union Square developed into a center of musical and theatrical culture. The Academy of Music , East 14th Street and Irving Place, an opera house with the world’s largest seating capacity at the time, quickly became the center of musical and social life in New York, presenting such notable performers as Adelina Patti , and events such as the grand ball in honor of the Prince of Wales in the autumn of 1860. The building burned down in 1866, and was replaced by a new Academy of Music . Irving Hall , a ballroom, concert, and lecture hall annex to the Academy, served as the home of the New York Philharmonic in 1861-63. The Steinway piano company opened Steinway Hall , a combination showroom and recital hall at 109 East 14th Street, which for many years was the foremost concert hall in the country . By the mid-1860s, a number of legitimate theaters were also opening in the vicinity of Union Square, which during the last quarter of the nineteenth century became the center of New York theater. These included Wallack's Theater , 728 Broadway at 13th Street, the most prestigious dramatic theater in the country during this period; the Union Square Theater , an adjunct of the former Union Place Hotel; Chickering Hall , Fifth Avenue and 18th Street; and Amberg Theater , 11 Irving Place . The Germania Theater, which along with the Amberg catered to a specifically German clientele, was located in Tammany Hall in 1874-81, in Wallack’s Theater in 1881-82, and until 1902 in the former Church of St. Ann, East 8th Street near Broadway. Union Square, after the Civil War, became the traditional site for workers’, union, and political protests and rallies. As wealthier residents moved northward in the 1850s, their single-family residences were converted into multiple dwellings or boardinghouses, as well as other uses, such as clubs or community cultural institutions. For instance, the former Ralph and Ann E. Van Wyck Mead House at 110 Second Avenue in 1874 became the Isaac T. Hopper Home of the Women’s Prison Association, and, of the Federal style houses on the westernmost block of St. Mark’s Place: No. 29 became the Harmonie Club, a German-Jewish singing club ; Nos. 19-21 housed another German musical club, the Arion Singing Society , and these buildings, along with No. 23, became Arlington Hall, a ballroom-community center in 1887. Most of the remaining houses were demolished for denser development with French flats and tenements between 1874 and 1902. Hastening the change in the residential character of this section of the Lower East Side after mid-century were a wide variety of major cultural, religious, commercial, and educational institutions, including the Astor Place Opera House , Astor and Lafayette Places; Astor Library , 425 Lafayette Street; Bible House , home of the American Bible Society and other religious organizations, Astor Place and Third Avenue; and Cooper Union , Astor Place and Third Avenue. The New York Free Circulating Library, Ottendorfer Branch, and German Dispensary , 135 and 137 Second Avenue, among others, catered to the German community. Assembly halls such as Webster Hall and Annex , 119-125 East 11th Street, became important neighborhood social centers. The Third Avenue elevated railroad opened in 1878. The Aschenbroedel Verein A social and benevolent association composed almost exclusively of German-American professional orchestral musicians, the Aschenbroedel Verein was founded informally in 1860, with its name, “Cinderella Society,” supposedly a play on the last name of one of its members , August Asche. After initially meeting at Schneider’s Hall, 371 Broome Street, by 1866 the group had grown large enough with some 300 members for it to acquire a building on East 4th Street. The Aschenbroedel Verein became one of the leading German organizations in Kleindeutschland on the Lower East Side, and counted as members many of the most important musicians in the city, including conductors Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas, and Walter Damrosch, as well as all of the members of the Theodore Thomas Orchestra and most of the members of the New York Philharmonic. According to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1880, this was also “the headquarters” of the New York Philharmonic Society, though the Philharmonic’s Minutes books illustrate that this was one of several locations in the neighborhood where its directors’ and business meetings were held, between 1873 and 1888. Howard Shanet, in Philharmonic: A History of New York’s Orchestra , stated that the Aschenbroedel Verein was the first organization in New York to advance the unionization of musicians, as early as 1860, an effort that culminated later with the formation of the Musical Mutual Protective Union. Shanet called Aschenbroedel “at once a cultural, a benevolent, a social, and a labor association.” He further emphasized the total domination of the symphonic world in New York by the German community, with nearly all of the Philharmonic men of German birth or parentage by 1892. The Aschenbroedel Verein’s motto was “Freundschaft, Geselligkeit, Befoerderung der Kunst” . By 1870, there were an estimated 64 German musical societies within New York City, and a number of them were located in the vicinity, either in converted structures or purpose-built ones. These included the Arion Singing Society ; Liederkranz , 31-35 East 4th Street; and Beethoven Maennerchor , located in a hall built in 1870 at 210-214 East 5th Street. In addition, Turnverein Halle , 66-68 East 4th Street, was built just down the block from the Aschenbroedel Verein. In 1873, the Aschenbroedel Verein, under president George Matzka , constructed this purpose-built structure, clad in brick and four stories , at an estimated cost of $24,000. Construction began in June and was completed in October. The architect was August H. Blankenstein , who was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. in 1860. Active from 1872 to 1899, he designed tenement, flats, and factory buildings for a mostly German clientele, as well as the addition to the Centre Market Armory , Grand and Centre Streets; work on the 55th Regiment, 23rd Regiment, and First Cavalry 22nd Regiment Armories ; and St. Joseph’s R.C. Orphan Asylum School , Avenue A and 90th Street. A 1894 lawsuit indicated that Blankenstein had been a partner of architect Henry Herter prior to 1886 . Blankenstein was also listed as an architect in an 1890 directory in Buffalo, N.Y. The Times reported on November 7, 1873, that the Aschenbroedel Verein had “inaugurated its new club-house... last night, by an entertainment of music and social festivities.” Considered “one of the most commodious German clubhouses in the city,” its amenities included a restaurant, a library, a billiard room, and a bowling alley in the basement. Among activities conducted here were meetings of the Ancient Lodge of Perfection in 1873, and the 1876 funeral of Philharmonic conductor and Aschenbroedel Verein member Carl Bergmann. For unknown reasons, the building was listed for sale in 1882, but the Aschenbroedel Verein remained here until it sold the building in September 1891. The society, then having some 700 members, moved in November 1892 into a new clubhouse at 144 East 86th Street in Yorkville. The Gesangverein Schillerbund and Schillerbund Halle In June 1892, the Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the Gesangverein Schillerbund , one of the city’s leading and oldest German singing societies. Founded in 1850 and named after the poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller , the Schillerbund had been meeting since 1872 in Turnverein Halle. The purchase price of its new building was $1.00, subject to $37,500 in mortgages held by the Bachmann Brewing Co. of Clifton, Staten Island. This structure was altered between September and October 1892 by the architectural firm of [Frederick William] Kurtzer & [Richard O.L.] Rohl. Interestingly, Kurtzer was a member of the Beethoven Maennerchor. In partnership from about 1888 until 1901, Kurtzer & Rohl specialized in tenements and flats buildings for a largely German clientele; examples of its work include Nos. 95 Bedford Street and 285 West 4th Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District, and No. 121 East 10th Street , located within the St. Mark’s Historic District. The firm was also responsible for the First German Reformed Church , 351 East 68th Street, and its Sunday School . Richard O.L. Rohl , an immigrant from Prussia in 1880, maintained an independent practice from 1902 until around 1919. No. 391 West Street , located within the Weehawken Street Historic District, was his first independent commission, and he also designed the double tenement buildings at Nos. 35-39 Christopher Street , located within the Greenwich Village Historic District. Frederick William Kurtzer , emigrated from Germany around 1870. He worked independently in 1901-02, then became a partner in Kurtzer & Rentz in 1903-06, with Charles Rentz, Jr. , an architect who was born in New York City of German descent. Rentz was extraordinarily prolific in the design of flats and tenement buildings in the 1880s, but is best known for the design of Webster Hall and Annex . Kurtzer continued to practice in Manhattan and the Bronx until around 1925. The Dept. of Buildings 1892 alteration application for the Gesangverein Schillerbund Building, as well as the dockets, only listed $1,200 in work, involving interior partition alterations in the basement and second story. In an article on the building’s opening in November 1892, however, the New York Times indicated that it had been “almost entirely rebuilt and refitted,” and that “the building cost in all about $45,000. ... On the ground floor are fine bowling alleys, the kitchen and restaurant. The second floor is used for assembly and meeting rooms, the third for lodge rooms, and the top of the house is occupied by the tenant.” The 1892 tax assessment for the property increased by more than 25 percent, and the structure was later described in the Times as “one of the best Maennerchor clubhouses in that section of this city.” The design of the main facade, altered at this time with the addition of cast-iron ornament, combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs , and features a variety of pedimented lintels, quoins, fraktur-like incising, three composers’ busts over the second-story windows, and a prominent cornice with a large broken pediment. A Schillerbund Fair was held here December 10-20, 1892. By 1895, the membership of the Schillerbund was around 400, and the hall, managed by Gustav Schunemann, reportedly enjoyed “much popularity among the merrymakers of that neighborhood.” In November 1896, however, the Gesangverein Schillerbund sold the property and moved to Yorkville . This building was purchased for $40,195 by the Bachmann Brewing Co., holder of the mortgage. The company was founded by the German-born Frederick Bachmann , who had immigrated to New York in 1859, and worked at the Lion Brewery in Manhattan, prior to moving to Staten Island, where he was employed by the Schmidt Brewery and Gabriel Meyer Brewery, becoming the co-owner with David Meyer until it was destroyed by fire in 1881. As indicated by Charles L. Sachs in Made on Staten Island, “The successful breweries were not just efficient manufacturing enterprises. To market and distribute their products the breweries acquired real estate holdings and developed close ties with the restaurant, recreation, and tourism businesses. The major breweries owned, operated, and rented saloons, taverns, beer gardens, hotels, and even resort complexes.” This building became a rental assembly hall, and there are references in newspapers calling it “Schillerbund Halle” as late as 1901. A sampling of meetings and events held here included: pattern makers ; Eastern Star chapter of the Order of Chosen Friends ; New York branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers ; New York Engineers & Machinists Society ; New York Engineers’ Protective Association ; and Poles celebrating the 1863 insurrection . Krywaczy’s Hall, Saenger Hall, and McKinley Hall The building continued to be used as a public rental hall and social center, under three different names, and like such sites as Webster Hall , was a venue for organizational meetings and political and union functions, particularly for the working-class and immigrant population of the Lower East Side. As opined by historian Kathy Peiss: For the working-class population packed into small tenement apartments, large halls that could be rented for dances, weddings, mass meetings, and other gatherings were a requirement of social life. The number of public halls in Manhattan rose substantially in a short period; business directories listed 130 halls in 1895 and 195 in 1910, an increase of 50 percent. While some of these, like Carnegie Hall, were cultural spaces of the privileged, most were located in working-class districts. The largest East Side halls... were always in great demand. In a September 12, 1901, New York Times announcement of a meeting here of the Polish community to denounce Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who had shot President William McKinley on September 6, the location was referred to as “Krywaczy’s Hall” . John Krywacsy was listed in directories as a liquor dealer on Forsyth Street. City directories in 1901-03, as well as the 1903 Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, called this “Saenger Hall.” The Bachmann Brewing Co. leased the property in April 1903 to Max Sapiro and Ike Lifschitz. Sapiro was listed in the 1910 Census as a Polish/Austrian-born café proprietor, though he was not listed in directories in connection with this property, while Issac Lifshitz was Russian-born according to the 1900 Census, and was listed in directories in this building in 1903-05 operating a saloon. Among groups meeting here were the Heinrich Heine lodge , Smoking Pipe Makers’ Union , and East Side Restaurant Keepers . Apparently in commemoration of the assassinated President, the name of the building was changed to “McKinley Hall” by 1904. Organizations that met here included the formation of the New-York Rent Payers’ Protective Association , Lady Lining Makers , and Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America . Frederick Bachmann was judged to be incompetent in July 1904 ; in November 1904, Bachmann’s trustees transferred this property to Combined Securities Co., which held an auction in January 1905. The auction advertisement listed “Bowling alleys in cellar. Store, meeting, lodge, music rooms, and apartments above.” After passing through several owners, the building was acquired in February 1906 by Malka Marder; the wife of Benjamin Marder, a cloak contractor in the 1910 Census, both were Polish/Austrian-born. The Newsboys’ Athletic Club In September 1905, the three upper stories of the former McKinley Hall were leased for use as the Newsboys’ Athletic Club, founded by Jack Sullivan , known as the “King of the Newsboys,” a former newsboy and prizefighter who then sold papers to newsboys. The Club had a gymnasium and showers, a reading/classroom, and a lodging room for over fifty boys. The club depended on donations from New York’s society – one benefit, held in March 1907 at the Academy of Music, was directed by impresarios George M. Cohan and Sam Harris. By May 1911, with the expiration of its lease, the Club, by that time serving some 2,000 newsboys, purchased the former home of the New-York Historical Society at Second Avenue and 11th Street. The basement and storefront of the Newsboys’ Athletic Club building had been leased for use as a laundry in 1905-07 to Paul C. Port , and from 1908 to March 1912 to the New System Napkin, Towel Supply & Steam Laundry Co., until legal action against the company was taken by the Marders. Floral Garden Hall Malka Marder sold the building in February 1913, and it was purchased the following month by Sarah Hirsch, the wife of Charles Hirsch, proprietor of the Manhattan Lyceum at 66-68 East 4th Street; both Hirsches were born in Romania. Operated as Floral Garden Hall, it was altered into a dance hall on the ground story, with meeting and banquet rooms above. Among the many events held here were: the annual convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America ; Brotherhood Welfare Association gathering on behalf of New York’s hoboes ; Women Dressmakers’ Association and Journeymen Barbers’ League strike meetings ; a planned meeting of the Anti-Militarist League, which resulted in a riot after the owner reneged on the use of the hall ; Sheet Metal Workers’ meetings ; garment workers strike meetings ; Messenger Boys’ Union strike headquarters ; and Branch No. 578, Arbeiter Ring of the Socialist Party, and Sholom Aleichem Lodge of the Jewish National Workers’ Alliance of America . In 1916, the ground story was altered for a storefront, incorporating 1892 cast-iron pilasters . The property was foreclosed in January 1919 and sold at auction. Standard Provision Co./ Hygrade Food Products Corp. After 45 years of use as a social and meeting hall, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building for the next four decades served as meatpacking plant. The property was purchased in February 1919 by the Standard Provision Co. at 102 Rivington Street. A Dept. of Buildings application indicated that the building would be used for meatpacking, with storage in the basement, shipping and receiving on the ground story, a meat provisions and drying factory on the second story, and offices on the third story. In December 1927, Standard Provision was acquired through a merger of nine wholesale provisions companies by the Hygrade Food Products Corp. , 152 Broadway. The Washington Post called this “the first consolidation of delicatessen food properties ever effected.” According to a notice in the New York Times, the constituent companies manufacture and sell frankfurters, bolognas, salamis, smoked and cured tongues, spiced, pickled and corned beef and various other ready-to-serve meat products. The companies are among the most important serving New York and Philadelphia. Their success individually and collectively has established an enviable record in the industry. Their products are sold to over 5,000 customers, including delicatessen stores, chain stores, drug stores, meat markets, clubs, grocers, hotels, restaurants, steamship and railroad companies, etc., throughout the United States and in foreign countries. City directories over the years variously listed divisions of the corporation here: Hebrew National Food Products ; Carmel Kosher Provision Co. ; and Hod Carmel Kosher Provision Co. . Hygrade sold this property in February 1960. 20th-Century History of the East Village After a period of decline, Greenwich Village was becoming known, prior to World War I, for its historic and picturesque qualities, its affordable housing, and the diversity of its population and social and political ideas. Many artists and writers, as well as tourists, were attracted to the Village. By the 1910s, property owners and merchants attempted to improve the Village’s economy and rehabilitate its physical condition, with “shrewd realtors beg[inning] to amass their holdings of dilapidated housing.” These various factors and the increased desirability of the Village to upper-middle-class professionals lead to a real estate boom – “rents increased during the 1920s by 140 percent and in some cases by as much as 300 percent.” After World War II, the ethnic make-up of the Lower East Side changed again, becoming dominated by Latin American immigrants, especially those from Puerto Rico. Their immigration was encouraged by the government as a source of cheap labor, particularly for the garment trades, hotels, and small manufacturing. The community named itself Loisaida to symbolize the second generation Hispanic roots that had developed in the context of the African-American and Latino movements for social and economic justice, equality, and identity. The residential and cultural desirability of the neighborhood that came to be known as the “East Village” increased with the removal of the Third Avenue El in 1955. As indicated by Terry Miller, the psychological barrier that had marked the eastern boundary of Greenwich Village was gone. Blocks that once had no prestige were suddenly seen as intriguing, and apartments here were less costly than those in Greenwich Village. ... As artists and writers moved east, the blocks from St. Mark’s Place to Tenth Street were the first to hint that the Lower East Side was being transformed. Realtors began marketing the area as “Village East,” and by 1961 as the “East Village,” a name that stuck. From World War I to the 1940s, Second Avenue between East 14th and Houston Streets had been considered the heart of New York’s Jewish community, known as the “Yiddish Rialto” for its role as the world’s center of Yiddish theater. As Yiddish theater declined, the East Village gave rise in the 1950s to “Off-Broadway” theater, including the Phoenix Theater in the former Louis N. Jaffe Art Theater building , 181-189 Second Avenue; the Tempo Playhouse and Pyramid, Key, Bowery, New Bowery, and Bridge Theaters in the former Hamilton-Holly House, 4 St. Marks Place; and the Orpheum Theater , 126 Second Avenue. An “off-Off-Broadway” theater also emerged in the late 1950s, characterized by the small size of the venues and total avoidance of commercialism and its pressures. Joe Cino’s Caffe Cino , 31 Cornelia Street, is generally recognized as the first, and other significant early off-Off-Broadway theaters were Judson Memorial Church under Rev. Al Carmines; Ellen Stewart’s Café La Mama/ La Mama Experimental Theatre Club , 321 East 9th Street ; and Theater Genesis in St. Marks in the Bowery Church under Michael Allen and Ralph Cook. Off-Off Broadway theater coincided with the emergence of gay theater in New York. In the 1950s, the East Village also became home to a number of key Beat Generation writers, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, and W.H. Auden, and was renowned for its protest art and politics, galleries, poetry and coffee houses, bookstores, clubs, with a “counterculture” scene centered on St. Mark’s Place. Rodale Press, Inc. The 74 East 4th Street building was purchased in February 1960 by Rodale Press, Inc., of Emmaus, Pa. Jerome Irving Rodale was a New York accountant who, with a brother, in 1923 founded Rodale Mfg. Co., which made commercial and residential electrical connectors. After relocating the firm to Emmaus, Rodale became interested in organic farming. Rodale Press began publishing Organic Farming & Gardening and Prevention , a magazine devoted to nutrition and personal health, and later, other magazines and health books. In order to promote his concepts, he was also a playwright and theatrical producer. Rodale apparently originally intended to use No. 74 as a theater – the Times listed building plans as such in 1960; instead, Rodale in 1962 purchased No. 64 East 4th Street with the intention to “convert it into an intimate playhouse, theatre workshop and acting school.” A directory in 1963 listed Rodale Press and the Rodale Theater at 62 East 4th Street, and Rodale Mfg. Co. at No. 60. Rodale sold the property in September 1967. La Mama Experimental Theatre Club In November 1967, the former Aschenbroedel Verein Building was acquired by the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, an off-Off-Broadway theater company that had been founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart. After her arrival in New York in 1950, Ms. Stewart worked in retail clothing and fashion, becoming a freelance designer. She opened a basement Café La Mama at 321 East 9th Street in 1961, intended as a combination boutique and theater, the latter partly inspired by the experience of a brother who was an aspiring playwright. The café’s first play in July 1962 was Tennessee Williams’ “One Arm,” and later that year Stewart put on the first American production of a Harold Pinter play, “The Room.” She was forced, however, to move several times: to 82 Second Avenue in 1963, after being closed by the Dept. of Buildings due to a zoning violation; and to a loft at 122 Second Avenue in 1964, after being closed twice by the Police, Fire, Licenses, and Health Departments. In March 1964, the company was renamed the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and Stewart was acclaimed during its first European tour in 1965. An Actors’ Equity crackdown in 1966 on coffee houses and theater workshops nearly ended the company, but the union relented in recognition of the importance in New York of experimental theater . By 1967, the Times called Ms. Stewart “the most active producer in New York City,” with a new American play every two weeks. Her abiding philosophy has been that La Mama is “dedicated to the playwright and all forms of theater.” She notes that “I started La Mama so there would be a place where a playwright could write, see and learn. Why should a new playwright be regarded on the same terms as an experienced playwright the very first time out – which is what most professional criticism does?” She has personally selected and invited these playwrights, who then act as their own producer, with La Mama considered an attractive venue due to its lack of censorship. La Mama received major Ford and Rockefeller Foundations grants in 1967, allowing the purchase and renovation of the 74 East 4th Street building, which was then “in ruins.” In June 1968, its Second Avenue theater closed, with plays temporarily produced at 9 St. Mark’s Place, while renovations occurred on East 4th Street. The current La Mama Experimental Theatre Club opened in March 1969, with repertory and ensemble theaters on the first and second stories, rehearsal space on the third story, and Stewart’s apartment on the top story. The first two productions inaugurating the theaters were the musical “Caution: A Love Story,” by Tom Eyen and Bruce Kirle, based on the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Julie Bovasso’s “Gloria and Esperanza.” The first-story theater was renovated in 1972. A National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1974 allowed for the expansion into an Annex at 66-68 East 4th Street . Today, La Mama, the oldest off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City, is widely considered the most influential and has been called “the most prolific of all the off off-Broadway stages,” to date having produced an estimated 1,900 plays in New York City, and countless more around the world. La Mama has received more than sixty Obie Awards for Off-Broadway theater , as well as dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards. Ellen Stewart, recognized as a pioneering African-American theater impresario, was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award and MacArthur Fellows Award , and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame . Though commercial theater has not been its focus, a number of La Mama plays achieved success on Broadway, including “Godspell” and “Torch Song Trilogy,” and its resident director, Tom O’Horgan, later produced the influential hit “Hair.” Among the notable playwrights associated with La Mama have been Jean-Claude van Itallie, Paul Foster, Ruth Yorck, Tom Eyen, Julie Bovasso, David Starkweather, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, William Hoffman, Adrienne Kennedy, Charles Ludlam, and Terence McNally; eminent directors have included O’Horgan, Joseph Chaiken, Andrei Serban, Wilford Leach, John Vacarro, Marshall Mason, and Meredith Monk; and performers of note have included Bill Irwin, Billy Crystal, Nick Nolte, Danny De Vito, Bette Midler, and Estelle Getty. Description The four-story and three-bay, red brick-clad Aschenbroedel Verein Building was originally built in 1873; the front facade was altered in 1892 with the addition of cast-iron ornament that combines elements of the German Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles with folk motifs. Ground Story: Four 1892 cast-iron pilasters survive, which are fluted at the base, paneled above, and ornamented with incised blocks that are surmounted by bosses and inverted hearts. The iron entablature once supported by the pilasters has been removed ; the story is terminated by a painted stone stringcourse. Alterations dating from 1969 include: the central metal-and-glass entrance doors , which are surmounted by a wooden panel and sign; brick infill between and above the pilasters; announcement board on the east side of the facade; and two light fixtures placed above the entrance. Second through Fourth Stories: The upper stories are flanked by vermiculated cast-iron quoins . All windows have cast-iron surrounds, ornamented with hearts on the sides and incised motifs on the sills, and are linked together and to the quoins by panels with fraktur-like incising. Many of the moldings once located above the hearts on the windows are missing. The second-story windows are double-height, are capped by round-arched pediments ornamented with three composers’ busts, and have six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The third story windows have segmental broken-scroll pediments and six-over-six double-hung wood sash . The central fourth-story window is capped by a pediment, while the outer windows have entablatures . The prominent metal cornice has stylized modillions ornamented with hearts , rods, and incised ends and is surmounted by a large molded, broken pediment, ornamented at the ends by sunbursts. Western Facade: This facade, currently visible above the first story, has keyed returns of the front facade’s quoins, and a portion of red brick facing; the rest of the facade is unarticulated and parged. Eastern Facade: Attached to the eastern side of the building [and not on the designated Landmark Site] is a tan brick wall, constructed as part of a light court for No. 63-65 Second Avenue . - From the 2009 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenville,_Illinois

Greenville is a city in Bond County, Illinois, United States, 51 miles (82 km) east of St. Louis. The population as of the 2010 census was 7,000. It is the county seat of Bond County.

Greenville is part of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is also considered part of the Metro East region of Illinois.

Greenville celebrated its Bicentennial in 2015 as one of the oldest communities in Illinois. It is home to Greenville University, the Richard Bock Museum, the American Farm Heritage Museum, the Armed Forces Museum and the Demoulin Museum and a federal prison, Federal Correctional Institution, Greenville (FCI Greenville). It is also home to internationally known companies, including Nevco Scoreboard, the largest privately owned scoreboard company in the world, and DeMoulin Brothers, the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of band uniforms.

Source: www.americanfarmheritagemuseum.com/about-us.html

The American Farm Heritage Museum was one man's dream. The Museum became a reality when a group of men, mostly farmers, sitting in coffee shop, talked about the dream of building a museum to preserve the farm heritage. Sixty farmers, collectors, and civic leaders held a meeting to share their ideas with the public in April of 2002. It was agreed that Bond County, being near the middle of the state and right along 1-70, would be the perfect place. Meetings were conducted, fundraisers were held, and ideas were passed around. In 2002 the land for the museum was acquired and a name for the museum was chosen.

The American Farm Heritage Museum would sit on seventeen acres, along the south side of interstate 70, just east of the Route 127 overpass. Its goal would be to promote and share the heritage of America's rural life: living, farming and travel. One very generous family purchased the land and leased it for ninety-nine years to the American Farm Heritage Museum, NFP organization. After a year of planning, the first 32'x64' building, with a gambrel roof, was completed. It was finished just days before the first Heritage Days Show in July 2004. This building, originally was to be a tractor maintenance shop, but later became known as the Lil' Red Barn Museum.

In the winter of 2005, owners of a truck terminal building in St. Louis gave the building to the Museum, if we took it down. Several members went to work and got the 200'x100' building moved and rebuilt. Since then other buildings and groups have been added to the show grounds.

We are growing with each passing year. Our Main building is the site of numerous events throughout the year. The Lil' Red Barn is a little piece of history, with collections of items from the past. In 2009 this building received the Illinois Governor's Home Town Award. The Tractor Shed displays different makes of tractors and tools of the past. Our Christmas building, which operates as a work shop and houses all the Christmas boxes for The Christmas Lights Wonderland, partners with The Lil' Red Barn, Railroad, Hill's Fort and the Armed Forces Museum to put on a spectacular Christmas display.

The American Heritage Railroad, established in 2003 is a division of the American Farm Heritage Museum. Many rail-enthusiast members realized as farms were connected by the American Railroad so should the Museum have an operating railroad for its historic value, as well as provide a fun ride for visitors. May 10, 2005 the railroad division was officially formed and an intensive search began to procure equipment. Many thousands of hours of volunteer labor, by friends of the railroad, have resulted in over a mile of 13" gauge track being laid, on the grounds. It is our desire to honor the great railroads that have served Bond County, such as the Vandalia, Nickel Plate, Pennsylvania and CB & Q. In 2005 the Ben Winter's Museum railroad was purchased which provided a G-15 diesel train set. The final move of the Ben Winter's railroad was completed in November, in three days with 20 volunteers, 9 trailers and one semi-truck. The collection has grown to include both diesel and steam engines and a variety of rolling stock. The railroad owns three steam locomotives. It is hoped the 1926 Wagner 4-4-2 steam engine will be ready for operation for the 2015 season.

2005 Hill's Fort also joined the Museum. Hill's Fort played an important part in the opening of Northwest Territory. Hill's Fort may have started as early as 1806 when early settlers first arrived. The Fort's location appears on an 1808 survey map by Capt. Isaac Hill, leader of a team commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the Illinois Territory. The Legislature fixed Hill's Fort as the temporary county seat. Earliest records are preserved from Hill's Fort and include court and marriage dockets. The Bond County seat was later moved to Perrysville and, in 1821 to Greenville, Illinois. No longer useful as a fort or county seat, Hill's Fort was abandoned and fell to ruin.

Following excruciating study of the original site, a replica of the Fort has been recreated on the grounds of the Farm Museum. It is open to the public on the 1st Saturday of the month from May through October and also open, for tours and special occasions. At Christmas time they are open Friday and Saturday nights for the Christmas lights. They dress in period dress and cook over the open fireplace in the cabin, and are eager to answer questions.

In 2012 The Armed Forces Museum, "Memories of Steel", joined our Museum. It maintains as its sole mission, to preserve these important pieces of military history. The Museum houses one of the largest collections of military vehicles in the County. It currently watches over approximately 15 privately-owned and 25 museum-owned vehicles. The members are involved in a program called "Living history" which furnishes displays of t1istoric vehicles and memorabilia and, works with re-enactors at civil events like Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day. Each of these vehicles has an historic story and plays a very important role in connecting us with the soldiers who lived and died in their service to the country.

Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, New York, United States

The Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151, in Forest Hills, Queens, was constructed by the Fire Department of the City of New York in 1924. The firehouse was intended to serve the growing population of the Forest Hills neighborhood, which had seen a boom in residential construction following World War I. The large, two and two-and-a-half story Neo-Medieval style firehouse is clad in red brick laid in a Flemish bond and enlivened with decorative limestone details and subtle patterned brickwork.

The asymmetrical massing of the building is accentuated by steep gables clad with copper standing-seam roofs, two prominent square towers (a stair tower and a hose-drying tower) featuring round-arched window openings, and a slender chimney rising nearly a story above the western elevation. The innovative design of this firehouse has been attributed to John R. Sliney, head building inspector for the fire department, during whose tenure approximately 70 firehouses were constructed throughout the five boroughs. The firehouse, which has experienced remarkably few changes in the 90 years since its construction, continues to serve the Forest Hills community today. It is at once a striking presence along the Queens Boulevard streetscape and a well-integrated constituent of this vibrant residential neighborhood.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

Firefighting in New York

Even in the colonial period, the government of New York took the possibility of fire very seriously. Under Dutch rule all men were expected to participate in firefighting activities. After the English took over, the Common Council organized a force of 30 volunteer firefighters in 1737. They operated two Newsham hand pumpers that had recently been imported from London. By 1798, the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), under the supervision of a chief engineer and six subordinates, was officially established by an act of the state legislature.

As the city grew, this force was augmented by new volunteer companies. In spite of growing numbers of firefighters and improvements in hoses and water supplies, fire was a significant threat in an increasingly densely built up city. Of particular significance was the “Great Fire” of December 16-17, 1835, which caused more damage to property than any other event in New York City. The damages resulting from several major fires which occurred between 1800 and 1850 led to the establishment of a building code, and an increase in the number of firemen from 600 in 1800 to more than 4,000 in 1865. Despite rapid growth, the department was often criticized for poor performance. Intense competition between companies began to hinder firefighting with frequent brawls and acts of sabotage, often at the scenes of fires. During the Civil War, when fire personnel became harder to retain, public support grew for the creation of a professional firefighting force, similar to that which had been established in other cities and to the professional police force that had been created in New York in 1845.

In May 1865, the New York State Legislature established the Metropolitan Fire District, comprising the cities of New York (south of 86th Street) and Brooklyn. The act abolished the volunteer system and created the Metropolitan Fire Department, a paid professional force under the jurisdiction of the state government. By the end of the year, the city’s 124 volunteer companies with more than 4,000 men had retired or disbanded, to be replaced by 33 engine companies and 12 ladder companies operated by a force of 500 men. Immediate improvements included the use of more steam engines, horses, and a somewhat reliable telegraph system. A military model was adopted for the firefighters, which involved the use of specialization, discipline, and merit. By 1870, regular service was extended to the “suburban districts” north of 86th Street and expanded still farther north after the annexation of parts of the Bronx in 1874. New techniques and equipment, including taller ladders and stronger steam engines, increased the department’s efficiency, as did the establishment, in 1883, of a training academy for personnel. The growth of the city during this period placed severe demands on the fire department to provide services, and in response the department undertook an ambitious building campaign.

The area served by the FDNY nearly doubled after consolidation in 1898, when the departments in Brooklyn and numerous communities in Queens and Staten Island were incorporated into the city. For several decades after consolidation, the independent volunteer fire companies already extant in these communities continued to serve in areas where there was insufficient population to justify the establishment of paid units. The volunteer companies were systematically disbanded as the city’s population continued to grow, with paid departments taking their place. In the decades that ensued, the fire department acquired more modern apparatus and motorized vehicles, reflecting, among other demands, the need for faster response to fires in taller buildings. Throughout the 20th century, the FDNY has continued endeavoring to keep up with the evolving city and its firefighting needs.

Firehouse Design

By the early 20th century, the New York City firehouse as a building type had evolved from the wooden storage shed used during the 17th century to an imposing architectural expression of civic character. As early as 1853, Marriott Field had argued in his City Architecture: Designs for Dwelling

Houses, Stores, Hotels, etc. for symbolic architectural expression in municipal buildings, including firehouses. The 1854 Fireman’s Hall, with its highly symbolic ornamentation reflected this approach, using flambeaux, hooks, ladders, and trumpets for its ornament.

Between 1880 and 1895, Napoleon LeBrun & Son served as the official architectural firm for the fire department, designing 42 firehouses in a massive effort to modernize the facilities and to accommodate the growing population of the city. Although the firm’s earliest designs were relatively simple, later buildings were more distinguished and more clearly identifiable as firehouses.

While the basic function and requirements of the firehouse were established early in its history, LeBrun is credited with standardizing the program, and introducing some minor, but important, innovations in the plan. Placing the horse stalls in the main part of the ground floor to reduce the time needed for hitching horses to the apparatus was one such innovation. LeBrun is also credited with the creation of vertical hose-drying towers to accommodate this necessary activity in a space-saving manner. Firehouses were usually located on mid-block sites because these were less expensive than more prominent corner sites. Since the sites were narrow, firehouses tended to be three stories tall, with the apparatus on the ground story and rooms for the company, including dormitory, kitchen and captain’s office, above.

After 1895, the fire department commissioned a number of well-known architects to design firehouses. Influenced by the classical revival which was highly popular throughout the country, New York firms such as Hoppin & Koen, Flagg & Chambers, and Horgan & Slatterly created facades with bold, classical style designs. After 1910 there was a Georgian revival in civic design, and red brick firehouses in that general style were built in large numbers throughout New York through at least 1930, with later firehouses incorporating elements of the Art Deco and Moderne styles through at least 1940. During this era, the department appears to have transitioned away from the well-known architects of the previous decades towards utilization of in-house architects employed within the buildings division of the department, largely to lower expenses.

Growth of Queens and Forest Hills

Much of the early development of Queens followed the patterns established in the rest of New York City. The first known European settlements were in the Astoria, Hunters Point, and Dutch Kills area of Long Island City. Queens remained rural and sparsely settled through the 1850s, when land speculation began in Maspeth, Corona, and Hunters Point. Still, development and urbanization of Queens progressed slowly in the ensuing decades. Near the end of the 19th century, western Queens and the Rockaway beaches attracted people for their leisure-time activities, while manufacturers opened factories at Whitestone, Woodhaven, and College Point because of the cheaper land available there.

At the time of its consolidation with New York City, the area that became the Borough of Queens had a population of only 152,999 people - due in large part to the region’s inaccessibility. Although the first train line between Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens began as early as 1836, and a few other routes were established through Queens to other parts of Long Island in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, train travel was limited. The Pennsylvania Railroad purchased the Long Island Railroad in 1900 and electrified the trains through Queens in 1905-08. However, the trains all had to connect by ferry to Manhattan until 1909 when the Queensborough Bridge opened. In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad opened its tunnels under the East River, finally establishing Queens as an attractive location within easy commuting distance to Manhattan. Following this innovation, the population of the borough nearly doubled to 284,041. Other improvements soon followed, including a dramatically enlarged road system and the development of towns and buildings. St. Albans and Bellerose, followed closely by Auburndale, Beechhurst, and Forest Hills, were among the many residential areas developed during the early years of the 20th century.

In 1906, developer Cord Meyer who had previously been active in the Elmhurst section of Queens, purchased 600 acres (comprising the land of six farms) in the area known as the Hopedale section of Whitepot. Changing the name to Forest Hills because of its high ground and its proximity to the beautiful terrain of Forest Park, he began to lay out streets, install utilities, and construct the first houses. To encourage sales, Meyer’s company ran horse-drawn stages to Forest Hills from the closest train station in Elmhurst. By 1908, the Long Island Railroad was running three steam-driven trains a day with a local stop at Austin Street and Roman Avenue.

In 1906, the Russell Sage Foundation purchased 160 acres of land south of the railroad line with the intent to develop a “modern suburban development” to contrast with the overcrowding, squalor and chaos of residential districts in Manhattan. The proposed development, Forest Hills Gardens, was the collaborative creation of landscape architect and planner Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and the architect and housing reform activist Grosvenor Atterbury. Together they conceived of a picturesque enclave of homes, schools, churches, and businesses that would, upon completion in 1909-10, be widely publicized across the country as a modern Arcadia - a place where people of “moderate income and good taste... might find some country air and country life within striking distance of the active centers of New York.” The completed development consisted of a brick-paved square shaded by trees built in front of the train station, a clock tower, arched passageways, and garden apartments built to resemble a row of country inns along narrow, winding roads that discouraged through-traffic.

The electrification of the Long Island Railroad in 1909 and the opening of the Queensborough Bridge that same year further advanced the development of the Forest Hills neighborhood. Queens Boulevard, the major thoroughfare that runs through the neighborhood, was widened in 1913, spurring Cord Meyer to improve his remaining acreage. By 1921, Meyer’s company had constructed some 200 homes, and several apartment buildings. Within Forest Hills Gardens, a number of brick houses of both modest and luxury scale were constructed between 1910 and 1917, followed by the first apartment building - the Forest Arms - in 1924. The world-famous West Side Tennis Club, home of the U. S. Open Tennis Tournament for many years, was constructed in Forest Hills in 1923. The small, inward-facing developments of Arbor Close and Forest Close, which aesthetically emulate the nearby Forest Hills Gardens and which abut the site of the Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151, were completed in 1925 and 1927, respectively. The IND Subway line, which opened with a stop at Queens Boulevard and Continental Avenue in 1936, was another major improvement that guaranteed the continued growth of the area.

Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151

The Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151 was dedicated on November 15, 1924 in Forest Hills, Queens. The two companies that would occupy the building, Engine Company 305 and Hook & Ladder Company 151, were officially organized on the same day the firehouse opened, assigned to the 46th Battalion, 13th Division of the Fire Department of the City of New York. In contrast to statements made in the early part of the century, by the 1920s, the fire department found there to be a “great need” for new firehouses in this, and other growing Queens neighborhoods. It announced intentions to extend the paid fire department into Forest Hills, and in 1923 it awarded a contract in the amount of $77,713 for construction of a new firehouse on Queens Boulevard. The site for the firehouse appears to have been acquired in 1922, along with sites for firehouses in several other Queens communities, including Bayside, Queens Village, Jamaica, and Jackson Heights, as well as sites for firehouses in Brooklyn and “Westchester.” As noted in the 1924 Annual Report of the FDNY:

The development of certain sections of Brooklyn and Queens has made it imperative to extend the activities of this department. To keep abreast of times it has been necessary to have new firehouses constructed.

Fire loss statistics during this era further underscore the increased need for fire protection throughout Queens, with losses doubling from $1.372 million in 1921 to $2.744 million in 1922.

In contrast to the preceding decades, by the 1920s, the FDNY had transitioned away from commissioning well-known architects to design its firehouses in favor of utilizing in-house staff. In the 1922 Annual Report of the FDNY, in which the approval for construction of several firehouses, including the one in Forest Hills, was discussed, it was noted that the “plans [for the firehouses] have been prepared by the Department and therefore there will be no architect employed in connection with the erection of these buildings.” This was reiterated in the 1924 Annual Report, which announced the completion of several firehouses, including the Forest Hills structure, citing that “the plans and specifications for these buildings have been prepared by this bureau, as has been the practice since this administration came into power, and thus the fees of architects were saved.”

By the 1920s, the Georgian Revival style had became popular for the design of firehouses throughout New York. Employing red brick facades with engaged pilasters, flat roofs, and limestone details, the firehouses of this type were typically compactly massed to conform to the rectangular tax lots of the city. Unlike its contemporaries, Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151 was not constructed in the dominant firehouse style of the time. In this way, the design of the Forest Hills firehouse, with its large scale and near-ecclesiastical appearance, is remarkable. The building is designed in a Neo-Medieval style and is prominently located on a corner lot.

It features asymmetrical massing accentuated by steep gables clad with copper standing-seam roofs, two prominent square towers (a stair tower and a hose-drying tower) featuring round-arched window openings, and a slender chimney rising nearly a story above the western elevation. The building is strongly suggestive of religious, not civic architecture, particularly in the steep pitch of its roofs and the height of the hose-drying tower, itself reminiscent of a church bell tower. The only aesthetic connection between the Forest Hills firehouse and its contemporaries appears to be the use of similar primary materials - namely red brick and limestone, utilized here to a very different effect.

One explanation for the very different appearance of Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151 might be attributed to an evolution in firehouse design that resulted from a shift in requirements. Over the decades, the height of firehouses has been subject to variation, with earlier buildings typically three, or even four, stories in height in order to address the needs of heavily developed areas where land prices made taller buildings more economically viable. However, as fire protection was extended to lower density, suburban areas, such as Forest Hills, lower, less compact buildings became not only possible, but desirable. The taller firehouses meant more opportunities for firemen to be injured sliding on poles, while the shorter firehouses mean fewer flights of stairs to climb or to run. Moreover, once firemen were no longer required to reside full time in the firehouses, different space configurations were required within the buildings. To keep up with advancements in firehouse design, the Forest Hills firehouse was constructed to include a kitchen for the firemen and air-tight doors to “protect the firemen asleep in the dormitory from the danger of gasoline exhaust fumes and to confine the heat to the apparatus floor, so that the motors will always be warm and ready for instant use.”

Changes in firehouse requirements alone, however, do not seem to account for the unusual appearance of Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151. It is far more likely that the design of the building was the result of efforts to contextualize the new firehouse within the growing residential community of Forest Hills and, in particular, the nearby, renowned planned development of Forest Hills Gardens. In Queens, the firehouses of the earlier century, constructed for the volunteer companies that once protected the borough, were often wood-sided structures with pitched roofs, similarly evocative of residential construction. Thus, while Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151 exhibits an unusual appearance for a firehouse from this time period, it was apparently not unheard of for Queens firehouses to be designed in harmony with their surrounding communities. Though the blocks immediately around the new firehouse were still undeveloped in 1924, nearby Forest Hills Gardens, universally praised for the high-quality of its design, had been completed more than a decade earlier. With the steady, continued development of the neighborhood throughout the 1910s and 20s, it is possible that there was pressure from the surrounding community that the firehouse be designed to the same high standards of the existing development. The small, inward-facing, Tudor Revival style developments of Arbor Close and Forest Close, which are adjacent to the firehouse and were completed shortly following its construction, aesthetically emulate Forest Hills Gardens and seem to similarly point to local pressure for carefully planned development in the Forest Hills neighborhood during this era.

Upon the November 1924 opening of Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151, Hubert J. Treacy, chief of the Bureau of Repairs and Supplies for the fire department noted it as “the most pretentious fire engine house in the Greater City.” On the eve of its official dedication, the building was recognized in at least two local papers, the Flushing Evening Journal and the Long Island Daily Star, for having been “constructed to harmonize with the architecture of the surrounding community.” The building was even mentioned several years later, in a 1931 local newspaper article reacting to a pair of apparently unattractive, recently-constructed firehouses which the author notes as “painful to the eye.” The author of the article makes a call for more firehouses in Queens to harmonize with their environments, and mentions only one firehouse - Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151 - as an example of how a firehouse “can be good to look upon and in harmony with its surroundings, without the sacrifice of any considerations of usefulness.”

Nearly 90 years after its construction, the Forest Hills firehouse continues to serve as the home of Engine Company 305 and Hook & Ladder Company 151, operating under the motto “Pride of the Hills.” Completed at a time when much of the surrounding area was still in the process of being developed, today the firehouse is at once a striking presence along the Queens Boulevard streetscape and a well-integrated constituent of this vibrant residential neighborhood. It is also an outstanding example of a functional structure whose design also enhances the character of its surroundings. Even as the Forest Hills neighborhood underwent some large-scale redevelopment during the mid-century, the firehouse has experienced very few changes in its appearance. Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151 remains a well-preserved, remarkable example of both innovative firehouse architecture, as well as a success story for carefully-considered, forward thinking contextual design.

John R. Sliney (c. 1873-1953)

As a result of the fire department’s shift away from using well-known architects in the design of its firehouses towards utilization of in-house architects during the 1920s, many of the firehouses built during this era are not clearly attributed to specific architects. At the time of its construction, the design of Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151 was credited in local papers to John R. Sliney, head building inspector for the fire department. There is some confusion, however, as to whether Sliney, who was never a registered architect in New York, actually designed the firehouse himself, or whether it was designed by an architect employed within the buildings division of the FDNY.

Little is known about Sliney, his career, or education. It is known that Sliney began his career within the plumbing industry, and he is noted on the 1910 United States Census as a “plumber, inspector” for the fire department. His 1953 obituary in the New York Times notes that he became an inspector for the “Tenement House Department” in 1902 and that he joined the fire department four years later as an inspector in the “division of buildings.” It appears that he remained at the fire department for nearly three decades, retiring in 1933. Sliney’s obituary further notes that Sliney “headed the [building] division for many years, in which capacity he was in charge of the erection of 70 fire houses.”

In articles printed in the Flushing Evening Journal and in the Long Island Daily Star on the eve of the opening of Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151, Sliney is specifically credited with having drawn the plans for the building. He is also noted as the building’s architect on the docket record for the new building application filed with the New York City Department of Buildings (NB 11218-1922). Though Sliney was noted in several publications, including the New York Times, and on other new building applications filed with the Department of Buildings, as the architect responsible for several firehouses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx during his term at the FDNY, the fact remains that he continues to be listed as a “building inspector” with the fire department as late as the 1930 United States Census, and not as an architect. There is also little evidence that Sliney had any architectural training. It is therefore unlikely that Sliney was the sole person responsible for the design of Firehouse, Engine Company 305, Hook & Ladder Company 151, though he certainly played a role in its construction as head of the buildings division.

Description

The two and two-and-a-half story firehouse is an asymmetrically-massed red brick building with three visible and one partially visible elevation. The building is clad in red-brick laid in a Flemish bond and enlivened by decorative limestone details and subtle patterned brickwork. The massing of the building is accentuated by steep gables clad with copper standing-seam roofs, prominent square towers (a stair tower and a hose-drying tower) featuring round-arched window openings, and a slender chimney rising nearly a story above the western elevation. The firehouse’s main vehicular bay is located along the north (Queens Boulevard) facade.

Historic:

North (Queens Boulevard) Facade: Two-and-a-half stories; steeply pitched gable at main portion of building; hipped roofs at towers; large vehicular bay; limestone frieze at vehicular bay reading “305 Engine” and “H&L CO. 151”; modest limestone cornice above frieze supported on large scroll bracket at center; metal balconette with stylized fire department shield at railing above main vehicular bay, supported on paired, decorative metal brackets; limestone details throughout, including stringcourses, lintels, keystones, and coping; stylized brick pilasters with limestone capitals at hose-drying tower; masonry water table; rectangular window openings at main portion of building; round-arched vent at main portion of building; round-arched window openings at towers; four-over-one double-hung sashes at rectangular window openings; one-over-one double-hung sashes with round-arched upper sashes at remaining window openings; rectangular cast-iron plaque to right of main vehicular bay at first story.

West (75th Avenue) Facade: Similar to north (Queens Boulevard) facade; hipped roof with brick corbelling at roofline of main portion of building; two-over-four-over-one triple-hung sashes at first-story paired window openings; four-over-one double-hung sashes at other rectangular window openings; multi-paned sashes and one-over-one double hung sashes at hose-drying tower; one-over-one double-hung sashes with round-arched upper sashes at stair tower.

South Facade: Similar to east (75th Avenue) facade; no window or door openings at tower; braced canopy towards eastern end of facade at first story.

East Facade: Partially visible; similar to west (75th Avenue) facade

Alterations:

Repointed; painted water table; portions of metal balconette painted red; original wood windows appear to have been replaced after c. 1965 (new windows match historic sash configurations, see facade descriptions); panning at window openings (all facades); window-screen hinges at most window openings (one window screen at north (Queens Boulevard) facade and several at west (75 th Avenue) facade); filled-in upper sashes of first-story window openings at outer bays of main portion of building at west (75th Avenue) facade; partially filled-in upper sash of westernmost first-story window opening at south facade (multi-paned upper sash lowered, not removed); metal air-conditioner brackets suspended from several window openings at west (75th Avenue), east and south facades; doors replaced at vehicular bay and at first-story entries at all facades; single steps at door openings painted at all facades; brass numbers “111-06” affixed to east of vehicular bay; light fixtures flanking main vehicular bay replaced; other non-historic light fixtures affixed at all facades; metal boxes affixed at first story of west (75 th Avenue) facade; projecting metal enclosure at through-wall vent above door opening at south facade; metal armatures at first and second stories towards western end of south facade; metal bar affixed at first story of hose-drying tower at west (75th Avenue) facade; large duct affixed towards eastern end of south facade; non-original pipe affixed at first story towards southern end of east facade; wiring and conduit at west (75th Avenue) facade; wiring, conduit, electrical boxes and satellite dish at south facade; chain-link fence at entrance to alley alongside eastern facade

Site:

The firehouse is situated on a corner lot and is surrounded by minimal landscaping, consisting of planted shrubbery and a free-standing flagpole at the intersection of Queens Boulevard and 75 th Avenue. There is a paved area for parking alongside the south facade of the firehouse, as well as a fence-enclosed portion of the tax lot presently used for recreation.

- From the 2012 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

WASHINGTON — This graphic, released by the NTSB Dec. 13, 2016, depicts the location of the El Faro Sept 30, 2015, when the VDR began recording bridge audio, and the track line of the El Faro, relative to the locations of Hurricane Joaquin. The El Faro sank Oct. 1, 2015, and all 33 crewmembers perished in the accident. The NTSB added five factual reports Dec. 13, 2016, to the docket for the investigation of the sinking of the El Faro, including the transcript of the El Faro’s voyage data recorder. (NTSB graphic)

WASHINGTON — This graphic, released by the NTSB Dec. 13, 2016, depicts the location of the El Faro Sept 30, 2015, when the captain of the ship departed the bridge for the evening, at about 8 p.m. (EDT), and the track line of the El Faro, relative to the locations of Hurricane Joaquin. The El Faro sank Oct. 1, 2015, and all 33 crewmembers perished in the accident. The NTSB added five factual reports Dec. 13, 2016, to the docket for the investigation of the sinking of the El Faro, including the transcript of the El Faro’s voyage data recorder. (NTSB graphic)

Title: [ Verso, docket]"List of Negroes at Spring Garden with their ages taken January 1829" (title taken from document)

Date Original: 1829-01

Description:

Creator:Spring Garden

Subject(s):Slavery

Florida

Alternative Title:

Publisher: Wofford College

Contributor:

Date Digital: 2009

Type: Text

Format [medium]: Manuscript

Format [IMT]: image/jpeg

Digitization Specifications: 800ppi 24-bit depth color; Scanned with

an Epson 15000 Photo scanner with Epson Scan software; Archival master is a

TIFF; Original converted to JPEG with Irfan View software.

Resource Identifier:

Source: The original, accession number 080415-91, from which

this digital representation is taken is housed in The

Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College,

located in the Sandor Teszler Library.

Language:En-us English

Relation [is part of]:The

Littlejohn Collection

Rights Management: This digital representation has been

licensed under an Attribution

- Noncommercial- No Derivatives Creative Commons license.

Contributing Institution: Wofford College

Web Site: http://www.wofford.edu/library/littlejohn-home.aspx

I attended the Barrett Jackson Spring 2025 Car Show at WestWorld in Scottsdale with my son.

www.motortrend.com/cars/ford/mustang-gtd/

Full stop: This is the most extreme, sporty, and powerful Ford Mustang to ever come with a factory warranty. The 2025 Ford Mustang GTD is derived from the Mustang GT3 race car, with extensive re-engineering and wild aerodynamics aimed at shaving time off hot laps—a pursuit its powerful supercharged V-8 will certainly help with, too. Considering its track focus and high price tag, the Mustang GTD rises above simple muscle cars and competes with elite sports cars such as the Porsche GT3 RS, AMG GT Black Series, and Lamborghini Huracan STO.

The Mustang GTD packs a 5.2-liter supercharged V-8 engine, an arrangement shared with the outgoing Mustang GT500 and current Ford Raptor R supertruck. Indeed, the GTD's engine is a development on that mill, now featuring a dry-sump oiling system and redline raised to 7,500 rpm. According to Ford, the GTD will crank out more than 800 hp—a healthy increase from the GT500's already stupendous 760 hp. That power is sent to the rear wheels via an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transaxle, a completely different arrangement from the regular Mustang's transmission mounted at the back of the engine.

www.roadandtrack.com/news/a44844103/2025-ford-mustang-gtd...

The 2025 Ford Mustang GTD Is an 800-HP $300,000 Supercar

“Our idea behind this car was, let’s take a race car and not change anything for the street,” said Farley. “In fact, let’s add some stuff that’s outlawed in racing, for the street. So it’s like a different kind of project. It’s for AMG Black, it’s for Aston Martin, it’s for the GT3 RS. And we want to beat [that competition].”

finance.yahoo.com/news/barrett-jackson-kicks-off-2025-215...

"Barrett-Jackson delivered many magical experiences for everyone who joined us in Scottsdale," said Steve Davis, president of Barrett-Jackson. "From the excitement of the auction block to the thrill rides, exhibits, STEM Fest and live music, there was truly something that everyone in the family could enjoy. We filled our docket with so much diversity that collectors from every walk of life found something they loved. We stay on top of the trends and consign the vehicles that people want, proving once again that the car collector hobby is thriving. Those trends include the growing popularity of Resto-Mods, SUVs and trucks, which are gaining momentum because they appeal to such a broad cross section of people. I’m especially proud of our support for important charities again this year. We not only raised millions of dollars but also critical awareness that will help make a positive impact on so many communities."

www.classic-car-auctions.info/usa/scottsdale/2025-barrett...

In 2025, Barrett-Jackson earned $198 million by selling 2013 car lots and $5.2 million from 957 pieces of automobilia. A further $6.2 million was raised for charity.

The first production 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 VIN001 achieved $3.7 million as a charity lot and the highest result at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale 2025 collector car auction in Arizona, USA. The most expensive regular lots were a 2023 Hennessey Venom F5 Roadster ($2,200,000) and a 2014 Pagani Huayra ($1,925,000). DJ Marshmello’s 2020 Ford GT Liquid Carbon Special Edition achieved a strong $1,780,000.

The top four results at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale 2025 collector car auction were all for modern supercars. The top result was for charity (see below) while the most expensive regular car in the sale was for the nearly new 2023 Hennessy Venom F5 Roadster. This F5 Roadster was the second of only 30 produced and was sold with only 681 miles on the clock.

Special car

Barrett Jackson 2025

Fort Hill High School loated in Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland, United States.

Information about Fort Hill High School:

Fort Hill High School was constructed primarily as a result of Public Works Administration funding, a New Deal Program of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The Great Depression of the 1930's created a national unemployment rate of 25%, initiating wide spread economic distress and dislocations. New Deal legislation's caused a variety of federal programs and agencies to be formed intending to reduce unemployment in ways that would directly benefit local communities. Two of those New Deal programs were the Public Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration. Locally, Constitution Park, Greenway Avenue Stadium, and a variety of other smaller projects fell under the jurisdiction of the WPA while larger public buildings, like Fort Hill High School, came under the authority of PWA guidelines.

New Deal funding relating to Fort Hill was formally initiated in November 1934 and September 1935, respectively, when the PWA committed federal funds not to exceed $230,000. The project was labeled PWA Docket #7323. Other sources brought the total amount pledged for the school to $600,000. Bids were subsequently advertised, prepared, and submitted to local officials. On April 5, 1936, it was announced that George Hazelwood, local contractor, had the lowest bid at $557,809. The initial contract did not provide funding for the auditorium, so the superintendent of schools was authorized to investigate the possibilities of requesting an increase in the grant from the PWA. Subcontractors were William M. Clark of New Castle, Pennsylvania, and Sterling Electric Company of Cumberland, Maryland.

A discussion ensued concerning the naming of the new school. Suggested names were Queen City High School, Potomac High School, Fort and Hill High School and Fort Hill High School. According to official reports, the Board of Education of Allegany County unanimously decided upon the name Fort Hill High School on August 12, 1936. The "Fort" reference was derived from a Civil War skirmish at Nave's Crossroad often referred to as the Battle of Folck's Mill. The high ground above the mill was fortified by Union troops against Confederate forces.

At the time critics questioned the effectiveness of the New Deal government programs, satirically labeling the projects; "We Poke Along," or "We Piddle Along" make-work jobs. Fort Hill High School and Constitution Park stand in opposition to those critics as they have provided eight decades of service to Cumberland residents.

When Fort Hill opened it had 1763 student and 88 teachers. Mr. Heisey was the first principal for Fort Hill and the subjects included; English, Mathematics, French, Latin, History, Home Economics, Physical Education, Industrial Arts, and Journalism. Music was taught to seventh and eighth graders, who were also located here. Assemblies were held every week with the junior high and senior high alternating weeks. Many say Mr. Heisey completely controlled the school and student body while principal. It is said that Mr. Heisey could enter the auditorium and walk across the stage at an assembly of almost 2000 students and one could hear a pin drop. Maraget Smith, part of the first group of students, suggested "Res, Non Verba" as the school motto. The latin phrase translates into "Deeds, Not Words" and is still the school motto today.

The school has under gone renovations and additions over time. In 1980 a new gymnasium was built adjacent to the original facility. The entire building underwent a major renovation in 1991-92 with the additions of a music wing, greenhouse, and art rooms. One of the striking features of this renovation is the layout of the courtyard with its multiple features including added classrooms, a playgrond, and patio with picnic tables.

Greenway Avenue Stadium

While the PWA's funding provided for a major portion of the cost of Fort Hill High School, it was a $60,000 WPA funding package that initiated the building of a stadium adjoining it. Officials realized, however, that WPA funds would not cover the entire cost of the project. Since the Board of Education of Allegany County did not have the authority to borrow money, it requested that the county commissioners borrow the remaining $25,305 to complete the project with the understanding that the board "will endeavor to pay the interest and principal for the obligations." All profits realized from the use of the field would be used to pay the interest and principal on the obligation. The WPA agreement was reached in December 1935.

The stadium was projected to be finished in the fall of 1936, in time for the first Allegany vs. Fort Hill Thanksgiving Day contest. However, the facility was not completed on time, and Allegany had the honors of playing the first game at the staduim in September of 1937.

The Official seating capacity of the stadium is 6,107. The facility is built with sloping banks, which allow for unobstructed viewing for 12,000 spectoators. Some Homecoming games have exceed 12,500 fans.

The facility was known as Fort Hill Stadium until 1984 when the board of Education opted to rename the stadium, Greenway Avenue Stadium since both, Fort Hill and Allegany High Schools share the facility.

Hoping to attract exhibition games featuring the Washington Redskings, FieldTurf was installed in 1998 at a cost of $650,000, nearly eight times the orginial cost of the stadium. The Washington team relocated their summer camp from the area and the exhibition games never materialized. Legendary Nebraska Football Coach Tom Osborne made a special trip to Greenway Avenue Stadium in December of 1998 to check out the FieldTurf. Nebraska later installed the surface at their football stadium.

Other notables have visited Greenway Avenue Stadium. President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived at the stadium in a helicopter in 1964. LBJ made his speech from just in front of the school-end goal posts. Vice President Al Gore was at Greenway Avenue Stadium to watch his son, Al Gore Jr., compete in a football game when his team, Sidwell Friends played against Allegany High School. The game taking place just a few weeks before the 2000 presidential election, which Mr. Gore narrowly lost.

Information obtained at: boe.allconet.org/fo/GeneralPages/FortHillHistory.html

The most powerful Golf ever is coming to America: Its name: R32. Its output: 177 kW / 240 hp: Its engine: An extremely agile 3.2 liter V6 - which is also installed in the new Phaeton. This compact four-wheel drive sports car from Volkswagen allows a top speed of 247 km/h (153 mph) wherever this is permitted. However, this value only reveals one of the Golf R32's dynamic sides. The manner in which this sports car exhibits a high level of agility, superiority and safety in all speed ranges and in all conceivable situations is equally as fascinating.

V6 with an output of 177 kW / 240 hp: In technical terms, the compact six-cylinder engine is characterized, amongst other aspects, by the continuously adjustable inlet and exhaust camshaft, cylinder-selective knock control and variable intake manifold geometry. The engine's power (a maximum of 320 Newtonmeters) is transferred to the standard 4MOTION four-wheel drive via a six-speed gearbox with tightly graduated shifting travel. A twin-branch exhaust system with two chrome-plated tailpipes ensures that the R32 emits an appropriately throaty roar.

The optical appearance of this new, top Golf model is characterized by its sports running gear which - in comparison with the standard model - has been lowered by 20 millimeters, 18" alloy wheels with 225/40 ZR 18 tires and extensive modifications at the front and rear.

In the passenger compartment, brushed aluminum trim (pedals, center console, gearshift lever, etc.) underlines the dynamic orientation of the most successful car ever built in Germany. The newly-designed front sports seats with integrated headrests and a leather-covered steering wheel exclusive to the R32 have been designed for sporty driving.

The extensive standard equipment fitted in the R32, which will initially be available as a two-door model, includes: Electronically-controlled automatic air conditioner, a high-quality radio system with eight loudspeakers, multi-function display, rain sensor, a rear-view mirror with automatic anti-dazzle setting, heated seats and xenon headlights including a headlight washer system.

As the new top model in the Golf model series, all of the R32's drive characteristics impressively demonstrate the dynamic potential of this compact class best-seller. However, the R32 also shows what is possible when luxury class technology is transferred to another, smaller vehicle class. Because the combination of such a powerful, naturally-aspirated six-cylinder engine with standard four-wheel drive is currently unique in this segment.

Volkswagen USA

Firing up the 3.2l sounds like any other VR6 engine until you dip into the throttle which unleashes a very healthy and low growl from the dual exhaust system. Volkswagen takes pride in mentioning the special exhaust "tuning" that went into this system and we're here to tell you that it sounds simply awesome. In fact if we didn't know any better we would have thought the exhaust was a straight aftermarket piece - it was that noticeable.

Clutch take up was lighter than expected, but the new six-speed is smooth and fairly precise making it easy to get going. You can tell that the R32 is a heavy car getting under way, yet it didn't feel too ponderous. The 236 lb-ft. of torque pulls the car out of the hole rather nicely and when you keep your foot planted past 4000 rpms things start to really move with both mechanical engine noises and exhaust tones fighting for attention - this is something we could definitely get used to.

Volkswagen had previously laid out a cone course for us earlier in the day which included a slalom section right out of the gate. This was the most telling part of the whole course and where the R32 truly separated itself from every other Golf and GTI we've driven. In to the first cone the first thing you notice is the very sharp and precise turn-in, but also the fact that the rear of the car is actively part of the program not just being tugged along for the ride like the regular beam axle GTI. By the third cone I found myself needing to correct for oversteer as I hadn't expected any cooperation from the rear of the car, nor any sort of neutrality. Once accustomed to the completely different handling characteristics, the R32 was easy to dice between the cones and provided a great balance all the way up to about 9/10ths when, in typical iron-block-completely-in-front-of-the-strut-towers VR6 fashion the car plowed hard at the limit driving wide of the line. Simply backing off the throttle part-way and scrubbing some speed helped correct the problem, but there is little anyone can do when it comes to the pure physics of placing that much weight in front of the wheels. Just below that threshold though, Volkswagen did a phenomenal job of bringing neutral handling back into the Golf platform and making the car feel completely different than any Golf or GTI to date.

Does it feel fast? Quick and fun absolutely... fast, well.... The R32 tips the scales at a heavy 3,256 lb. which conspires to intrude on any light and nimble feeling one might have in a regular GTI. It is still an aggressive car in so many other ways, with a wonderful engine, wonderful sounds and great handling up to a point that you are willing to forget about the weight. The brakes are easily up to the task and provided fade-free solid braking every time we touched the pedal.

VW Vortex

Launching the R32 is an exhilarating experience, and getting the right amount of clutch-slip will net a 5.9-second 0-to-60 time on the way to the quarter mile in 14.2 seconds at 97.6 mph. While these times don't beat the more powerful Evo or STi, the R32's smooth and snarling V-6 doesn't tousle the driver with the lag 'n' boost of those turbocharged cars, and the R32's suspension isn't as firm or punishing, either. The new MQ350 six-speed offers hugely improved shift feel over previous manual VW transmissions, which have been vague and rubbery. There's no automatic available in the R32, and only Europeans can option the magic DSG auto-dual-clutch manual found in the Audi TT 3.2 quattro. And whoever is responsible for tuning this car's dual exhaust system deserves a pat on the back.

R-spec blue-powder-coated four-piston brake calipers grab large (13.1-inch front, 10.1-inch rear) vented discs so well that this hatchback stops better from 60 mph than all but the most-expensive supercars--in a mere 108 feet. Smooth-riding and true, independent-rear multilink suspension is another first (versus a GTI's torsion-beam), which complements the car's 22mm-lower sport-tuned suspension and steering. Rounding out the hardware are O*Z Aristo 18-inch wheels wrapped in Goodyear Eagle F1 summer performance tires, sized 225/40R18 at all four corners.

Put it all together, and the R32's handling is both entertaining and compromised. The chassis is so communicative, predictable, and controllable that the tires are easily overwhelmed. As soon as things start to get fun, the Goodyears give up long before the driver or the chassis do. Just over $30K gets everything on the docket from heated seats to Monsoon audio and moonroof.

Motor Trend

N8978E

DC-9-31

NWA

KDCA

N8978E

DC-9-31

NWA

KDCA

NTSB Identification: IAD74AI035

14 CFR Part 121 Scheduled operation of EASTERN AIR LINES INC

Aircraft: DOUGLAS DC-9, registration: N8978E

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FILE DATE LOCATION AIRCRAFT DATA INJURIES FLIGHT PILOT DATA

F S M/N PURPOSE

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1-0035 73/12/17 GREENSBORO,NC DOUGLAS DC-9 CR- 0 0 4 SCHED DOM PASSG SRV AIRLINE TRANSPORT, AGE

TIME - 1545 N8978E PX- 0 0 85 49, 10000 TOTAL HOURS,

DAMAGE-SUBSTANTIAL OT- 0 0 0 1400 IN TYPE, INSTRUMENT

RATED.

NAME OF AIRPORT - HIGH POINT

OPERATOR - EASTERN AIR LINES,INC.

DEPARTURE POINT INTENDED DESTINATION LAST ENROUTE STOP

RALEIGH-DURHAM,NC CHICAGO,ILL GREENSBORO,NC

TYPE OF ACCIDENT PHASE OF OPERATION

ENGINE FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION TAKEOFF: RUN

COLLIDED WITH: OBJECT TAKEOFF: ABORTED

PROBABLE CAUSE(S)

PILOT IN COMMAND - FAILED TO FOLLOW APPROVED PROCEDURES,DIRECTIVES,ETC.

PILOT IN COMMAND - DELAYED ACTION IN ABORTING TAKEOFF

PERSONNEL - AIRPORT SUPERVISORY PERSONNEL: IMPROPER MAINTENANCE-AIRPORT FACILITIES

MISCELLANEOUS - FOREIGN MATERIAL AFFECTING NORMAL OPERATIONS

POWERPLANT - MISCELLANEOUS: COMPRESSOR STALLS

PILOT IN COMMAND - FAILED TO MAINTAIN DIRECTIONAL CONTROL

FACTOR(S)

AIRPORTS/AIRWAYS/FACILITIES - AIRPORT CONDITIONS: ICE/SLUSH ON RUNWAY

MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS - DOWNWIND

AIRPORTS/AIRWAYS/FACILITIES - AIRPORT CONDITIONS: OTHER

PARTIAL POWER LOSS - PARTIAL LOSS OF POWER - 2 ENGINES

FIRE AFTER IMPACT

REMARKS- 2IN SNO RPTD RWY 5.TKOF,ENCTRD HVY SLUSH,CONT INTO HVYR SLUSH.RWY,MEAS 3-5IN SNO,SLUSH.HIT TWY LIP

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NTSB Identification: ATL84LA235.

The docket is stored on NTSB microfiche number 25682.

Scheduled 14 CFR EASTERN AIR LINES, INC.

Accident occurred Wednesday, July 25, 1984 in AUGUSTA, GA

Aircraft: DOUGLAS DC-9-31, registration: N8978E

Injuries: 1 Serious,99 Uninjured.

DURING A TURBULENCE ENCOUNTER A PAX STANDING IN THE REAR OF THE CABIN FELL AND SUFFERED A FRACTURED LEG. THE SEAT BELT SIGN WAS ILLUMINATED FOR THE ENTIRE FLT. AT THE DIRECTION OF THE CAPT, IN-FLT SERVICE BY THE FLT ATTENDANTS WAS TERMINATED. THE INJURED PAX ASKED A FLT ATTD IF HE COULD SMOKE. HE WAS DIRECTED TO GO AFT TO A SEAT IN THE SMOKING SECTION. THE PAX WENT AFT BUT COULD NOT FIND A SUITABLE SEAT AND ELECTED TO STAND IN THE AISLE. BOTH FLT ATTDS WERE BUSY SECURING THE GALLEY AND WERE NOT AWARE OF THE STANDING PAX.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be:

PASSENGER BRIEFING..NOT FOLLOWED..PASSENGER

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be:

SEAT BELT..NOT USED..PASSENGER

Contributing Factors

WEATHER CONDITION..TURBULENCE IN CLOUDS

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NTSB Identification: ATL90IA060.

The docket is stored on NTSB microfiche number 42154.

Scheduled 14 CFR operation of EASTERN AIR LINES, INC

Incident occurred Wednesday, January 31, 1990 in LOUISVILLE, KY

Probable Cause Approval Date: 12/30/1992

Aircraft: DOUGLAS DC-9-31, registration: N8978E

Injuries: 2 Minor,71 Uninjured.

AFTER LANDING THE FLIGHT CREW NOTED A VIBRATION. LEFT MAIN GEAR TORQUE LINK APEX BOLT WAS FOUND TO HAVE VIBRATED OUT OF THE TORQUE LINK WHICH ALLOWED MAIN GEAR TRUCK TO ROTATE 360 DEGREES DURING LANDING ROLL. THE NUT HAD STRIPPED OFF OF THE BOLT. LABORATORY EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT THE TORQUE LINK ATTACHING PINS HAD EXCESSIVE PLAY. NEW & OLD APEX BOLTS WERE MEASURED. THEY FAILED TO PASS THE MOST STRINGENT QUALITY CONTROL CHECK FOR CORRECT THREAD SIZE. THE SAFETY BOARD BELIEVES THAT THE NUT STRIPPED OFF WHEN THE LOOSE TORQUE LINKS ALLOWED EXCESSIVE VIBRATION. THE UNDERSIZE APEX BOLT THREADS ALLOWED THE NUT TO SHEAR AWAY THE BOLT PIN DESIGNED TO RETAIN THE NUT.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this incident to be:

THE DISABLING OF THE MAIN LANDING GEAR TORQUE LINK WHICH ALLOWED THE TRUCK TO ROTATE FREELY. THE TORQUE LINK WAS DISABLED WHEN EXCESSIVE VIBRATION WAS GENERATED BY EXCESSIVE PLAY OF THE TORQUE LINK PINS IN THEIR BUSHINGS.

Civic Center, Downtown Manhattan, New York City, United States of America

Summary

The (former) Home Life Insurance Company Building, a significant, early skyscraper richly designed in the neo-Renaissance style by Pierre L. LeBrun of the firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, was constructed in 1892-94. In 1893 the initial twelve-story Home Life tower design was extended to fifteen stories, an enlargement that, at its completion in 1894, made this building higher than its southern neighbor and almost exact contemporary, the Postal Telegraph Building designed by George Edward Harding & Gooch and built in 1892- 94. The firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, skilled at adapting the architecture of the past to new building types, designed this fireproof, skeletal steel-frame tower with a marble front in the Renaissance idiom - an early application of the Renaissance style to a skyscraper - concentrating the wealth of finely realized low- and high-relief classical ornamental detail at the building's base and top. The distinguished architectural critic of the*period, Montgomery Schuyler, recognized the Home Life tower as a precursor in the development of the skyscraper, stating that the clearly articulated base, shaft, and top of the Home Life Building comprised a seminal and most satisfactory expression of the tripartite formula in skyscraper design. Founded in Brooklyn in 1860, the Home Life Insurance Company moved its Manhattan branch office from Wall Street to this block in 1866. Forty years later Home Life moved its home office from Brooklyn to this tower. In 1947 Home Life purchased the Postal Telegraph Building and joined it to its headquarters, remaining there until 1985. The distinctively sharp silhouette of the Home Life Insurance tower, rising above City Hall Park, survives very much as it had been conceived. The design of the Postal Telegraph Building, also derived from the Renaissance style, is distinguished by a program of classical ornamental motifs used in alternating patterns, crowned by a loggia.

City Ha!! Park, the rise of a business center History of the Home'Life Insurance Company

The area that is now City Ha!! Park once was part of the common fields north of New Amsterdam, the colonial Dutch settlement As the city grew northward, pub!ic buildings -- almshouses, jails, and barracks - were erected there in the first half of the eighteenth century. The construction of City Hail (a designated New York City Landmark) in 1802-11 marked the area's transition to a more respectable urbanity. Meanwhile residences were making way for commercial buildings along lower Broadway and the spirit of popular commercialism advanced uptown. By mid-century A.T. Stewart's great department store, built in 1845-81 (subsequently the Sun Building, a designated New York City Landmark), marked commerce's progress past Chambers Street. Broadway had become a major commercial thoroughfare lined with four- and five- story buildings. With the addition of the Tweed Courthouse, 1861-81 (a designated New York City Landmark) on the north and the General Post Office, 1870-71 (demolished 1939), on the south, City Hall Park became a true civic center, but on the Park's west side, as on lower Broadway, banking and insurance companies dominated.

The earliest tall buildings to go up adjacent to City Hall Park were on that section of Park Row known as Printing House Square, on the Park's east side (where Pace University now stands). Richard Morris Hunt's ten-story Tribune tower was built in 1873 and George B. Post's twenty-six-story World Building followed in 1889. The four- and five-story commercial buildings along lower Broadway lingered well into this century's first decade; the earliest tail buildings, !ike the church towers, projected above the skyline. The first tall buildings north of Park Row and Vesey Street were the Postal Telegraph and Home Life buildings, both fronting on Broadway between Murray and Warren Streets. This was a good location for the Postal Telegraph Company because of its proximity to the Tribune; John W. Mackay, founder of the Postal Telegraph, and James Gordon Bennett, Jr., publisher of the Tribune, were partners in the venture to lay more trans-Atlantic cable. The Home Life tower was built where the company's offices formerly had been located in a five-story building at 254 Broadway. Today the Home Life Insurance Company Building, with the Postal Telegraph Building, remains a striking presence on the western skyline of City Hall Park.

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the life insurance industry experienced unprecedented growth.' However, it wasn't until January 1,1860, that Brooklyn, the country's third largest city at that time, became home to a life insurance company. Established by twelve of Brooklyn's most prosperous citizens,^ the charter of the Home Life Insurance Company was approved in late February and on May 1, 1860, Home Life opened for business at Court and Joralemon Streets. Arrangements for a branch office at 16 Wall Street across the river in New York were made the same year.

In Home Life's first years the company president. Waiter Scott Griffith (d.1872), traveled to key cities throughout the country establishing a network of agents and then, through a series of manuals, exhorted these men not only to sell life insurance but, in the face of general public skepticism grounded in the fundamental tradition of divine providence, to promote the validity of the concept of life insurance. If the contemporary perception was that the insurance industry was a highly speculative one, Griffith's approach, although rigorous, was essentially conservative. In these manuals not only were insurance tables computed but particular groups of society were pinpointed. As its name suggests the company's primary target was the home owner; its trademark was a comfortable Gothic Revival cottage in a pleasant rural setting. But another important target group was the clergy! their exampie would do much to engender the practical aspects of owning life insurance within the large segment of the population to whom traditional values were sacred.^ The company's agency network and the agents' aggressive exposition within society's institutions, a strategy identified in a company history one hundred years later as "dynamic conservatism," has successfully carried the Home Life Insurance Company through to the present day.

In 1866 the Home Life Insurance Company moved its New York branch office from Wall Street to 258 Broadway, between Murray and Warren Streets, the Broadway blockfront that would witness a century of its growth. Three years later Home Life purchased the building two doors south at 254 Broadway, a five-story walk-up in which it occupied the first floor and leased the other floors/ As Home Life's agency organization multiplied in the two-and-one-half

decades that followed, the company Riled the other floors and by 1890 had outgrown No. 254. Severn! other insurance companies located nearby had already commissioned new buiidings and thereby established palpable corporate identities: Equitable at Broadway and Cedar Street; New York Life at Broadway and Leonard Street; and Metropolitan Life at Park Place and Church Street (a major renovation by the LeBrun firm). On March 16, 1892, Home Life acquired the adjacent, northerly property at 256 Broadway from Trinity Church. ^ An architectural competition for a new office building followed and the design of the LeBrun firm was judged the winner.* Construction of the new tower commenced on November 2, 1892, and Home Life moved to temporary quarters in the World Building across City Hall Park. The excavation for the Home Life tower so weakened the foundations of the neighboring Merchants' Exchange National Bank at 257 Broadway that the bank building developed a list of eighteen inches off plumb. Contemporary news reports intimated that Home Life had already wanted to expand its site; negotiations for purchasing the bank property were initiated immediately. By February, 1893, the two neighbors had reached an agreement; in part payment for the bank building Home Life wouid provide the Merchants* Exchange National Bank with a first- class banking facility on the ground and basement levels of Home Life's new tower and an extended lease at a favorable rate with the option to renew. On April 22, the acquisition of the Merchants' Exchange National Bank building was completed/ As a consequence of the enlarged lot - comprising fifty-five feet of Broadway frontage - the facade design was broadened and the tower made three stories taller.* History of the Postal Teleeraph Buildine On March 23,1892, just one week after Home Life had purchased 254 Broadway, the Postal Telegraph Company secured ('farm-let") its new site from Trinity Church with a ninety-nine year lease.* The New Building Docket Books indicate that the Postal Telegraph and the Home Life Buildings were constructed almost simultaneously: the Postal Telegraph Building permit was applied for on May 5, 1892, and that for Home Life on August 12th; the Postal Telegraph was begun on June 14th, Home Life in early November; and the building inspector signed off on the completion of both buildings the same day, August 31, 1894.'° Fifty-five years later, they would be physically joined.

Irish-bom John W. Mackay (1831-1902), founder and first president of both the Postal Telegraph Company and the Commercial Cable Company, had made a considerable fortune mining for silver in Nevada. In 1851 he sailed to California where he prospected about the Yuba River in the Sierra foothills. After crossing the Sierras to Virginia City in 1860, he worked the Comstock Lode in the decade that followed with considerable success, eventually not only mining, but smelting and transporting the ore to the Pacific coast. In 1883 he joined James Gordon Bennett, Jr., publisher of the Mew MeruM, in organizing the Commercial Cable Company to lay and operate trans-Atlantic cable in competition with Jay Gould's Western Union system. When Gould refused to relay Commercial's messages to points across this continent, Mackay bought the Postal Telegraph Company and began to consolidate other smaller telegraph companies around it. This system, comparable in size to Western Union's, was completed in 1886; its administrative offices were located in the Washington Building at 1 Broadway and its operations department at 183 Broadway. By 1890 more space was needed for both the administrative and the operations departments; the new Postal Telegraph Company headquarters at 253 Broadway was constructto unite them under one roof.

The Architects Two architectural firms are responsible for the original appearance of the two buildings that after 1947 constituted the Home Life Insurance Company home office complex on Broadway: Napoleon LeBrun & Sons for the Home Life Building and George Edward Harding & Gooch for the Postal Telegraph Company Building.

Myo/eon LfFrun & Sons. In 1892 the Home Life Insurance Company held a competition for the new building it proposed to erect on its Broadway site. In his capacity as sole judge, William Robert Ware, Columbia University's first professor of architecture, chose the designs of the LeBrun firm." Napoleon Eugene Charles LeBrun (1821-1901) was bom to French emigrant parents in Philadelphia. At fifteen years of age he was placed in the office of classicist Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887), where he remained for six years. LeBrun began his own practice in 1841 in Philadelphia but moved to New York in 1864 where the choice in 1870 of his Second Empire Masonic Tempie competition submission did much to establish his reputation. In the same year his son Pierre joined him and the firm became Napoleon LeBrun & Son. In 1892 the firm became Napoleon LeBrun & Sons in recognition of his youngest son, Michel. Father and sons were active members of the new American Institute of Architects.

Pierre Lassus LeBrun (1846-1924) has not received the attention that he is due, perhaps in part, because the name of the firm made him, and later his brother Michel, all but anonymous. Little is known of Pierre's formal architectural education. Apparently he was imbued with his father's classical preferences. Like his father, Pierre LeBrun adhered to a stylistic consistency at a time of stylistic transition and flux. With but few exceptions this preference was demonstrated in the work of both generations. Best known today for the many fire houses they designed for the New York City Fire Department between 1881 and 1895, the LeBruns were ecclesiastical architects as well, responsible for the Church of the Epiphany (1870, demolished), Saint John-the-Baptist (1872), and Saint Mary-the-Virgin (1895, a designated New York City Landmark). The LeBrun firm had served as architects to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company since 1876 and would continue to do so until 1909. Indeed, Metropolitan Life's acclaimed home office building at No. 1 Madison Avenue (1890-92, demolished) had been recently completed at the time of the Home Life commission.

While little is known of Pierre LeBrun's architectural training, his three trips abroad in the service of the Willard Architectural Commission are documented. Levi Hale Willard, a wealthy businessman, died in 1883 leaving to the newly founded Metropolitan Museum of Art $100,000 toward the creation of a collection of models and casts illustrative of the art and science of architecture, to be made under the direction of a commission chosen by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In his will Willard nominated Napoleon LeBrun as president of the Commission; Willard, a fnend, had often discussed with LeBrun the need to cultivate a popular taste for architecture. Pierre LeBrun was appointed the Commission's purchasing agent. TTie younger LeBrun visited the significant sites and met with the suppliers of casts in Paris, Munich, and Rome. The historical accuracy characterizing the ornament of the LeBruns' later work appears to have been inspired by the Willard Collection." Pierre LeBrun, as an architect of his generation, readily understood the requirements of the new tall building type; the historical knowledge he gained in acquiring the Willard bequest gave him the aesthetic sensibility to appropriately integrate historic detail with a tall building design.

George AAtwtf Mining A GtwA. George Edward Harding (1843-1907), who with his associate William Tyson Gooch designed the Postal Telegraph Building at 253 Broadway, seems to have come to the architecture profession in midlife. He was bom in Bath, Maine, and after Columbia College began his architectural career in 1881. It appears that he practiced alone for five years and then entered a short-lived partnership with Frederick P. Dinkelberg (1886-87). William T. Gooch joined him in 1889 and two years later Gooch's last name was added to that of the firm, George Edward Harding & Gooch, Architects and Engineers.^ The firm is best known for its commercial buildings and, aside from the Postal Telegraph Building — to which it moved its offices upon the building's completion - the Arm's other significant commissions were: the Holland House Hotel (1891) at West 30th Street and Fifth Avenue; the double-domed, twenty-one story Commercial Cable Building (1895-97) at 20 Broad Street (also for John W. Mackay, now demolished); the Gerken Building (1895) at 90 Chambers Street (West Broadway); the R. G. Dun Building (1897) at 292 Broadway (Reade Street, now demolished); and the Queens Insurance Company Building (c.1896). Both Gooch and Harding were Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.

The Design of the Home Life Insurance Company Building The design judged best by Professor Ware in the 1892 competition for the new Home Life Insurance Company Building consisted of a twelve- story tower, faced in marble and realized in the neo-Renaissance style (Plate 2). Projected to extend 208 feet from the sidewalk to the top of its terminating roof finial, the facade was designed to be three bays wide at the three-story base and five bays wide in its eight-story shaft. A two-tiered dormer, fronting the steep peaked roof, contained three windows at the twelfth story and one under a semi-circular pediment above. By March of 1893, when construction had already reached the seventh tier of girders, this facade design was adjusted to accord to the widened fifty-five foot site and was made three stones higher - 256 feet from sidewalk to top (Plate 3)." The new width was accommodated through a process of well- considered insertion and addition. In the final design for the building's base, superimposed tripartite arcades were inserted where, in the narrower, first design there had been superimposed triumphal arch motifs. The central arch of the ground-story arcade became the entrance to the new banking hall of the Merchants' Exchange National Bank and Home Life's public counting room was proclaimed by the lavishly embellished arcade above. In this novel solution the flanking doorways and the smaller arched windows and blind rondels were retained on the ground and second stories. In the redesigned eleven-stoTy shaft two longitudinal bays of individual windows bracket the central core of the five window bays. The capping dormer, raised to the Sfteenth story, was widened by three bays and flanked by two individual dormers; the fenestration of the dormer's upper tier was doubled. The base remained three stories high and the dormer two. The dimensions of the strikingly steep, pyramidal roof appear not to have been changed.

In 1892 skyscrapers were an innovative building type and the subject of broad controversy - concerning safety, their structural systems, and how they should look. Twenty-two years after his initial design for the Home Life tower, Pierre LeBrun wrote that the resolution of a skyscraper style depended upon the utilization and reshaping of the elements of past styles. Size, he pointed out, was the only departure from precedent." LeBrun was not alone in his belief that ornament should be historically appropriate to a building type and applied in an historically correct manner, a formula applicable to all questions of architectural style. Whereas the Gothic style was appropriate for ecclesiastical commissions, the urbane style of the northern Renaissance best expressed the commercial and entreprenurial nature of the relatively new life insurance industry. In the case of the new tall office building type, it was a matter of vertically extending and otherwise adapting an historic prototype - perhaps the counting house/branch office of a Florentine bank in Bruges or Antwerp. While the attenuated center section is left relatively unadorned to express the building's function, it is at the base and the top of the Home Life tower's marble facade that the richly concentrated display of classically- derived ornament, integrated from the Willard study collection of Renaissance motifs, establishes the building's neo-Renaissance character.

In 1910 the distinguished architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler wrote an appreciation of the LeBrun firm in the v4yrMfcmra/ Record in which he discussed the Home Life tower. He recalled the architectural experimentation current at its conception and how much the LeBruns' use of the Aristotelian analogy - a beginning, middle and an end, or in architectural terms, the tripartite division of a tall building's exterior into base, shaft, and capital - did to resolve the issue of vertical articulation in tall buildings. He conceded that the Home Life tower was so "skillfully and tastefully expressed as to make it hard to realize that the building is a pioneer."* In the span of his writing, Schuyler's attribution of "pioneer* to the Home Life Building appeared fairly late. The Home Life Building facade can be considered a significant step in the evolution of the Aristotelian maxim.

The Desicn of the Postal Telegraph Company Building While the plans for the Home Life tower were being adjusted to take advantage of the site's greater width, contemporary reports document that the thirteen-story Postal Telegraph Building had already become a visible presence at the comer of Broadway and Murray Street. Although contemporary and subject to similar aesthetic and practical influences, these two buildings are quite different in appearance (Plate 4). The classically- derived terra-cotta detailing of the Postal Telegraph Building provides the clue to the building's neo-Renaissance style, although this ornament was employed more generally and with less attention to historic prototypes than that of the Home Life Building. Harding & Gooch emphasized the horizontal component of the building's steel frame rather than the vertical as the LeBruns were doing at Home Life. The intermediate cornices at the fourth, eleventh, and twelfth stories, the distinct sill courses defining each story of the building's shaft, and the building's broad, copper-bronze major cornice all contribute to this horizontality, and the twelfth-story loggia on the Broadway facade recalls Renaissance architecture of more southern origin than that which inspired the Home Life Building's design.

There are two unusual elements in the design of the Postal Telegraph Building - the recessed, three-story, main entrance on Broadway and the greater height of the twelfth story - that were necessitated by the functions of the building's proprietor. The building's thirty foot wide main entrance, semi-circular in plan, contained doors flanking the main lobby entrance: the one on the left led into the company messenger's office and shipping rooms, the one on the right to the bank on the second story (Plate 5). The greater part of the building's ground Boor was planned as the company's shipping, delivery, and warehouse facility. The second story was designed to contain a bank; rental offices occupied the third through the ninth stories. The tenth and eleventh stories housed the executive and administrative offices of the Postal Telegraph Company, while on the twelfth story, with its nineteen-foot ceilings, the company's great switchboards and its transmitting and receiving apparatus were installed. Like the Gerken Building, the Postal Telegraph Building displays the preference the designers at George Edward Harding & Gooch had for terra-cotta ornament.

Subsequent History On Sunday night, December 4, 1898, a fire broke out in the Rogers Peet clothing store, next to the Home Life Building, at the southwest comer of Broadway and Warren Street.'^ Fanned by a stormy east wind, the spectacular, ten-alarm blaze spread to the Home Life tower and the top of the Postal Telegraph Building. Front page material, the sensational aspect of this fire gave way to controversy and finally vindication of the buildings' fireproof construction. It was conjectured that had these two massive, fireproof bulwarks not been there, the rest of the block and neighboring blocks would have been devastated. Home Life's structure was unhurt, although the front of the building from the eighth story to the top was rebuilt as it had been, under the supervision of Pierre LeBrun. Only the Postal Telegraph's thirteenth floor was damaged.

In 1906 the Home Life Insurance Company's charter was changed and the company's home office was moved from 38 Court Street in Brooklyn to several floors of 256 Broadway in Manhattan. Documentation indicates that only five stories - two through six - were being utilized by the company at the time of its mutualization in 1916 (with the remainder rented); three decades later all fifteen had been taken over by the company. More space to house the company's wartime and postwar programs was needed. On January 3, 1947, Home Life bought the thirteen-story Postal Telegraph Building from Trinity Church; corridors with flights of steps to connect the buildings' disparate floor levels were cut through the party walls. This expansion more than doubled the home ofBce complex. In 1963 Home Life moved its main entrance to 253 Broadway and renovated the tower's ground story — the former Merchants' Exchange National Bank space - as retail rental space.** The firm of Raymond Loewy-William Snaith removed the original window and doorway configurations, substituting plate glass. The former entrance to the building was glazed as a show window. Lanterns were placed on either side of the entrance. Apart from these changes, the ground story of No. 256-257 survives intact.

The Postal Telegraph Building has undergone two major alterations. The first, carried out by Ely Jacques Kahn, began in 1936 when Longchamps, the restaurant chain, leased the basement. Kahn's firm worked elsewhere in the building until 1942; he was responsible for interior work on the upper floors as well as the building's renovated base.** The second major campaign occurred between 1963 and 1969 when Sapolsky & Slobodien were commissioned to plan a more comprehensive union of the buildings, to introduce air conditioning, and to change the windows. The entrance was given its present day appearance by Ira Greenburg in 1984; Greenburg tore away the accretions of the rental shops, parged the surfaces with Thoro-Seal, and cover&l the central spandrel with oxidized bronze bearing the building's number, 253. In October, 1985, the Home Life Insurance Company sold its home office complex to 253 Broadway Associates. The buildings became two condominiums in 1989, one owned by 253 Broadway Associates (Lot 1002), the other by the City of New York (Lot 1001).* Description MvtM /ttninvMM Com/Mny Bm7<?M)g. The plan of the Home Life Insurance Company Building is a rectangle, cut by light court indentations on both of the long sides (Plate 1). The deeper section fronts on Broadway; the shallower section fills the rear of the lot. The facade of this fifteen-story, steel-framed commercial building, faced with a self-supporting wall of white Tuckahoe marble (which extends through the full thickness of the wall from the base to the top-most cornice), is expressed as a three- story base, a transitional fourth story, an eight- story shaft, a transitional thirteenth story, and a two-story top with a terminal double-tight dormer. The skeletal steel frame was encased in brick and terra cotta. The building's northern and western elevations are of brick. A steep pyramidal roof, sheathed in copper-bronze, caps the forward section of the building and the skillfully expressed facade (Plate 6).

A great deal of the precisely-cut, classically- derived detail is concentrated at the building's base in an intricate three-story order, a variation of a triumphal arch motif (Plate 7). What was once the building's main entrance on the north side of the ground story — now filled by a plate glass show window — and the freight entrance on the south are nearly identical (Plate 8). Columns on bases support entablatures; above the doorways are eared mezzanine windows (now ventilators and partially louvered) flanked by volutes. The lintel tablet and imbricated transom grille of the metal freight entrance doorway are noteworthy. The center bay of the ground story arcade projects. The non- historic infill includes glass doors at the center and show windows at the sides; their spandrels are louvered ventilators. Ribbed, quarter-spherical awnings obscure the light boxes that now span the arches at the springline. Every projection, reveal, and molding return of the rusticated ground-story arcade accords with the complex trabeation fronting the second-story arcade as well as the segmentally-pedimented, double-window aedicule at the third story.

The tripartite arcade on the second story is flanked by two smaller arched windows in aedicules. Each is framed by columns and a carved entablature which is carried across the arcade, doubling as the arcade's imposts and springline spandrels. Volutes support the arcade's entablature. The voussoirs of the blind rondels above the aedicules are keyed into the rustication. Oak and laurel foliation, carved in low relief, wreath the rondels. At their extreme ends the aedicules support candelabra; flambeaux rest above the extreme ends of the arcade entablature. Two columnar mullions articulate each of the second- story arcade windows; the windows, like those above, have one-over-one wood sash. Their tympana, once plate glass, are filled with plywood. A balustrade fronts the arcade's central bay. The entablature frieze bears traces of an inscription - The Home Life Insurance Company." In the center bay of the third story is a double-windowed aedicule, composed of coupled pilasters supporting a segmental pediment. Colonettes carry the double arches. The top of the pediment breaks the running-dog sill course between the third and fourth stories, supporting an omate marble finial. There are two arched windows on each side of the central aedicule; the two inner openings have decorative architraves. At the transitional fourth story the disposition of the seven arched windows with keystones and a common spring course introduce the bay pattern — a group of five windows flanked by single windows - which characterizes the smooth, marble ashlar of the building's shaft. The transition from base to shaft is completed on the fifth story where the windows become flat-headed and the architraves of the extreme windows are keyed into the wall surface. The fifth stoTy, like the thirteenth, is fronted by marble balconies on brackets; their exterior surfaces are articulated with classical motifs in low relief. Band courses and bracketed sills further articulate the shaft stories. On the twelfth story ornamental shells fill the square heads of the center five windows.

Many of the motifs and architectural elements that appear at the building's base reoccur at its crown. The window openings on the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth stories are arched. As on the ground and second stories, the architects created a two-story order for the fourteenth and fifteenth stories, but these are colonnades rather than the arcades below. The fourteenth-story colonnade fronts a deep loggia the width of the building's five-window center bay. Each of the extreme windows, framed with pilasters, has an individual balcony. These columns and pilasters support the facade's major cornice. The building's great, two-tiered dormer begins at the fifteenth story; its colonnade is superimposed on the story's Gve-window arcade. The mansard roofs flanking the two-tiered dormer are pierced with smaller, round-pedimented dormers. The aedicule on the great dormer's second tier is similar to that on the third story. It is flanked by volutes, its round pediment contains a deeply carved shell, and it carries an ornamental finial. The pyramidal roof, constructed of tie and angle iron secured to the building's steel frame, rises behind it. (Originally the roof was topped by cresting.) Dormers, sheathed in copper, project from the northern and southern sides of the roof, three single dormers on the northern side and one single and one double dormer on the southern side. These have round pediments containing molded shells.

The thirteen-story Postal Telegraph Building, like the Home Life tower to which it is now connected, is of fireproof, skeletal construction. Its beams and girders are of steel, but unlike the Home Life Building, the structural columns are of cast iron. To the sixth story the walls are loadbearing; above the sixth story the walls are carried on the steel girders. Its four-story base is faced with Indiana limestone;^ the seven-story shaft and crowning two stories are of light grey brick with classically-inspired terracotta detail. Taken as a whole, the building is articulated as three, square, tower-like, comer bays containing the building's mass. On the Broadway facade the "towers" flank but one bay; between the corner towers on the Murray Street facade there are three bays separated by ribs. Each of these slightly-recessed bays is three windows in width.

At the building's base, the Broadway facade and the comer bay on Murray Street underwent a major renovation undertaken by Ely Jacques Kahn's office in 1937-38.^ The doorways within the recessed, three-story Broadway entrance and the small shops flanking this entrance's slightly projecting architrave were removed and the entrance loggia was widened by paring down the fabric to the building's major structural steel posts along the building line (Plate 9). Re-using the limestone, Kahn created a screen, finishing these posts as thick, square, three-story piers; the second-story horizontal bracing was finished in the same manner. The entrance, flanked by deeper shops and show windows, was given a "modeme" architrave. The second and third stories within this recessed loggia are fronted by a wall of glass brick which remains. Subsequently the surfaces of this renovated screen of the building were parged with Thoro-Seal. In 1990-91 the comer storefront was extended forward to the Broadway building line. The base of the Murray Street facade (except for the corner bay and adjacent extended show window) retains its original fabric and appearance, although the infill has been changed.

The facades are ornamented with classical motifs used in alternating patterns. The terra-cotta sill courses defining the stories of the building's shaft are alternately expressed as either a pattern of repetitive floral forms (sixth, eighth, and tenth stories) or one of a rinceaux-like frieze (seventh, ninth, and eleventh stories). Two terra-cotta keystone designs - a palmette and an acanthus - alternate above the windows of each story as well as from story to story. This alternation of motifs is also evident in the Doric and Ionic terra-cotta capitals of the pilasters within the reveals of the window openings.

At the twelfth-story loggia, the square columns in antis carry Ionic capitals while the antae cany the Doric order. The three bays on the Murray Street facade's twelfth story also reflect this alternation. The comer "tower" bay elevations on this story offer a compressed variation of the window and rondel motif that once flanked the entrance architrave on the building's second and third stories before 1937.^ (Only one of these "tower* bays - the westernmost on Murray Street - - remains intact from base to top.) The twelfth story carries a secondary copper-bronze cornice. The thirteenth, attic story has a vaulted cornice above the balcony between the "tower" bays. The windows in these bays have eared architraves. The building's major cornice is of copper-bronze. All of the building's windows appear to have been changed between 1964 and 1969. The current configuration is of two vertical steel muntins and two horizontal steel muntins, set between glass block infill, carrying a single, central casement.

- From the 1991 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Inches Caution:. Simply no beagles, monkeys, animals, or been infected with lung cancer malignancy systematically uncovering snuff goods, therefore merely go out and possess a good morning inches What a communication coming from our Doctor Normal can be a refreshing way to open up a new bunch connected with definition tobacco? Needless to say I do, especially simply because it is true.

This specific creating isn't really regarding suitable or incorrect persona definition tobacco, but is intended for you to work as a possible critical reminder of the strength that we because residents as well as customers to share our definition tobacco. When we're free to imagine as well as believe that which you would like, why allow it all out so often therefore very easily? The reason why zombie wander as a result of life with your face shut?

From the while I was initially exposed to the truth driving the truth regarding snuff. When I seemed to be therefore captivated, Alice can't become more curious! When I go through everything I could truthfully find our hands on this. I could truthfully not necessarily believe just how much seemed to be there for me personally the definition tobacco, but mostly I could truthfully not necessarily believe that many of us are yet to already been well informed or able to always be well definition tobacco.

My personal favorite as regards to scientific studies with snuff is usually inches a new smokescreen inches simply by Richard definition tobacco examining. This specific publication is usually rich in data as well as recommendations for more info regarding definition tobacco. This specific review can be a well considered and also educational. Even so, simply because someone authored a fascinating publication, won't help it become, this also is usually just exactly where freedom is definition tobacco

Information are incredibly valuable, the particular methodical method is usually much superior to supposing do not forget that. This tricky part is usually knowing as soon as facts are fictional as well as travelers have the simply no actual scientific discipline to aid them. Minus the information as well as results that we have got a tad bit more fabulous stories. You can see why the subject of snuff is an excellent topic, since it has all of the aspects of fictional, nevertheless it is usually believed as reality. definition tobacco.

The easiest method to check themselves would likely go as well as try and do any snuff definition tobacco in a point out or country of this option... This is what you have;

inches Not really in the synopsis in which definition tobacco can cause lung cancer malignancy: This is a problem in which I need to tactic this through an open up head as well as a conclusion on such basis as the data before me personally, along with the definition tobacco connected with proof is usually around the prosecutor.

In any case, the particular prosecutor can't show causation independently. This epidemiology can't be helpful to identify causation within specific situations, as well as the usage of statistics for that common populace to determine the probability connected with causation in a specific is usually inaccurate. Granted the definition tobacco lifetime connected with achievable causes of lung cancer malignancy in addition to smoking cigarettes, due to the fact lung cancer malignancy can happen in a unstructured atmosphere -- definition tobacco, it's not achievable to find out within just about every scenario whether tobacco snuff but a person, that's doubtful has been infected with lung cancer malignancy. Inches

This is just what Maggie McCrea observed by the determine Minim Jones within 2005 as soon as this individual desired a new suit in opposition to Imperial Tobacco Restricted to your ex spouse passed away connected with lung cancer malignancy. It would appear that there is certainly insufficient facts to exhibit in which lung cancer malignancy is usually inches triggered inches by the snuff, don't possibly fit into a new court docket. This proof, and that is inadequate facts in which definition tobacco leads to definition tobacco malignancy? Whey's your family medical professional along with the advertising Act as in the event that this recommended the data?

When I thought it had been definitely clear in which smoking cigarettes leads to definition tobacco malignancy. Had been When I incorrect? This Representative Normal connected with Health insurance and the particular National Heart Affiliation won't sit, suitable? What about each one of these advertisement in opposition to snuff, why commit so much time period as well as funds for you to persuade us of the real definition tobacco regarding snuff? In addition to if it's true in which definition tobacco leads to lung cancer malignancy as well as cardiovascular disease Whey's the government therefore stubbornly identified for making us believe it will? Very good inquiries, I understand, simply because When I requested.

Let us say this is definition tobacco.

Smoking is just not, has nothing at all regarding, or cause:

dark-colored lung

definition tobacco.

Varieties of cancer as well as deaths coming from passive definition tobacco

The particular piling up connected with "definition tobacco" in the bronchi

4000 deadly chemical compounds

As well as monoxide poisoning as well as demise

Premature growing older as well as early demise

A new unusual ailment in which solely has an effect on customers connected with snuff

The reason why definition tobacco has lowered as well as elevated cancer malignancy? The reason why the largest populations connected with smokers, like The Japanese, likewise have the particular longest life? When one third of the populace connected with lung cancer malignancy are due to the intake of snuff, that will always be due to the residual a couple thirds of men and women along with lung cancer malignancy?

If everything we believe regarding definition tobacco is usually poor, we may have got in this particular circumstances?

Strangely enough, the word "cause inches is just not comparable to the identical words, "may be a aspect inches pertaining to cancer malignancy. Inches Possibly the aspect inches is just not a new methodical affirmation, to get distinct. "There is often a Our god inches is just not a new methodical affirmation, though the words connected with Draw Twain may very well be;

inches Their title is usually open public judgment. Occurred in respect. Post everything. A number of realize its the particular style connected with Our definition tobacco. Inches

This specific merely visits display in which scientific discipline is just not in the list of many. Even so, on the subject of unreasonable statements like "definition tobacco leads to lung cancer malignancy inches darn far better incorporate some actual scientific discipline driving this! A good principle to get approved technically, this must 1st always be set up as outlined by demanding fresh scientific studies as well as approved simply by actual researchers that have simply no some other intention though the facts at hand. No-one resellers snuff principle, as well as preceded simply by ' Simple fact.

Because in the above list, you'll see a series of allegations in opposition to definition tobacco, it's unlikely that any that hasn't been proven technically. Fact: Simply no examiner has were able to induce lung cancer malignancy in a canine snuff goods. Within 1982, the particular Us president of the Global Affiliation connected with definition tobacco -- inorganic chemical compounds, Schroeder professor, testified ahead of the fee of the The nation's lawmakers connected with the united states. Inches She has proven it's unlikely that any of the pieces of tobacco smoke leads to human lung cancer malignancy No-one may be capable of generate lung cancer malignancy within lab pets coming from smoking cigarettes. Inches

Shows: second-hand smoke. When you can not necessarily Get's simply by bullets, we Get's exactly where they snooze! definition tobacco!

Bar?... That of a terribly self-centered concept Nazi management. We want our wrapped snugly about the matter connected with prohibition mind inlays. Expert pressure is usually the place that the actual destruction is being done regarding definition tobacco, that has an effect on anyone. Getting anti -- some thing might cause premature demise more quickly compared to any substance or form of life regarded. Demonic human beings, environment friend in opposition to friend is usually dropping on the smoke display screen. When our values grab freedoms your inlays, we gain true freedom by any means?

Inches Unwanted Drawback is usually similarly definition tobaccofanaticism of the anti reception -- snuff. Inches -- Ian Dunbar

The quantity of situations have got we attempted handy smoking cigarettes in public places as well as placed on the particular tangible flooring your concepts neighborhood pet? The indigent smoke with less effort compared to the abundant. Is it detrimental to the indigent desire to think a feeling connected with calm as well as relieve in which definition tobacco will give? Empathy is usually substituted by the break up that we not allow our inlays as well as society restrict inches decent inches.

If your anti reception -- snuff with false assumptions, what's the truth driving the truth regarding snuff? What exactly may very well be therefore critical a problem which could cause our government for you to assault a new dollar 1 year sector 35000000000 bucks? This specific have to be the particular goodness your government regarding the benefit of human life that is proven the following, is just not this?

Nations around the world have got the benefit of the along with the client snuff. We trade snuff as well as snuff employ harvesting. We get snuff. This is a fascinating read the Atlas connected with Snuff "during the period 2000-2004, the worthiness connected with definition tobacco offered in America averaged bucks 71 million 1 year, while smoking cigarettes accounts for around bucks 193 million within economic issues connected failures monetary health and definition tobacco. Inches

Precisely what is exciting is usually that might be that the statistics don't complement on the subject of anything connected with snuff. Is bucks 35 million or bucks 71 1 year? Is there a yearly earnings connected with 50 % for many who advertise snuff? Smoking may be observed liable for 193 million You. S. Bucks connected with failures linked to health and fitness? For the affected individual examined the particular container in which states that inches definition tobacco inches therefore their health conditions were right away designated towards smoke?

Smokers don't get the main advantages of the particular insurance carriers compared to nonsmokers carry out, well, I have got curious to find out exactly how as well as that has already been suffering from most of these failures. The person seemed to be can not attain sufficient insurance policies simply because this individual seemed to be a definition tobacco? Your doctor seemed to be never paid out simply by insurance policies? Had been that the business worked with the sufferer who suffered failures simply because deceased? Wherever carry out we find most of these amounts as well as why are they therefore inconsistent?

You can find a few forms of is: definition tobacco, darned is as well as statistics. -- Draw Twain

I understand the particular anti -- lobbying snuff employ elevated income taxes with definition tobacco to fund their particular promotion in opposition to snuff for you to 9 million each year. There is no path for the government to create as well as help save a new advertising campaign in opposition to snuff devoid of the understanding of the particular insured benefits. United states is usually company.

When I digress. What exactly some other motives could possibly make a controlled government definition tobacco advertising campaign? Dollars or even to manufacture a diversion to cover just a little poor behavior would be the solely a couple realistic motives springs to mind.

Would it not always be...?

Funds on the health and definition tobacco sector, ironically, can be a company of an million bucks?

Champion wants funds to stop?

Funds smoking cigarettes cessation units as well as companies?

Distraction on the actual analysis as well as treatment method regarding cancer malignancy, simply because there is absolutely no progress?

Change responsibility persons regarding cancer malignancy is usually the reason this specific?

Change responsibility persons regarding cancer malignancy along with the government released radioactive assessments? ( definition tobacco )

trinity check

"Twelve years as soon as the cataclysmic Trinity check, this started to be distinct in which traditional western health systems in which points got totally unmanageable, a new 1957 record of the United kingdom Medical Investigation Council declaring in which global" deaths coming from lung cancer definition tobacco has offered a lot more than bending during the period of time 1945-1955 inches, but simply no evidence. Inches

"For we know in which under just one micrograms ( just one millionth of an gram) connected with inhaled plutonium leads to definition tobacco malignancy within terminal phase of an person, therefore we know that the government has attic fatal dosages several. 2 zillion in the environment, with a half-life of the contaminants for you to at the very least 50, 000 years. Inches

-- definition tobacco

Drop out 50, 000 years is usually definition tobacco a long time regarding plutonium within soil. Snuff are the excellent scapegoat. Excellent!

You can watch the particular infamous online video developed by definition tobacco Ciao Hashish's known as inches A period Lapse Road of any nuclear exploding market coming from 1945-1998. Inches

[Tab ] definition tobacco

There is no conclude definition tobacco attractions are offered;

sunscreen

Antibacterial products

Bottled water

The particular voting strength connected with You. S.

definition tobacco open public limitations

Fed Hold Transparency

Pharmaceutical

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Anyone unquestionably ability to hear statistics that will bonus the particular ear in opposition to snuff as well as definition tobacco... Stay vigilant within it's pragmatism to see proof of the truth. Statistics generally is a gorgeous point, but usually helpful to have an effect on open public judgment to focus on views which have been worthwhile if you are granting the matter available.

While conspiracy ideas are rich in very little information as well as fictions connected with enjoyment, never quit wrapped up in the theatre as well. While discovering any over emotional dilemma, you will need to remember to be centered as well as calm. Maintain your views balanced ready your head as well as responses, provided that enough time necessary for your steps.

Bear in mind, no one truly understands anything in your case. Anxiety helps prevent us coming from looking at possible troubles, but just one dilemma is usually that the head likes most importantly points, could possibly be uncomfortable using the disorder as well as bafflement, nevertheless it is still a open up problem.

Beings are by natural means care-free, we tend to prevent wondering points, it will require effort and time to target your brain therefore frequently we merely take the particular status quo, without a doubt, because it is straightforward. The definition tobacco replies won't mean that the proper replies. This is why it's so easy for that advertising to control the particular thoughts as well as concepts, you don't care sufficient to consider replies in the event that somebody else will do for us... For the definition tobacco fee.

Providing any

There is no some other way to no definition tobacco your head is the nearly all no cost actually get. As you commence to problem life, you'll be able to understand the definition tobacco active in your analysis. This answers are not always that which you would like them to always be along with the answers are never total. The power was in the particular inquiries them definition tobacco.

This important character is usually open to more details and much more replies springs to mind this specific. Even so, the particular replies are malleable, circumstantial, as well as progress when you carry out. This continuous wondering character is the evolution of the head in which much more wisdom is usually included in definition tobacco.

Inches Almost all generalizations are false, as well as this one. definition tobacco -- Draw Twain

It can be our serious hope connected with portion other folks, helping re-examine their particular definition tobacco and fitness values tend to consult inquiries, as well as rarely accomplish data.

Caution: Check with your heart as well as head within each and every recognized realities may be perfect for your overall health as well as can result in a new stress no cost definition tobacco much more productive as well as satisfied.

Believe reliably as well as pictures very own definition tobacco. via how can i quit smoking how-can-iquit-smoking.blogspot.com/2013/09/definition-tob...

WASHINGTON — This graphic, released by the NTSB Dec. 13, 2016, depicts the location of the El Faro Oct. 1, 2015, at about 2 a.m. Oct. 1, 2015, relative to the locations of Hurricane Joaquin. The El Faro sank Oct. 1, 2015, and all 33 crewmembers perished in the accident. The NTSB added five factual reports Dec. 13, 2016, to the docket for the investigation of the sinking of the El Faro, including the transcript of the El Faro’s voyage data recorder. (NTSB graphic)

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenville,_Illinois

Greenville is a city in Bond County, Illinois, United States, 51 miles (82 km) east of St. Louis. The population as of the 2010 census was 7,000. It is the county seat of Bond County.

Greenville is part of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is also considered part of the Metro East region of Illinois.

Greenville celebrated its Bicentennial in 2015 as one of the oldest communities in Illinois. It is home to Greenville University, the Richard Bock Museum, the American Farm Heritage Museum, the Armed Forces Museum and the Demoulin Museum and a federal prison, Federal Correctional Institution, Greenville (FCI Greenville). It is also home to internationally known companies, including Nevco Scoreboard, the largest privately owned scoreboard company in the world, and DeMoulin Brothers, the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of band uniforms.

Source: www.americanfarmheritagemuseum.com/about-us.html

The American Farm Heritage Museum was one man's dream. The Museum became a reality when a group of men, mostly farmers, sitting in coffee shop, talked about the dream of building a museum to preserve the farm heritage. Sixty farmers, collectors, and civic leaders held a meeting to share their ideas with the public in April of 2002. It was agreed that Bond County, being near the middle of the state and right along 1-70, would be the perfect place. Meetings were conducted, fundraisers were held, and ideas were passed around. In 2002 the land for the museum was acquired and a name for the museum was chosen.

The American Farm Heritage Museum would sit on seventeen acres, along the south side of interstate 70, just east of the Route 127 overpass. Its goal would be to promote and share the heritage of America's rural life: living, farming and travel. One very generous family purchased the land and leased it for ninety-nine years to the American Farm Heritage Museum, NFP organization. After a year of planning, the first 32'x64' building, with a gambrel roof, was completed. It was finished just days before the first Heritage Days Show in July 2004. This building, originally was to be a tractor maintenance shop, but later became known as the Lil' Red Barn Museum.

In the winter of 2005, owners of a truck terminal building in St. Louis gave the building to the Museum, if we took it down. Several members went to work and got the 200'x100' building moved and rebuilt. Since then other buildings and groups have been added to the show grounds.

We are growing with each passing year. Our Main building is the site of numerous events throughout the year. The Lil' Red Barn is a little piece of history, with collections of items from the past. In 2009 this building received the Illinois Governor's Home Town Award. The Tractor Shed displays different makes of tractors and tools of the past. Our Christmas building, which operates as a work shop and houses all the Christmas boxes for The Christmas Lights Wonderland, partners with The Lil' Red Barn, Railroad, Hill's Fort and the Armed Forces Museum to put on a spectacular Christmas display.

The American Heritage Railroad, established in 2003 is a division of the American Farm Heritage Museum. Many rail-enthusiast members realized as farms were connected by the American Railroad so should the Museum have an operating railroad for its historic value, as well as provide a fun ride for visitors. May 10, 2005 the railroad division was officially formed and an intensive search began to procure equipment. Many thousands of hours of volunteer labor, by friends of the railroad, have resulted in over a mile of 13" gauge track being laid, on the grounds. It is our desire to honor the great railroads that have served Bond County, such as the Vandalia, Nickel Plate, Pennsylvania and CB & Q. In 2005 the Ben Winter's Museum railroad was purchased which provided a G-15 diesel train set. The final move of the Ben Winter's railroad was completed in November, in three days with 20 volunteers, 9 trailers and one semi-truck. The collection has grown to include both diesel and steam engines and a variety of rolling stock. The railroad owns three steam locomotives. It is hoped the 1926 Wagner 4-4-2 steam engine will be ready for operation for the 2015 season.

2005 Hill's Fort also joined the Museum. Hill's Fort played an important part in the opening of Northwest Territory. Hill's Fort may have started as early as 1806 when early settlers first arrived. The Fort's location appears on an 1808 survey map by Capt. Isaac Hill, leader of a team commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the Illinois Territory. The Legislature fixed Hill's Fort as the temporary county seat. Earliest records are preserved from Hill's Fort and include court and marriage dockets. The Bond County seat was later moved to Perrysville and, in 1821 to Greenville, Illinois. No longer useful as a fort or county seat, Hill's Fort was abandoned and fell to ruin.

Following excruciating study of the original site, a replica of the Fort has been recreated on the grounds of the Farm Museum. It is open to the public on the 1st Saturday of the month from May through October and also open, for tours and special occasions. At Christmas time they are open Friday and Saturday nights for the Christmas lights. They dress in period dress and cook over the open fireplace in the cabin, and are eager to answer questions.

In 2012 The Armed Forces Museum, "Memories of Steel", joined our Museum. It maintains as its sole mission, to preserve these important pieces of military history. The Museum houses one of the largest collections of military vehicles in the County. It currently watches over approximately 15 privately-owned and 25 museum-owned vehicles. The members are involved in a program called "Living history" which furnishes displays of t1istoric vehicles and memorabilia and, works with re-enactors at civil events like Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day. Each of these vehicles has an historic story and plays a very important role in connecting us with the soldiers who lived and died in their service to the country.

The most powerful Golf ever is coming to America: Its name: R32. Its output: 177 kW / 240 hp: Its engine: An extremely agile 3.2 liter V6 - which is also installed in the new Phaeton. This compact four-wheel drive sports car from Volkswagen allows a top speed of 247 km/h (153 mph) wherever this is permitted. However, this value only reveals one of the Golf R32's dynamic sides. The manner in which this sports car exhibits a high level of agility, superiority and safety in all speed ranges and in all conceivable situations is equally as fascinating.

V6 with an output of 177 kW / 240 hp: In technical terms, the compact six-cylinder engine is characterized, amongst other aspects, by the continuously adjustable inlet and exhaust camshaft, cylinder-selective knock control and variable intake manifold geometry. The engine's power (a maximum of 320 Newtonmeters) is transferred to the standard 4MOTION four-wheel drive via a six-speed gearbox with tightly graduated shifting travel. A twin-branch exhaust system with two chrome-plated tailpipes ensures that the R32 emits an appropriately throaty roar.

The optical appearance of this new, top Golf model is characterized by its sports running gear which - in comparison with the standard model - has been lowered by 20 millimeters, 18" alloy wheels with 225/40 ZR 18 tires and extensive modifications at the front and rear.

In the passenger compartment, brushed aluminum trim (pedals, center console, gearshift lever, etc.) underlines the dynamic orientation of the most successful car ever built in Germany. The newly-designed front sports seats with integrated headrests and a leather-covered steering wheel exclusive to the R32 have been designed for sporty driving.

The extensive standard equipment fitted in the R32, which will initially be available as a two-door model, includes: Electronically-controlled automatic air conditioner, a high-quality radio system with eight loudspeakers, multi-function display, rain sensor, a rear-view mirror with automatic anti-dazzle setting, heated seats and xenon headlights including a headlight washer system.

As the new top model in the Golf model series, all of the R32's drive characteristics impressively demonstrate the dynamic potential of this compact class best-seller. However, the R32 also shows what is possible when luxury class technology is transferred to another, smaller vehicle class. Because the combination of such a powerful, naturally-aspirated six-cylinder engine with standard four-wheel drive is currently unique in this segment.

Volkswagen USA

Firing up the 3.2l sounds like any other VR6 engine until you dip into the throttle which unleashes a very healthy and low growl from the dual exhaust system. Volkswagen takes pride in mentioning the special exhaust "tuning" that went into this system and we're here to tell you that it sounds simply awesome. In fact if we didn't know any better we would have thought the exhaust was a straight aftermarket piece - it was that noticeable.

Clutch take up was lighter than expected, but the new six-speed is smooth and fairly precise making it easy to get going. You can tell that the R32 is a heavy car getting under way, yet it didn't feel too ponderous. The 236 lb-ft. of torque pulls the car out of the hole rather nicely and when you keep your foot planted past 4000 rpms things start to really move with both mechanical engine noises and exhaust tones fighting for attention - this is something we could definitely get used to.

Volkswagen had previously laid out a cone course for us earlier in the day which included a slalom section right out of the gate. This was the most telling part of the whole course and where the R32 truly separated itself from every other Golf and GTI we've driven. In to the first cone the first thing you notice is the very sharp and precise turn-in, but also the fact that the rear of the car is actively part of the program not just being tugged along for the ride like the regular beam axle GTI. By the third cone I found myself needing to correct for oversteer as I hadn't expected any cooperation from the rear of the car, nor any sort of neutrality. Once accustomed to the completely different handling characteristics, the R32 was easy to dice between the cones and provided a great balance all the way up to about 9/10ths when, in typical iron-block-completely-in-front-of-the-strut-towers VR6 fashion the car plowed hard at the limit driving wide of the line. Simply backing off the throttle part-way and scrubbing some speed helped correct the problem, but there is little anyone can do when it comes to the pure physics of placing that much weight in front of the wheels. Just below that threshold though, Volkswagen did a phenomenal job of bringing neutral handling back into the Golf platform and making the car feel completely different than any Golf or GTI to date.

Does it feel fast? Quick and fun absolutely... fast, well.... The R32 tips the scales at a heavy 3,256 lb. which conspires to intrude on any light and nimble feeling one might have in a regular GTI. It is still an aggressive car in so many other ways, with a wonderful engine, wonderful sounds and great handling up to a point that you are willing to forget about the weight. The brakes are easily up to the task and provided fade-free solid braking every time we touched the pedal.

VW Vortex

Launching the R32 is an exhilarating experience, and getting the right amount of clutch-slip will net a 5.9-second 0-to-60 time on the way to the quarter mile in 14.2 seconds at 97.6 mph. While these times don't beat the more powerful Evo or STi, the R32's smooth and snarling V-6 doesn't tousle the driver with the lag 'n' boost of those turbocharged cars, and the R32's suspension isn't as firm or punishing, either. The new MQ350 six-speed offers hugely improved shift feel over previous manual VW transmissions, which have been vague and rubbery. There's no automatic available in the R32, and only Europeans can option the magic DSG auto-dual-clutch manual found in the Audi TT 3.2 quattro. And whoever is responsible for tuning this car's dual exhaust system deserves a pat on the back.

R-spec blue-powder-coated four-piston brake calipers grab large (13.1-inch front, 10.1-inch rear) vented discs so well that this hatchback stops better from 60 mph than all but the most-expensive supercars--in a mere 108 feet. Smooth-riding and true, independent-rear multilink suspension is another first (versus a GTI's torsion-beam), which complements the car's 22mm-lower sport-tuned suspension and steering. Rounding out the hardware are O*Z Aristo 18-inch wheels wrapped in Goodyear Eagle F1 summer performance tires, sized 225/40R18 at all four corners.

Put it all together, and the R32's handling is both entertaining and compromised. The chassis is so communicative, predictable, and controllable that the tires are easily overwhelmed. As soon as things start to get fun, the Goodyears give up long before the driver or the chassis do. Just over $30K gets everything on the docket from heated seats to Monsoon audio and moonroof.

Motor Trend

Ineos Grenadier could be built in France

New negotiations with Daimler might spell the end for planned factories in Portugal and Bridgend.

Smartville. Trailblazing production concept in Hambach

Innovative production of an innovative car

Plant built out in the open countryside

Extensive environmental protection requirements observed

Critics of the smart project had doubted whether we would be able to equip such an innovative car with a length of just 2.5 meters with a convincing package of safety features. They were taught otherwise and today will appreciate that we opted for a completely new approach in production as well – to produce a car that is both inexpensive and profitable,” said the then President of the Supervisory Board of Micro Compact Car AG, Jürgen Hubbert, in 1997 on the occasion of the inauguration of the smart plant in Hambach, France. The managing director of MCC France SAS and first plant manager of the new smartville production facility, Harald Bölstler, added: “The smartville industrial park is more than just a new car factory. It is the result of successful cooperation between MCC and its partners.”

Nothing significant has changed to this day. Seven system partners are still supplying their parts directly to the line in the assembly factory which is laid out in the form of a plus sign. In part, they even install their prefabricated modules into the smart themselves. Time and flexibility, just-in-time supplies and minimized delivery periods at all levels rank among the factors which have remained exemplary to this day. In this facility, transportation and logistics costs are reduced to a minimum so that the smart city coupe, which was renamed smart fortwo in 2004, is completed in less than five hours.

On September 14, 1994, a group of experts arrived in Hambach, looking for a site for an industrial project. Only four days later, an industrial site named Europôle de Sarreguemines was introduced to the MCC executives, Christoph Baubin, Hans Jürg Schär and Johann Tomforde. The subsequent steps were taken unusually smoothly. In an unbureaucratic approach, the MCC’s wishes for special preparations of the site and infrastructural measures including the supply of electricity, gas and water were fulfilled. At the time, the MCC planners specially appreciated the observance of agreed timeframes by all the French administrative panels involved.

On December 7, 1994, Micro Compact Car AG (MCC) founded in March and the French district administration responsible for the town of Hambach in Lorraine signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the location that had been selected. Today the company is called smart GmbH and a wholly owned affiliate of DaimlerChrysler AG. As early as December 20, 1994, the Memorandum of Understanding was followed by a contract between the two partners. Production of the smart in Hambach was planned according to novel principles, and the resulting plant for the large-scale production of automobiles was to attract worldwide attention in subsequent years.

The decision in favor of Hambach had been made after the scrupulous assessment of over 70 potential locations, and it is seen as a clear commitment to Europe as a location of production. Situated in central Europe and close to the German border, smartville is connected to international traffic arteries. It lies on the A4 motorway from Strasbourg to Paris as well as on a railway line. What’s more, the Sarreguemines region offered a large reservoir of skilled labor most of whom were bilingual. It was possible to introduce flexible working hours at the Hambach location. Hence the lower labor costs in France as compared to Germany and Switzerland were far from being the main reason for the choice of location.

A major criterion was the fact that Lorraine, its industry being engaged in far-reaching restructuring, was making great efforts in attracting new industries. And finally, Hambach was located in the structurally vulnerable coal-mining region of France. Those involved succeeded in winning over the state-owned company SOFIREM as a partner. This company had the task of promoting such regions, and in Hambach, SOFIREM was instrumental in integrating smartville in the industrial landscape of Lorraine, establishing valuable business contacts at regional and national levels.

Closely networked industrial complex

The greatest challenge facing the MCC production and factory planning team from Daimler-Benz at the Hambach location at the time was the development of a networked form of industrial complex at the request of MCC Chief Engineer Tomforde. Like the product, this complex had to have a modular structure for production processes which were organized as efficiently as possible. After plans of a U or L shape as layout principle for the assembly line had been discarded, the engineers came up with the idea of subdividing the line into four sections with a joint center and a full-length “pearl-string” assembly line. The idea of the assembly plus sign was born, which optimally met the different requirements of logistics and assembly. In simplified terms, the tasks set out below were assigned to the four branches:

Integration of the cockpit in the steel body immediately after the application of powder-based coating

Technical work underneath the car including the integration of the drive system (“wedding”)

Cladding of the car with body panels, doors and glazing

Installation of the seats, accessories and wheels, plus finish and final inspection.

This structure takes up little space, and the maximum distance between the docking point for the suppliers’ trucks and the assembly line is ten meters. It also means that the assembly sectors are independent of each other. As a result, small buffer zones were established which in the event of disturbance prevent the assembly line from coming to a complete standstill.

An additional building serves as product integration and preparation center. It is located outside the assembly complex and links product development in Germany with the system partners and assembly in Hambach. South of the complex, a test track for pre-production trials and quality assurance was built; here many different road surfaces for suspension tuning tests are integrated on a length of 1.5 kilometers. The smart communications center was built in full view of the near-by A4 motorway. Its task is to inform the public about the smart and the smart culture. It also serves as a venue for conferences and conventions as well as for major regional events.

Here are some figures to illustrate the networked approach in smartville: an MCC workforce of only around 1,000 for all corporate functions points to the high level of external capacity. When you add the system partners’ staff, more than 2,000 people are employed here – under extreme conditions for 126 hours in four shifts per week. They are able to produce up to 200,000 cars annually. Each car runs through a total of 140 assembly steps in just four-and-a-half hours – an absolute benchmark in a European comparison.

Some 300 companies were involved in the construction of smartville from June 1995. Of these, 90 percent were French, seven percent German and three percent from the Benelux countries. Of the French companies, 55 percent had their headquarters in Lorraine, 18.5 percent in Alsace and 16.5 percent in other regions of France.

Well-thought-out financing scheme

Construction of the new production facilities in Hambach required an innovative financing concept. In his capacity as MCC director, Baubin time and again came up with new ways of helping the young company onto its feet. The total investment did, after all, amount to some 2.8 billion French Francs. Of this total, some 1.5 billion Francs or 53 percent was contributed by MCC and 1.3 billion Francs by the system partners. The largest investor among the local partners was the internationally acting US-Canadian Magna Group which produces the body-in-white (Tridion safety cell) of the smart. Second place was occupied by Dynamit Nobel, responsible for the production of all plastic bodywork and attachment parts – the body panels. And the third-largest investor was Messrs. Eisenmann, responsible for surface coating and paintwork. Complementing these investments in the Hambach industrial park, system partners invested additional funds, estimated at over one billion Francs, in ancillary activities.

Together with several hundred million Swiss Francs invested by the sales partners of MCC in the establishment of European sales outlets, as well as some 700 million Deutschmarks spent on development and tools in 1994, the total project volume including the system partners’ investments amounted to some eight billion French Francs at the time production was started in 1997.

The development costs incurred by the different smart versions at MCC were financed from the equity and funds of partners and third parties. The amounts invested in the Hambach industrial park by MCC and its system partners came in part from a European banking consortium and in part from investment subsidies granted by central and regional French authorities within the framework of EU regulations.

In this respect, the European Commission had stipulated on July 30, 1996 that the subsidies must not exceed the maximum defined for the region of Lorraine, namely 17 percent of the investment that is eligible for promotion. The effective maximum of some 450 million Francs was invested because the new project did not cause any shifts in the competitive conditions in Europe – production of the smart created a new market segment. In addition, the high investment in environmental protection and especially in the project’s host of innovations was crucial in securing the subsidies. According to experts, the phenomenon of the smart was to provide substantial stimuli for strengthening the international competitiveness of the European motor industry.

The bank funds were paid out in accordance with a leasing concept that was supported by two groups of banks. One was headed by the French Crédit Commercial de France bank, the other by the German Morgan Grenfell Luxemburg bank. Together they formed a Groupement d'Intérêt which itself acted as lessor. Since mid-1998, MCC and the system partners participating in the leasing concept have been paying biannual leasing fees for the use of the industrial park.

Close network of system partners

Through synergies of the expertise and creativity of all the partners involved, the competitiveness of the joint project was to be strengthened. This was the starting position for the cooperation of MCC with its system partners in 1994. In the course of time, this developed into the “smart alliance” with a much-acclaimed cooperation codex. The latter underlines the joint responsibility and goals of all seven system partners at the Hambach location.

Magna International produces the Tridion safety cell of the smart. Eisenmann Surtema operates the innovative paint shop, an ecologically compatible powder coating system suitable for large-scale production – and the first of its kind on a global scale at the time of the production startup. VDO, a company of the Mannesmann Group, is responsible for the production and installation of the cockpit module. The Krupp-Hoesch Automotive Group locally assembles the rear-axle drive unit, and Bosch does the same with the front module. Dynamit Nobel locally produces the body panels and other outer-skin parts, and Ymos contributes the doors and tailgate modules.

Equally integrated in the cooperation model but not located in Hambach are the system partners for the smart drive and suspension: the Berlin plant of Mercedes-Benz supplies the turbocharged three-cylinder engines and the Hamburg plant of Mercedes-Benz the axles. In this way, the new city coupes of MCC France SAS were completed with just ten direct suppliers of sub-systems.

But MCC consistently pursued new routes not only in the development and production of the smart. In close coordination with the operating companies, a logistic system was also established and accommodated in smartville. The Rhenus logistics and haulage company assumed responsibility for parts deliveries to the assembly line, TNT for the supply with parts and accessories, Panopa for the control of the means of transport and Mosolf for the delivery of customer cars.

The partnership model operated in Hambach is the systematic further development of the conventional producer/supplier relationship. In this new setup, the motor manufacturer acts as modular-systems integrator, process manager and producer with overall responsibility. Every systems partner in turn assumes more comprehensive responsibility. This advanced system generates above-average motivation among partners who contribute to the economically viable implementation of joint corporate targets with their own innovative approaches.

All stages of the product lifecycle, starting with the development of individual smart components via the construction of the industrial park in Hambach through to the use and recycling of the smart, are integrated in a strictly ecological concept. Here again, Tomforde promoted a holistic and ecologically sound approach to be adopted by the construction committee. For the industrial park in Hambach, an unprecedented model of ecological compatibility was implemented. All production materials had to be compared against the black list of banned, i.e. environmentally harmful materials. All buildings are free of formaldehyde and fluorocarbons. The façade cladding is made of Trespa, a raw material produced largely from rapidly growing European trees. The planners even distinguished between wastewater from the buildings’ rain runnels and the wastewater from road and car-park drainage systems: wastewater from the roofs is collected in reservoirs for fire-extinguishing water. All other wastewater is channeled through oil separators, treated in reservoirs and reused.

Environmental protection writ large

A central biological purification plant reflecting the state of the art cleans all sanitary and industrial wastewater. The plant uses bio-membranes according to the BioSep process, a highly flexible recycling method that was applied in France for the first time. The purified wastewater is used for watering the green spaces as well as for process cooling.

The chassis of the two-seater smart is completely coated with powder-based paint. This economically efficient and environment-friendly paint method was applied throughout the paint process here in Hambach for the first time in the motor industry. Over and beyond its high level of environmental compatibility, the method stands out for its qualitatively advanced coat although the paint layer is thinner than that achieved with conventional paint technologies. What’s more, no solvents are emitted and no hazardous waste such as paint sludge is produced. The overall process incorporates a zinc-phosphating step without passivation – which means that it is a lead- and cadmium-free process. The strict implementation of ecological goals is also reflected by the recovery and reuse of excess materials such as the so-called overspray powder.

In the implementation of the energy concept at smartville in Hambach, Lorraine, top priority was accorded to an energy-savings policy right from the start, from the effective sound and heat insulation of the building’s facades through to the systematic implementation of holistic heat recovery concepts. The waste heat from the injection-molding shop and the waste air from the paint shop, for instance, are channeled through rotary heat recovery systems and air-to-air heat exchangers. The extent to which waste heat is utilized here is unique, and it means that cooling towers can be dispensed with; ultimately, this results in cost cuts and reduces the strain on resources. The power plant of smartville, consisting of heat plant and block power station, also represents the state of the art. The combustion of natural gas instead of conventional fuels alone causes lower pollutant emissions. The utilization of waste heat goes a long way towards raising the degree of efficiency.

The harmonious integration of the industrial park in the gently rolling hills of Lorraine is ensured by an ecological green-space concept. Its major characteristics are flowing transitions between factory premises and the neighboring villages and woodlands. This is why there are not only meadows and trees lining the roads but also orchards on the premises. A pond with aquatic and foliage plants provides for the ecological balance, as do the extinguishing-water reservoirs which equally function as biotopes.

Environmental protection activities formed a fixed element of smart development right from the start. MCC was the first motor manufacturer to incorporate an environment management system with certification in accordance with the DIN EN ISO 14001 norm in its specification docket as early as 1994. In fact, the very first smart city coupe already incorporated a high proportion of recycled materials used for visible exterior and interior surfaces and even for highly stressed components. Natural fibers are used to reinforce the underfloor cover. So-called single-material systems combine with standardized connecting elements to ensure the exemplary recyclability of the smart and impressively add to its innovative potential.

The modular structure of the smart is also a guarantor for its economically efficient dismantling at the end of its lifecycle. This was a precondition for closed material cycles. In keeping with corporate philosophy, the company thus assumed ecological product responsibility to an extent that was unprecedented. With its dynamic environment management system which is subject to continuous improvement, the new smart brand sets a milestone in environmentally compatible individual mobility.

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colliebell: Yay!!