The Shadownlands Collection is based on science fiction stories by Dyan Bender.

 

The second character in the collection is Fyre, whose secret name is Ardala. She is the adopted daughter of a wealthy Healer and direct descendant of the last ruler of what is often called the Great City.

 

She is a Highborn, a race the developed from Human close intermarriage of the ruling families. Thru centuries of narrowed bloodlines a race of physically beautiful and mentally gifted people consolidated power. Marked physically by extremely pale pearlescent skin and blazing red hair with oddly metallic quality. Highborn are marked by a drive to acquire power and are gifted with something other races call Charisma.

 

Ardala is young, she has gained her full height but is still not filled out completely. She has been able to pass as a boy for years. Her eyes are blue, the warm blue of shallow seas, and bright with curiosity and good humor. Although wealthy now for many years she and her mother moved often and she has learned to easily adapt to new locations...she enjoys learning about new people, customs and cultures. She is gentle, and her gentle nature shows in her expression. She completely lacks the imperious and commanding nature that typically marks Highborn, but she is just starting to understand that she has personal power, she is starting to learn that she can command the attention of others.

 

She wears her silk finery, wide pants of teal silk that were left a bit short in the ankles in her last growth spurt; silk slippers encrusted with brass sequins; a silk chiffon vest draping over her young shoulders with fine brass chains; a bra heavily embellished with tiger eye gems, brass and gold, forming hawk motives that symbolize and foreshadow her soaring potential. Her hips, neck and intricately braided hair are adorned with gold chains.

 

The doll is a Andro Inamorata Nnaji in Milk skintone.

 

This is a commissioned bespoken OOAK doll and not for sale.

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Some interesting buildings in Boorowa Street and vicinity are:

•In Zouch Street is the Gothic Anglican Church built in 1893. Architect was Edmund Blacket. The first Anglican Church was built on this spot in 1865. Adjacent is the red brick 1937 Rectory and the 1866 Anglican school room.

•Continue along Cloete St. Take next left into Lynch St. Here is the Methodist Church built in 1909. Now the Uniting Church. Built in Arts and Craft style with horizontal banding bricks, tower etc. The first Methodist Church was built in 1865. Turn around and go along Lynch Street.

•On the corner is the 1928 neo classical style Courthouse with Doric columns.

•Next to it is the much altered Post Office and clock built in 1878. The original Post Office stood here when built 1862.

•Cross the roundabout to see the School of Arts building and library. Built in 1904 as a single storey with two gables.

•Next door is the former AMP Society building on the corner. Built in the 1920s with a curved Doric pillared entrance with the AMP statue logo above. A friend in times of need.

•Opposite is the Presbyterian Church. Built in 1920 of greenish grey coloured feldspar quartz. Young’s first Presbyterian church was built in 1871. Turn around and turn right at the roundabout into Boorowa St.

•On the corner is the Baroque style Commercial Bank of Sydney built in 1890. Two different style porches for the entrances.

•On the right painted grey is The Great Eastern Hotel built in 1904. A typical Australian hotel but with triangular pediments.

•At the next roundabout is the Commercial Hotel. Built in 1930s in Spanish Mission style in red brick.

•Next on left is Millard’s Department Store built in 1917. A major three storey edifice in the street.

•Opposite is Young Town Hall built in 1875. In 1922 the Soldiers War Memorial Clock tower was added. Turn around and go back to the roundabout and turn right. Just along the road is the marked Federation building built around 1901. It has a stepped pediment along the roof. It is important as it was the store of one of the last 19th century Chinese traders in Young – Billy Hayes (anglicised.) He ran it to the 1960s.

•Turn right here next you will see on the right the five storey red brick Millard’s flourmill. Cross the creek.

•You will see St Mary’s Catholic Church. Gothic in style and erected 1874 of local granite with Welsh slate roof. Granite addition to the nave made in 1934. Just behind the church on the side street is the Catholic Convent built in 1891. Gothic looking gables and excellent cast iron lacework on balconies. Now part of the Catholic College.

•Opposite is the Lambing Flat Museum in the old original town school. It opened in 1883. The first town school began in 1861 with the first government school on the site on the present railway station.

•Beyond the park is Young High School. It began as the first Courthouse on these goldfields in 1861. A second grand classical Greek temple building Courthouse opened in 1886 at a cost of £12,000. It was given to the Education Department in 1924. With additions it opened as the Young High School in 1947.

•Young railway station. The railway reached here from Harden in 1885 when the Gothic station was built. It is now the Information Centre.

 

A few days ago, we exited our local Walmart and there was a big circle of sky above us that looked like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were about to break out. Only had my phone with me (my wide angle is still away, not being repaired anyway-long story. Yeah, thanks, Nikon) Anyoldhow, it did eventually rain, but, long after this sensational, celestial foreshadowing. Now for something completely different. It seems that, just as we here in St. T. are about to pass into stage three, we are now going to be required to wear a mask in public. We are a small city of ca. 40000 souls, and NO cases and no deaths from My Sharona Cryus (as one of my favourite YouTubers calls it lol). I only included Walmart for context on the sky. I in no way endorse the corporation, or what they stand for. Whatever in the honkin' hairy heck that may be.

© Ben Heine || Facebook || Twitter || www.benheine.com

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For more information about my art: info@benheine.com

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Obama Popular Despite Challenges

 

By David Zussman (*)

 

The United States is a great sporting nation and, as a result, Americans like keeping score and handicapping most public events. The performance of their presidents is no exception and, since the early days of the Roosevelt presidency, the media have marked the first 100 days by providing a report card based on their performance.

 

It is generally acknowledged that no other U.S. president has arrived in office with higher expectations than Barack Obama, and more difficult problems. It is, therefore, not surprising that he has been subjected to a steeper learning curve than his predecessors.

 

By the time Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20, the U.S. financial system was in freefall, the credit markets were becoming unglued, house prices were tumbling, and a half-dozen foreign hotspots required presidential attention. It is difficult to imagine how it could have been more challenging.

 

Since the 100-day mark is an artificial marker, the White House staff was reluctant to join in on the rating game but their efforts proved futile.

 

Once they realized that it was going to be impossible to blunt the media's interest in rating the administration's performance, some senior staff tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to lower the public's expectations regarding Obama's early accomplishments by assigning themselves a B-plus. And finally, the White House embraced the 100-day anniversary, with the president appearing at last month's 100-day town hall celebration in St. Louis.

 

At this point, given all of the challenges and difficulties encountered by Obama, he remains a very popular political leader. In fact, according to the Pew Foundation, his personal popularity is higher than the ratings for his individual programs.

 

However, there is a very wide gap in the perceptions of Democrats and Republicans, suggesting that he might be one of the most polarizing presidents when compared with his predecessors. This may foreshadow future political tensions in the United States.

 

While not popular with Republicans, Obama appears to have precipitated a dramatic shift in attitude in favour of a greater role for government in the United States and may be giving a new name to the notion of activism.

 

Most observers attribute the positive rankings to Obama's personal style. He offers calm leadership that is heavily dependent on teamwork.

 

It is generally acknowledged that his eclectic team of advisers has two characteristics. First, they represent a wide range of ideological beliefs that appears to have broad appeal, and they seek a consensus among key decision makers before they act. In addition, he prefers to signal his intentions and his overall policy direction, but is reluctant to dictate how the policy will be implemented. At this point, he is perfectly willing to allow Congress to sort out how his policies will be implemented.

 

Ironically, some observers have noted that his approach to governing is the one used by Ronald Reagan more than a generation ago.

 

Former Clinton labour secretary, Robert Reich, may have captured best Obama's "cool" approach to governing when he described the president as being "the serene centre of the cyclone -- exuding calm when most Americans are petrified."

 

While management style is obviously an important factor, America has also changed its attitudes since George W. Bush was first elected in 2000. The American population is aging and appears more predisposed to accept an increased role for government.

 

Given the obvious failure of the Bush administration to buffer Americans from the impact of unfettered markets, it is not surprising that Obama has been very effective in changing the conversation with Americans and bringing in a new paradigm about governing that includes a broader role for government.

 

The swine flu epidemic that is sweeping across the world is a good example of how events can upset the best plans of newly elected governments. The American political system replaces its senior managers after each change of administration but this time it has been severely handicapped during this crisis period.

 

More significant, the epidemic has also exposed the weaknesses of the American transition process that requires it to replace the top 7,000 public servants.

 

The complex vetting procedures in addition to the generally cumbersome appointment process has created a backlog of appointments that is undermining the government's ability to respond to its various challenges.

 

For example, at this point, the Obama administration has still to fill around 15 senior executive health jobs, with a similar number of vacancies at the Treasury department.

 

One observer noted that "we're setting up a system where the only people who qualify to work in government are the ones who never actually left government."

 

Trapped between retaining the former Bush-appointed administrators or following a lengthy search process to find suitable replacements, the government remains leaderless in too many important departments.

 

While the first 100 days are not a very good predictor of what's to come, it's clear that the public is currently content with Obama's performance.

 

He has introduced a new vocabulary and style to governing and he evidently understands Prof. Drew Westen's observation that citizens want to hear values-based and emotionally compelling narratives from their political leaders.

 

As in Canada, Americans want to be reassured that their leadership can feel their pain and is working in their interests.

 

(*) David Zussman holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.

 

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

 

--> This article appeared on www.windsorstar.com

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Some interesting buildings in Boorowa Street and vicinity are:

•In Zouch Street is the Gothic Anglican Church built in 1893. Architect was Edmund Blacket. The first Anglican Church was built on this spot in 1865. Adjacent is the red brick 1937 Rectory and the 1866 Anglican school room.

•Continue along Cloete St. Take next left into Lynch St. Here is the Methodist Church built in 1909. Now the Uniting Church. Built in Arts and Craft style with horizontal banding bricks, tower etc. The first Methodist Church was built in 1865. Turn around and go along Lynch Street.

•On the corner is the 1928 neo classical style Courthouse with Doric columns.

•Next to it is the much altered Post Office and clock built in 1878. The original Post Office stood here when built 1862.

•Cross the roundabout to see the School of Arts building and library. Built in 1904 as a single storey with two gables.

•Next door is the former AMP Society building on the corner. Built in the 1920s with a curved Doric pillared entrance with the AMP statue logo above. A friend in times of need.

•Opposite is the Presbyterian Church. Built in 1920 of greenish grey coloured feldspar quartz. Young’s first Presbyterian church was built in 1871. Turn around and turn right at the roundabout into Boorowa St.

•On the corner is the Baroque style Commercial Bank of Sydney built in 1890. Two different style porches for the entrances.

•On the right painted grey is The Great Eastern Hotel built in 1904. A typical Australian hotel but with triangular pediments.

•At the next roundabout is the Commercial Hotel. Built in 1930s in Spanish Mission style in red brick.

•Next on left is Millard’s Department Store built in 1917. A major three storey edifice in the street.

•Opposite is Young Town Hall built in 1875. In 1922 the Soldiers War Memorial Clock tower was added. Turn around and go back to the roundabout and turn right. Just along the road is the marked Federation building built around 1901. It has a stepped pediment along the roof. It is important as it was the store of one of the last 19th century Chinese traders in Young – Billy Hayes (anglicised.) He ran it to the 1960s.

•Turn right here next you will see on the right the five storey red brick Millard’s flourmill. Cross the creek.

•You will see St Mary’s Catholic Church. Gothic in style and erected 1874 of local granite with Welsh slate roof. Granite addition to the nave made in 1934. Just behind the church on the side street is the Catholic Convent built in 1891. Gothic looking gables and excellent cast iron lacework on balconies. Now part of the Catholic College.

•Opposite is the Lambing Flat Museum in the old original town school. It opened in 1883. The first town school began in 1861 with the first government school on the site on the present railway station.

•Beyond the park is Young High School. It began as the first Courthouse on these goldfields in 1861. A second grand classical Greek temple building Courthouse opened in 1886 at a cost of £12,000. It was given to the Education Department in 1924. With additions it opened as the Young High School in 1947.

•Young railway station. The railway reached here from Harden in 1885 when the Gothic station was built. It is now the Information Centre.

 

A.C.B. Drapers:

 

The 1920s was a decade of significant growth in Fortitude Valley. The success it had attained as a commercial and industrial hub from the beginning of the twentieth century, expanded further in the 1920s. In this decade, the newly amalgamated Brisbane City Council undertook major civic work programs in the Valley. Large and small retailers extended their premises and many public and community buildings were erected. Not least of these extensive building plans were those of Albert Charles Byerley, director of the A.C.B. Ladies Drapers.

 

Byerley had commenced the A.C.B. Ladies Drapers on Wickham Street in the Valley on 13 October 1916 with £5000 worth of stock and 17 employees. Fortitude Valley was not short of drapers in 1916, with the well-known and long-established drapery stores of T.C. Beirne, Overell and Sons and McWhirter and Sons dominating the shopping precinct. The draperies were large, able to provide a wide variety of goods to eager customers, and with a combination of well-priced goods and attractive displays, were capable of attracting enthusiastic crowds of shoppers. Small businesses in the Valley profited from the customers drawn to the draperies, but entering into direct competition with the drapers’ firms was risky. Byerley’s gamble paid off, however, and by 1923 the A.C.B employed 600 people, with branches in Gympie, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville, Toowoomba, Warwick and Pittsworth. Byerley even won bowls championships with one of the Overell managers towards the end of the 1910s. At 40 years old, Byerley declared proudly, he was the youngest drapery executive in Australia.

 

From the 1920s, Byerley and the A.C.B Drapers embarked on a period of tireless expansion. The A.C.B’s flagship Valley store was first run from Northcote Chambers on Wickham Street, close to the Wickham Street frontage of the massive Overell department store. In February 1920, Byerley and partner George Henry Birkbeck obtained title to 32.15 perches of land adjacent to Northcote Chambers, along with a £18,500 mortgage from former land owner Colonel Charles Plant. By April, the A.C.B. Drapers had announced its plans for large extensions to its showrooms. The company spent £38,000 to renovate its branches and promoted its new plans with a building sale. It was boasted that the new building would have the largest single street plate-glass window frontage in the Commonwealth. Plans for brick alterations to the property were approved in October 1920, to be constructed by contractor Henry Roberts. No architect was listed, although Roberts may have been responsible for the design of the building. Roberts was a speculative builder who later went on to become an architect and designed several buildings, particularly as his own investments.

 

The new building opened in February 1921, with a sketch included in the advertisements of the Brisbane Courier.

 

In July 1921, the Brisbane Municipal Council approved plans for the A.C.B Ladies’ Drapers to build a new brick building, again constructed by Henry Roberts. The first part of the new building was completed in twelve weeks and four days, ready to open in October. The A.C.B.’s business was so large that it continued its occupation of Northcote Chambers (which was owned, in part, by Henry Roberts) as well as moving into the new building. Birkbeck retired from business and the entire property was transferred to Byerley in December.

 

The second part of the new building was completed in August 1922, just as a fire broke out in the Northcote Chambers building and caused £15,000 worth of damage to stock, as well as to other tenants. All drapery stock was moved into the new building. Expansion continued, with new footwear sections opened in April 1923. At the same time, Byerley proposed to construct a ten-storey building on a newlypurchased site adjoining the property in Wickham Street. The building was to have bulk stores, two floors of show rooms, a mail order department, offices, three floors for manufacturing and two storeys for lunch rooms – one for employees, the other for the public. Designed by the Queensland Construction Company, it would cost the A.C.B. £50,000. Byerley entered into a mortgage with the Australian Mutual Providential Society to the value of £24,000 and a second to Colonel Plant for £10,000 (both registered on 10 April).

 

Work on the foundations was announced to start in May 1923, and the A.C.B again celebrated with a ‘building sale’. Progress slowed, and a concrete warehouse was finally approved on 11 March 1924. The buildings between the A.C.B building and Clark Street were cleared at the end of the year; a photograph published in the Brisbane Courier in September 1923 shows workmen from the Queensland Construction Company near the Wickham and Clark Street corner, preparing to demolish the shops.

 

In the interim, Byerley was expanding the A.C.B. branches to regional Queensland. New premises had been opened in Cairns, Innisfail, Charters Towers in 1924 and Atherton and South Brisbane in 1926, and each branch had been registered as a separate company.

 

By 1926, however, the A.C.B. had passed the peak of its commercial success. Only one floor and a basement of the ten-storey building had emerged. Two fires broke out in the Valley premises in November 1927, causing £28,115 worth of damage (including £3,298 to the building). Repairs were undertaken by the Queensland Constructional Company, which had set up its offices in the A.C.B’s buildings.

 

Further troubles followed. While Byerley expanded, borrowing from banks and other creditors, the financial situation of his companies began to worsen. The stock market crash and ensuing depression hit in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and by 1930 Byerley was almost certainly insolvent. Officially, however, it was not until 1932 that A.C.B. Limited crashed, with £282,276/12/5 in liabilities and over 130 creditors. In the hearings over the ensuing years, Byerley’s one-man A.C.B. drapery chain was described as a ‘bubble organisation’ which had finally burst. The company was compulsorily wound up and Byerley declared bankrupt. There were only two secured creditors in the company, both with charges over the Wickham Street property. Of AMP’s original £24,000 mortgage, £22,999/14/10 remained, while the estate of

Colonel Plant had a £6,000 charge over the property. Byerley had claimed the Wickham-street building was worth £46,150, but it was judged that the property would raise insufficient money to cover the debts of the two creditors. James Malouf, a draper, took possession of the Valley property in October 1932, with the blessing of the Australian Mutual Provident Society.

 

With debtors to be paid, the A.C.B property was offered for sale at auction in March 1933. The entire property was composed of two allotments, totalling just over a quarter of an acre and with a frontage (138 feet 6 inches) said to be one of the largest in the city. The sites contained two buildings: a ‘substantial brick building’ of three floors and a basement, with 69 foot and four inch frontage (now number 282). There was also a two-storey building on the site adjacent (now number 302). The properties had an advantageous location near the Brunswick Street train station, but at auction they were passed in without any bids. (Similarly, Foy and Gibson’s large premises had received only one bid at auction eight months earlier, while Stewart and Sons’ large factory in McLachlan Street was offered for sale unsuccessfully for several years.)

 

Malouf continued his drapery store from the premises until 1937, when the Australian Mutual Provident Society became the holder of the estate. Smith’s furniture store leased the building until 1949, when the Brisbane City Mission relocated there. The Mission purchased the property at number 282 (a site of just under thirty-two perches) in 1952. The building became known as ‘Revesby House’ after Revesby Holdings purchased it in 1985, using it for shops and offices. In 1987 it passed to Richard and Juliana Martin and was transferred to For Angels Ltd in 2003.

 

McWhirters Bulk Store:

 

The drapery firm of James McWhirter and Son Ltd was founded in 1898. Business commenced in a single shop fronting Brunswick Street, but quickly expanded to include other retail. James McWhirter senior had been employed by T.C. Beirne, another draper in Fortitude Valley, before establishing his own business. Competition between the two major retailers played out over the twentieth century, with their stores facing each other across Brunswick Street.

 

By the early twentieth century, McWhirters was one of the three largest Valley retailers, alongside TC Beirne and Overells. Following the disastrous 1890s floods which drove south side retailers to the north side, the Valley became the shopping hub for greater Brisbane, rivalled only by the city centre itself. McWhirters flourished as a family department store, its many customers attracted by a high quality of goods, variety of merchandise and moderate prices. The store’s shop windows, especially at Christmas, became a Fortitude Valley attraction.

 

The massive trade of McWhirter and Son necessitated expansion during this period. Large buildings and additions were undertaken in 1912, 1923 and 1930-31. These buildings engulfed one side of the ‘Valley Corner’, taking up most of the block fronting Wickham, Warner and Brunswick Streets. These buildings are all listed together on the State Heritage Register.

 

McWhirters’ development was not limited to Fortitude Valley. James McWhirter’s sharp business acumen had enabled him to expand his business to branches throughout Queensland. McWhirters worked on the principle that ‘distance shall be no bar to trade’. It had a large number of Queensland country clients and regularly sent parcels to customers in New South Wales, South Australia and New Guinea. The firm was renowned for its postal service for country customers and produced regular catalogues for mail orders. Similarly, the large city-based drapery firm of McDonnell and East’s advertised itself as the ‘Home of the Mail Order’ in 1918, while T.C. Beirne had a rural store in Mackay.

 

Expansion of McWhirters around the late 1910s seems to have focused on catering for this business: the firm’s garage, from which many parcels would have been delivered, was built in 1918 in nearby Ballow Street.

 

McWhirters had contributed greatly to the attraction of Friday night shopping in the Valley in the early 1900s. However, in 1908 a Shop Assistants’ Wages Board was established, and in the following years agitation to abolish Friday night trading and to reinstate the 48 hour week, grew. The Drapers’ Association, which included McWhirters, agreed in 1916 to cease their Friday night trading, foreshadowing the 1917 stipulation that overtime rates had to be paid for Friday night shopping, in effect abolishing Friday night shopping. To counteract the reduction in trading hours, McWhirters advertised the introduction of a suburban section of their Mail Order Department, for the convenience of customers. In reality, the loss of Friday night trading does not seem to have harmed most of the Valley firms, who were reported not to want re-establish Friday night trading, and whose takings increased after the abolition. The success of the mail order department can be seen in the 1918 purchase of the Warner Street site on which the bulk store was built.

 

In 1918 McWhirter and Son purchased the Warner Street site. It had been owned from 1913 by T.C. Beirne, although it was not used as part of Beirne’s retail business, but rather the location of the Elite Skating Palace.

 

On 25 September 1918 plans for the new brick warehouse on Warner Street were registered, though they were not approved until 20 December. The architect, Thomas Ramsay Hall of Queen St and contractor, Henry Roberts of Adelaide St, had been employed to construct the Ballow Street garage earlier in 1918. Hall was a prominent Brisbane architect from a family of prominent Brisbane architects: John Hall, his father, designed buildings for the Queensland National Bank and private residences including ‘Greylands’, ‘Langlands’ and ‘Pahroombin’, while Francis Richard Hall, his half-brother, was in practice with Robin Dods as Hall and Dods. T.R. Hall contributed significantly to the architectural design of Brisbane and Queensland, as a solo practitioner (with designs including the Castlemaine Perkins Building in Adelaide St (1918-19), McDonnell and East Limited Building (1912-1928) and the Sandgate Town Hall (1911-12)); with partner GG Prentice (most notably City Hall (1930), Our Lady of Victories Catholic Church (1924-5)); and with later partner LB Phillips (Gayndah Shire Hall (1935), Southport Bathing Pavillion (1934) and the Southport Town Hall (1935)). Hall, ‘well and popularly known in Brisbane’, also worked with Henry and D.F. Roberts on developments of McWhirters in 1914, where his ‘considerable technical resource’ was considered invaluable on the intricate remodelling scheme.

 

As Hall formed an architectural firm with GG Prentice in 1919, Prentice may also have contributed to the design of the McWhirters bulk store.

 

The McWhirters Bulk Store was completed in 1919. Four storeys high, spacious and imposing, it afforded ‘convincing evidence of the wonderful growth of that firm’s [McWhirter and Son] business.’ It was considered ‘decidedly attractive’ and appreciated for its ‘thorough modernity’. A dock on the ground floor was connected to the upper storage levels by an electric lift, with electric lighting and fire sprinklers installed throughout the building. A lunch room for the employees took up half a floor, making it large enough to be considered for dances and socials. A tower above the roof was capped with a concrete water tank. The total floor space was 46,000 square feet.

 

The completion of the bulk store unfortunately coincided with the death of James McWhirter, son of the founder. James junior died in Sydney in September 1919. McWhirters Limited was incorporated in the following year. James senior lived only a few years longer, dying in 1925. However the success of McWhirters continued well into the first half of the twentieth century: in 1928 McWhirters earned a record profit of ₤77,888, with more settled earnings of ₤37,072 by June 1940. In 1949 the turnover of Valley residents was estimated at ₤15 million each year, of which McWhirters, T.C. Beirne’s and Overells accounted for more than ₤5 million.

 

In the late 1920s, the mail order business and packing department were moved into the building. Business had grown so significantly in the 1920s that it was seen as more beneficial to relocate the department into separate and larger premises. This also had the advantage of locating the mail order department conveniently close to the Ballow Street motor garage, from which the parcels were sent. However, the building was also used for events outside its normal business: it was the location for a wireless concert and horticultural exhibit in 1925. In 1933, the bulk store was the site of distribution of free Christmas hampers donated by McWhirters to those suffering the effects of the Depression. 5,000 people arrived on Christmas morning to claim a hamper.

 

Architect T.R. Hall was retained for the McWhirters 1930-31 addition, with new partner G.G. Phillips. The striking building on the Wickham and Brunswick Street corner, joined the two existing buildings and was built by G.A. Stronach. This five-storey addition provided another 250,000 square feet (a little more than two hectares) of floor space at a cost of ₤130,000.

 

Source: Brisbane City Council Heritage Register.

Foreshadowing of an era gone by.

Oil has been depleted and replaced by other forms of energy that are more environmentally sound.

Nature's reclaiming of the Earth is visible everywhere. Ancient structures and relics of abandoned gas stations and vehicles are still littering the soon to be pristine countryside. Humans hiding from view are awaiting clean-up operations, which have been too busy since the Great War.

 

Week 1

 

I've decided to take on a 52 week photography project to help improve my photography. My goal is to not just capture nice pictures, but to hopefully tell a story of some kind. This week, I wanted to show how life had made me neglect some of my favorite hobbies/pass times because other things were "too important" to pass up. That's never a good excuse and I've realized that, so now now I'm picking up where I left off.

 

For those who can't read my messy handwriting here's the list I came up with -- I hope to, but will not necessarily post in the order presented:

 

1. Picking up where I left off

2. Self-portrait

3. Ramadan

4. Sunrise/sunset

5. Eid

6. Books

7. The Little Things

8. Bokeh

9. Three

10. Reflection

11. Clouds

12. Faceless portrait

13. Red

14. Frame within a frame

15. Street

16. Shadows

17. Leading lines

18. Black and White

19. Five

20. Patterns

21. Blue

22. Hands

23. Music

24. Out of focus

25. Low Key

26. Pen and Ink

27. Writing on the Wall

28. The City

29. High Angle

30. Beginning

31. Low Angle

32. Nostalgia

33. Green

34. Shoes

35. Smile

36. Photographers

37. A Sign

38. High key

39. Motion blur

40. Fiction/fantasy

41. Intricate

42. Fresh

43. Symmetry

44. Juxtaposition

45. One

46. Hope

47. Curves

48. Opportunity

49. Foreshadow

50. Geometry

51. Happiness

52. Self-portrait

 

La catedral de la Intercesión de la Virgen junto al foso (en ruso Собор Покрова Пресвятой Богородицы, что на Рву, Sobor Pokrová Presvyatoy Bogoróditsy, chto na Rvu), más conocida como Catedral de San Basilio, es un templo ortodoxo localizado en la Plaza Roja de la ciudad de Moscú, Rusia. Es mundialmente famosa por sus cúpulas en forma de bulbo. A pesar de lo que se suele pensar popularmente, la Catedral de San Basilio no es ni la sede del Patriarca Ortodoxo de Moscú, ni la catedral principal de la capital rusa, pues en ambos casos es la Catedral de Cristo Salvador. Como parte de la Plaza Roja, la catedral de San Basilio fue incluida desde 1990, junto con el conjunto del Kremlin, en la lista de Patrimonio de la Humanidad de Unesco.

La construcción de la catedral fue ordenada por el zar Iván el Terrible para conmemorar la conquista del Kanato de Kazán, y se realizó entre 1555 y 1561. En 1588, el zar Teodoro I de Rusia mandó que se agregara una nueva capilla en el lado este de la construcción, sobre la tumba de San Basilio el Bendito, santo por el cual se empezó a llamar popularmente la catedral.

San Basilio se encuentra en el extremo sureste de la Plaza Roja, justo frente a la Torre Spásskaya (la Torre del Salvador) del Kremlin y la iglesia de San Juan Bautista en Dyákovo.

El concepto inicial era construir un grupo de capillas, dedicadas a cada uno de los santos en cuyo día el zar ganó una batalla, pero la construcción de una torre central unifica estos espacios en una sola catedral.

La leyenda dice que el zar Iván dejó ciego al arquitecto Póstnik Yákovlev para evitar que proyectara una construcción que pudiera superar a esta, aunque parece claro que no se trata más que de una fabulación, ya que Yákovlev participó, pasados unos años, en la construcción del Kremlin de Kazán.

La catedral de San Basilio no debe confundirse con el Kremlin de Moscú, que está situado a su lado en la Plaza Roja, y por tanto no forma parte de él. Aun así, muchos medios confunden ambas construcciones.

 

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catedral_de_San_Basilio

 

The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собор Василия Блаженного, Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennogo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is a church in Red Square in Moscow, Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (Собор Покрова Пресвятой Богородицы, что на Рву, Sobor Pokrova Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy, chto na Rvu) or Pokrovsky Cathedral (Покровский собор). It was built from 1555–1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

The building is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, a design that has no parallel in Russian architecture. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century. The Guardian compared building with "garish chunk of Disneyland architecture" and "a clown's nose on the face of the evil empire".

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral

 

Project: Narrative

 

This semester I've been continuously inspired by Italy and the art that I was face-to-face with when I was there over the summer. While there are numerous artistic representations of other bible stories, I was surprised at the amount of Annunciation scenes we encountered. One after another, and all different in their own way.

 

I also was influenced by David Hilliard for the composition and layout of the images. If you aren't familiar with his work, I definitely recommend checking it out! www.davidhilliard.com

 

For this representation of the Annunciation I wanted to strip it down to be as minimalistic as possible and still try to communicate the story and idea. There are only a couple of symbols that give way to it being an annunciation scene:

 

My choice to use a diptych was influenced by Hilliard's work, as well as religious paintings as a whole. Diptychs and triptychs have been commonly used in religious paintings for centuries.

 

The white clothing and sheets- Mary's purity and innocence

 

The light- typically represented by an angel; foreshadowing of what is and what is going to happen.

 

AND a huge thank you to Lexi for modeling and being so patient! You deserve more than a pumpkin spice latte for those two brutally early morning sessions. You're awesome!

You should check out her work if you haven't yet! www.flickr.com/photos/sealegssnapshots/

A very pleasant surprise this, but just a foreshadowing of the bigger one Z&S had in store for me. Whether or not this is to become common on MK routes I don't know, but seeing what turned up a few moments later, it seems unimportant by comparison.

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

 

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

 

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

 

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

 

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.

 

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843

 

Note: You can put fangs on an ass, but it is still an ass.

  

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fihlBfuA2B4

 

Ribbon in the sky HQ - Stevie Wonder

 

Just perhaps

A first sighting in 2011

A luminous ribbon in the sky

Foreshadowing better times to come

g

Montreal

Prompt: Reading between the lines / foreshadowing

 

Materials used:

-- Lamy Safari fountain pen, B nib

-- Lamy Safari fountain pen, EF nib

-- DeAtramentis Document ink black (ink in both pens)

 

Paper: Global Art Hand Book Journal

A BNSF worker cuts down the last old-school Santa Fe searchlight signal bridge in the Southwest in Riverside, California on the early morning of November 8, 2020.

 

Judges' comments: As railroads continue to modernize their network signal systems, this series of three images elegantly depicts a changing of the guard. The judges admired this photographer’s ability to artfully capture the story of transition from veteran searchlight signals to new “Darth Vader” colorlight signals. The first image convincingly captures the “before” while foreshadowing the “new” lurking beyond the signal bridge. The scrapper's torch highlights the second image, with the bridge again in the background. Perhaps most memorable, the third image portrays the fallen soldier with the upgraded system towering above. The judges also noted the photographer’s adept skill with ambient-light night photography in a variety of conditions.

 

Read more about the 2021 John E. Gruber Creative Awards Program: railphoto-art.org/awards/2021-awards/

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Aleksander Porfírievich Borodín (en ruso, Александр Порфирьевич Бородин; San Petersburgo, Imperio ruso, 12 de noviembre de 1833 – ibídem, 27 de febrero de 1887) fue un compositor, doctor y químico, destacado dentro de los compositores del nacionalismo ruso, también conocido por formar parte del Grupo de los cinco.

Borodín es conocido por sus sinfonías, sus dos cuartetos de cuerda, En las estepas de Asia Central y su ópera El príncipe Ígor. Fue un prominente defensor de los derechos de las mujeres, de la educación en Rusia y fundó la Escuela de medicina para mujeres en San Petersburgo.

Fue hijo ilegítimo del príncipe georgiano Luká Stepánovitch Gedevanishvili (62), quien lo registró conforme a la usanza de la época como hijo de uno de sus sirvientes, Porfiri Borodín. Su madre fue Evdokia (Eudoxie) Constantínovna Antónova (25), apodada por el diminutivo Dunia. Su padre muere cuando Alexander tenía 7 años y lo incluye en su testamento. Alexander fue un autodidacta, aprende a tocar flauta, violonchelo y piano. Tuvo una vida confortable y recibió una buena educación incluyendo clases de piano, francés y alemán. A los 15 años se inscribe en la Facultad de Medicina, a los 21 es contratado en el Hospital de la Armada Territorial y a los 23 como profesor de la Academia Militar de Química. Sin embargo, su área de especialización fue la química, por lo cual no recibió clases formales de composición hasta 1863, cuando se convirtió en discípulo de Mili Balákirev. Tuvo dos hermanos, Dmitri Serguéievich Aleksándrov y Evgueni Fiódorovich Fiódorov, que fueron registrados como hijos de los sirvientes del príncipe. Se casa en 1861 con una famosa y talentosa pianista nacida en Heidelberg, Ekaterina Serguéievna Protopópova, con quien tuvo tres hijos.

En 1869 Balákirev le dirigió su primera sinfonía y en ese mismo año Borodín comenzó la composición de su segunda sinfonía. Aunque el estreno ruso de esta última fue un fracaso, Franz Liszt logró que fuera interpretada en Alemania en 1880, donde tuvo bastante éxito, dándole fama fuera de Rusia.

También en 1869 empezó a trabajar en la composición de su ópera El príncipe Ígor, que es considerada por algunos su obra más importante. Esta ópera contiene las ampliamente conocidas Danzas polovtsianas (o Danzas de los pólovtsy), siendo éste un fragmento comúnmente interpretado por sí mismo, tanto en su versión coral como orquestal. Debido a la gran carga de trabajo como químico, la ópera quedó inconclusa al momento de su muerte, siendo completada posteriormente por Nikolái Rimski-Kórsakov y Aleksandr Glazunov.

Priorizó su ópera sobre la tercera sinfonía, quedando esta inacabada. Alexander Glazunov consiguió arreglar las secciones del primer movimiento, así como recrear el scherzo a partir de uno de sus cuartetos de cuerda, cuyo scherzo iba a ser el mismo. Para el trío del scherzo, Glazunov utilizó temas que se habían desechado durante la composición de El príncipe Igor.

A pesar de ser un compositor reconocido, Borodín siempre se ganó la vida como químico, campo en el cual era bastante respetado, particularmente por su conocimiento de los aldehídos. A Borodín también se le atribuye, junto con Charles-Adolphe Wurtz, el descubrimiento de la reacción aldólica, una importante reacción en química orgánica; además de otra reacción química conocida como reacción Borodin-Hunsdiecker. En 1872, participó en la fundación de una escuela de Medicina para mujeres.

Sus obras incluyen el poema sinfónico En las estepas de Asia Central, dos cuartetos de cuerdas, donde el tercer movimiento Nocturno del segundo cuarteto goza de gran fama, un quinteto para cuerdas, un quinteto para piano y cuerdas, una sonata para violoncelo y piano, 16 canciones para bajo y piano, tres de ellas además con violoncelo, piezas para piano, así como las ya mencionadas sinfonías 1 y 2, más una tercera incompleta al momento de su muerte (con dos movimientos completados por Glazunov), el segundo movimiento de la tercera sinfonía, Borodín lo transcribió a cuarteto de cuerdas como un Scherzo.

Tras la muerte de Modest Músorgski en marzo de 1881, sufre de ataques cardiacos y cólera. Borodín murió a los 53 años de un infarto durante una fiesta organizada por los profesores de la academia en San Petersburgo, el 27 de febrero de 1887 y fue enterrado en el cementerio Tijvin del monasterio de Aleksandr Nevski. Su esposa le sobrevivió 5 meses.

En su honor, un cuarteto de cuerdas fundado en Rusia en 1945 lleva su nombre, el Cuarteto Borodín. El pintor Iliá Yefímovich Repin (1844–1930) hizo un magnífico retrato de Borodín, que se encuentra en el Museo Estatal Ruso de San Petersburgo.

 

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Borodín

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Cinco_(compositores)

  

Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Порфи́рьевич Бороди́н) (12 November 1833 – 27 February 1887) was a Russian chemist and Romantic musical composer of Georgian ancestry. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as "The Mighty Handful", a group dedicated to producing a uniquely Russian kind of classical music, rather than imitating earlier Western European models. Borodin is known best for his symphonies, his two string quartets, the symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia and his opera Prince Igor. Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the US musical Kismet.

A doctor and chemist by profession, Borodin made important early contributions to organic chemistry. Although he is presently known better as a composer, during his lifetime, he regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only practising music and composition in his spare time or when he was ill. As a chemist, Borodin is known best for his work concerning organic synthesis, including being among the first chemists to demonstrate nucleophilic substitution, as well as being the co-discoverer of the aldol reaction. Borodin was a promoter of education in Russia and founded the School of Medicine for Women in Saint Petersburg, where he taught until 1885.

Borodin was born in Saint Petersburg as an illegitimate son of a 62-year-old Georgian nobleman, Luka Stepanovich Gedevanishvili, and a married 25-year-old Russian woman, Evdokia Konstantinovna Antonova. Due to the circumstances of Alexander's birth, the nobleman had him registered as the son of one of his Russian serfs, Porfiry Borodin, hence the composer's Russian last name. As a result of this registration, both Alexander and his nominal Russian father Porfiry were officially serfs of Alexander's biological father Luka. The Georgian father emancipated Alexander from serfdom when he was 7 years old and provided housing and money for him and his mother. Despite this, Alexander was never publicly recognized by his mother, who was referred to by young Borodin as his "aunt".

Despite his status as a commoner, Borodin was well provided for by his Georgian father and grew up in a large four-storey house, which was gifted to Alexander and his "aunt" by the nobleman. Although his registration prevented enrollment in a proper gymnasium, Borodin received good education in all of the subjects through private tutors at home. During 1850 he enrolled in the Medical–Surgical Academy in Saint Petersburg, which was later the workplace of Ivan Pavlov, and pursued a career in chemistry. On graduation he spent a year as surgeon in a military hospital, followed by three years of advanced scientific study in western Europe.

During 1862 Borodin returned to Saint Petersburg to begin a professorship of chemistry at the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy and spent the remainder of his scientific career in research, lecturing and overseeing the education of others. Eventually, he established medical courses for women (1872).

He began taking lessons in composition from Mily Balakirev during 1862. He married Ekaterina Protopopova, a pianist, during 1863, and had at least one daughter, named Gania. Music remained a secondary vocation for Borodin besides his main career as a chemist and physician. He suffered poor health, having overcome cholera and several minor heart failures. He died suddenly during a ball at the Academy, and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg.

In his profession Borodin gained great respect, being particularly noted for his work on aldehydes. Between 1859 and 1862 Borodin had a postdoctoral position in Heidelberg. He worked in the laboratory of Emil Erlenmeyer working on benzene derivatives. He also spent time in Pisa, working on halocarbons. One experiment published during 1862 described the first nucleophilic displacement of chlorine by fluorine in benzoyl chloride. The radical halodecarboxylation of aliphatic carboxylic acids was first demonstrated by Borodin during 1861 by his synthesis of methyl bromide from silver acetate. It was Heinz Hunsdiecker and his wife Cläre, however, who developed Borodin's work into a general method, for which they were granted a US patent during 1939, and which they published in the journal Chemische Berichte during 1942. The method is generally known as either the Hunsdiecker reaction or the Hunsdiecker–Borodin reaction.

During 1862, Borodin returned to the Medical–Surgical Academy (now known as the S.M. Kirov Military Medical Academy), and accepted a professorship of chemistry. He worked on self-condensation of small aldehydes in a process now known as the aldol reaction, the discovery of which is jointly credited to Borodin and Charles-Adolphe Wurtz. Borodin investigated the condensation of valerian aldehyde and oenanth aldehyde, which was reported by von Richter during 1869. During 1873, he described his work to the Russian Chemical Society and noted similarities with compounds recently reported by Wurtz.

He published his last full article during 1875 on reactions of amides and his last publication concerned a method for the identification of urea in animal urine.

His successor as chemistry professor of the Medical-Surgical academy was his son-in-law and fellow chemist, Alexander Dianin.

Borodin met Mily Balakirev during 1862. While under Balakirev's tutelage in composition he began his Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major; it was first performed during 1869, with Balakirev conducting. During that same year Borodin started on his Symphony No. 2 in B minor, which was not particularly successful at its premiere during 1877 under Eduard Nápravník, but with some minor re-orchestration received a successful performance during 1879 by the Free Music School by Rimsky-Korsakov's direction. During 1880 he composed the popular symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia. Two years later he began composing a third symphony, but left it unfinished at his death; two movements of it were later completed and orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov.

During 1868 Borodin became distracted from initial work on the second symphony by preoccupation with the opera Prince Igor, which is considered by some to be his most significant work and one of the most important historical Russian operas. It contains the Polovtsian Dances, often performed as a stand-alone concert work forming what is probably Borodin's best-known composition. Borodin left the opera (and a few other works) incomplete at his death.

Prince Igor was completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. It is set in the 12th century, when the Russians, commanded by Prince Igor of Seversk, determined to conquer the barbarous Polovtsians by travelling eastward across the Steppes. The Polovtsians were apparently a nomadic tribe originally of Turkish origin who habitually attacked southern Russia. A full solar eclipse early during the first act foreshadows an ominous outcome to the invasion. Prince Igor's troops are defeated. The story tells of the capture of Prince Igor, and his son, Vladimir, of Russia by Polovtsian chief Khan Konchak, who entertains his prisoners lavishly and orders his slaves to perform the famous 'Polovtsian Dances', which provide a thrilling climax to the second act. The second half of the opera finds Prince Igor returning to his homeland, but rather than finding himself in disgrace, he is welcomed home by the townspeople and by his wife, Yaroslavna. Although for a while rarely performed in its entirety outside of Russia, this opera has received two notable new productions recently, one at the Bolshoi State Opera and Ballet Company in Russia during 2013, and one at the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York City during 2014.

No other member of the Balakirev circle identified himself so much with absolute music as did Borodin in his two string quartets, and in his many earlier chamber compositions. Himself a cellist, he was an enthusiastic chamber music player, an interest that increased during his chemical studies in Heidelberg between 1859 and 1861. This early period yielded, among other chamber works, a string sextet and a piano quintet. In thematic structure and instrumental texture he based his pieces on those of Felix Mendelssohn.

During 1875 Borodin started his First String Quartet, much to the displeasure of Mussorgsky and Vladimir Stasov. That Borodin did so in the company of The Five, who were hostile to chamber music, demonstrates his independence. From the First Quartet onward, he displayed mastery of the form. His Second Quartet, in which his strong lyricism is represented in the popular "Nocturne", followed during 1881. The First Quartet is richer in changes of mood. The Second Quartet has a more uniform atmosphere and expression.

Borodin's fame outside the Russian Empire was made possible during his lifetime by Franz Liszt, who arranged a performance of the Symphony No. 1 in Germany during 1880, and by the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau in Belgium and France. His music is noted for its strong lyricism and rich harmonies. Along with some influences from Western composers, as a member of The Five his music has also a Russian style. His passionate music and unusual harmonies proved to have a lasting influence on the younger French composers Debussy and Ravel (in homage, the latter composed during 1913 a piano piece entitled "À la manière de Borodine").

The evocative characteristics of Borodin's music made possible the adaptation of his compositions in the 1953 musical Kismet, by Robert Wright and George Forrest, notably in the songs "Stranger in Paradise" and "And This Is My Beloved". In 1954, Borodin was posthumously awarded a Tony Award for this show.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Borodin

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Alexander_B...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_(composers)

 

Two UP motors lead an eastbound intermodal down the Sandusky District, which was quite funny considering the current circumstances. Minutes before we saw the power for the first time, we were joking about how the train coming was UP QCHCO or something like that, and then this popped up looking straight off the railroad likely to be purchasing NS in the near future. Only time will tell.

Acrylic on Canvas (240 cm x 150 cm)

 

"We Saw the Future" is a conceptual series of acrylic paintings by , Brazilian artist Zéh Palito. The series portrays a world wherein man and animal merge as one. Defining Palito's archetypal foreshadowings of this obscure destiny, each painting illuminates a specific step of the journey. Using his signature color palette of bright reds, royal blues, lime greens, and electric yellows within the contrasting organic shapes against geometric, Zéh Palito takes his audience into this self-conceived dimension. He enhances the cardinal concept of nature’s connectivity by splashing evocative imagery about the canvas: grenades ejecting rainbows, hands possessing hearts, elephants and gorrilas exploring uncharted territory. “We Saw the Future” reinvents the inherent evolution, alludes to the riddance of all things bad, and leaps towards the equality of man and his fellow animal. Yet again, Zéh Palito gives his audience reason to take a second look at the world around them. For, it is man who determines what lay ahead. Perhaps the future is not such a mystery after all.

 

(Paley Martin- Art Nouveau MAG)

 

Llegamos una tarde cualquiera de Agosto, la familia y mi amigo se encontraron después de un largo tiempo. La tarde presagiaba con su capote gris un encuentro triste y emotivo.

 

Las lágrimas, las sonrisas, las historias se sucedieron una tras otra, este solía ser el lugar de juegos de mi amigo durante sus vacaciones, apenas irreconocible.

 

El batey se había convertido en un pueblo fantasma desde que el central dejó de existir para ellos, Unos decidieron mudarse, los que quedaron decidieron renovar los votos y las esperanzas, mas solo lluvia gris les había llegado hasta el momento.

 

Fue difícil para mi que nunca antes había visitado el lugar, mucho mas duro fue para mi amigo, quedando solo en las historias del como y cuando.

  

We arrived one afternoon August, family and my friend reunite after a long time. The afternoon foreshadowed his gray cloak sad and emotional encounter.

 

The tears, the smiles, the stories followed one after another, this used to be the playground of my friend while on holiday as a child, today was a place barely recognizable.

 

The batey had become a ghost town since the sugar mill ceased to exist for them, few decided to move, those who remained decided to renew the vows and hopes, but only gray rain had come so far.

 

It was difficult for me who had never visited the place, much harder it was for my friend, remaining only the stories of how and when

thegoldensieve.com

 

A trip through the trippiest place I know

When I was a kid, my parents had a friend, Bob, who was one of those characters that seems straight out of a Jean Shepard story. In the golden hindsight of memory's sieve, it's hard to to draw the line between reality, the rosy blur of childhood memory and dream. One thing I clearly remember, however, was that Bob had a deep interest in the strange, especially in the space where oddball, creepy and craft intersect. Therefore, once-upon-a-time, we drove with Bob and the whole family out to south-western Wisconsin to visit a place called The House on the Rock. As an craftsman, Bob knew something of the sculptures and the lore surrounding this road-side oddity. We didn't know what to expect.

What I can remember was a long hallway suspended above the pines, swaying gently in the breeze, a series of gaudy rooms with outlandish decorations and automated music machines that played out-of-tune music when plied with a token. I also remember the tour of The House was extremely trying as the tour went on forever. By the time we reached the end of a long hallway and an enormous indoor carousel, walking to the steady pounding of a timpani drum, we had had enough and looked for a way out. All we could find was a fire exit and decided, rather than seeing just how deep the rabbit hole goes, we should crash out. Since then, the House on the Rock became a fixture of the familial lore. It became a symbol for the creepy, the strange and the never-ending. If memory serves, it was most aptly compared with a flu-dream - that is, one of those fitful, aberrantly creepy and thoroughly surreal nightmares one has when running a high fever. When we woke left, it was hard to be sure what fitful visions were real and what were twisted by our imaginations into something more sinister. The mere mention of The House on the Rock became something of an inside joke and reference point. When we found ourselves in a strange place or lost in some over-long detour, a House on the Rock comparison wasn't long in coming.

So, when after a wedding some months past, my wife and I found ourselves with some good friends and without a plan for the day - we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and visit the House on the Rock. One of our companions had been just a few years back and we were prepared for the full three tours. The folks at the front didn't mind my bringing a tripod through (although one bored manager near the end seemed to have a problem - luckily this place is such a dark labyrinth that those problems were quickly left behind) and I will not bring to you over the course of three posts about thirty-odd photographs from within the musky corners of this oddity.

The "house," comprises the first tour. A tour of the entire museum is split into three parts and it takes over three hours to complete. I will share the photographs I took in three parts as well, roughly split along the same lines as the tour. As you walk through the place, you find yourself making a slow decent from the gaudy, semi-organized spaces of the house into progressive disorganization, disorientation and creepshow. For me, the experience reaches its apogee at the end of the second tour - in a room billed as having the world's largest carousel. At this point, however, only the second tour is ending; after all, it wouldn't be the House on the Rock if it didn't go on too long. Should you need any further testimony to the other-worldly quality of this museum, in doing a little background checking and research for this post, I discovered that the House on the Rock serves as the portal into the minds of the gods in a novel called American Gods.

The house, (which the long exposures of these images gives the appearance of being well-lit, don't be fooled) initially gives the impression of careful design and imagination but eventually yields to the chaos that awaits. "The Infinity Room" (above) is one of the very first rooms in the house and presents the last true glimpse of daylight the visitor gets for the next several hours. The small little spaces one might expect to find in Jackie Treehorn's Malibu penthouse from the Coen brothers' Big Lebowski end about the time the strange collections of artifacts begin. A few suits of armor facing the stadium seating of a claustrophobic amphitheater mirror the contents of a room near the end of tour three where a vast collection of armors from numerous time periods wage war near a fiberglass elephant. Just out of the house and into the second tour and a "Streets of Yesterday" exhibit begins. Miniaturized versions of small town Americana and non-functional, creepy fortuneteller booths foreshadow the bulk the second tour, or what I would call "The Dark Carnival," after Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Some interesting buildings in Boorowa Street and vicinity are:

•In Zouch Street is the Gothic Anglican Church built in 1893. Architect was Edmund Blacket. The first Anglican Church was built on this spot in 1865. Adjacent is the red brick 1937 Rectory and the 1866 Anglican school room.

•Continue along Cloete St. Take next left into Lynch St. Here is the Methodist Church built in 1909. Now the Uniting Church. Built in Arts and Craft style with horizontal banding bricks, tower etc. The first Methodist Church was built in 1865. Turn around and go along Lynch Street.

•On the corner is the 1928 neo classical style Courthouse with Doric columns.

•Next to it is the much altered Post Office and clock built in 1878. The original Post Office stood here when built 1862.

•Cross the roundabout to see the School of Arts building and library. Built in 1904 as a single storey with two gables.

•Next door is the former AMP Society building on the corner. Built in the 1920s with a curved Doric pillared entrance with the AMP statue logo above. A friend in times of need.

•Opposite is the Presbyterian Church. Built in 1920 of greenish grey coloured feldspar quartz. Young’s first Presbyterian church was built in 1871. Turn around and turn right at the roundabout into Boorowa St.

•On the corner is the Baroque style Commercial Bank of Sydney built in 1890. Two different style porches for the entrances.

•On the right painted grey is The Great Eastern Hotel built in 1904. A typical Australian hotel but with triangular pediments.

•At the next roundabout is the Commercial Hotel. Built in 1930s in Spanish Mission style in red brick.

•Next on left is Millard’s Department Store built in 1917. A major three storey edifice in the street.

•Opposite is Young Town Hall built in 1875. In 1922 the Soldiers War Memorial Clock tower was added. Turn around and go back to the roundabout and turn right. Just along the road is the marked Federation building built around 1901. It has a stepped pediment along the roof. It is important as it was the store of one of the last 19th century Chinese traders in Young – Billy Hayes (anglicised.) He ran it to the 1960s.

•Turn right here next you will see on the right the five storey red brick Millard’s flourmill. Cross the creek.

•You will see St Mary’s Catholic Church. Gothic in style and erected 1874 of local granite with Welsh slate roof. Granite addition to the nave made in 1934. Just behind the church on the side street is the Catholic Convent built in 1891. Gothic looking gables and excellent cast iron lacework on balconies. Now part of the Catholic College.

•Opposite is the Lambing Flat Museum in the old original town school. It opened in 1883. The first town school began in 1861 with the first government school on the site on the present railway station.

•Beyond the park is Young High School. It began as the first Courthouse on these goldfields in 1861. A second grand classical Greek temple building Courthouse opened in 1886 at a cost of £12,000. It was given to the Education Department in 1924. With additions it opened as the Young High School in 1947.

•Young railway station. The railway reached here from Harden in 1885 when the Gothic station was built. It is now the Information Centre.

 

Allard Motor Company Limited was an English car manufacturer founded in 1945 by Sydney Allard which commenced from small premises in south west London. Car manufacture almost ceased within a decade. It produced approximately 1900 cars before his death in 1966. Before the war, Allard supplied some replicas of a Bugatti-tailed special of his own design from Adlards Motors inPutney.

 

Allards featured large American V8 engines in a light British chassis and body, giving a high power-to-weight ratio and foreshadowing the Sunbeam Tiger and AC Cobra of the early 1960s. Cobra designer Carroll Shelby and father of the Corvette Zora Arkus Duntov both drove Allards in the early 1950s.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

KCS 4576 builds a train at Bensenville Yard with a few CP engines surrounding it. With the news of the proposed CP/KCS merger spreading around. It's kinda obvious why I picked this title.

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Some interesting buildings in Boorowa Street and vicinity are:

•In Zouch Street is the Gothic Anglican Church built in 1893. Architect was Edmund Blacket. The first Anglican Church was built on this spot in 1865. Adjacent is the red brick 1937 Rectory and the 1866 Anglican school room.

•Continue along Cloete St. Take next left into Lynch St. Here is the Methodist Church built in 1909. Now the Uniting Church. Built in Arts and Craft style with horizontal banding bricks, tower etc. The first Methodist Church was built in 1865. Turn around and go along Lynch Street.

•On the corner is the 1928 neo classical style Courthouse with Doric columns.

•Next to it is the much altered Post Office and clock built in 1878. The original Post Office stood here when built 1862.

•Cross the roundabout to see the School of Arts building and library. Built in 1904 as a single storey with two gables.

•Next door is the former AMP Society building on the corner. Built in the 1920s with a curved Doric pillared entrance with the AMP statue logo above. A friend in times of need.

•Opposite is the Presbyterian Church. Built in 1920 of greenish grey coloured feldspar quartz. Young’s first Presbyterian church was built in 1871. Turn around and turn right at the roundabout into Boorowa St.

•On the corner is the Baroque style Commercial Bank of Sydney built in 1890. Two different style porches for the entrances.

•On the right painted grey is The Great Eastern Hotel built in 1904. A typical Australian hotel but with triangular pediments.

•At the next roundabout is the Commercial Hotel. Built in 1930s in Spanish Mission style in red brick.

•Next on left is Millard’s Department Store built in 1917. A major three storey edifice in the street.

•Opposite is Young Town Hall built in 1875. In 1922 the Soldiers War Memorial Clock tower was added. Turn around and go back to the roundabout and turn right. Just along the road is the marked Federation building built around 1901. It has a stepped pediment along the roof. It is important as it was the store of one of the last 19th century Chinese traders in Young – Billy Hayes (anglicised.) He ran it to the 1960s.

•Turn right here next you will see on the right the five storey red brick Millard’s flourmill. Cross the creek.

•You will see St Mary’s Catholic Church. Gothic in style and erected 1874 of local granite with Welsh slate roof. Granite addition to the nave made in 1934. Just behind the church on the side street is the Catholic Convent built in 1891. Gothic looking gables and excellent cast iron lacework on balconies. Now part of the Catholic College.

•Opposite is the Lambing Flat Museum in the old original town school. It opened in 1883. The first town school began in 1861 with the first government school on the site on the present railway station.

•Beyond the park is Young High School. It began as the first Courthouse on these goldfields in 1861. A second grand classical Greek temple building Courthouse opened in 1886 at a cost of £12,000. It was given to the Education Department in 1924. With additions it opened as the Young High School in 1947.

•Young railway station. The railway reached here from Harden in 1885 when the Gothic station was built. It is now the Information Centre.

 

Don't fear the reaper, or the tractor or whatever. This is a beautiful field of Safflower in Davis, CA.

The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, tr. Sobór Vasíliya Blazhénnogo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. Its completion, with its colors, was made in 1683. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

 

The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, because it was perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, like all churches in Byzantine Christianity, the church was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.

 

The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.

 

As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.

 

Construction under Ivan IV

The site of the church had been, historically, a busy marketplace between the St. Frol's (later Saviour's) Gate of the Moscow Kremlin and the outlying posad. The centre of the marketplace was marked by the Trinity Church, built of the same white stone as the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy (1366–68) and its cathedrals. Tsar Ivan IV marked every victory of the Russo-Kazan War by erecting a wooden memorial church next to the walls of Trinity Church; by the end of his Astrakhan campaign, it was shrouded within a cluster of seven wooden churches. According to the report in Nikon's Chronicle, in the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered the construction of the wooden Church of Intercession on the same site, "on the moat". One year later, Ivan ordered the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of Trinity Church to commemorate his campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was "a major innovation" for Muscovy. The placement of the church outside the Kremlin walls was a political statement in favour of posad commoners and against hereditary boyars.

 

Contemporary commentators clearly identified the new building as Trinity Church, after its easternmost sanctuary; the status of "katholikon" (собор, sobor, large assembly church) had not been bestowed on it yet:

 

On the Trinity on the Moat in Moscow.

In the same year, through the will of czar and lord and grand prince Ivan began making the pledged church, as he promised for the capture of Kazan: Trinity and Intercession and seven sanctuaries, also called "on the moat". And the builder was Barma with company.

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

The identity of the architect is unknown. Tradition held that the church was built by two architects, Barma and Postnik, the official Russian cultural heritage register lists "Barma and Postnik Yakovlev". Researchers proposed that both names refer to the same person, Postnik Yakovlev or, alternatively, Ivan Yakovlevich Barma (Varfolomey). Legend held that Ivan blinded the architect so that he could not re-create the masterpiece elsewhere. Many historians are convinced that it is a myth, as the architect later participated in the construction of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow as well as in building the walls and towers of the Kazan Kremlin. Postnik Yakovlev remained active at least throughout the 1560s. This myth likely originated with Jerome Horsey's account of Ivan III of Moscow having blinded the architect of the fortress of Ivangorod.

 

There is evidence that construction involved stonemasons from Pskov and German lands.

 

Architectural style

Because the church has no analog—in the preceding, contemporary, or later architecture of Muscovy and Byzantine cultural tradition, in general,—the sources that inspired Barma and Postnik are disputed. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc rejected European roots for the cathedral, opining that its corbel arches were Byzantine and ultimately Asian. A modern "Asian" hypothesis considers the cathedral a recreation of Qolşärif Mosque, which was destroyed by Russian troops after the Siege of Kazan.

 

Nineteenth-century Russian writers, starting with Ivan Zabelin,[5] emphasized the influence of the vernacular wooden churches of the Russian North; their motifs made their ways into masonry, particularly the votive churches that did not need to house substantial congregations. David Watkin also wrote of a blend of Russian and Byzantine roots, calling the cathedral "the climax" of Russian vernacular wooden architecture.

 

The church combines the staggered layered design of the earliest (1505–1508) part of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the central tent of the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530s), and the cylindric shape of the Church of Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo (1547); but the origin of these unique buildings is equally debated. The Church in Kolomenskoye, according to Sergei Podyapolsky, was built by Italian Petrok Maly, although mainstream history has not yet accepted his opinion. Andrey Batalov revised the year of completion of Dyakovo church from 1547 to the 1560s–70s, and noted that Trinity Church could have had no tangible predecessors at all.

 

Dmitry Shvidkovsky suggested that the "improbable" shapes of the Intercession Church and the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye manifested an emerging national renaissance, blending earlier Muscovite elements with the influence of Italian Renaissance. A large group of Italian architects and craftsmen continuously worked in Moscow in 1474–1539, as well as Greek refugees who arrived in the city after the fall of Constantinople. These two groups, according to Shvidkovsky, helped Moscow rulers in forging the doctrine of Third Rome, which in turn promoted assimilation of contemporary Greek and Italian culture. Shvidkovsky noted the resemblance of the cathedral's floorplan to Italian concepts by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Donato Bramante, but most likely Filarete's Trattato di architettura. Other Russian researchers noted a resemblance to sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, although he could not have been known in Ivan's Moscow. Nikolay Brunov recognized the influence of these prototypes but not their significance; he suggested that mid-16th century Moscow already had local architects trained in Italian tradition, architectural drawing and perspective, and that this culture was lost during the Time of Troubles.

 

Andrey Batalov wrote that judging by the number of novel elements introduced with Trinity Church, it was most likely built by German craftsmen. Batalov and Shvidkovsky noted that during Ivan's reign, Germans and Englishmen replaced Italians, although German influence peaked later during the reign of Mikhail Romanov. German influence is indirectly supported by the rusticated pilasters of the central church, a feature more common in contemporary Northern Europe than in Italy.

 

The 1983 academic edition of Monuments of Architecture in Moscow takes the middle ground: the church is, most likely, a product of the complex interaction of distinct Russian traditions of wooden and stone architecture, with some elements borrowed from the works of Italians in Moscow. Specifically, the style of brickwork in the vaults is Italian.

 

Layout

Instead of following the original ad hoc layout (seven churches around the central core), Ivan's architects opted for a more symmetrical floor plan with eight side churches around the core, producing "a thoroughly coherent, logical plan" despite the erroneous latter "notion of a structure devoid of restraint or reason" influenced by the memory of Ivan's irrational atrocities. The central core and the four larger churches placed on the four major compass points are octagonal; the four diagonally placed smaller churches are cuboid, although their shape is hardly visible through later additions. The larger churches stand on massive foundations, while the smaller ones were each placed on a raised platform as if hovering above ground.

 

Although the side churches are arranged in perfect symmetry, the cathedral as a whole is not. The larger central church was deliberately offset to the west from the geometric centre of the side churches, to accommodate its larger apse on the eastern side. As a result of this subtle calculated asymmetry, viewing from the north and the south presents a complex multi-axial shape, while the western façade, facing the Kremlin, appears properly symmetrical and monolithic. The latter perception is reinforced by the fortress-style machicolation and corbeled cornice of the western Church of Entry into Jerusalem, mirroring the real fortifications of the Kremlin.

 

Inside the composite church is a labyrinth of narrow vaulted corridors and vertical cylinders of the churches. Today the cathedral consists of nine individual chapels. The largest, central one, the Church of the Intercession, is 46 metres (151 ft) tall internally but has a floor area of only 64 square metres (690 sq ft). Nevertheless, it is wider and airier than the church in Kolomenskoye with its exceptionally thick walls. The corridors functioned as internal parvises; the western corridor, adorned with a unique flat caissoned ceiling, doubled as the narthex.

 

The detached belfry of the original Trinity Church stood southwest or south of the main structure. Late 16th- and early 17th-century plans depict a simple structure with three roof tents, most likely covered with sheet metal. No buildings of this type survive to date, although it was then common and used in all of the pass-through towers of Skorodom. August von Meyenberg's panorama (1661) presents a different building, with a cluster of small onion domes.

 

Structure

The foundations, as was traditional in medieval Moscow, were built of white stone, while the churches themselves were built of red brick (28 by 14 by 8 cm (11.0 by 5.5 by 3.1 in)), then a relatively new material (the first attested brick building in Moscow, the new Kremlin Wall, was started in 1485). Surveys of the structure show that the basement level is perfectly aligned, indicating use of professional drawing and measurement, but each subsequent level becomes less and less regular. Restorers who replaced parts of the brickwork in 1954–1955 discovered that the massive brick walls conceal an internal wooden frame running the entire height of the church. This frame, made of elaborately tied thin studs, was erected as a life-size spatial model of the future cathedral and was then gradually enclosed in solid masonry.

 

The builders, fascinated by the flexibility of the new technology, used red bricks as a decorative medium both inside and out, leaving as much brickwork open as possible; when location required the use of stone walls, it was decorated with a brickwork pattern painted over stucco. A major novelty introduced by the church was the use of strictly "architectural" means of exterior decoration. Sculpture and sacred symbols employed by earlier Russian architecture are completely missing; floral ornaments are a later addition. Instead, the church boasts a diversity of three-dimensional architectural elements executed in brick.

 

Colour

The church acquired its present-day vivid colours in several stages from the 1680s to 1848. Russian attitude towards colour in the 17th century changed in favour of bright colours; iconographic and mural art experienced an explosive growth in the number of available paints, dyes and their combinations. The original colour scheme, missing these innovations, was far less challenging. It followed the depiction of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation:

 

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.

And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats, I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

 

— Revelation, 4:3–4 (KJV)

The 25 seats from the biblical reference are alluded to in the building's structure, with the addition of eight small onion domes around the central tent, four around the western side church and four elsewhere. This arrangement survived through most of the 17th century. The walls of the church mixed bare red brickwork or painted imitation of bricks with white ornaments, in roughly equal proportion. The domes, covered with tin, were uniformly gilded, creating an overall bright but fairly traditional combination of white, red and golden colours. Moderate use of green and blue ceramic inserts provided a touch of rainbow as prescribed by the Bible.

 

While historians agree on the colour of the 16th-century domes, their shape is disputed. Boris Eding wrote that they most likely were of the same onion shape as the present-day domes. However, both Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo churches have flattened hemispherical domes, and the same type could have been used by Barma and Postnik.

 

Development

1583–1596

The original Trinity Church burnt down in 1583 and was refitted by 1593. The ninth sanctuary, dedicated to Basil Fool for Christ (the 1460s–1552), was added in 1588 next to the north-eastern sanctuary of the Three Patriarchs. Another local fool, Ivan the Blessed, was buried on the church grounds in 1589; a sanctuary in his memory was established in 1672 inside the south-eastern arcade.

 

The vault of the Saint Basil Sanctuary serves as a reference point in evaluating the quality of Muscovite stonemasonry and engineering. As one of the first vaults of its type, it represents the average of engineering craft that peaked a decade later in the church of the Trinity in Khoroshovo (completed 1596). The craft was lost in the Time of Troubles; buildings from the first half of the 17th century lack the refinement of the late 16th century, compensating for poor construction skill with thicker walls and heavier vaults.

 

1680–1683

The second, and most significant, round of refitting and expansion took place in 1680–1683. The nine churches themselves retained their appearance, but additions to the ground-floor arcade and the first-floor platform were so profound that Nikolay Brunov rebuilt a composite church from an "old" building and an independent work that incorporated the "new" Trinity Church. What once was a group of nine independent churches on a common platform became a monolithic temple.

 

The formerly open ground-floor arcades were filled with brick walls; the new space housed altars from thirteen former wooden churches erected on the site of Ivan's executions in Red Square. Wooden shelters above the first-floor platform and stairs (the cause of frequent fires) were rebuilt in brick, creating the present-day wrap-around galleries with tented roofs above the porches and vestibules.

 

The old detached belfry was demolished; its square basement was reused for a new belltower. The tall single tented roof of this belltower, built in the vernacular style of the reign of Alexis I, significantly changed the appearance of the cathedral, adding a strong asymmetrical counterweight to the church itself. The effect is most pronounced on the southern and eastern facades (as viewed from Zaryadye), although the belltower is large enough to be seen from the west.

 

The first ornamental murals in the cathedral appeared in the same period, starting with floral ornaments inside the new galleries; the towers retained their original brickwork pattern. Finally, in 1683, the church was adorned with a tiled cornice in yellow and blue, featuring a written history of the church in Old Slavic typeface.

 

1737–1784

In 1737 the church was damaged by a massive fire and later restored by Ivan Michurin. The inscriptions made in 1683 were removed during the repairs of 1761–1784. The church received its first figurative murals inside the churches; all exterior and interior walls of the first two floors were covered with floral ornamentation. The belltower was connected with the church through a ground-floor annex; the last remaining open arches of the former ground-floor arcade were filled during the same period, erasing the last hint of what was once an open platform carrying the nine churches of Ivan's Jerusalem.

 

1800–1848

Paintings of Red Square by Fyodor Alekseyev, made in 1800–1802, show that by this time the church was enclosed in an apparently chaotic cluster of commercial buildings; rows of shops "transformed Red Square into an oblong and closed yard." In 1800 the space between the Kremlin wall and the church was still occupied by a moat that predated the church itself. The moat was filled in preparation for the coronation of Alexander I in 1801. The French troops who occupied Moscow in 1812 used the church for stables and looted anything worth taking. The church was spared by the Fire of Moscow (1812) that razed Kitai-gorod, and by the troops' failure to blow it up according to Napoleon's order. The interiors were repaired in 1813 and the exterior in 1816. Instead of replacing missing ceramic tiles of the main tent, the Church preferred to simply cover it with a tin roof.

 

The fate of the immediate environment of the church has been a subject of dispute between city planners since 1813. Scotsman William Hastie proposed clearing the space around all sides of the church and all the way down to the Moskva River; the official commission led by Fyodor Rostopchin and Mikhail Tsitsianov agreed to clear only the space between the church and Lobnoye Mesto. Hastie's plan could have radically transformed the city, but he lost to the opposition, whose plans were finally endorsed by Alexander I in December 1817 (the specific decision on clearing the rubble around the church was issued in 1816).

 

Nevertheless, actual redevelopment by Joseph Bove resulted in clearing the rubble and creating Vasilyevskaya (St. Basil's) Square between the church and Kremlin wall by shaving off the crest of the Kremlin Hill between the church and the Moskva River. Red Square was opened to the river, and "St. Basil thus crowned the decapitated hillock." Bove built the stone terrace wall separating the church from the pavement of Moskvoretskaya Street; the southern side of the terrace was completed in 1834. Minor repairs continued until 1848, when the domes acquired their present-day colours.

 

1890–1914

Preservationist societies monitored the state of the church and called for a proper restoration throughout the 1880s and 1890s, but it was regularly delayed for lack of funds. The church did not have a congregation of its own and could only rely on donations raised through public campaigning; national authorities in Saint Petersburg and local in Moscow prevented financing from state and municipal budgets. In 1899 Nicholas II reluctantly admitted that this expense was necessary, but again all the involved state and municipal offices, including the Holy Synod, denied financing. Restoration, headed by Andrey Pavlinov (died 1898) and Sergey Solovyov, dragged on from 1896 to 1909; in total, preservationists managed to raise around 100,000 roubles.

 

Restoration began with replacing the roofing of the domes. Solovyov removed the tin roofing of the main tent installed in the 1810s and found many original tiles missing and others discoloured; after a protracted debate the whole set of tiles on the tented roof was replaced with new ones. Another dubious decision allowed the use of standard bricks that were smaller than the original 16th-century ones. Restorers agreed that the paintwork of the 19th century must be replaced with a "truthful recreation" of historic patterns, but these had to be reconstructed and deduced based on medieval miniatures. In the end, Solovyov and his advisers chose a combination of deep red with deep green that is retained to the present.

 

In 1908 the church received its first warm air heating system, which did not work well because of heat losses in long air ducts, heating only the eastern and northern sanctuaries. In 1913 it was complemented with a pumped water heating system serving the rest of the church.

 

1918–1941

During World War I, the church was headed by protoiereus Ioann Vostorgov, a nationalist preacher and a leader of the Black-Hundredist Union of the Russian People. Vostorgov was arrested by Bolsheviks in 1918 on a pretext of embezzling nationalized church properties and was executed in 1919.[citation needed] The church briefly enjoyed Vladimir Lenin's "personal interest"; in 1923 it became a public museum, though religious services continued until 1929.

 

Bolshevik planners entertained ideas of demolishing the church after Lenin's funeral (January 1924). In the first half of the 1930s, the church became an obstacle for Joseph Stalin's urbanist plans, carried out by Moscow party boss Lazar Kaganovich, "the moving spirit behind the reconstruction of the capital". The conflict between preservationists, notably Pyotr Baranovsky, and the administration continued at least until 1936 and spawned urban legends. In particular, a frequently-told story is that Kaganovich picked up a model of the church in the process of envisioning Red Square without it, and Stalin sharply responded "Lazar, put it back!" Similarly, Stalin's master planner, architect Vladimir Semyonov, reputedly dared to "grab Stalin's elbow when the leader picked up a model of the church to see how Red Square would look without it" and was replaced by pure functionary Sergey Chernyshov.

 

In the autumn of 1933, the church was struck from the heritage register. Baranovsky was summoned to perform a last-minute survey of the church slated for demolition, and was then arrested for his objections. While he served his term in the Gulag, attitudes changed and by 1937 even hard-line Bolshevik planners admitted that the church should be spared. In the spring of 1939, the church was locked, probably because demolition was again on the agenda; however, the 1941 publication of Dmitry Sukhov's detailed book on the survey of the church in 1939–1940 speaks against this assumption.

 

1947 to present

In the first years after World War II renovators restored the historical ground-floor arcades and pillars that supported the first-floor platform, cleared up vaulted and caissoned ceilings in the galleries, and removed "unhistoric" 19th-century oil paint murals inside the churches. Another round of repairs, led by Nikolay Sobolev in 1954–1955, restored original paint imitating brickwork, and allowed restorers to dig inside old masonry, revealing the wooden frame inside it. In the 1960s, the tin roofing of the domes was replaced with copper.

 

The last round of renovation was completed in September 2008 with the opening of the restored sanctuary of St. Alexander Svirsky. The building is still partly in use today as a museum and, since 1991, is occasionally used for services by the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 1997 Orthodox Christian services have been held regularly. Nowadays every Sunday at Saint Basil's church there is a divine liturgy at 10 a.m. with an Akathist to Saint Basil.

 

Naming

The building, originally known as "Trinity Church",[8] was consecrated on 12 July 1561, and was subsequently elevated to the status of a sobor (similar to an ecclesiastical basilica in the Catholic Church, but usually and incorrectly translated as "cathedral"). "Trinity", according to tradition, refers to the easternmost sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, while the central sanctuary of the church is dedicated to the Intercession of Mary. Together with the westernmost sanctuary of the Entry into Jerusalem, these sanctuaries form the main east–west axis (Christ, Mary, Holy Trinity), while other sanctuaries are dedicated to individual saints.

 

Sanctuaries of the cathedral

Compass point Type Dedicated to Commemorates

Central coreTented churchIntercession of Most Holy TheotokosBeginning of the final assault of Kazan, 1 October 1552

WestColumnEntry of Christ into JerusalemTriumph of the Muscovite troops

North-westGroin vaultSaint Gregory the Illuminator of ArmeniaCapture of Ars Tower of Kazan Kremlin, 30 September 1552

NorthColumnSaint Martyrs Cyprian and Justinia (since 1786 Saint Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia)Complete capture of Kazan Kremlin, 2 October 1552

North-eastGroin vaultThree Patriarchs of Alexandria (since 1680 Saint John the Merciful)Defeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

EastColumnLife-giving Holy TrinityHistorical Trinity Church on the same site

South-eastGroin vaultSaint Alexander SvirskyDefeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

SouthColumnThe icon of Saint Nicholas from the Velikaya River (Nikola Velikoretsky)The icon was brought to Moscow in 1555.

South-westGroin vaultSaint Barlaam of KhutynMay have been built to commemorate Vasili III of Russia

North-eastern annex (1588)Groin vaultBasil the BlessedGrave of venerated local saint

South-eastern annex (1672)Groin vaultLaying the Veil (since 1680: Nativity of Theotokos, since 1916: Saint John the Blessed of Moscow)Grave of venerated local saint

The name "Intercession Church" came into use later, coexisting with Trinity Church. From the end of the 16th century[66] to the end of the 17th century the cathedral was also popularly called Jerusalem, with reference to its church of Entry into Jerusalem as well as to its sacral role in religious rituals. Finally, the name of Vasily (Basil) the Blessed, who died during construction and was buried on-site, was attached to the church at the beginning of the 17th century.

 

Current Russian tradition accepts two coexisting names of the church: the official "Church of Intercession on the Moat" (in full, the "Church of Intercession of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat"), and the "Temple of Basil the Blessed". When these names are listed together the latter name, being informal, is always mentioned second.

 

The common Western translations "Cathedral of Basil the Blessed" and "Saint Basil's Cathedral" incorrectly bestow the status of cathedral on the church of Basil, but are nevertheless widely used even in academic literature. Especially during the 19. century, in English and other languages the Saint Basil's Cathedral was also called (Cathedral or Church of) Vassili Blagennoi.

 

Sacral and social role

On the day of its consecration the church itself became part of Orthodox thaumaturgy. According to the legend, its "missing" ninth church (more precisely a sanctuary) was "miraculously found" during a ceremony attended by Tsar Ivan IV, Metropolitan Makarius with the divine intervention of Saint Tikhon. Piskaryov's Chronist wrote in the second quarter of the 17th century:

 

And the Tsar came to the dedication of the said church with Tsaritsa Nastasia and with Metropolitan Makarius and brought the icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker that came from Vyatka. And they began to offer a prayer service with sanctified water. And the Tsar touched the base with his own hands. And the builders saw that another sanctuary appeared, and told the Tsar. And the Tsar, and Metropolitan, and all the clergy were surprised by the finding of another sanctuary. And the Tsar ordered it to be dedicated to Nicholas ...

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

 

Allegory of Jerusalem

Construction of wrap-around ground-floor arcades in the 1680s visually united the nine churches of the original cathedral into a single building. Earlier, the clergy and the public perceived it as nine distinct churches on a common base, a generalized allegory of the Orthodox Heavenly City similar to fantastic cities of medieval miniatures. At a distance, separate churches towering over their base resembled the towers and churches of a distant citadel rising above the defensive wall. The abstract allegory was reinforced by real-life religious rituals where the church played the role of the biblical Temple in Jerusalem:

 

The capital city, Moscow, is split into three parts; the first of them, called Kitai-gorod, is encircled with a solid thick wall. It contains an extraordinary beautiful church, all clad in shiny bright gems, called Jerusalem. It is the destination of an annual Palm Sunday walk, when the Grand Prince must lead a donkey carrying the Patriarch, from the Church of Virgin Mary to the church of Jerusalem which stands next to the citadel walls. Here is where the most illustrious princely, noble and merchant families live. Here is, also, the main muscovite marketplace: the trading square is built as a brick rectangle, with twenty lanes on each side where the merchants have their shops and cellars ...

 

— Peter Petreius, History of the Great Duchy of Moscow, 1620

Templum S. Trinitatis, etiam Hierusalem dicitur; ad quo Palmarum fest Patriarcha asino insidens a Caesare introducitur.

Temple of Holy Trinity, also called Jerusalem, to where the tsar leads the Patriarch, sitting on a donkey, on the Palm Holiday.

 

— Legend of Peter's map of Moscow, 1597, as reproduced in the Bleau Atlas

The last donkey walk (хождение на осляти) took place in 1693. Mikhail Petrovich Kudryavtsev noted that all cross processions of the period began, as described by Petreius, from the Dormition Church, passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and ended at Trinity Cathedral. For these processions the Kremlin itself became an open-air temple, properly oriented from its "narthex" (Cathedral Square) in the west, through the "royal doors" (Saviour's Gate), to the "sanctuary" (Trinity Cathedral) in the east.

 

Urban hub

Tradition calls the Kremlin the centre of Moscow, but the geometric centre of the Garden Ring, first established as the Skorodom defensive wall in the 1590s, lies outside the Kremlin wall, coincident with the cathedral. Pyotr Goldenberg (1902–71), who popularized this notion in 1947, still regarded the Kremlin as the starting seed of Moscow's radial-concentric system, despite Alexander Chayanov's earlier suggestion that the system was not strictly concentric at all.

 

In the 1960s Gennady Mokeev (born 1932) formulated a different concept of the historical growth of Moscow. According to Mokeev, medieval Moscow, constrained by the natural boundaries of the Moskva and Neglinnaya Rivers, grew primarily in a north-easterly direction into the posad of Kitai-gorod and beyond. The main road connecting the Kremlin to Kitai-gorod passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and immediately afterwards fanned out into at least two radial streets (present-day Ilyinka and Varvarka), forming the central market square. In the 14th century the city was largely contained within two balancing halves, Kremlin and Kitai-gorod, separated by a marketplace, but by the end of the century it extended further along the north-eastern axis. Two secondary hubs in the west and south spawned their own street networks, but their development lagged behind until the Time of Troubles.

 

Tsar Ivan's decision to build the church next to St. Frol's Gate established the dominance of the eastern hub with a major vertical accent, and inserted a pivot point between the nearly equal Kremlin and Kitai-gorod into the once amorphous marketplace. The cathedral was the main church of the posad, and at the same time it was perceived as a part of the Kremlin thrust into the posad, a personal messenger of the Tsar reaching the masses without the mediation of the boyars and clergy. It was complemented by the nearby Lobnoye mesto, a rostrum for the Tsar's public announcements first mentioned in chronicles in 1547 and rebuilt in stone in 1597–1598. Conrad Bussow, describing the triumph of False Dmitriy I, wrote that on 3 June 1606 "a few thousand men hastily assembled and followed the boyarin with [the impostor's] letter through the whole Moscow to the main church they call Jerusalem that stands right next to the Kremlin gates, raised him on Lobnoye Mesto, called out for the Muscovites, read the letter and listened to the boyarin's oral explanation."

 

Replicas

A scale model of Saint Basil's Cathedral has been built in Jalainur in Inner Mongolia, near China's border with Russia. The building houses a science museum.

Seeing those sad faces and how it seemed as if both men were just two sides of the coin of life, I couldn't decide whether they were future and past of one single soul, unaware of the presence of one another... Or if, perhaps, they were avoiding any eye contact because the vision of the other was a foreshadowing view of how youth and beauty will someday fade, and also a sad reminder of the youthful dreams that were once promised, never to be fulfilled, on the other case...

 

What we shall become... What we were once. Let's learn to live the moment and seize the day... After all, 50 years go by fast...

 

Subway car

C Line,

New York

 

Taken with an iPhone 4 with Hipstamatic app. Processed with PS Mobile app.

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Some interesting buildings in Boorowa Street and vicinity are:

•In Zouch Street is the Gothic Anglican Church built in 1893. Architect was Edmund Blacket. The first Anglican Church was built on this spot in 1865. Adjacent is the red brick 1937 Rectory and the 1866 Anglican school room.

•Continue along Cloete St. Take next left into Lynch St. Here is the Methodist Church built in 1909. Now the Uniting Church. Built in Arts and Craft style with horizontal banding bricks, tower etc. The first Methodist Church was built in 1865. Turn around and go along Lynch Street.

•On the corner is the 1928 neo classical style Courthouse with Doric columns.

•Next to it is the much altered Post Office and clock built in 1878. The original Post Office stood here when built 1862.

•Cross the roundabout to see the School of Arts building and library. Built in 1904 as a single storey with two gables.

•Next door is the former AMP Society building on the corner. Built in the 1920s with a curved Doric pillared entrance with the AMP statue logo above. A friend in times of need.

•Opposite is the Presbyterian Church. Built in 1920 of greenish grey coloured feldspar quartz. Young’s first Presbyterian church was built in 1871. Turn around and turn right at the roundabout into Boorowa St.

•On the corner is the Baroque style Commercial Bank of Sydney built in 1890. Two different style porches for the entrances.

•On the right painted grey is The Great Eastern Hotel built in 1904. A typical Australian hotel but with triangular pediments.

•At the next roundabout is the Commercial Hotel. Built in 1930s in Spanish Mission style in red brick.

•Next on left is Millard’s Department Store built in 1917. A major three storey edifice in the street.

•Opposite is Young Town Hall built in 1875. In 1922 the Soldiers War Memorial Clock tower was added. Turn around and go back to the roundabout and turn right. Just along the road is the marked Federation building built around 1901. It has a stepped pediment along the roof. It is important as it was the store of one of the last 19th century Chinese traders in Young – Billy Hayes (anglicised.) He ran it to the 1960s.

•Turn right here next you will see on the right the five storey red brick Millard’s flourmill. Cross the creek.

•You will see St Mary’s Catholic Church. Gothic in style and erected 1874 of local granite with Welsh slate roof. Granite addition to the nave made in 1934. Just behind the church on the side street is the Catholic Convent built in 1891. Gothic looking gables and excellent cast iron lacework on balconies. Now part of the Catholic College.

•Opposite is the Lambing Flat Museum in the old original town school. It opened in 1883. The first town school began in 1861 with the first government school on the site on the present railway station.

•Beyond the park is Young High School. It began as the first Courthouse on these goldfields in 1861. A second grand classical Greek temple building Courthouse opened in 1886 at a cost of £12,000. It was given to the Education Department in 1924. With additions it opened as the Young High School in 1947.

•Young railway station. The railway reached here from Harden in 1885 when the Gothic station was built. It is now the Information Centre.

 

 

Joyeux Noël à toutes et à tous ! — A very Merry Christmas to all !

 

This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.

 

Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.

 

Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.

 

Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.

 

The eastern part of the church as seen from the South. A very difficult photograph to frame, as the church stands on a small hilltop and is surrounded by a supporting wall on all sides.

No Photoshop work done here. This was done via an 8 second exposure.

 

I layed on the ground for the first 6 seconds, got up and tore(not literally of course) my black shirt off (I had a white one underneath) and then kneeled for about 1 second or so. :)

 

Fun project. This was the 8 second exposure assignment for the Take a class with Dave & Dave group.

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Some interesting buildings in Boorowa Street and vicinity are:

•In Zouch Street is the Gothic Anglican Church built in 1893. Architect was Edmund Blacket. The first Anglican Church was built on this spot in 1865. Adjacent is the red brick 1937 Rectory and the 1866 Anglican school room.

•Continue along Cloete St. Take next left into Lynch St. Here is the Methodist Church built in 1909. Now the Uniting Church. Built in Arts and Craft style with horizontal banding bricks, tower etc. The first Methodist Church was built in 1865. Turn around and go along Lynch Street.

•On the corner is the 1928 neo classical style Courthouse with Doric columns.

•Next to it is the much altered Post Office and clock built in 1878. The original Post Office stood here when built 1862.

•Cross the roundabout to see the School of Arts building and library. Built in 1904 as a single storey with two gables.

•Next door is the former AMP Society building on the corner. Built in the 1920s with a curved Doric pillared entrance with the AMP statue logo above. A friend in times of need.

•Opposite is the Presbyterian Church. Built in 1920 of greenish grey coloured feldspar quartz. Young’s first Presbyterian church was built in 1871. Turn around and turn right at the roundabout into Boorowa St.

•On the corner is the Baroque style Commercial Bank of Sydney built in 1890. Two different style porches for the entrances.

•On the right painted grey is The Great Eastern Hotel built in 1904. A typical Australian hotel but with triangular pediments.

•At the next roundabout is the Commercial Hotel. Built in 1930s in Spanish Mission style in red brick.

•Next on left is Millard’s Department Store built in 1917. A major three storey edifice in the street.

•Opposite is Young Town Hall built in 1875. In 1922 the Soldiers War Memorial Clock tower was added. Turn around and go back to the roundabout and turn right. Just along the road is the marked Federation building built around 1901. It has a stepped pediment along the roof. It is important as it was the store of one of the last 19th century Chinese traders in Young – Billy Hayes (anglicised.) He ran it to the 1960s.

•Turn right here next you will see on the right the five storey red brick Millard’s flourmill. Cross the creek.

•You will see St Mary’s Catholic Church. Gothic in style and erected 1874 of local granite with Welsh slate roof. Granite addition to the nave made in 1934. Just behind the church on the side street is the Catholic Convent built in 1891. Gothic looking gables and excellent cast iron lacework on balconies. Now part of the Catholic College.

•Opposite is the Lambing Flat Museum in the old original town school. It opened in 1883. The first town school began in 1861 with the first government school on the site on the present railway station.

•Beyond the park is Young High School. It began as the first Courthouse on these goldfields in 1861. A second grand classical Greek temple building Courthouse opened in 1886 at a cost of £12,000. It was given to the Education Department in 1924. With additions it opened as the Young High School in 1947.

•Young railway station. The railway reached here from Harden in 1885 when the Gothic station was built. It is now the Information Centre.

 

This is one of Detroit's more significant--yet little-appreciated--Art Deco buildings. It was designed for Detroit Saturday Night by Smith, HInchman & Grylls Chief Designer, Wirt Rowland, and was completed in 1929. The building is located at 1959 E. Jefferson Avenue, just east of the Dequindre Cut.

 

Rowland used here many of the design elements of the Penobscot Building, most notably, limestone facing, beveled roof-line, "organ pipes" or convex fluting, stepped arch, and emphasis on both vertical and horizontal. The significance of the building is due in part to its extraordinary similarity to the Art Deco structures in and around Miami Beach, constructed beginning in the mid-thirties. The similarities may, in fact, be an outgrowth of the design efforts of Wirt Rowland in Detroit.

 

In his role as Chief Designer for Albert Kahn Associates (1918 to 1922), Rowland was responsible for training and developing the firm's most capable designers, among them the Skinner brothers, Coulton (1891 - 1963) and John Llewellyn (1893 - 1972). They left Detroit in 1923 and within a few years, started their own architectural firm in Miami. They were early adopters of what we now call Art Deco style, applying it to houses and commercial buildings alike.

 

In 1935, American Architect selected a home designed by John and Coulton Skinner for an article on Miami Beach architecture. Built in 1934 for Eleanor Farrington, the home broke with Miami's popular Spanish Revival style, substituting a striking modern look which foreshadowed the Art Deco hotels built in Miami Beach. Key design elements of the home reflect those previously used by Wirt Rowland. The home's octagon-shaped windows are identical in shape to the mullion-defined windows within the Guardian Building's large arches. The angles which define the shape of the windows (30 & 60 degrees) and the angle of the home's roof (30 degrees) recall the 30 and 60 degree angles of the Guardian Building's (1929) colorful designs.

 

It's possible that the Skinners based this design on Rowland's buildings. However, the home is so extraordinarily different, yet stunningly attractive, that one wonders if Rowland may have sketched it as a favor for John Skinner. Rowland was known to have provided help and advice to younger architects, particularly during the depression years, and John Skinner and Rowland maintained a close friendship until Rowland's death.

 

The Skinners are perhaps best known in Miami for two early hotels, the Barbizon at 530 Ocean Drive (1937) and Bentley at 500 Ocean Drive (1939). Their later work includes such major, Miami area structures as Miami Seaquarium, the original terminal at Miami International Airport, Eastern Airlines and Pan American executive and administration buildings in Miami, Claude Pepper Federal Office Building, University of Miami Science Building and Medical School, the former Miami Public Library (now demolished), and Dade County Auditorium.

 

Coulton Skinner was active in the Florida Association of Architects, and served as its president in 1945. At the same time, the organization's secretary-treasurer was George Haas, a former Detroit architect from Albert Kahn's office and former president of the Michigan Society of Architects.

 

Another Miami architect who trained under Rowland was Gerard Pitt, who worked for Albert Kahn from 1913 until 1930, first as a draftsman and, after passing his licensing exam in 1922, as an architect. He moved to Miami in 1930 and, from 1935 through 1957, served as a supervising architect on the Florida Hotel Commission. Pit was also an active member of the Florida Association of Architects. He is recognized as one of Miami's significant modern architects primarily for his apartment building designs from the 1940s through the 1960s.

 

Detroit Saturday Night was a newspaper established in 1907 by Harry M. Nimmo and William R. Orr. After Orr's death in 1914, Nimmo, the paper's editor, became president as well. In 1928, having outgrown its existing facilities, the paper had Smith, Hinchman & Grylls design this building on East Jefferson. It was completed the following year.

 

Nimmo died suddenly at the age of 59 in April of 1937, and shortly after, the newspaper ceased publication. The newspaper's production operation continued on as a commercial printing company: Saturday Night Press.

 

In order to handle the heavy typesetting and printing equipment used by the newspaper, 1959 E. Jefferson was designed with high ceilings, heavy-duty electrical systems and the capability of handling very high floor loads. For this reason, the building continued to be used primarily by typesetting and printing firms for many years after Detroit Saturday Night's demise. Therein lies the second reason for the building's importance: it was home to nearly all of Detroit's major, advertising typesetting firms, including the largest type house in the Midwest and one of the first to use computerized typesetting equipment.

 

Detroit Typesetting Company and Detroit Electrotype Company moved their operations into the building in the 1930s. By the 1940s, they were joined by Michigan Typesetting, which relocated from 457 W. Fort Street. Michigan Typesetting and Detroit Typesetting later merged under the name Michigan Typesetting Company, becoming the largest typographic firm in the Midwest. In 1952, Michigan Type formed a printing subsidiary, the Flexitype Corporation, to compliment their typesetting operations.

 

Detroit Type Foundry relocated to the building around the same time. The Foundry cast individual pieces of lead type used by letterpress printing equipment--technology which preceded the Linotype lead casting machines widely used at the time. Along the way, the Foundry was absorbed by Michigan Type, who continued to operate its century-old machines until 1982.

 

In 1964, Michigan Type expanded further by merging its Flexitype subsidiary with Douglas Offset Company, becoming Flexitype & Douglas Offset. At the same time, an 80,000 square foot wing was added to the east side of the building to accommodate the firm's growth.

 

The city's second largest type house was George Willens & Company. George Willens (1890 - 1973) was born in Chicago and relocated to Detroit, establishing his typesetting firm in 1916. Willens was highly skilled in the typographic arts and focused his firm's efforts on newspaper and magazine ads, the most demanding and lucrative area of the business. Outside of Detroit, George Willens is perhaps better known for having filmed the explosion of the Hindenburg as it attempted to land near Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. Willens, and his 16-year-old son Harvey, had planned to travel to Europe on the Hindenburg's return flight.

 

With the advent of computerized, photographic typesetting in the 1970s, most of the city's existing "hot lead" typesetting companies merged or went out of business. The city's substantial print-based advertising industry was also hurt by the Detroit auto manufacturers loss of market share to international competitors.

 

In 1975, Willens & Co., now headed by Harvey Willens, merged with Michigan Typesetting, headed by Robert Levison, the new firm being called Willens+Michigan Company. Though Willens+Michigan was one of the first in the nation to adopt computerized, photographic typesetting, the development of the personal computer ultimately eliminated the need to purchase type from outside suppliers. Willens+Michigan faded slowly, closing its doors sometime in the early nineties, bringing to an end 1959 E. Jefferson's role as a home for Detroit's typesetting industry.

Maker: Alois Auer (1813-1869)

Born: Austria

Active: Austria

Medium: nature print

Size: 9 in x 8 in

Location: Austria

 

Object No. 2025.658

Shelf: C-12

 

Publication: Alos Auer, Faust: Poligrafisch-illustrirte Zeitschrift Für Kunst, Wissenschaft, Industrie Und Geselliges Leben (1854).

 

Other Collections:

 

Provenance: Milaneum

Rank: 1230

 

Notes: In the mid-nineteenth century, technicians at the Austrian Royal and Imperial Court Printing Office devised the first method for mechanically reproducing nature prints: that is, prints from intaglio plates made from the impression of botanical specimens. Despite the complexity and apparent limitations of the process, Alois Auer, director of the printing office, boldly claimed that the new process was more important than photography. The ‘self-print of nature’, as Auer translates the term Naturselbstdruck, was his firm’s prize invention, garnering Austria a coveted medal at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London. This was the only Council Medal, the highest honour, awarded for printing at the exhibition. The medal recognized the Austrians for their inventiveness with ‘all those new applications of art and science which dimly foreshadow an unknown future’. (Source-Hume, Naomi, The Nature Print and Photography in the 1850s, The History of Photography Vol. 35 Number 1, Feb. 2011)

 

Nature printing is a printing process, developed in the 18th century, that uses the plants, animals, rocks and other natural subjects to produce an image. Originally nature prints were made by inking items such as fish or leaves with a roller, then printing them onto paper through a process of light controlled rubbing, much like one would print a woodcut. The “Auer Nature Print” however, began with an impression of the object into soft led which rendered a detailed continuous tone photographic likeness of an object without the use of a camera. It is likely that Walter Woodbury utilized a key concept inherent in this process as the basis for creating the popular Woodburytype. Alois Auer of Vienna invented the process in 1852, and Henry Bradbury patented his version of the process in England in 1853. Within ten years the technique was made obsolete by improvements in the photomechanical printing industry, and essentially “Nature Printing” disappeared from use. (Source - photogravure.com)

 

To view our archive organized by Collections, visit: OUR COLLECTIONS

 

For information about reproducing this image, visit: THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE

This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.

 

Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.

 

Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.

 

Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.

 

The apse and the lovely alfresco paintings.

On almost Monumentless Ave, Richmond, VA, this monument of a former U.S. Army officer, who turned against the U.S. to defend slavery, was removed by the city of Richmond 7/7/2020.

"New York City, the city that never sleeps, is now ‘sleep city"

  

[www.trinitywallstreet.org/about/stpaulschapel/history}

The Chapel and the Beginnings of a Nation

Ten years after St. Paul’s opened, the colonies were at war with Britain. In September, a dramatic event foreshadowed the destruction of the Revolutionary War: a fire that started downtown raged through the city, destroying approximately 500 buildings in one night, including Trinity Church. St. Paul’s Chapel was spared by a bucket brigade that doused the structure with water. With Trinity in ruins, St. Paul’s became the primary church until 1790.

 

Following his inauguration as the nation’s first president, in 1789, George Washington walked up Broadway to St. Paul’s for the service, attended by his wife, as well as both houses of Congress. The inauguration took place at Federal Hall, formerly New York’s City Hall, on Wall Street, a short walk from the chapel. Washington attended St. Paul’s for two years, while the newly created city of Washington DC was under construction and New York functioned as the nation’s capital. He sat in the specially designated Presidential Pew at St. Paul’s, as the main church had yet to be rebuilt after the Great Fire. (The reconstruction of Trinity Church, delayed by the advent of the war, was not completed until 1790.)

  

La capilla y los comienzos de una nación

Diez años después de la apertura de San Pablo, las colonias estaban en guerra con Gran Bretaña. En septiembre, un evento dramático presagió la destrucción de la Guerra Revolucionaria: un incendio que comenzó en el centro arrasó la ciudad, destruyendo aproximadamente 500 edificios en una noche, incluida la Iglesia de la Trinidad. La Capilla de San Pablo fue salvada por una brigada de cubos que roció la estructura con agua. Con la Trinidad en ruinas, San Pablo se convirtió en la iglesia principal hasta 1790.

 

Después de su toma de posesión como primer presidente de la nación, en 1789, George Washington caminó por Broadway hasta St. Paul's para el servicio, al que asistieron su esposa y ambas cámaras del Congreso. La inauguración tuvo lugar en el Federal Hall, anteriormente el Ayuntamiento de Nueva York, en Wall Street, a pocos pasos de la capilla. Washington asistió a San Pablo durante dos años, mientras que la recién creada ciudad de Washington DC estaba en construcción y Nueva York funcionaba como la capital de la nación. Se sentó en el banco presidencial especialmente designado en St. Paul's, ya que la iglesia principal aún no se había reconstruido después del Gran Incendio. (La reconstrucción de la Iglesia de la Trinidad, retrasada por el advenimiento de la guerra, no se completó hasta 1790).

Deutschland / Bayern - Schloss Neuschwanstein

 

Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, pronounced [nɔʏˈʃvaːnʃtaɪn], Southern Bavarian: Schloss Neischwanstoa) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

 

The castle was intended as a home for the king, until he died in 1886. It was open to the public shortly after his death. Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.

 

The municipality of Schwangau lies at an elevation of 800 m (2,620 ft) at the southwest border of the German state of Bavaria. Its surroundings are characterised by the transition between the Alpine foothills in the south (toward the nearby Austrian border) and a hilly landscape in the north that appears flat by comparison.

 

In the Middle Ages, three castles overlooked the villages. One was called Schwanstein Castle. In 1832, Ludwig's father King Maximilian II of Bavaria bought its ruins to replace them with the comfortable neo-Gothic palace known as Hohenschwangau Castle. Finished in 1837, the palace became his family's summer residence, and his elder son Ludwig (born 1845) spent a large part of his childhood here.

 

Vorderhohenschwangau Castle and Hinterhohenschwangau Castle sat on a rugged hill overlooking Schwanstein Castle, two nearby lakes (Alpsee and Schwansee), and the village. Separated by only a moat, they jointly consisted of a hall, a keep, and a fortified tower house. In the nineteenth century only ruins remained of the twin medieval castles, but those of Hinterhohenschwangau served as a lookout place known as Sylphenturm.

 

The ruins above the family palace were known to the crown prince from his excursions. He first sketched one of them in his diary in 1859. When the young king came to power in 1864, the construction of a new palace in place of the two ruined castles became the first in his series of palace building projects. Ludwig called the new palace New Hohenschwangau Castle; only after his death was it renamed Neuschwanstein.[9] The confusing result is that Hohenschwangau and Schwanstein have effectively swapped names: Hohenschwangau Castle replaced the ruins of Schwanstein Castle, and Neuschwanstein Castle replaced the ruins of the two Hohenschwangau Castles.

 

Neuschwanstein embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism (German: Burgenromantik), and Ludwig II's immoderate enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner.

 

In the 19th century, many castles were constructed or reconstructed, often with significant changes to make them more picturesque. Palace-building projects similar to Neuschwanstein had been undertaken earlier in several of the German states and included Hohenschwangau Castle, Lichtenstein Castle, Hohenzollern Castle, and numerous buildings on the River Rhine such as Stolzenfels Castle. The inspiration for the construction of Neuschwanstein came from two journeys in 1867 — one in May to the reconstructed Wartburg near Eisenach, another in July to the Château de Pierrefonds, which Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was transforming from a ruined castle into a historistic palace.

 

The king saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.

 

In February 1868, Ludwig's grandfather Ludwig I died, freeing the considerable sums that were previously spent on the abdicated king's appanage. This allowed Ludwig II to start the architectural project of building a private refuge in the familiar landscape far from the capital Munich, so that he could live out his idea of the Middle Ages.

 

It is my intention to rebuild the old castle ruin of Hohenschwangau near the Pöllat Gorge in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles, and I must confess to you that I am looking forward very much to living there one day [...]; you know the revered guest I would like to accommodate there; the location is one of the most beautiful to be found, holy and unapproachable, a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world. It will also remind you of "Tannhäuser" (Singers' Hall with a view of the castle in the background), "Lohengrin'" (castle courtyard, open corridor, path to the chapel) ...

— Ludwig II, Letter to Richard Wagner, May 1868

 

The building design was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel. For technical reasons, the ruined castles could not be integrated into the plan. Initial ideas for the palace drew stylistically on Nuremberg Castle and envisaged a simple building in place of the old Vorderhohenschwangau Castle, but they were rejected and replaced by increasingly extensive drafts, culminating in a bigger palace modelled on the Wartburg. The king insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft. Ludwig's control went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.

 

Whereas contemporary architecture critics derided Neuschwanstein, one of the last big palace building projects of the nineteenth century, as kitsch, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig II's other buildings are now counted among the major works of European historicism. For financial reasons, a project similar to Neuschwanstein – Falkenstein Castle – never left the planning stages.

 

The palace can be regarded as typical for nineteenth-century architecture. The shapes of Romanesque (simple geometric figures such as cuboids and semicircular arches), Gothic (upward-pointing lines, slim towers, delicate embellishments) and Byzantine architecture and art (the Throne Hall décor) were mingled in an eclectic fashion and supplemented with 19th-century technical achievements. The Patrona Bavariae and Saint George on the court face of the Palas (main building) are depicted in the local Lüftlmalerei style, a fresco technique typical for Allgäu farmers' houses, while the unimplemented drafts for the Knights' House gallery foreshadow elements of Art Nouveau. Characteristic of Neuschwanstein's design are theatre themes: Christian Jank drew on coulisse drafts from his time as a scenic painter.

 

The basic style was originally planned to be neo-Gothic but the palace was primarily built in Romanesque style in the end. The operatic themes moved gradually from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to Parsifal.

 

In 1868, the ruins of the medieval twin castles were completely demolished; the remains of the old keep were blown up. The foundation stone for the palace was laid on 5 September 1869; in 1872 its cellar was completed and in 1876, everything up to the first floor, the gatehouse being finished first. At the end of 1882 it was completed and fully furnished, allowing Ludwig to take provisional lodgings there and observe the ongoing construction work. In 1874, management of the civil works passed from Eduard Riedel to Georg von Dollmann. The topping out ceremony for the Palas was in 1880, and in 1884, the king was able to move in to the new building. In the same year, the direction of the project passed to Julius Hofmann, after Dollmann had fallen from the King's favour.

 

The palace was erected as a conventional brick construction and later encased in various types of rock. The white limestone used for the fronts came from a nearby quarry. The sandstone bricks for the portals and bay windows came from Schlaitdorf in Württemberg. Marble from Untersberg near Salzburg was used for the windows, the arch ribs, the columns and the capitals. The Throne Hall was a later addition to the plans and required a steel framework.

 

The transport of building materials was facilitated by scaffolding and a steam crane that lifted the material to the construction site. Another crane was used at the construction site. The recently founded Dampfkessel-Revisionsverein (Steam Boiler Inspection Association) regularly inspected both boilers.

 

For about two decades the construction site was the principal employer in the region. In 1880, about 200 craftsmen were occupied at the site, not counting suppliers and other persons indirectly involved in the construction. At times when the king insisted on particularly close deadlines and urgent changes, reportedly up to 300 workers per day were active, sometimes working at night by the light of oil lamps. Statistics from the years 1879/1880 support an immense amount of building materials: 465 tonnes (513 short tons) of Salzburg marble, 1,550 t (1,710 short tons) of sandstone, 400,000 bricks and 2,050 cubic metres (2,680 cu yd) of wood for the scaffolding.

 

In 1870, a society was founded for insuring the workers, for a low monthly fee, augmented by the king. The heirs of construction casualties (30 cases are mentioned in the statistics) received a small pension.

 

In 1884, the king was able to move into the (still unfinished) Palas, and in 1885, he invited his mother Marie to Neuschwanstein on the occasion of her 60th birthday. By 1886, the external structure of the Palas (hall) was mostly finished. In the same year, Ludwig had the first, wooden Marienbrücke over the Pöllat Gorge replaced by a steel construction.

 

Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the king's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes: The palace was intended to serve Ludwig II as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting. As a temple of friendship it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building. In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.

 

Neuschwanstein welcomes almost 1.5 million visitors per year making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. For security reasons the palace can only be visited during a 35-minute guided tour, and no photography is allowed inside the castle. There are also special guided tours that focus on specific topics. In the peak season from June until August, Neuschwanstein has as many as 6000 visitors per day, and guests without advance reservation may have to wait several hours. Ticket sales are processed exclusively via the ticket centre in Hohenschwangau. As of 2008, the total number of visitors was more than 60 million In 2004, the revenues were booked as €6.5 million.

 

Neuschwanstein is a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Helmut Käutner's Ludwig II (1955) and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), both biopics about the king; the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and the war drama The Great Escape (1963). It served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle and later, similar structures. It is also visited by the character Grace Nakimura alongside Herrenchiemsee in the game The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1996).

 

In 1977, Neuschwanstein Castle became the motif of a West German definitive stamp, and it appeared on a €2 commemorative coin for the German Bundesländer series in 2012. In 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

 

A meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly on 6 April 2002, at the Austrian border near Hohenschwangau was named Neuschwanstein after the palace. Three fragments were found: Neuschwanstein I (1.75 kg (3.9 lb), found July 2002) and Neuschwanstein II (1.63 kg (3.6 lb), found May 2003) on the German side, and Neuschwanstein III (2.84 kg (6.3 lb), found June 2003) on the Austrian side near Reutte. The meteorite is classified as an enstatite chondrite with unusually large proportions of pure iron (29%), enstatite and the extremely rare mineral sinoite (Si2N2O).

 

Since 2015, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig's Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed (including Schwerin Palace, for example).

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Das Schloss Neuschwanstein steht oberhalb von Hohenschwangau bei Füssen im südöstlichen bayerischen Allgäu. Der Bau wurde ab 1869 für den bayerischen König Ludwig II. als idealisierte Vorstellung einer Ritterburg aus der Zeit des Mittelalters errichtet. Die Entwürfe stammen von Christian Jank, die Ausführung übernahmen Eduard Riedel und Georg von Dollmann. Der König lebte nur wenige Monate im Schloss, er starb noch vor der Fertigstellung der Anlage. Neuschwanstein wurde ursprünglich als Neue Burg Hohenschwangau bezeichnet, seinen heutigen Namen trägt es seit 1886. Eigentümer des Schlosses ist der Freistaat Bayern; es wird von der Bayerischen Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Gärten und Seen betreut und bewirtschaftet.

 

Neuschwanstein ist das berühmteste der Schlösser Ludwigs II. und eine der bekanntesten Sehenswürdigkeiten Deutschlands. Es wird jährlich von etwa 1,5 Millionen Touristen besucht. Das oftmals als „Märchenschloss“ bezeichnete Neuschwanstein ist nahezu ganzjährig für Besucher geöffnet. Die Architektur und Innenausstattung sind vom romantischen Eklektizismus des 19. Jahrhunderts geprägt; das Schloss gilt als ein Hauptwerk des Historismus. Eine Aufnahme der „Ludwig-Schlösser“ Neuschwanstein, Linderhof und Herrenchiemsee in die Liste des Weltkulturerbes der UNESCO wird angestrebt.

 

Erstmals urkundlich erwähnt wurde ein »Castrum Swangowe« im Jahre 1090. Damit gemeint waren die im Mittelalter an der Stelle des heutigen Schlosses Neuschwanstein stehenden zwei kleinen Burgen: Die aus einem Palas und einem Bergfried bestehende Burg Vorderhohenschwangau an der Stelle des heutigen Palas und, nur durch einen Halsgraben getrennt, ein befestigter Wohnturm namens Hinterhohenschwangau, der sich dort befand, wo zwischen heutigem Ritterhaus und Kemenate auch Ludwig II. einen hohen Bergfried geplant hatte, zu dessen Errichtung er jedoch nicht mehr kam. Beide Gebäude gingen auf die Herren von Schwangau zurück, die in der Region als Lehensnehmer der Welfen (bis 1191) und der Staufer (bis 1268), danach als reichsunmittelbare Ritter ansässig waren, bis zu ihrem Aussterben im Jahre 1536. Der Minnesänger Hiltbolt von Schwangau stammt aus diesem Geschlecht. Hinterhohenschwangau war wahrscheinlich der Geburtsort von Margareta von Schwangau, der Ehefrau des Minnesängers Oswald von Wolkenstein. Als 1363 Herzog Rudolf IV. von Österreich Tirol unter habsburgische Herrschaft brachte, verpflichteten sich Stephan von Schwangau und seine Brüder, ihre Festen Vorder- und Hinterschwangau, die Burg Frauenstein und den Sinwellenturm dem österreichischen Herzog offenzuhalten.

 

Eine Urkunde von 1397 nennt zum ersten Mal den Schwanstein, das heutige Schloss Hohenschwangau, das um diese Zeit unterhalb der älteren Doppelburg auf einer Anhöhe zwischen Alpsee und Schwansee errichtet worden war. Seit dem 16. Jahrhundert befand sich die reichsunmittelbare Herrschaft Schwangau unter Oberhoheit der Wittelsbacher, welche die Burg Schwanstein zur Bärenjagd sowie als Sitz für jüngere Söhne und später für ein Pfleggericht nutzten. Sie hatten den gesamten Besitz 1567 aus dem Nachlass der bankrotten Augsburger Patrizierfamilie Baumgartner erworben.

 

Im 19. Jahrhundert waren die beiden oberen Burgen zu Ruinen verfallen, die Überreste Hinterhohenschwangaus zu einem Sylphenturm genannten Aussichtsplatz umgestaltet. Ludwig II. verbrachte einen Teil seiner Kindheit in der Nähe der Burgruinen auf dem benachbarten Schloss Hohenschwangau, das sein Vater König Maximilian II. um 1837 von einer spätmittelalterlichen Burg zu einem wohnlichen Schloss im Sinne der Romantik hatte umgestalten lassen. Hohenschwangau war ursprünglich als Schloss Schwanstein bekannt, seine neue Bezeichnung erhielt es erst während des Wiederaufbaus. Damit wurden die Namen der Burg Schwanstein und der älteren Doppelburg Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau vertauscht. Max II. hatte 1855 Baurat Eduard Riedel beauftragt, für den Turm von Hinterhohenschwangau zunächst einen Aussichtspavillon in Glas-Eisen-Konstruktion zu entwerfen, im Jahr darauf dann einen Plan für die Reparatur des Turms und die Herstellung eines Zimmers mit einem Zeltdach darüber. Beides wurde jedoch zurückgestellt.

 

Die oberhalb des Wohnschlosses gelegenen Ruinen waren dem Kronprinzen – wie auch der Frauenstein und der Falkenstein – häufiges Wanderziel und deshalb gut bekannt. 1859 zeichnete er die Überreste der Vorderhohenschwangauer Burg erstmals in sein Tagebuch. 1837 pries ein Anonymus das wiederaufgebaute Schloss Hohenschwangau als „die Wiege einer neuen Romantik“ und schwärmte von dem Gedanken, dass „auch die Ruinen von dem vorderen Schlosse Schwangau (gemeint war die Doppelburg Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau), die mit Falkenstein und Hohen-Freyberg ein langgezogenes Dreieck bilden, zu einem großen einfachen Fest- und Sängersaal wiederaufgerichtet werden …“ Damit war die Idee eines Wiederaufbaus der Ruinen im Sinne einer Wiedergeburt des Austragungsortes des Sängerkriegs auf der Wartburg in der Welt; 20 Jahre bevor die thüringische Wartburg durch Hugo von Ritgen wiederaufgebaut wurde und 30 Jahre bevor Ludwig II. die Idee in die Tat umsetzte, indem er auf dem „Jugend“ genannten Burgfelsen von Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau ein neues „Sängerschloss“ nach dem Vorbild der Wartburg errichten ließ.

 

ach der Regierungsübernahme durch den jungen König 1864 war der Wiederaufbau der Vorderhohenschwangauer Burgruine – des späteren Neuschwansteins – das erste größere Schlossbauprojekt Ludwigs II. Er plante damit durchaus nichts Außergewöhnliches: In ganz Europa bauten sich zur gleichen Zeit gekrönte Häupter und Adelsfamilien Schlösser und Burgen in historischen Stilen oder ließen bedeutende mittelalterliche Monumente rekonstruieren. Kurz nach dem väterlichen Hohenschwangau hatte Ludwigs Onkel, König Friedrich Wilhelm IV. von Preußen, das Schloss Stolzenfels und von 1850 bis 1867 die Burg Hohenzollern wiedererrichten lassen. Der hannoversche König hatte von 1858 bis 1869 das Schloss Marienburg gebaut. Die britische Königin Victoria ließ ab 1845 Osborne House und kurz darauf Balmoral Castle umbauen, nachdem ihr Onkel Georg IV. schon zwischen 1820 und 1830 Windsor Castle bedeutend erweitert hatte. Ein weiteres Beispiel aus Europa war ab 1840 der Bau des Palácio Nacional da Pena durch den portugiesischen König Ferdinand II. Zur gleichen Zeit ließen die Fürsten zu Schwarzenberg das böhmische Schloss Frauenberg errichten und die Fürsten von Urach das Schloss Lichtenstein bauen. Auch die umfangreiche Restaurierung der Hohkönigsburg im Elsass durch den deutschen Kaiser, die allerdings erst im frühen 20. Jahrhundert stattfand, kann hier erwähnt werden.

 

Dem als Sinnbild einer Ritterburg gedachten Neuschwanstein folgten mit Linderhof noch ein Lustschloss aus der Epoche des Rokoko und mit Schloss Herrenchiemsee ein barocker Palast, der als Denkmal für die Zeit des Absolutismus stand. Angeregt zu dem Bau Neuschwansteins wurde Ludwig II. durch zwei Reisen: Im Mai 1867 besuchte er mit seinem Bruder Otto die wieder aufgebaute Wartburg bei Eisenach, im Juli desselben Jahres besichtigte er in Frankreich Schloss Pierrefonds, das damals von Eugène Viollet-le-Duc für Kaiser Napoleon III. von einer Burgruine zu einem historistischen Schloss umgestaltet wurde. Im Verständnis des Königs entsprachen beide Bauten einer romantischen Darstellung des Mittelalters, ebenso wie die musikalischen Sagenwelten Richard Wagners. Dessen Werke Tannhäuser und Lohengrin hatten den König nachhaltig beeindruckt. Am 15. Mai 1868 teilte er dem befreundeten Komponisten in einem Brief mit:

 

„Ich habe die Absicht, die alte Burgruine Hohenschwangau bei der Pöllatschlucht neu aufbauen zu lassen, im echten Styl der alten deutschen Ritterburgen“

 

Durch den Tod seines 1848 abgedankten Großvaters Ludwig I. konnte der junge König ab 1868 dessen Apanage einbehalten, wodurch ihm umfangreiche finanzielle Mittel zur Verfügung standen. Der König wollte mit dem nun entstehenden Bauprojekt in der ihm aus Kindertagen vertrauten Landschaft ein privates Refugium abseits der Hauptstadt München schaffen, in dem er seine Vorstellung des Mittelalters erleben konnte, zumal das von ihm gern genutzte Schloss Hohenschwangau jeweils während der Sommermonate von seiner ungeliebten Mutter, der Königin Marie, besetzt war. Die Entwürfe für das neue Schloss lieferte der Münchner Theatermaler Christian Jank, umgesetzt wurden sie durch den Architekten Eduard Riedel. Überlegungen, die Burgruinen in den Bau zu integrieren, wurden wegen der damit verbundenen technischen Schwierigkeiten nicht weiter verfolgt. Erste Pläne für das Schloss, die sich stilistisch an der Nürnberger Burg orientierten und einen schlichten Neubau anstelle der alten Burg Vorderhohenschwangau vorsahen, wurden wieder verworfen und gegen zunehmend umfangreichere Entwürfe ersetzt, die zu einem größeren Schloss nach dem Vorbild der Wartburg führten. Der König bestand auf einer detaillierten Planung und ließ sich jeden Entwurf zur Genehmigung vorlegen. Sein Einfluss auf die Entwürfe reichte so weit, dass das Schloss vor allem als seine eigene Schöpfung und weniger als die seiner beteiligten Architekten gelten kann.

 

Mit dem Bau des Schlosses wurde 1869 begonnen. Die Wünsche und Ansprüche Ludwigs II. wuchsen mit dem Bau ebenso wie die Ausgaben, und die Entwürfe und Kostenvoranschläge mussten mehrfach überarbeitet werden. So war anstelle des großen Thronsaales ursprünglich nur ein bescheidenes Arbeitszimmer geplant, und vorgesehene Gästezimmer wurden aus den Entwürfen wieder gestrichen, um Platz für einen Maurischen Saal zu schaffen, der aufgrund der ständigen Geldknappheit nicht realisiert werden konnte. Die ursprünglich schon für 1872 vorgesehene Fertigstellung des Schlosses verzögerte sich wiederholt. Als Dank für den Kaiserbrief erhielt der König ab 1871 zwar Zuwendungen aus dem Welfenfonds durch Bismarck, doch wurden seine finanziellen Mittel nun zunehmend auch durch seine weiteren Bauprojekte vereinnahmt. Der Palas und das Torhaus Neuschwansteins waren bis 1886 im Außenbau weitgehend fertiggestellt; ab 1884 konnte der König den Palas erstmals bewohnen. Ludwig II. lebte bis zu seinem Tod 1886 insgesamt nur 172 Tage im Schloss, das bis dahin noch einer Großbaustelle glich. 1885 empfing er hier anlässlich ihres 60. Geburtstags seine auf dem unteren Hohenschwangau residierende Mutter, die vormalige Königin Marie.

 

Neuschwanstein sollte Ludwig II. gewissermaßen als bewohnbare Theaterkulisse dienen. Es war als Freundschaftstempel dem Leben und Werk Richard Wagners gewidmet, der es jedoch nie betreten hat. Trotz seiner Größe war das Schloss nicht für die Aufnahme eines Hofstaats vorgesehen; es bot lediglich der Privatwohnung des Königs und Zimmern für die Dienerschaft Raum. Die Hofgebäude dienten weniger Wohn- als vielmehr dekorativen Zwecken. So war zum Beispiel der Bau der Kemenate – die erst nach Ludwigs Tod vollendet wurde – eine direkte Reminiszenz an den zweiten Akt von Lohengrin, wo ein solches Gebäude einen der Schauplätze darstellte.

 

Ludwig II. bezahlte seine Bauprojekte selbst aus seinem Privatvermögen und dem Einkommen seiner Zivilliste. Anders als oft kolportiert wird, wurde die Staatskasse für seine Bauten nicht belastet. Die Baukosten Neuschwansteins betrugen bis zum Tod des Königs 6.180.047 Mark, ursprünglich veranschlagt waren 3,2 Millionen Mark. Seine privaten Mittel reichten für die ausufernden Bauprojekte jedoch nicht mehr aus, und so musste der König laufend neue Kredite aufnehmen. 1883 war er bereits mit über 7 Millionen Mark verschuldet, 1885 drohte ihm erstmals eine Pfändung.

 

Die Streitigkeiten um die Verschuldung des Staatsoberhaupts veranlassten die bayerische Regierung 1886, den König zu entmündigen und für regierungsunfähig erklären zu lassen. Ludwig II. hielt sich zur Zeit seiner Entmündigung am 9. Juni 1886 in Neuschwanstein auf; es war das letzte seiner selbst in Auftrag gegebenen Schlösser, das er bewohnte. Die anlässlich seiner bevorstehenden Absetzung am 10. Juni 1886 nach Neuschwanstein gereiste Regierungskommission ließ der König im Torhaus festsetzen. Nach einigen Stunden wurden die Mitglieder der Kommission freigelassen. Am 11. Juni erschien eine zweite Kommission unter der Leitung Bernhard von Guddens. Der König musste Neuschwanstein daraufhin am 12. Juni 1886 verlassen und wurde nach Schloss Berg verbracht, wo er am 13. Juni 1886 im Starnberger See ertrank.

 

Ludwig II. errichtete Schloss Neuschwanstein nicht als Repräsentationsbau oder zur Machtdemonstration, sondern ausschließlich als seinen privaten Rückzugsort. Im Gegensatz dazu steht die heutige Bedeutung des Schlosses als eines der wichtigsten Touristenziele Deutschlands. Der Deutsche Tourismusverband macht auf internationaler Ebene mit Neuschwanstein Werbung für Bayern als ein Land der Märchenschlösser. So nimmt es nicht Wunder, dass bei einer Umfrage der Deutschen Zentrale für Tourismus (DZT) unter 15.000 ausländischen Gästen über deren liebstes Besucherziel das Schloss Neuschwanstein Platz 1 erreichte. Im nationalen Vergleich wählten 350.000 Teilnehmer die Schlossanlage in der ZDF-Show Unsere Besten – die Lieblingsorte der Deutschen indes nur auf Rang 19. Bei der Abstimmung über die neuen Weltwunder im Jahr 2007 war Schloss Neuschwanstein auf dem achten Platz zu finden.

 

Seit ihrer Öffnung für den Besucherverkehr im Todesjahr Ludwigs zählt die Anlage beständig steigende Gästezahlen. Allein in den ersten acht Wochen besuchten rund 18.000 Menschen das Schloss. 1913 zählte es über 28.000 Gäste, 1939 waren es bereits 290.000. Bis 2001 war die Zahl auf rund 1,3 Millionen Besucher angewachsen, darunter 560.000 Deutsche und 385.000 Amerikaner sowie Engländer. Drittstärkste Gruppe waren in jenem Jahr die 149.000 Japaner. Bis 2005 wurden insgesamt über 50 Millionen Besucher gezählt. 2013 wurde mit 1,52 Millionen Besuchern ein neuer Rekord aufgestellt, das waren 31 Prozent der gesamten Besucher in den staatlichen Schlössern, Burgen und Residenzen. Damit ist Schloss Neuschwanstein der unangefochtene Besuchermagnet der Bayerischen Schlösserverwaltung und deren einzige Anlage, die mehr Gewinn einbringt als Kosten verursacht. 2004 wurden über 6,5 Millionen Euro an Einnahmen verbucht. Die Anlage zählt in der Hochsaison von Juni bis August durchschnittlich mehr als 6000 Besucher am Tag, in Stoßzeiten bis zu 10.000. Aufgrund des hohen Andrangs müssen Gäste ohne Voranmeldung zum Teil mit mehreren Stunden Wartezeit rechnen. Der Ticketverkauf erfolgt – vor Ort und online – ausschließlich über das Ticketcenter in Hohenschwangau. Aus Gründen der Sicherheit ist es nur im Rahmen einer etwa 35-minütigen Führung möglich, das Schloss zu besichtigen. Daneben gibt es noch sogenannte Themenführungen, die sich beispielsweise mit den Sagenwelten der jeweiligen Bilder befassen.

 

Der mit Neuschwanstein verbundene Massentourismus ist für die Region jedoch nicht nur ein lukratives Geschäft, sondern bringt auch Probleme mit sich. Vor allem in den Sommermonaten ist die Verkehrssituation rund um die Königsschlösser Hohenschwangau und Neuschwanstein extrem angespannt. Der ausufernde Parksuchverkehr in Schwangau wirkt belastend auf die Bewohner, und der sich stauende Verkehr in der Augsburger Straße in Füssen ist zu einem Drittel auf den An- und Abreiseverkehr der Schlosstouristen zurückzuführen. Seit über 20 Jahren stehen die Stadt Füssen und die Gemeinde Schwangau in Verhandlung zur Beseitigung ihrer Verkehrsprobleme, doch die verschiedenen Interessenlagen und gegensätzliche Positionen der Beteiligten führten bislang zu keiner Lösung. Trotz langer Parkplatzsuche sowie Schlangestehen vor dem Ticketcenter und dem Schlossportal reißt der Besucherstrom nach Schloss Neuschwanstein nicht ab, denn

 

„Der Nimbus des „Märchenkönigs“ übt offensichtlich auf die Umwelt eine derartige Faszination aus, dass jeder Versuch, die Besucherströme auf andere, weniger besuchte Objekte abzulenken, bisher vergeblich war und wohl auch bleiben wird.“

 

Die bayerische Regierung investiert regelmäßig Summen in Millionenhöhe in die Erhaltung des Schlosses und in die touristische Erschließung der Anlage. 1977 musste der Felsberg unter der Kemenate für 500.000 DM saniert werden. Mit rund 640.000 DM schlug noch einmal die damalige Sanierung der Marienbrücke zu Buche, während für die Erneuerung der Schlossdächer 2,1 Millionen Mark aufgewendet werden mussten. In den 1980er Jahren war das Abtäufen eines Treppenhauses und die Anlage eines weiteren Besucheraufgangs nötig geworden. Sie kosteten insgesamt 4,2 Millionen Mark. In der Zeit von 1990 bis 2008 gab der Freistaat weitere 14,5 Millionen Euro für Instandhaltungsmaßnahmen – darunter die Instandsetzung der einzigen Zufahrtsstraße sowie eine jahrelange Fassadensanierung – und die Verbesserung der Besucherbetreuung aus. Auch die Innenräume müssen regelmäßig instandgesetzt und restauriert werden. So wurden 2009 und 2011 für über 425.000 Euro die original erhaltenen Textilien im Schlaf- sowie Wohnzimmer Ludwigs II. restauriert und durch Licht- sowie Tastschutz vor weiterem Verfall bewahrt.

 

Die Schlossverwaltung warnt davor, dass mit jährlich etwa 1,5 Millionen Besuchern das Schloss an die Grenzen seiner Kapazität gelangt sei. Die Besuchermassen würden – zusammen mit dem alpinen Klima und dem Licht – die wertvollen Möbel und Textilien stark belasten. Eine besondere Rolle scheint dabei die von den Besuchern ausgeatmete Feuchtigkeit zu spielen. Wissenschaftler sollen untersuchen, inwiefern die Schlossverwaltung diese Belastung verringern kann.

 

Neuschwanstein gilt als Sinnbild für die Zeit der Romantik und ist weltweit bekannt. In amerikanischer Werbung ist es das meistgenutzte Schlossmotiv. Schon im Mai 1954 zeigte die amerikanische Illustrierte Life in einer Sonderausgabe über das deutsche Wirtschaftswunder Schloss Neuschwanstein auf seiner Titelseite.

 

Das Schloss inspirierte Künstler wie Andy Warhol, der es zum Thema einer seiner Pop-Art-Sequenzen machte, nachdem er es 1971 besucht hatte. 2002 stürzten in der Nähe Neuschwansteins Trümmerstücke eines Meteoriten auf die Erde, die seitdem unter dem Namen des Schlosses katalogisiert sind.

 

Die Anlage war Vorbild für mehrere Bauten auf der ganzen Welt, allen voran für das Sleeping-Beauty-Schloss im Disneyland Resort im kalifornischen Anaheim. Auch das Dornröschen-Schloss im Disneyland Paris wurde dem bayerischen „Märchenschloss“ nachempfunden und folgt der internationalen Einordnung, die den Anblick von Neuschwanstein mit Disney's Cinderella bzw. mit Aschenputtel in Verbindung bringt. Ähnliches gilt für das Excalibur Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Der 1990 eröffnete, 290 Millionen Dollar teure Komplex zeigt starke Anlehnungen an Neuschwanstein. In Deutschland ließ der Kommerzienrat Friedrich Hoepfner in der Karlsruher Haid-und-Neu-Straße von 1896 bis 1898 seine „Hoepfner-Burg“ nach Plänen von Johann Hantschel errichten. Der als Betriebsgebäude für Hoepfners Brauerei errichtete Bau zeigt ebenfalls Reminiszenzen an Schloss Neuschwanstein.

 

Schloss Neuschwanstein diente unzählige Male als Kulisse für Verfilmungen über das Leben Ludwigs II. Es war zum Beispiel Drehort für Filme wie Helmut Käutners Ludwig II. von 1955 und Luchino Viscontis Ludwig II. von 1972. Auch die neueste Filmbiografie, Ludwig II. von Peter Sehr und Marie Noëlle aus dem Jahr 2012, wurde an Originalschauplätzen gedreht.

 

Die Anlage kam aber nicht nur bei Verfilmungen des Lebens Ludwigs II. zum Einsatz. Zum Beispiel fand auch ein Teil der Dreharbeiten zu Ken Hughes’ Fantasy-Komödie Tschitti Tschitti Bäng Bäng aus dem Jahr 1968 dort statt, und in Mel Brooks’ 1987 veröffentlichter Star-Wars-Parodie Spaceballs stellte Schloss Neuschwanstein das Zuhause von Prinzessin Vespa auf dem Planeten Druidia dar. Auch für Peter Zadeks Die wilden Fünfziger von 1983 und in dem 2008 erstmals ausgestrahlten TV-Spielfilm Die Jagd nach dem Schatz der Nibelungen diente Neuschwanstein als Kulisse.

 

In dem DEFA-Märchenfilm Die vertauschte Königin von Dieter Scharfenberg findet in der Anfangssequenz ein Schlossmodell Verwendung, das eine Adaption Neuschwansteins ist.

 

Die in dem Film Sherlock Holmes: Spiel im Schatten aus dem Jahr 2011 gezeigte Festung in den Schweizer Alpen wurde digital gestaltet, als Vorlage diente neben der Festung Hohenwerfen auch Schloss Neuschwanstein.

 

(Wikipedia)

Norton Commando (1967-77) Engine 828cc air-cooled OHV parallel-twin

NORTON SET

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157626983592506...

  

The Norton Commando was built by Norton-Villiers with an OHV pre-unit parallel-twin engine initially of 750 (745cc), in January 1973 the ‘Mk.5 Fastback’ was launched and the ‘Long Range’ discontinued foreshadowing the first 850 cc machines launched in April 1973. The ‘Roadster’, ‘Hi Rider’ and the ‘Interstate’ all began to use a new 828 cc. engine, which had similar power to the 750 cc models but were less stressed.

 

The 850cc models were introduced in early 1973as an alternative to the 750 ut as the sole option from late 1973. All 850 models were fitted with a front disc brake. The 850 Mk.II was introduced from 1974

 

The Interstate was introduced in January 1972 using the combat engine, with a large fuel tank. In 1973 the Interstate was available with the 850 engine, initially as an option but from October 1973 as the sole engine Production of the Interstate continued until 1977 when manufacture of the Commando stopped. During the final year most of the Commando production was of the Interstate model

 

This machine, unused since new was being offered as top prize in National Motorcycle Museums annual raffle.

 

Diolch yn fawr am 69,709,650 o olygfeydd anhygoel, mwynhewch ac arhoswch yn ddiogel

 

Thank you 69,709,650 amazing views, enjoy and stay safe

 

Shot 02.03.2019 at the National Motorcycle Museum, Ref 138-173

   

Some Young History.

Like all the areas of the western slopes of NSW this was once the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. Their lands covered one of the biggest agricultural regions of Australia. There was little conflict in this region and diseases more than pastoralist action reduced their numbers considerably within a couple of years of white pastoral occupation. Like so many areas beyond the declared Nineteen Counties- the legal limit of white settlement in the 1820s and 1830s - the first pastoralist was white squatter James White in 1826. This free settler established his Burrangong station on the banks of Stoney Creek on the advice of a local Aboriginal man, Coborn Jackie. James White never married but his brother joined him and the first white child born in the region was his niece Sarah White in 1830. She lived to be 107 years old. The district was rich as the soils were volcanic soils and numerous streams ran westward to the lower areas of western NSW. The area where the sheep flocks of White rested for their lambing became known as Lambing Flat. Another pastoralist Edward Taylor planted some cherry trees in 1847. In the 1840s these squatters got licensing and later leasehold rights over the land. Until the upheaval of 1860. Gold was discovered then by James White’s nephew Dennis Regan and Alexander the Yankee with it being reported in the press in August 1860.

 

By mid-1861 20,000 miners were at Lambing Flat including 2,000 Chinese diggers. The Chinese were resented and some argue that the origins of the White Australia Policy stem from the xenophobia of Lambing Flat. There is no direct linkage here but the sentiments foreshadowed the Commonwealth policy of 1901. A group of white diggers drove off 500 Chinese miners in November of 1860 and violence and distrust continued as they destroyed their tents. The NSW government acted quickly and a Gold Commissioner and troops were despatched to Lambing Flat two weeks later. A further group of Chinese were driven away in December. In early January a similar incident occurred but this time the diggers threatened to attack the police troops if they interfered. Despite 30 police troops at Lambing Flat a further indecent occurred at the end of January when hundreds of Chinese were frightened off the fields and their tens burnt. A Miners Protective League was formed to expel the Chinese. This did not happen on other goldfields so why Lambing Flat? No one really knows. In March the government sent 300 troops to Lambing Flat armed with cannon and a defensive compound was erected. The last violence occurred in late June and early July 1861 when 3,000 miners attacked the Chinese, cut off pigtails and stole property and burnt tents. One European miner was killed in the melee. Next they attacked the fortified gaol in order to release some imprisoned miners for violence on the goldfields. One miner was killed by the police during the riot which happened near the current main street of Young. The Courthouse and police station were burnt down by the protesters. Calm quickly returned and the police regained control of the goldfields. Were the miners influenced by their knowledge of Eureka? Is this really a foreshadowing of the emergence of the workers unions? Five miners were tried for crimes in Goulburn Courthouse later in 1861 but were all acquitted and then the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in November 1861. The miners appeared to have won the battle. The anti-Chinese banner which the rioters carried was hidden for 100 years but re-discovered in Young in the 1960s. It is now in the town museum. The Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young has artefacts to tell the story of the Lambing Flat riots and the bushranging era. It also has the name plate of Coborn Jackie the Aboriginal friend and advisor of James White.

 

The town of Yong was surveyed in March of 1861 during the goldfield violence. The name of Lambing Flat was already tainted by then and the town was named Young after Sir John Young the Governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867. Town blocks were sold in May 1861 and before the end of that year Young had a Post Office, a school, a bank, an Anglican and a Catholic church and a newspaper. A hospital and a new Courthouse were erected in 1862. At that time Young was having about 124,000 ounces of gold escorted out of the town annually. But the rush was over by 1864 and less and less gold was being located by 1867. The town turned into an agricultural service centre with a saw mill (1865), a flour mill (1866), a brewery (1877) and finally railway (1885). The town then got a tannery, a soap factory, a work boot factory, a brick kiln, meat works and butter factory all before 1900. In 1889 Young became the first town outside of Sydney to have a domestic electricity supply for its residents. The arrival of the railway in 1885 allowed farmers to experiment with fruit crops as the train could speed them to markets in Sydney. Apples, oranges and plums were the first grown commercially in the 1890s and one farmer in the 1890s had a cherry orchard with 7,000 fruiting trees and 3,000 seedling cherries. Others followed suit and by 1908 Young was railing 15,000 cases of cherries to Sydney each season. Major expansion of the cherry industry occurred in the 1920s with 77 orchards near Young and it was soon the second most important cherry growing region of NSW after Orange. Young began holding a cherry festival in 1949 and still does each year in early December when picking is in full swing.

 

Some interesting buildings in Boorowa Street and vicinity are:

•In Zouch Street is the Gothic Anglican Church built in 1893. Architect was Edmund Blacket. The first Anglican Church was built on this spot in 1865. Adjacent is the red brick 1937 Rectory and the 1866 Anglican school room.

•Continue along Cloete St. Take next left into Lynch St. Here is the Methodist Church built in 1909. Now the Uniting Church. Built in Arts and Craft style with horizontal banding bricks, tower etc. The first Methodist Church was built in 1865. Turn around and go along Lynch Street.

•On the corner is the 1928 neo classical style Courthouse with Doric columns.

•Next to it is the much altered Post Office and clock built in 1878. The original Post Office stood here when built 1862.

•Cross the roundabout to see the School of Arts building and library. Built in 1904 as a single storey with two gables.

•Next door is the former AMP Society building on the corner. Built in the 1920s with a curved Doric pillared entrance with the AMP statue logo above. A friend in times of need.

•Opposite is the Presbyterian Church. Built in 1920 of greenish grey coloured feldspar quartz. Young’s first Presbyterian church was built in 1871. Turn around and turn right at the roundabout into Boorowa St.

•On the corner is the Baroque style Commercial Bank of Sydney built in 1890. Two different style porches for the entrances.

•On the right painted grey is The Great Eastern Hotel built in 1904. A typical Australian hotel but with triangular pediments.

•At the next roundabout is the Commercial Hotel. Built in 1930s in Spanish Mission style in red brick.

•Next on left is Millard’s Department Store built in 1917. A major three storey edifice in the street.

•Opposite is Young Town Hall built in 1875. In 1922 the Soldiers War Memorial Clock tower was added. Turn around and go back to the roundabout and turn right. Just along the road is the marked Federation building built around 1901. It has a stepped pediment along the roof. It is important as it was the store of one of the last 19th century Chinese traders in Young – Billy Hayes (anglicised.) He ran it to the 1960s.

•Turn right here next you will see on the right the five storey red brick Millard’s flourmill. Cross the creek.

•You will see St Mary’s Catholic Church. Gothic in style and erected 1874 of local granite with Welsh slate roof. Granite addition to the nave made in 1934. Just behind the church on the side street is the Catholic Convent built in 1891. Gothic looking gables and excellent cast iron lacework on balconies. Now part of the Catholic College.

•Opposite is the Lambing Flat Museum in the old original town school. It opened in 1883. The first town school began in 1861 with the first government school on the site on the present railway station.

•Beyond the park is Young High School. It began as the first Courthouse on these goldfields in 1861. A second grand classical Greek temple building Courthouse opened in 1886 at a cost of £12,000. It was given to the Education Department in 1924. With additions it opened as the Young High School in 1947.

•Young railway station. The railway reached here from Harden in 1885 when the Gothic station was built. It is now the Information Centre.

 

Alexander bodied Ford A series minibus - perhaps the earliest proper stage carriage minibus foreshadowing the Mercedes 709D. This was Grampian 60 but is seen here on loan to City of Oxford when new.

This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.

 

Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.

 

Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.

 

Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.

 

The church in Gourdon numbers roughly 90 sculpted or historied capitals, which is, once again, considerable for any church of that period, let alone a simple parochial one! This one shows alternating cat-like and human faces above what seems to be a floral, leafy motif of an almost abstract nature.

Autumn trees, shallow depth of field, and Lightroom make for an interesting combination.

via Instagram ift.tt/2kSyLqV

This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.

 

Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.

 

Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.

 

Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.

 

Some of the alfresco paintings in the choir or chancel. They date back from when the church was completed, i.e. the very early 1100s, and are admirable. Notice the still oversized hands, a leftover tradition from early Christianity.

Sandhill cranes in fall plumage and poor light blend into the sky, foreshadowing their imminent departure from the area.