Around 9 PM, when the light is fading and the sky is turning purple, they turn on the lights at the Acropolis. First it's just the lights at the base of the columns; and then later, there are lights illuminating the cliffs and stone walls below.

 

This was a handheld, 3-image HDR image, taken at the maximum telephoto setting of my Sony camera, and with an ISO setting of 6400.

 

Note: I selected this photo, among the 10 that I uploaded to Flickr on the evening of Jun 22, 2011, as my "photo of the day." It may be a bit trite and touristy, but it's still a stunning thing to see ... and for the photographer, of course, it's not always easy to separate one's memory of a subject from the photograph the reminds him of the memory...

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

 

My daughter is taking a nutrition class in high school. Her teacher has asked the students to bring in a "family favorite" as a dish to sample. Sara volunteered to be first, and that was today.

 

I tried to steer her towards a dish that would fool her teacher and classmates into thinking we ate responsibly. Sara wouldn't have any of that. She wanted me to make Potatoes Nelson.

 

"Nelson" was my college nickname. We played touch football, and I was the tight end. I had great hands and a willingness to block, making me perfect as a tight end. At that same time, Sim Nelson was a tight end for our nemesis, the University of Michigan. (I went to Michigan State University.) Michigan, being the prima donna glory hounds that they typically are, were all over the news, and the radios were full of news of "Sim Nelson, the big tight end". Anyways, that's how I came to have the nickname Nelson—I was a big tight end. [cue the snickers]

 

Potatoes Nelson was my signature dish then. I was poor, so I ate cheap. I usually dined on generic brand mac-n-cheese made with water. Hey, it was 10 or 15 boxes for $1. As a treat, I would make these potatoes on the weekend.

 

And I still make them for a breakfast treat.

 

Usually, I cook bacon beforehand, and use the bacon grease, plus crumble in the bacon. However, because I suspect some of the students wouldn't partake of refreshing pork, I left that out. I'm not kosher, but they are.

 

Today's was good, despite.

 

Potatoes Nelson

 

Ingredients (all quantities to taste and inclination)

Potatoes

Oil –or– bacon fat

Bacon (optional)

Onions

Green Peppers

 

Eggs

Tony Cachere's seasoning

Hot sauce

Water

 

Salt

Pepper

Cheese

 

Method

If you are going to use bacon, cook that first so that you can use the fat. Or not. Your choice. I cook mine in the oven (this time sans brown sugar, since I was using the drippings).

 

Oft times, I use baked potatoes from leftovers. But this time, I stuck potatoes with a fork and cooked them in the microwave. It was two large Idaho bakers, cooked for 15 minutes while I showered. By the time I came back, they'd been done and were cool enough to handle. I gave them a thick slice (1/4"), then cut the slices in half to make semi-circles.

 

I heat the pan I am cooking with first, then add the oil (or bacon fat). I am stuck on the old Frugal Gourmet adage, "hot pan, cold oil, food won't stick." I know that this is contrary to some Teflon guidance somewhere, but it's my pan and I'll ruin it if I want to.

 

The potatoes go into the now-hot oil. I resist turning them so that they brown. When I scent that they are brown, I flip them. That might be ten minutes, or maybe eight. Use your nose and learn your stove and pan.

 

After a while, when there is much potato brownness, I add the green peppers and onions. To save time, I used frozen chopped veggies. Those had been thawing for a while in a bowl lined with paper towel, to catch the water. Even so, the water on the veggies combining with hot oil was "exciting". Be careful.

 

It doesn't take much more than five minutes for the veggies to cook. Purty soon, the potatoes are brown, and the veggies are tender. (See picture above) If you have bacon cooked, you might consider chopping it up and adding it to the pan now to reheat it.

 

Got a broiler? Fire it up!

 

The Eggs

 

While all this is going on in the pan, I prepare the eggs. I make my usual scrambling mixture. I use Egg Beaters these days… saves time, is efficient since I can use as much as I want and put the rest back in the fridge, and is supposedly better for you.

 

I put the eggs into a bowl, and if they are real eggs, I whip them to make them to combine yolk with white. Then I add 1 teaspoon of water for each egg equivalent. I also add a drop or two of hot sauce. The water and hot sauce are from the Frugal Gourmet as well. The hot sauce helps the eggs have a "finished" taste. Don't use a lot, and no one will know what you used; it's just yummy. Got a hot tooth? Use more. I sprinkle some Tony's on top because I like my eggs to have flavor.

 

The point is, make a scrambled egg mixture because that's what's coming up.

 

Back to the Pan

 

I push the potatoes onto one half of the pan, leaving bear metal on the other half. I pour in the eggs, and scramble them. Not all the way like you'd serve on a plate, but enough so that you get scrambled eggs. Then I toss the eggs and potatoes together. The wet egg coats the potatoes, but you also have identifiable scrambled egg. Score!

 

I take some cheese now, and cover the eggs/potatoes. Back in the day, I used slices of generic "American Cheese"… it was certainly some homogenized oil product that was yellow. That's what I could afford. This morning, I found a bag of shredded Mexican Mix and a bag of shredded Sharp Cheddar. I used a Dave-sized handful of each and spread it evenly over the potatoes.

 

If you have a broiler, stick the pan in there. Let the golden heat melt and love-ify the cheese.

 

Now you can serve a delicious, bubbly pan of Potatoes Nelson. Note that I didn't salt or pepper the potatoes. I often will, but more often I'll just put the salt and pepper grinders on the table. My family is used to seasoning to their taste.

  

/FGR

/Things You May Not Know About Me

 

The Alexander Nevsky Memorial Church is an historic Russian Orthodox church building in Potsdam, Germany.

 

The church was built for the Russian residents of the settlement of Alexandrowka, now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin", below the Kapellenberg. Consecrated in 1826, it is still an active congregation and the oldest Russian Orthodox church in Germany. Designed by Vasily Stasov, Nevsky Church is a very early example of the Byzantine Revival architecture in Germany, and one of the earliest examples of Byzantine Revival in Russian Revival architecture.

 

The Russian colony of Alexandrowka is located north of downtown Potsdam. It was built in 1826-1827 by King Frederick William III of Prussia for the last twelve Russian singers in a choir that had previously 62 members.

 

Alexandrowka was named after Tsar Alexander I as a tribute to the strong ties between the Hohenzollern and Romanov families. This name was chosen following the death of Tsar Alexander I in 1825. The colony is currently part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Potsdam Castles and Parks, as it constitutes an integral part of Potsdam's cultural landscape.

 

History

In 1806, the Prussian-Saxon army was defeated by Napoleonic forces at the battle of Jena and Auerstedt. After Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1812, France and Prussia were compelled to form an alliance against Russia.

 

Out of the significant number of Russian soldiers captured in Russia during 1812, 62 soldiers remained in Potsdam by October of that year. A choir was formed from this group and officially affiliated with the King's 1st Prussian Guard Regiment. After the signing of the neutrality agreement known as the Convention of Tauroggen on December 30, 1812, Prussia and Russia became allies against France in the spring of 1813. At the request of the Prussian king, most of the former prisoners of war who were Russian soldiers were integrated into a separate regiment. Russian and Prussian troops, along with former Russian prisoners of war and Prussian deserters, joined forces under common leadership to fight against Napoleon. Tsar Alexander I not only permitted the soldiers' choir to remain in Prussia, but he also transferred seven grenadiers from one of his regiments to the king's guard regiment. The choir of former Russian prisoners of war continued to provide entertainment in the king's army camp, and losses in its ranks were compensated in 1815 by the transfer of additional grenadiers from a Russian regiment.

 

When Tsar Alexander I died in 1825, only 12 of these Russian singers were still living in Potsdam. On April 10, 1826, Frederick William III issued the following order:

 

"It is My intention, as a lasting monument to the memory of the bonds of friendship between Me and the High Seas Emperor Alexander of Russia's Majesty, to found a colony near Potsdam, which I intend to occupy with the Russian Singers given to Me by His Majesty as Colonists and name Alexandrowka."

 

— Friedrich Wilhelm III.

The new residents moved into the fully furnished estates in 1827. Every household received a cow, and the gardens were carefully designed to accommodate their needs. While the colonists had the right to pass down their holdings to male descendants, they were prohibited from selling, renting, or mortgaging the properties.

 

A Russian Orthodox memorial church, named Alexander Nevsky, was built on Chapel Hill and consecrated in September 1829. Adjacent to the church is the fourteenth residential house, which was inhabited by Tarnowsky, a royal footman of Russian origin.

 

The last singer died in 1861. After a century the founding of the Russian colony, only four families remained, and following the land reform, only two families could trace their direct lineage back to the original singers. The last member of the Shishkoff family, associated with the colony, died in 2008. Initially, the colony was privately owned by the House of Hohenzollern until it was expropriated in 1926. However, military control over the colony was held by the 1st Guards Regiment on Foot. It was only after the disbandment of the regiment in 1919 that the House of Hohenzollern took over the maintenance of the location. The previous royal laws governing the obligations and privileges of the citizens remained in effect until 1945. Fundamental changes in the legal status of the colony and its residents occurred during the period of the Soviet Zone of Occupation (SBZ) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Following German reunification, the majority of the homes have been privately owned.

 

Frederick William III (German: Friedrich Wilhelm III.; 3 August 1770 – 7 June 1840) was King of Prussia from 16 November 1797 until his death in 1840. He was concurrently Elector of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire until 6 August 1806, when the empire was dissolved.

 

Frederick William III ruled Prussia during the times of the Napoleonic Wars. The king reluctantly joined the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon in the German Campaign of 1813. Following Napoleon's defeat, he took part in the Congress of Vienna, which assembled to settle the political questions arising from the new, post-Napoleonic order in Europe. His primary interests were internal – the reform of Prussia's Protestant churches. He was determined to unify the Protestant churches to homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union of Churches. The king was said to be extremely shy and indecisive. His wife Queen Louise (1776–1810) was his most important political advisor.[citation needed] She led a mighty group that included Baron Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein, Prince Karl August von Hardenberg, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, and Count August von Gneisenau. They set about reforming Prussia's administration, churches, finance, and military. He was the dedicatee of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1824.

 

Early life

Frederick William was born in Potsdam on 3 August 1770 as the son of Frederick William II of Prussia and Frederica Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt. He was considered to be a shy and reserved boy, which became noticeable in his particularly reticent conversations, distinguished by the lack of personal pronouns. This manner of speech subsequently came to be considered entirely appropriate for military officers He was neglected by his father during his childhood and suffered from an inferiority complex his entire life.

 

As a child, Frederick William's father (under the influence of his mistress,[3] Wilhelmine Enke, Countess of Lichtenau) had him handed over to tutors, as was quite normal for the period. He spent part of the time living at Paretz, the estate of the old soldier Count Hans von Blumenthal who was the governor of his brother Prince Henry. They thus grew up partly with the count's son, who accompanied them on their Grand Tour in the 1780s. Frederick William was happy at Paretz, and for this reason, in 1795, he bought it from his boyhood friend and turned it into an important royal country retreat. He was a melancholy boy, but he grew up pious and honest. His tutors included the dramatist Johann Jakob Engel.

 

As a soldier, he received the usual training of a Prussian prince, obtained his lieutenancy in 1784, became a lieutenant colonel in 1786, a colonel in 1790, and took part in the campaigns against France of 1792–1794. On 24 December 1793, Frederick William married Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who bore him ten children. In the Kronprinzenpalais (Crown Prince's Palace) in Berlin, Frederick William lived a civil life with a problem-free marriage, which did not change even when he became King of Prussia in 1797. His wife Louise was particularly loved by the Prussian people, which boosted the popularity of the whole House of Hohenzollern, including the King himself.

 

Reign

Frederick William succeeded to the throne on 16 November 1797. He also became, in personal union, the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel (1797–1806 and again 1813–1840). At once, the new king showed that he was earnest of his good intentions by cutting down the royal establishment's expenses, dismissing his father's ministers, and reforming the most oppressive abuses of the late reign. He had the Hohenzollern determination to retain personal power but not the Hohenzollern genius for using it. Too distrustful to delegate responsibility to his ministers, he greatly reduced the effectiveness of his reign since he was forced to assume the roles he did not delegate. This is the main factor of his inconsistent rule.

 

Disgusted with his father's court (in both political intrigues and sexual affairs), Frederick William's first and most successful early endeavor was to restore his dynasty's moral legitimacy. The eagerness to restore dignity to his family went so far that it nearly caused sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow to cancel the expensive and lavish Prinzessinnengruppe project, which was commissioned by the previous monarch Frederick William II. He was quoted as saying the following, which demonstrated his sense of duty and peculiar manner of speech:

 

Every civil servant has a dual obligation: to the sovereign and the country. It can occur that the two are not compatible; then, the duty to the country is higher.

 

At first, Frederick William and his advisors attempted to pursue a neutrality policy in the Napoleonic Wars. Although they succeeded in keeping out of the Third Coalition in 1805, eventually, Frederick William was swayed by the queen's attitude, who led Prussia's pro-war party and entered into the war in October 1806. On 14 October 1806, at the Battle of Jena-Auerstädt, the French effectively decimated the Prussian Army's effectiveness and functionality; led by Frederick William, the Prussian army collapsed entirely soon after. Napoleon occupied Berlin in late October. The royal family fled to Memel, East Prussia, where they fell on the mercy of Emperor Alexander I of Russia.

 

Alexander, too, suffered defeat at the hands of the French, and at Tilsit on the Niemen France made peace with Russia and Prussia. Napoleon dealt with Prussia very harshly, despite the pregnant queen's interview with the French emperor, which was believed to soften the defeat. Instead, Napoleon took much less mercy on the Prussians than what was expected. Prussia lost many of its Polish territories and all territory west of the Elbe and had to finance a large indemnity and pay French troops to occupy key strong points within the kingdom.

 

Although the ineffectual king himself seemed resigned to Prussia's fate, various reforming ministers, such as Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein, Prince Karl August von Hardenberg, Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst, and Count August von Gneisenau, set about reforming Prussia's administration and military, with the encouragement of Queen Louise (who died, greatly mourned, in 1810). After bereavement, Frederick William fell under the influence of a 'substitute family' of courtiers, among whom included Friedrich Ancillon, a Huguenot preacher that provided the king with strong ideological support against political reforms that might restrain monarchical power, Sophie Marie von Voß, an older woman with conservative views and Prince Wilhelm zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein.

 

In 1813, following Napoleon's defeat in Russia and pressured by the Convention of Tauroggen, Frederick William turned against France and signed an alliance with Russia at Kalisz. However, he had to flee Berlin, still under French occupation. Prussian troops played a crucial part in the victories of the allies in 1813 and 1814, and the king himself traveled with the main army of Karl Philipp Fürst zu Schwarzenberg, along with Alexander of Russia and Francis of Austria.

 

At the Congress of Vienna, Frederick William's ministers succeeded in securing significant territorial increases for Prussia. However, they failed to obtain the annexation of all of Saxony, as they had wished.[citation needed] Following the war, Frederick William turned towards political reaction, abandoning the promises he had made in 1813 to provide Prussia with a constitution.

 

Prussian Union of Churches

Frederick William was determined to unify the Protestant churches to homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union of Churches. The merging of the Lutheran and Calvinist (Reformed) confessions to form the United Church of Prussia was highly controversial. Angry responses included a large and well-organized opposition. Especially the "Old Lutherans" in Silesia refused to abandon their liturgical traditions. The crown responded by attempting to silence protest. The stubborn Lutheran minority was coerced by military force, their churches' confiscation, and their pastors' imprisonment or exile. By 1834 outward union was secured based on common worship but separate symbols—the opponents of the measure being forbidden to form communities of their own. Many left Prussia, settling in South Australia, Canada, and the United States. The king's unsuccessful counterattack worsened tensions at the highest levels of government. The crown's aggressive efforts to restructure religion were unprecedented in Prussian history. In a series of proclamations over several years, the Church of the Prussian Union was formed, bringing together the majority group of Lutherans and the minority group of Reformed Protestants. The main effect was that the government of Prussia had full control over church affairs, with the king himself recognized as the leading bishop.

 

In 1824 Frederick William III remarried (morganatically) Countess Auguste von Harrach, Princess of Liegnitz.They had no children.

 

In 1838 the king distributed large parts of his farmland at Erdmannsdorf Estate to 422 Protestant refugees from the Austrian Zillertal, who built Tyrolean style farmhouses in the Silesian village.

 

Death

Frederick William III died on 7 June 1840 in Berlin, from a fever, survived by his second wife. His eldest son, Frederick William IV, succeeded him. Frederick William III is buried at the Mausoleum in Schlosspark Charlottenburg, Berlin.

 

Potsdam is the capital and largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of Berlin, and lies embedded in a hilly morainic landscape dotted with many lakes, around 20 of which are located within Potsdam's city limits. It lies some 25 kilometres (16 miles) southwest of Berlin's city centre. The name of the city and of many of its boroughs are of Slavic origin.

 

Potsdam was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Emperor until 1918. Its planning embodied ideas of the Age of Enlightenment: through a careful balance of architecture and landscape, Potsdam was intended as "a picturesque, pastoral dream" which would remind its residents of their relationship with nature and reason.

 

The city, which is over 1,000 years old, is widely known for its palaces, its lakes, and its overall historical and cultural significance. Landmarks include the parks and palaces of Sanssouci, Germany's largest World Heritage Site, as well as other palaces such as the Orangery Palace, the New Palace, Cecilienhof Palace, and Charlottenhof Palace. Potsdam was also the location of the significant Potsdam Conference in 1945, the conference where the three heads of government of the USSR, the US, and the UK decided on the division of Germany following its surrender, a conference which defined Germany's history for the following 45 years.

 

Babelsberg, in the south-eastern part of Potsdam, was already by the 1930s the home of a major film production studio and it has enjoyed success as an important center of European film production since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Filmstudio Babelsberg, founded in 1912, is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world.

 

Potsdam developed into a centre of science in Germany in the 19th century. Today, there are three public colleges, the University of Potsdam, and more than 30 research institutes in the city.

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

5075 AMN Evo Kolinska KTH Začini Vintage Antikvarijat Antique Store Mali Neboder Rijeka Croatia

 

Droga Kolinska, d.d. manufactures and markets food products in Europe and internationally. The company engages in the processing and packaging of coffee and tea; production of mineral water and soft drinks; production of meat products, including poultry products; production of homogenized products and dietary foods; and processing and packaging of cereals and spices. It is also involved in the processing and canning of fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms; processing of sea salt, herbs, and tea; production of cocoa, chocolate, and confectionary products; production of fruit and vegetable juices; and foreign branded product importing and exporting activities. The company is based in Ljubljana.

Biennale di Venezia 2014 - 14th International Architecture Exhibition - Fundamentals.

Fundamentals consists of three interlocking exhibitions:

1.Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014 is an invitation to the national pavilions to show the process of the erasure of national characteristics.

2.Elements of Architecture, in the Central Pavilion, pays close attention to the fundamentals of our buildings used by any architect, anywhere, anytime.

3.Monditalia dedicates the Arsenale to a single theme – Italy – with exhibitions, events, and theatrical productions.

 

The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, titled Fundamentals, directed by Rem Koolhaas and organized by la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, was open to the public from June 7 through November 23, 2014, in Venica Italy. 65 National Participations were exhibiting in the historic pavilions in the Giardini, in the Arsenale, and in the city of Venice. They examine key moments from a century of modernization. Together, the presentations start to reveal how diverse material cultures and political environments transformed a generic modernity into a specific one. Participating countries show, each in their own way, a radical splintering of modernity's in a century where the homogenizing process of globalization appeared to be the master narrative

 

Absorbing Modernity 1914–2014 has been proposed for the contribution of all the pavilions, and they too are involved in a substantial part of the overall research project, whose title is Fundamentals. The history of the past one hundred years prelude to the Elements of Architecture section hosted in the Central Pavilion, where the curator offers the contemporary world those elements that should represent the reference points for the discipline: for the architects but also for its dialogue with clients and society. Monditalia section in the Corderie with 41 research projects, reminds us of the complexity of this reality without complacency or prejudice, which is paradigmatic of what happens elsewhere in the world; complexities that must be deliberately experienced as sources of regeneration. Dance, Music, Theatre and Cinema with the programmes of the directors will participate in the life of the section, with debates and seminars along the six-month duration of the exhibition.

 

Elements of Architecture / Central Pavilions

This exhibition is the result of a two-year research studio with the Harvard Graduate School of Design and collaborations with a host of experts from industry and academia. Elements of Architecture looks under a microscope at the fundamentals of our buildings, used by any architect, anywhere, anytime: the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the roof, the door, the window, the façade, the balcony, the corridor, the fireplace, the toilet, the stair, the escalator, the elevator, the ramp. The exhibition is a selection of the most revealing, surprising, and unknown moments from a new book, Elements of Architecture, that reconstructs the global history of each element. It brings together ancient, past, current, and future versions of the elements in rooms that are each dedicated to a single element. To create diverse experiences, we have recreated a number of very different environments – archive, museum, factory, laboratory, mock-up, simulation

 

The Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris, France.

 

The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, under the direction of the French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. About 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.

 

Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623. With his death came Louis XIV who expanded the château into the beginnings of a palace that went through several changes and phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the de facto capital of France. This state of affairs was continued by Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, who primarily made interior alterations to the palace, but in 1789 the royal family and capital of France returned to Paris. For the rest of the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles was largely abandoned and emptied of its contents, and the population of the surrounding city plummeted.

 

Napoleon, following his coronation as Emperor, used Versailles as a summer residence from 1810 to 1814, but did not restore it. Following the Bourbon Restoration, when the king was returned to the throne, he resided in Paris and it was not until the 1830s that meaningful repairs were made to the palace. A museum of French history was installed within it, replacing the apartments of the southern wing.

 

The palace and park were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979 for its importance as the center of power, art, and science in France during the 17th and 18th centuries. The French Ministry of Culture has placed the palace, its gardens, and some of its subsidiary structures on its list of culturally significant monuments.

 

History

Main article: History of the Palace of Versailles

An engraving of Louis XIII's château as it appeared in 1652

Versailles around 1652, engraving by Jacques Gomboust [fr]

In 1623, Louis XIII, King of France, built a hunting lodge on a hill in a favorite hunting ground, 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris and 16 kilometers (10 mi) from his primary residence, the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye The site, near a village named Versailles, was a wooded wetland that Louis XIII's court scorned as being generally unworthy of a king; one of his courtiers, François de Bassompierre, wrote that the lodge "would not inspire vanity in even the simplest gentleman". From 1631 to 1634, architect Philibert Le Roy replaced the lodge with a château for Louis XIII, who forbade his queen, Anne of Austria, from staying there overnight, even when an outbreak of smallpox at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1641 forced Louis XIII to relocate to Versailles with his three-year-old heir, the future Louis XIV.

 

When Louis XIII died in 1643, Anne became Louis XIV's regent, and Louis XIII's château was abandoned for the next decade. She moved the court back to Paris, where Anne and her chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, continued Louis XIII's unpopular monetary practices. This led to the Fronde, a series of revolts against royal authority from 1648 to 1653 that masked a struggle between Mazarin and the princes of the blood, Louis XIV's extended family, for influence over him. In the aftermath of the Fronde, Louis XIV became determined to rule alone. Following Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis XIV reformed his government to exclude his mother and the princes of the blood, moved the court back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and ordered the expansion of his father's château at Versailles into a palace.

 

Louis XIV had hunted at Versailles in the 1650s, but did not take any special interest in Versailles until 1661. On 17 August 1661, Louis XIV was a guest at a sumptuous festival hosted by Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, at his palatial residence, the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis XIV was impressed by the château and its gardens, which were the work of Louis Le Vau, the court architect since 1654, André Le Nôtre, the royal gardener since 1657, and Charles Le Brun, a painter in royal service since 1647. Vaux-le-Vicomte's scale and opulence inspired Louis XIV's aesthetic sense, but also led him to imprison Fouquet that September, as he had also built an island fortress and a private army. Louis XIV was also inspired by Vaux-le-Vicomte, and he recruited its authors for his own projects. Louis XIV replaced Fouquet with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a protégé of Mazarin and enemy of Fouquet, and charged him with managing the corps of artisans in royal employment. Colbert acted as the intermediary between them and Louis XIV, who personally directed and inspected the planning and construction of Versailles.

 

Construction

Work at Versailles was at first concentrated on gardens, and through the 1660s, Le Vau only added two detached service wings and a forecourt to the château. But in 1668–69, as a response to the growth of the gardens, and victory over Spain in the War of Devolution, Louis XIV decided to turn Versailles into a full-scale royal residence. He vacillated between replacing or incorporating his father's château, but settled on the latter by the end of the decade, and from 1668 to 1671, Louis XIII's château was encased on three sides in a feature dubbed the enveloppe. This gave the château a new, Italianate façade overlooking the gardens, but preserved the courtyard façade, resulting in a mix of styles and materials that dismayed Louis XIV and that Colbert described as a "patchwork". Attempts to homogenize the two façades failed, and in 1670 Le Vau died, leaving the post of First Architect to the King vacant for the next seven years.

 

Le Vau was succeeded at Versailles by his assistant, architect François d'Orbay. Work at the palace during the 1670s focused on its interiors, as the palace was then nearing completion, though d'Orbay expanded Le Vau's service wings and connected them to the château, and built a pair of pavilions for government employees in the forecourt. In 1670, d'Orbay was tasked by Louis XIV with designing a city, also called Versailles, to house and service Louis XIV's growing government and court. The granting of land to courtiers for the construction of townhouses that resembled the palace began in 1671. The next year, the Franco-Dutch War began and funding for Versailles was cut until 1674, when Louis XIV had work begun on the Ambassadors' Staircase , a grand staircase for the reception of guests, and demolished the last of the village of Versailles.

 

Following the end of the Franco-Dutch War with French victory in 1678, Louis XIV appointed as First Architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, an experienced architect in Louis XIV's confidence, who would benefit from a restored budget and large workforce of former soldiers. Mansart began his tenure with the addition from 1678 to 1681 of the Hall of Mirrors, a renovation of the courtyard façade of Louis XIII's château, and the expansion of d'Orbay's pavilions to create the Ministers' Wings in 1678–79. Adjacent to the palace, Mansart built a pair of stables called the Grande and Petite Écuries from 1679 to 1682 and the Grand Commun, which housed the palace's servants and general kitchens, from 1682 to 1684. Mansart also added two entirely new wings in Le Vau's Italianate style to house the court, first at the south end of the palace from 1679 to 1681 and then at its north end from 1685 to 1689.

 

War and the resulting diminished funding slowed construction at Versailles for the rest of the 17th century. The Nine Years' War, which began in 1688, stopped work altogether until 1698. Three years later, however, the even more expensive War of the Spanish Succession began and, combined with poor harvests in 1693–94 and 1709–10, plunged France into crisis. Louis XIV thus slashed funding and canceled some of the work Mansart had planned in the 1680s, such as the remodeling of the courtyard façade in the Italianate style. Louis XIV and Mansart focused on a permanent palace chapel, the construction of which lasted from 1699 to 1710.

 

Louis XIV's successors, Louis XV and Louis XVI, largely left Versailles as they inherited it and focused on the palace's interiors. Louis XV's modifications began in the 1730s, with the completion of the Salon d'Hercule, a ballroom in the north wing, and the expansion of the king's private apartment, which required the demolition of the Ambassadors' Staircase In 1748, Louis XV began construction of a palace theater, the Royal Opera of Versailles at the northernmost end of the palace, but completion was delayed until 1770; construction was interrupted in the 1740s by the War of the Austrian Succession and then again in 1756 with the start of the Seven Years' War. These wars emptied the royal treasury and thereafter construction was mostly funded by Madame du Barry, Louis XV's favorite mistress. In 1771, Louis XV had the northern Ministers' Wing rebuilt in Neoclassical style by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, his court architect, as it was in the process of falling down. That work was also stopped by financial constraints, and it remained incomplete when Louis XV died in 1774. In 1784, Louis XVI briefly moved the royal family to the Château de Saint-Cloud ahead of more renovations to the Palace of Versailles, but construction could not begin because of financial difficulty and political crisis. In 1789, the French Revolution swept the royal family and government out of Versailles forever.

 

Role in politics and culture

The Palace of Versailles was key to Louis XIV's politics, as an expression and concentration of French art and culture, and for the centralization of royal power. Louis XIV first used Versailles to promote himself with a series of nighttime festivals in its gardens in 1664, 1668, and 1674, the events of which were disseminated throughout Europe by print and engravings. As early as 1669, but especially from 1678, Louis XIV sought to make Versailles his seat of government, and he expanded the palace so as to fit the court within it. The moving of the court to Versailles did not come until 1682, however, and not officially, as opinion on Versailles was mixed among the nobility of France.

 

By 1687, however, it was evident to all that Versailles was the de facto capital of France, and Louis XIV succeeded in attracting the nobility to Versailles to pursue prestige and royal patronage within a strict court etiquette, thus eroding their traditional provincial power bases. It was at the Palace of Versailles that Louis XIV received the Doge of Genoa, Francesco Maria Imperiale Lercari in 1685, an embassy from the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1686, and an embassy from Safavid Iran in 1715.[

 

Louis XIV died at Versailles on 1 September 1715 and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, then the duke of Anjou, who was moved to Vincennes and then to Paris by Louis XV's regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. Versailles was neglected until 1722, when Philippe II removed the court to Versailles to escape the unpopularity of his regency, and when Louis XV began his majority. The 1722 move, however, broke the cultural power of Versailles, and during the reign of Louis XVI, courtiers spent their leisure in Paris, not Versailles.

 

During Christmas 1763, Mozart and his family visited Versailles and dined with the kings. The 7-year-old Mozart played several works during his stay and later dedicated his first two harpsichord sonatas, published in 1764 in Paris, to Madame Victoria, daughter of Louis XV.

 

In 1783, the palace was the site of the signing of the last two of the three treaties of the Peace of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolutionary War. On September 3, British and American delegates, led by Benjamin Franklin, signed the Treaty of Paris at the Hôtel d'York (now 56 Rue Jacob) in Paris, granting the United States independence. On September 4, Spain and France signed separate treaties with England at the Palace of Versailles, formally ending the war.

 

The King and Queen learned of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July 1789, while they were at the palace, and remained isolated there as the Revolution in Paris spread. The growing anger in Paris led to the Women's March on Versailles on 5 October 1789. A crowd of several thousand men and women, protesting the high price and scarcity of bread, marched from the markets of Paris to Versailles. They took weapons from the city armory, besieged the palace, and compelled the King and royal family and the members of the National Assembly to return with them to Paris the following day.

 

As soon as the royal family departed, the palace was closed. In 1792, the National Convention, the new revolutionary government, ordered the transfer of all the paintings and sculptures from the palace to the Louvre. In 1793, the Convention declared the abolition of the monarchy and ordered all of the royal property in the palace to be sold at auction. The auction took place between 25 August 1793 and 11 August 1794. The furnishings and art of the palace, including the furniture, mirrors, baths, and kitchen equipment, were sold in seventeen thousand lots. All fleurs-de-lys and royal emblems on the buildings were chambered or chiseled off. The empty buildings were turned into a storehouse for furnishings, art and libraries confiscated from the nobility. The empty grand apartments were opened for tours beginning in 1793, and a small museum of French paintings and art school was opened in some of the empty rooms.

 

By virtue of an order issued by the Versailles district directorate in August 1794, the Royal Gate was destroyed, the Cour Royale was cleared and the Cour de Marbre lost its precious floor.

 

19th century – history museum and government venue

When Napoleon became Emperor of the French in 1804, he considered making Versailles his residence but abandoned the idea because of the cost of the renovation. Prior to his marriage with Marie-Louise in 1810, he had the Grand Trianon restored and refurnished as a springtime residence for himself and his family, in the style of furnishing that it is seen today.

 

In 1815, with the final downfall of Napoleon, Louis XVIII, the younger brother of Louis XVI, became King, and considered returning the royal residence to Versailles, where he had been born. He ordered the restoration of the royal apartments, but the task and cost was too great. Louis XVIII had the far end of the south wing of the Cour Royale demolished and rebuilt (1814–1824) to match the Gabriel wing of 1780 opposite, which gave greater uniformity of appearance to the front entrance. Neither he nor his successor Charles X lived at Versailles.

 

The French Revolution of 1830 brought a new monarch, Louis-Philippe to power, and a new ambition for Versailles. He did not reside at Versailles but began the creation of the Museum of the History of France, dedicated to "all the glories of France", which had been used to house some members of the royal family. The museum was begun in 1833 and inaugurated on 30 June 1837. Its most famous room is the Galerie des Batailles (Hall of Battles), which lies on most of the length of the second floor of the south wing. The museum project largely came to a halt when Louis Philippe was overthrown in 1848, though the paintings of French heroes and great battles still remain in the south wing.

 

Emperor Napoleon III used the palace on occasion as a stage for grand ceremonies. One of the most lavish was the banquet that he hosted for Queen Victoria in the Royal Opera of Versailles on 25 August 1855.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the palace was occupied by the general staff of the victorious German Army. Parts of the château, including the Gallery of Mirrors, were turned into a military hospital. The creation of the German Empire, combining Prussia and the surrounding German states under William I, was formally proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871. The Germans remained in the palace until the signing of the armistice in March 1871. In that month, the government of the new Third French Republic, which had departed Paris during the War for Tours and then Bordeaux, moved into the palace. The National Assembly held its meetings in the Opera House.

 

The uprising of the Paris Commune in March 1871, prevented the French government, under Adolphe Thiers, from returning immediately to Paris. The military operation which suppressed the Commune at the end of May was directed from Versailles, and the prisoners of the Commune were marched there and put on trial in military courts. In 1875 a second parliamentary body, the French Senate, was created and held its meetings for the election of a President of the Republic in a new hall created in 1876 in the south wing of the palace. The French Senate continues to meet in the palace on special occasions, such as the amendment of the French Constitution.

 

20th century

The end of the 19th and the early 20th century saw the beginning of restoration efforts at the palace, first led by Pierre de Nolhac, poet and scholar and the first conservator, who began his work in 1892. The conservation and restoration were interrupted by two world wars but have continued until the present day.

 

The palace returned to the world stage in June 1919, when, after six months of negotiations, the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending the First World War, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. Between 1925 and 1928, the American philanthropist and multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave $2,166,000, the equivalent of about thirty million dollars today, to restore and refurbish the palace.

 

More work took place after World War II, with the restoration of the Royal Opera of Versailles. The theater was reopened in 1957, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

 

In 1978, parts of the palace were heavily damaged in a bombing committed by Breton terrorists.

 

Starting in the 1950s, when the museum of Versailles was under the directorship of Gérald van der Kemp, the objective was to restore the palace to its state – or as close to it as possible – in 1789 when the royal family left the palace. Among the early projects was the repair of the roof over the Hall of Mirrors; the publicity campaign brought international attention to the plight of post-war Versailles and garnered much foreign money including a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

 

One of the more costly endeavors for the museum and France's Fifth Republic has been to repurchase as much of the original furnishings as possible. Consequently, because furniture with a royal provenance – and especially furniture that was made for Versailles – is a highly sought-after commodity on the international market, the museum has spent considerable funds on retrieving much of the palace's original furnishings.

 

21st century

In 2003, a new restoration initiative – the "Grand Versailles" project – was started, which began with the replanting of the gardens, which had lost over 10,000 trees during Cyclone Lothar on 26 December 1999. One part of the initiative, the restoration of the Hall of Mirrors, was completed in 2006. Another major project was the further restoration of the backstage areas of the Royal Opera of Versailles in 2007 to 2009.

 

The Palace of Versailles is currently owned by the French state. Its formal title is the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. Since 1995, it has been run as a Public Establishment, with an independent administration and management supervised by the French Ministry of Culture.

 

The grounds of the palace will host the equestrian competition during the 2024 Summer Olympics.

 

Architecture and plan

The Palace of Versailles is a visual history of French architecture from the 1630s to the 1780s. Its earliest portion, the corps de logis, was built for Louis XIII in the style of his reign with brick, marble, and slate, which Le Vau surrounded in the 1660s with Enveloppe, an edifice that was inspired by Renaissance-era Italian villas. When Mansart made further expansions to the palace in the 1680s, he used the Enveloppe as the model for his work. Neoclassical additions were made to the palace with the remodeling of the Ministers' Wings in the 1770s, by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, and after the Bourbon Restoration.

 

The palace was largely completed by the death of Louis XIV in 1715. The eastern facing palace has a U-shaped layout, with the corps de logis and symmetrical advancing secondary wings terminating with the Dufour Pavilion on the south and the Gabriel Pavilion to the north, creating an expansive cour d'honneur known as the Royal Court (Cour Royale). Flanking the Royal Court are two enormous asymmetrical wings that result in a façade of 402 metres (1,319 ft) in length. Covered by around a million square feet (10 hectares) of roof, the palace has 2,143 windows, 1,252 chimneys, and 67 staircases.[

 

The palace and its grounds have had a great influence on architecture and horticulture from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th century. Examples of works influenced by Versailles include Christopher Wren's work at Hampton Court Palace, Berlin Palace, the Palace of La Granja, Stockholm Palace, Ludwigsburg Palace, Karlsruhe Palace, Rastatt Palace, Nymphenburg Palace, Schleissheim Palace, and Esterházy Palace.

 

Royal Apartments

The construction in 1668–1671 of Le Vau's enveloppe around the outside of Louis XIII's red brick and white stone château added state apartments for the king and the queen. The addition was known at the time as the château neuf (new château). The grands appartements (Grand Apartments, also referred to as the State Apartments[141][142]) include the grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine. They occupied the main or principal floor of the château neuf, with three rooms in each apartment facing the garden to the west and four facing the garden parterres to the north and south, respectively. The private apartments of the king (the appartement du roi and the petit appartement du roi) and those of the queen (the petit appartement de la reine) remained in the château vieux (old château). Le Vau's design for the state apartments closely followed Italian models of the day, including the placement of the apartments on the main floor (the piano nobile, the next floor up from the ground level), a convention the architect borrowed from Italian palace design.

 

The king's State Apartment consisted of an enfilade of seven rooms, each dedicated to one of the known planets and their associated titular Roman deity. The queen's apartment formed a parallel enfilade with that of the grand appartement du roi. After the addition of the Hall of Mirrors (1678–1684) the king's apartment was reduced to five rooms (until the reign of Louis XV, when two more rooms were added) and the queen's to four.

 

The queen's apartments served as the residence of three queens of France – Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche, wife of Louis XIV, Marie Leczinska, wife of Louis XV, and Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI. Additionally, Louis XIV's granddaughter-in-law, Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy, duchesse de Bourgogne, wife of the Petit Dauphin, occupied these rooms from 1697 (the year of her marriage) to her death in 1712.

 

Ambassador's Staircase

The Ambassadors' Staircase (Escalier des Ambassadeurs) was an imperial staircase built from 1674 to 1680 by d'Orbay. Until Louis XV had it demolished in 1752 to create a courtyard for his private apartments, the staircase was the primary entrance into the Palace of Versailles and the royal apartments especially. It was entered from the courtyard via a vestibule that, cramped and dark, contrasted greatly with the tall, open space of the staircase – famously lit naturally with a skylight – so as to overawe visitors.

 

The staircase and walls of the room that contained it were clad in polychrome marble and gilded bronze, with decor in the Ionic order. Le Brun and painted the walls and ceiling of the room according to a festive theme to celebrate Louis XIV's victory in the Franco-Dutch War. On the wall immediately above the staircase were trompe-l'œil paintings of people from the Four Parts of the World looking into the staircase over a balustrade, a motif repeated on the ceiling fresco. There they were joined by allegorical figures for the twelve months of the year and various Classical Greek figures such as the Muses. A marble bust of Louis XIV, sculpted by Jean Warin in 1665–66, was placed in a niche above the first landing of the staircase.

 

The State Apartments of the King

The construction of the Hall of Mirrors between 1678 and 1686 coincided with a major alteration to the State Apartments. They were originally intended as his residence, but the King transformed them into galleries for his finest paintings, and venues for his many receptions for courtiers. During the season from All-Saints Day in November until Easter, these were usually held three times a week, from six to ten in the evening, with various entertainments.

 

The Salon of Hercules

This was originally a chapel. It was rebuilt beginning in 1712 under the supervision of the First Architect of the King, Robert de Cotte, to showcase two paintings by Paolo Veronese, Eleazar and Rebecca and Meal at the House of Simon the Pharisee, which was a gift to Louis XIV from the Republic of Venice in 1664. The painting on the ceiling, The Apotheosis of Hercules, by François Lemoyne, was completed in 1736, and gave the room its name.

 

The Salon of Abundance

The Salon of Abundance was the antechamber to the Cabinet of Curios (now the Games Room), which displayed Louis XIV's collection of precious jewels and rare objects. Some of the objects in the collection are depicted in René-Antoine Houasse's painting Abundance and Liberality (1683), located on the ceiling over the door opposite the windows.

 

The Salon of Venus

This salon was used for serving light meals during evening receptions. The principal feature in this room is Jean Warin's life-size statue of Louis XIV in the costume of a Roman emperor. On the ceiling in a gilded oval frame is another painting by Houasse, Venus subjugating the Gods and Powers (1672–1681). Trompe-l'œil paintings and sculpture around the ceiling illustrate mythological themes.

 

The Salon of Mercury

The Salon of Mercury was the original State Bedchamber when Louis XIV officially moved the court and government to the palace in 1682. The bed is a replica of the original commissioned by King Louis-Philippe in the 19th century when he turned the palace into a museum. The ceiling paintings by the Flemish artist Jean Baptiste de Champaigne depict the god Mercury in his chariot, drawn by a rooster, and Alexander the Great and Ptolemy surrounded by scholars and philosophers. The Automaton Clock was made for the King by the royal clockmaker Antoine Morand in 1706. When it chimes the hour, figures of Louis XIV and Fame descend from a cloud.

 

The Salon of Mars

The Salon of Mars was used by the royal guards until 1782, and was decorated on a military theme with helmets and trophies. It was turned into a concert room between 1684 and 1750, with galleries for musicians on either side. Portraits of Louis XV and his Queen, Marie Leszczinska, by the Flemish artist Carle Van Loo decorate the room today.

 

The Salon of Apollo

The Salon of Apollo was the royal throne room under Louis XIV, and was the setting for formal audiences. The eight-foot-high silver throne was melted down in 1689 to help pay the costs of an expensive war, and was replaced by a more modest throne of gilded wood. The central painting on the ceiling, by Charles de la Fosse, depicts the Sun Chariot of Apollo, the King's favorite emblem, pulled by four horses and surrounded by the four seasons.

 

The Salon of Diana

The Salon of Diana was used by Louis XIV as a billiards room, and had galleries from which courtiers could watch him play. The decoration of the walls and ceiling depicts scenes from the life of the goddess Diana. The celebrated bust of Louis XIV by Bernini made during the famous sculptor's visit to France in 1665 is on display here.

 

Private apartments of the King and Queen

The apartments of the King were the heart of the château; they were in the same location as the rooms of Louis XIII, the creator of the château, on the first floor (second floor US style). They were set aside for the personal use of Louis XIV in 1683. He and his successors Louis XV and Louis XVI used these rooms for official functions, such as the ceremonial lever ("waking up") and the coucher ("going to bed") of the monarch, which was attended by a crowd of courtiers.

 

The King's apartment was accessed from the Hall of Mirrors from the Oeil de Boeuf antechamber or from the Guardroom and the Grand Couvert, the ceremonial room where Louis XIV often took his evening meals, seated alone at a table in front of the fireplace. His spoon, fork, and knife were brought to him in a golden box. The courtiers could watch as he dined.

 

The King's bedchamber had originally been a Drawing Room before Louis XIV transformed it into his own bedroom in 1701. He died there on 1 September 1715. Both Louis XV and Louis XVI continued to use the bedroom for their official awakening and going to bed. On 6 October 1789, from the balcony of this room Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, joined by the Marquis de Lafayette, looked down on the hostile crowd in the courtyard, shortly before the King was forced to return to Paris.

 

The bed of the King is placed beneath a carved relief by Nicolas Coustou entitled France watching over the sleeping King. The decoration includes several paintings set into the paneling, including a self-portrait of Antony van Dyck.

 

Private apartments of The Queen

The petit appartement de la reine is a suite of rooms that were reserved for the personal use of the queen. Originally arranged for the use of the Marie-Thérèse, consort of Louis XIV, the rooms were later modified for use by Marie Leszczyńska and finally for Marie-Antoinette. The Queen's apartments and the King's Apartments were laid out on the same design, each suite having seven rooms. Both suites had ceilings painted with scenes from mythology; the King's ceilings featured male figures, the Queen's featured females.

 

Hall of Mirrors

The Hall of Mirrors is a long gallery at the westernmost part of the palace that looks out onto the gardens. The hall was built from 1678 to 1681 on the site of a terrace Le Vau built between the king and queen's suites. The hall is clad in marble and decorated in a modified version of the Corinthian order, with 578 mirrors facing 17 windows and reflecting the light provided by them. The ceiling fresco, painted by Le Brun over the next four years, embellishes the first 18 years of Louis XIV's reign in 30 scenes, 17 of which are military victories over the Dutch. The fresco depicts Louis XIV himself alongside Classical figures in the scenes celebrating moments in his reign such as the beginning of personal rule in 1661, breaking from earlier frescoes at Versailles that used allegories derived from Classical and mythological scenes.

 

The Salon of War and the Salon of Peace bookend the Hall of Mirrors on its northern and southern ends respectively. The Salon of War, constructed and decorated from 1678 to 1686, celebrates French victories in the Franco-Dutch War with marble panels, gilded bronze trophies of arms, and a stucco bas-relief of Louis XIV on horsebask riding over his enemies. The Salon of Peace is decorated in the same fashion but according to its eponymous theme.

 

Royal Chapel

The Royal Chapel of Versailles is located at the southern end of the north wing. The building stands 40-meter (130 ft) high, and measures 42 meters (138 ft) long and 24 meters (79 ft) wide. The chapel is rectangular with a semicircular apse, combining traditional, Gothic royal French church architecture with the French Baroque style of Versailles. The ceiling of the chapel is constituted by an unbroken vault, divided into three frescos by Antoine Coypel, Charles de La Fosse, and Jean Jouvenet. The palette of motifs beneath the frescoes glorify the deeds of Louis IX, and include images of David, Constantine, Charlemagne, and Louis IX, fleur de lis, and Louis XIV's monogram. The organ of the chapel was built by Robert Clicquot and Julien Tribuot in 1709–1710.

 

Louis XIV commissioned the chapel, its sixth, from Mansart and Le Brun in 1683–84. It was the last building constructed at Versailles during Louis XIV's reign. Construction was delayed until 1699, however, and it was not completed until 1710. The only major modification to the chapel since its completion was the removal of a lantern from its roof in 1765. A full restoration of the chapel began in late 2017 and lasted into early 2021.

 

Royal Opera

The Royal Opera of Versailles was originally commissioned by Louis XIV in 1682 and was to be built at the end of the North Wing with a design by Mansart and Vigarani. However, due to the expense of the King's continental wars, the project was put aside. The idea was revived by Louis XV with a new design by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1748, but this was also temporarily put aside. The project was revived and rushed ahead for the planned celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, and Marie-Antoinette. For economy and speed, the new opera was built almost entirely of wood, which also gave it very high quality acoustics. The wood was painted to resemble marble, and the ceiling was decorated with a painting of the Apollo, the god of the arts, preparing crowns for illustrious artists, by Louis Jean-Jacques Durameau. The sculptor Augustin Pajou added statuary and reliefs to complete the decoration. The new Opera was inaugurated on 16 May 1770, as part of the celebration of the royal wedding.

 

In October 1789, early in the French Revolution, the last banquet for the royal guardsmen was hosted by the King in the opera, before he departed for Paris. Following the Franco-German War in 1871 and then the Paris Commune until 1875, the French National Assembly met in the opera, until the proclamation of the Third French Republic and the return of the government to Paris.

 

Museum of the History of France

Shortly after becoming King in 1830, Louis Philippe I decided to transform the palace into a museum devoted to "All the Glories of France," with paintings and sculpture depicting famous French victories and heroes. Most of the apartments of the palace were entirely demolished (in the main building, practically all of the apartments were annihilated, with only the apartments of the king and queen remaining almost intact), and turned into a series of several large rooms and galleries: the Coronation Room (whose original volume was left untouched by Louis-Philippe), which displays the celebrated painting of the coronation of Napoleon I by Jacques-Louis David; the Hall of Battles; commemorating French victories with large-scale paintings; and the 1830 room, which celebrated Louis-Philippe's own coming to power in the French Revolution of 1830. Some paintings were brought from the Louvre, including works depicting events in French history by Philippe de Champaigne, Pierre Mignard, Laurent de La Hyre, Charles Le Brun, Adam Frans van der Meulen, Nicolas de Largillière, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Jean-Marc Nattier, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Hubert Robert, Thomas Lawrence, Jacques-Louis David, and Antoine-Jean Gros. Others were commissioned especially for the museum by prominent artists of the early 19th century, including Eugène Delacroix, who painted Saint Louis at the French victory over the British in the Battle of Taillebourg in 1242. Other painters featured include Horace Vernet and François Gérard. A monumental painting by Vernet features Louis Philippe himself, with his sons, posing in front of the gates of the palace.

 

The overthrow of Louis Philippe in 1848 put an end to his grand plans for the museum, but the Gallery of Battles is still as it was, and is passed through by many visitors to the royal apartments and grand salons. Another set of rooms on the first floor has been made into galleries on Louis XIV and his court, displaying furniture, paintings, and sculptures. In recent years, eleven rooms on the ground floor between the Chapel and the Opera have been turned into a history of the palace, with audiovisual displays and models.

 

Estate of Versailles

The estate of Versailles consists of the palace, the subsidiary buildings around it, and its park and gardens. As of June 2021, the estate altogether covers an area of 800 hectares (8.0 km2; 2,000 acres), with the park and gardens laid out to the south, west, and north of the palace. The palace is approached from the east by the Avenue de Paris, measuring 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to a gate between the Grande and Petite Écuries. Beyond these stables is the Place d'Armes, where the Avenue de Paris meets the Avenue de Sceaux and Avenue de Saint-Cloud (see map), the three roads that formed the main arteries of the city of Versailles. Exactly where the three roads meet is a gate leading into the cour d'honneur. hemmed in by the Ministers' Wings. Beyond is the Royal Gate and the main palace, which wraps around the Royal and finally Marble Courts

 

The estate was established by Louis XIII as a hunting retreat, with a park just to the west of his château. From 1661, Louis XIV expanded the estate until, at its greatest extent, the estate was made up by the Grand Parc , a hunting ground of 15,000 hectares (150 km2; 37,000 acres), and the gardens, called the Petit Parc, which covered 1,700 hectares (17 km2; 4,200 acres). A 25-mile (40 km) long, 10-foot (3.0 m) high wall with 24 gateways enclosed the estate.

 

The landscape of the estate had to be created from the bog that surrounded Louis XIII's château using landscape architecture usually employed in fortress building. The approach to the palace and the gardens were carefully laid out via the moving of earth and construction of terraces. The water from the marsh was marshalled into a series of lakes and ponds around Versailles, but these reservoirs were not sufficient for the palace, city, or gardens. Great lengths were taken to supply Versailles with water, such as the damming of the river Bièvre to create an inflow in the 1660s, the construction of an enormous pumping station at the river Seine near Marly-le-Roi in 1681, and an attempt to divert water from the river Eure with a canal in the later 1680s.

 

Gardens

The gardens of Versailles, as they have existed since the reign of Louis XIV, are the work of André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre's gardens were preceded by a simple garden laid out in the 1630s by landscape architects Jacques Boyceau and Jacques de Nemours, which he rearranged along an east–west axis that, because of Louis XIV's land purchases and the clearing of woodland, were expanded literally as far as could be seen. The resulting gardens were a collaboration between Le Nôtre, Le Brun, Colbert, and Louis XIV, marked by rigid order, discipline, and open space, with axial paths, flowerbeds, hedges, and ponds and lakes as motifs. They became the epitome of the French formal garden style, and have been very influential and widely imitated or reproduced.

 

Subsidiary structures

The first of the subsidiary structures of the Palace of Versailles was the Versailles Menagerie [fr],[199][200] built by Le Vau between the years 1662 and 1664, at the southern end of the Grand Canal. The apartments, overlooking the pens, were renovated by Mansart from 1698 to 1700, but the Menagerie fell into disuse in 1712. After a long period of decay, it was demolished in 1801. The Versailles Orangery, just to the south of the palace, was first built by Le Vau in 1663, originally as part of the general moving of earth to create the Estate.[191] It was also modified by Mansart, who, from 1681 to 1685, totally rebuilt it and doubled its size.

 

In late 1679, Louis XIV commissioned Mansart to build the Château de Marly, a retreat at the edge of Versailles's estate, about 5 miles (8.0 km) from the palace. The château consisted of a primary residential building and twelve pavilions, in Palladian style placed in two rows on either side of the main building. Construction was completed in 1686, when Louis XIV spent his first night there. The château was nationalized and sold in 1799, and subsequently demolished and replaced with industrial buildings. These were themselves demolished in 1805, and then in 1811 the estate was purchased by Napoleon. On 1 June 2009, the grounds of the Château de Marly were ceded to the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles.

 

La Lanterne, is a hunting lodge named after the lantern that topped the nearby Menagerie that was built in 1787 by Philippe Louis de Noailles, then the palace governor. It has since 1960 been a state residence.

 

Petit Trianon

The Petit Trianon, whose construction from 1762 to 1768 led to the advent of the names "Grand" and "Petit Trianon", was constructed for Louis XV and the Madame du Barry in the Neoclassical style by Gabriel. The building has a piano nobile, basement, and attic, with five windows on each floor. On becoming king, Louis XVI gave the Petit Trianon to Marie Antoinette, who remodeled it, relaid its gardens in the then-current English and Oriental styles, and formed her own court there.

 

In 1668, Louis XIV purchased and demolished the hamlet of Trianon, near the northern tip of the Grand Canal, and in its place, he commissioned Le Vau to construct a retreat from court, remembered as the Porcelain Trianon. Designed and built by Le Vau in 1670, it was the first example of Chinoiserie (faux Chinese) architecture in Europe, though it was largely designed in French style. The roof was clad not with porcelain but with delftware, and was thus prone to leaks, so in 1687 Louis XIV ordered it demolished. Nevertheless, the Porcelain Trianon was itself influential and copycats were built across Europe.

 

The Grand Trianon

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

 

To replace the Porcelain Trianon, Louis XIV tasked Mansart with the construction in 1687 of the Grand Trianon, built from marble in three months. The Grand Trianon has a single story, except for its attached service wing, which was modified by Mansart in 1705–06. The east façade has a courtyard while the west faces the gardens of the Grand Trianon, and between them a peristyle. The interiors are mostly original,[214] and housed Louis XIV, the Madame de Maintenon, Marie Leszczynska, and Napoleon, who ordered restorations to the building. Under de Gaulle, the north wing of the Grand Trianon became a residence of the President of France.

 

The Queen's hamlet and Theater

Near the Trianons are the French pavilion, built by Gabriel in 1750 between the two residences, and the Queen's Theater and Queen's Hamlet, built by architect Richard Mique in 1780 and from 1783 to 1785 respectively. These were both built at the behest of Marie Antoinette; the theater, hidden in the gardens, indulged her appreciation of opera and is absolutely original, and the hamlet to extend her gardens with rustic amenities. The building scheme of the Queen's Hamlet includes a farmhouse (the farm was to produce milk and eggs for the queen), a dairy, a dovecote, a boudoir, a barn that burned down during the French Revolution, a mill and a tower in the form of a lighthouse.

 

Modern political and ceremonial functions

The palace still serves political functions. Heads of state are regaled in the Hall of Mirrors; the bicameral French Parliament—consisting of the Senate (Sénat) and the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale)—meet in joint session (a congress of the French Parliament) in Versailles to revise or otherwise amend the French Constitution, a tradition that came into effect with the promulgation of the 1875 Constitution. For example, the Parliament met in joint session at Versailles to pass constitutional amendments in June 1999 (for domestic applicability of International Criminal Court decisions and for gender equality in candidate lists), in January 2000 (ratifying the Treaty of Amsterdam), and in March 2003 (specifying the "decentralized organization" of the French Republic).

 

In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed the global financial crisis before a congress in Versailles, the first time that this had been done since 1848, when Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte gave an address before the French Second Republic. Following the November 2015 Paris attacks, President François Hollande gave a speech before a rare joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles. This was the third time since 1848 that a French president addressed a joint session of the French Parliament at Versailles. The president of the National Assembly has an official apartment at the Palace of Versailles. In 2023 a state visit by Charles III to France included a state banquet at the Palace.

The pig (Sus domesticus), often called swine (pl.: swine), hog, or domestic pig when distinguishing from other members of the genus Sus, is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is variously considered a subspecies of Sus scrofa (the wild boar or Eurasian boar) or a distinct species. Pigs were domesticated in the Neolithic, both in East Asia and in the Near East. When these arrived in Europe, they extensively interbred with wild boar but retained their domesticated features.

 

Pigs are farmed primarily for meat, called pork. The animal's skin or hide is used for leather. China is the world's largest pig producer, followed by the European Union and then the United States. Around 1.5 billion pigs are raised each year, producing some 120 million tonnes of meat.

 

Pigs have featured in human culture since Neolithic times, appearing in art and literature for children and adults.

 

Description

The pig has a large head, with a long snout strengthened by a special prenasal bone and a disk of cartilage at the tip. The snout is used to dig into the soil to find food and is an acute sense organ. The dental formula of adult pigs is

3.1.4.3

3.1.4.3

, giving a total of 44 teeth. The rear teeth are adapted for crushing. In the male, the canine teeth can form tusks, which grow continuously and are sharpened by constantly being ground against each other. There are four hoofed toes on each foot; the two larger central toes bear most of the weight, while the outer two are also used in soft ground. Most pigs have rather sparsely bristled hair on their skin, though there are some woolly-coated breeds such as the Mangalitsa.

 

Pigs possess both apocrine and eccrine sweat glands, although the latter are limited to the snout. Pigs, like other "hairless" mammals such as elephants, do not use thermal sweat glands in cooling. Pigs are less able than many other mammals to dissipate heat from wet mucous membranes in the mouth by panting. Their thermoneutral zone is 16–22 °C (61–72 °F). At higher temperatures, pigs lose heat by wallowing in mud or water via evaporative cooling, although it has been suggested that wallowing may serve other functions, such as protection from sunburn, ecto-parasite control, and scent-marking. Pigs are among four mammalian species with mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom. Mongooses, honey badgers, hedgehogs, and pigs all have different modifications to the receptor pocket which prevents α-neurotoxin from binding. Pigs have small lungs for their body size, and are thus more susceptible than other domesticated animals to fatal bronchitis and pneumonia. Pigs have a maximum life span of about 27 years. The genome of the pig has been sequenced; it contains about 22,342 protein-coding genes.

 

Taxonomy

The pig is most often considered to be a subspecies of the wild boar, which was given the name Sus scrofa by Carl Linnaeus in 1758; following from this, the formal name of the pig is Sus scrofa domesticus. However, in 1777, Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben classified the pig as a separate species from the wild boar. He gave it the name Sus domesticus, still used by some taxonomists. The American Society of Mammalogists considers it a separate species.

 

Domestication in the Neolithic

Archaeological evidence shows that pigs were domesticated from wild boar in the Near East in or around the Tigris Basin, being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans. There were pigs in Cyprus more than 11,400 years ago, introduced from the mainland, implying domestication in the adjacent mainland by then. Pigs were separately domesticated in China, starting some 8,000 years ago. In the Near East, pig husbandry spread for the next few millennia. It reduced gradually during the Bronze Age, as rural populations focused instead on commodity-producing livestock, but it was sustained in cities.

 

Domestication did not involve reproductive isolation with population bottlenecks. Western Asian pigs were introduced into Europe, where they crossed with wild boar. There appears to have been interbreeding with a now extinct ghost population of wild pigs during the Pleistocene. The genomes of domestic pigs show strong selection for genes affecting behavior and morphology. Human selection for domestic traits likely counteracted the homogenizing effect of gene flow from wild boars and created domestication islands in the genome. Pigs arrived in Europe from the Near East at least 8,500 years ago. Over the next 3,000 years they interbred with European wild boar until their genome showed less than 5% Near Eastern ancestry, yet retained their domesticated features.

 

DNA evidence from subfossil remains of teeth and jawbones of Neolithic pigs shows that the first domestic pigs in Europe were brought from the Near East. This stimulated the domestication of local European wild boar, resulting in a third domestication event with the Near Eastern genes dying out in European pig stock. More recently there have been complex exchanges, with European domesticated lines being exported, in turn, to the ancient Near East. Historical records indicate that Asian pigs were again introduced into Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

 

History

Columbian Exchange

Among the animals that the Spanish introduced to the Chiloé Archipelago in the 16th century Columbian Exchange, pigs were the most successful in adapting to local conditions. The pigs benefited from abundant shellfish and algae exposed by the large tides of the archipelago. Pigs were brought to southeastern North America from Europe by de Soto and other early Spanish explorers. Escaped pigs became feral, disrupting the lives of Native Americans.

 

With a population of around 1 billion individuals, the domesticated pig is one of the most numerous large mammals on the planet.

 

Feral pigs

Pigs have escaped from farms and gone feral in many parts of the world. Feral pigs in the southeastern United States have migrated north to the Midwest, where many state agencies have programs to remove them. Feral pigs in New Zealand and northern Queensland have caused substantial environmental damage. Feral hybrids of the European wild boar with the domestic pig are disruptive to both environment and agriculture, especially in southeastern South America.

 

Reproduction

Female pigs reach sexual maturity at 3–12 months of age and come into estrus every 18–24 days if they are not successfully bred. The variation in ovulation rate can be attributed to intrinsic factors such as age and genotype, as well as extrinsic factors like nutrition, environment, and the supplementation of exogenous hormones. The gestation period averages 112–120 days.

 

Estrus lasts two to three days, and the female's displayed receptiveness to mate is known as standing heat. Standing heat is a reflexive response that is stimulated when the female is in contact with the saliva of a sexually mature boar. Androstenol is one of the pheromones produced in the submaxillary salivary glands of boars that trigger the female's response. The female cervix contains a series of five interdigitating pads, or folds, that hold the boar's corkscrew-shaped penis during copulation. Females have bicornuate uteruses and two conceptuses must be present in both uterine horns for pregnancy to be established. Maternal recognition of pregnancy in pigs occurs on days 11 to 12 of pregnancy and is marked by progesterone production from a functioning corpus luteum. To avoid luteolysis by PGF2α, rescuing of the corpus luteum must occur via embryonic signaling of estradiol 17β and PGE2. This signaling acts on both the endometrium and luteal tissue to prevent the regression of the corpus luteum by activation of genes that are responsible for corpus luteum maintenance. During mid to late pregnancy, the corpus luteum relies primarily on Luteinizing hormone for maintenance until birth.

 

Archeological evidence indicates that medieval European pigs farrowed, or bore a litter of piglets, once per year. By the nineteenth century, European piglets routinely double-farrowed, or bore two litters of piglets per year. It is unclear when this shift occurred.

 

Behaviour

Pig behaviour is intermediate between that of other artiodactyls and of carnivores. Pigs seek out the company of other pigs, and often huddle to maintain physical contact, but do not naturally form large herds. They live in groups of about 8–10 adult sows, some young individuals, and some single males.

 

Because of their relative lack of sweat glands, pigs often control their body temperature using behavioural thermoregulation. Wallowing, coating the body with mud, is a common behaviour. They do not submerge completely under the mud, but vary the depth and duration of wallowing depending on environmental conditions. Adult pigs start wallowing once the ambient temperature is around 17–21 °C (63–70 °F). They cover themselves in mud from head to tail. They may use mud as a sunscreen, or to keep parasites away. Most bristled pigs "blow their coat", meaning that they shed most of the longer, coarser stiff hair once a year, usually in spring or early summer, to prepare for the warmer months ahead.

 

If conditions permit, pigs feed continuously for many hours and then sleep for many hours, in contrast to ruminants, which tend to feed for a short time and then sleep for a short time. Pigs are omnivorous and versatile in their feeding behaviour. They primarily eat leaves, stems, roots, fruits, and flowers. They are noticeably intelligent, on a par with dogs.

 

Rooting

Rooting is an instinctual comforting behaviour in pigs characterized by nudging the snout into something. It first happens when piglets are born to obtain their mother's milk, and can become a habitual, obsessive behaviour, most prominent in animals weaned too early. Pigs root and dig into the ground to forage for food. Rooting is also a means of communication.

 

Nest-building

A characteristic of pigs which they share with carnivores is nest-building. Sows root in the ground to create depressions the size of their body, and then build nest mounds, using twigs and leaves, softer in the middle, in which to give birth. When the mound reaches the desired height, she places large branches, up to 2 metres in length, on the surface. She enters the mound and roots around to create a depression within the gathered material. She then gives birth in a lying position, unlike other artiodactyls which usually stand while birthing.

 

Nest-building occurs during the last 24 hours before the onset of farrowing, and becomes most intense 12 to 6 hours before farrowing. The sow separates from the group and seeks a suitable nest site with well-drained soil and shelter from rain and wind. This provides the offspring with shelter, comfort, and thermoregulation. The nest provides protection against weather and predators, while keeping the piglets close to the sow and away from the rest of the herd. This ensures they do not get trampled on, and prevents other piglets from stealing milk from the sow. The onset of nest-building is triggered by a rise in prolactin level, caused by a decrease in progesterone and an increase in prostaglandin; the gathering of nest material seems to be regulated more by external stimuli such as temperature.

 

Nursing and suckling

Pigs have complex nursing and suckling behaviour. Nursing occurs every 50–60 minutes, and the sow requires stimulation from piglets before milk let-down. Sensory inputs (vocalisation, odours from mammary and birth fluids, and hair patterns of the sow) are particularly important immediately post-birth to facilitate teat location by the piglets. Initially, the piglets compete for position at the udder; then the piglets massage around their respective teats with their snouts, during which time the sow grunts at slow, regular intervals. Each series of grunts varies in frequency, tone and magnitude, indicating the stages of nursing to the piglets.

 

The phase of competition for teats and of nosing the udder lasts for about a minute, ending when milk begins to flow. The piglets then hold the teats in their mouths and suck with slow mouth movements (one per second), and the rate of the sow's grunting increases for approximately 20 seconds. The grunt peak in the third phase of suckling does not coincide with milk ejection, but rather the release of oxytocin from the pituitary into the bloodstream. Phase four coincides with the period of main milk flow (10–20 seconds) when the piglets suddenly withdraw slightly from the udder and start sucking with rapid mouth movements of about three per second. The sow grunts rapidly, lower in tone and often in quick runs of three or four, during this phase. Finally, the flow stops and so does the grunting of the sow. The piglets may dart from teat to teat and recommence suckling with slow movements, or nosing the udder. Piglets massage and suckle the sow's teats after milk flow ceases as a way of letting the sow know their nutritional status. This helps her to regulate the amount of milk released from that teat in future sucklings. The more intense the post-feed massaging of a teat, the more milk that teat later releases.

 

Teat order

In pigs, dominance hierarchies are formed at an early age. Piglets are precocious, and attempt to suckle soon after being born. The piglets are born with sharp teeth and fight for the anterior teats, as these produce more milk. Once established, this teat order remains stable; each piglet tends to feed on a particular teat or group of teats. Stimulation of the anterior teats appears to be important in causing milk letdown, so it might be advantageous to the entire litter to have these teats occupied by healthy piglets. Piglets locate teats by sight and then by olfaction.

 

Senses

Pigs have panoramic vision of approximately 310° and binocular vision of 35° to 50°. It is thought they have no eye accommodation. Other animals that have no accommodation, e.g. sheep, lift their heads to see distant objects. The extent to which pigs have colour vision is still a source of some debate; however, the presence of cone cells in the retina with two distinct wavelength sensitivities (blue and green) suggests that at least some colour vision is present.

 

Pigs have a well-developed sense of smell; use is made of this in Europe where trained pigs find underground truffles. Olfactory rather than visual stimuli are used in the identification of other pigs. Hearing is well developed; sounds are localised by moving the head. Pigs use auditory stimuli extensively for communication in all social activities. Alarm or aversive stimuli are transmitted to other pigs not only by auditory cues but also by pheromones. Similarly, recognition between the sow and her piglets is by olfactory and vocal cues.

 

Pests and diseases

Pigs are subject to many pests and diseases which can seriously affect productivity and cause death. These include parasites such as Ascaris roundworms, virus diseases such as the tick-borne African Swine Fever, bacterial infections such as Clostridium, arthritis caused by Mycoplasma, and stillbirths caused by Parvovirus.

 

Some parasites of pigs are a public health risk as they can be transmitted to humans in undercooked pork. These are the pork tapeworm Taenia solium; a protozoan, Toxoplasma gondii; and a nematode, Trichinella spiralis. Transmission can be prevented by thorough sanitation on the farm; by meat inspection and careful commercial processing; and by thorough cooking, or alternatively by sufficient freezing and curing.

 

In agriculture

Pigs have been raised outdoors, and sometimes allowed to forage in woods or pastures. In industrialized nations, pig production has largely switched to large-scale intensive pig farming. This has lowered production costs but has caused concern about possible cruelty. As consumers have become concerned with the humane treatment of livestock, demand for pasture-raised pork in these nations has increased. Most pigs in the US receive ractopamine, a beta-agonist drug, which promotes muscle instead of fat and quicker weight gain, requiring less feed to reach finishing weight, and producing less manure. China has requested that pork exports be ractopamine-free.

 

Like all animals, pigs are susceptible to adverse impacts from climate change, such as heat stress from increased annual temperatures and more intense heatwaves. Heat stress has increased rapidly between 1981 and 2017 on pig farms in Europe. Installing a ground-coupled heat exchanger is an effective intervention.

 

Breeds

Many breeds of pig have been created by farmers around the world, differing in coloration, shape, and size. According to The Livestock Conservancy, as of 2016, three breeds of pig are critically rare (having a global population of fewer than 2000). They are the Choctaw hog, the Mulefoot, and the Ossabaw Island hog. The smallest known pig breed in the world is the Göttingen minipig, typically weighing about 26 kilograms (57 lb) as a healthy, full-grown adult.

 

Economy

Global pig stock

in 2019

Number in millions

1. China (Mainland)310.4 (36.5%)

2. European Union143.1 (16.83%)

3. United States78.7 (9.26%)

4. Brazil40.6 (4.77%)

5. Russia23.7 (2.79%)

6. Myanmar21.6 (2.54%)

7. Vietnam19.6 (2.31%)

8. Mexico18.4 (2.16%)

9. Canada14.1 (1.66%)

10. Philippines12.7 (1.49%)

World total850.3

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization

Approximately 1.5 billion pigs are slaughtered each year for meat.

 

The pork belly futures contract became an icon of commodities trading. It appears in depictions of the arena in popular entertainment, such as the 1983 film Trading Places. Trade in pork bellies declined, and they were delisted from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2011.

 

In 2023, China produced more pork than any other country, 55 million tonnes, followed by the European Union with 22.8 million tonnes and the United States with 12.5 million tonnes. Global production in 2023 was 120 million tonnes. India, despite its large population, consumed under 0.3 million tonnes of pork in 2023. International trade in pork (meat not consumed in the producing country) reached 13 million tonnes in 2020.

 

Uses

Pigs are farmed primarily for meat, called pork. Pork is eaten in the form of pork chops, loin or rib roasts, shoulder joints, steaks, and loin (also called fillet). The many meat products made from pork include ham, bacon, and sausages. Pork is further made into charcuterie products such as terrines, galantines, pâtés and confits. Some sausages such as salami are fermented and air-dried, to be eaten raw. There are many types, the original Italian varieties including Genovese, Milanese, and Cacciatorino, with spicier kinds from the South of Italy including Calabrese, Napoletano, and Peperone.

 

The hide is made into pigskin leather, which is soft and durable; it can be brushed to form suede leather. These are used for products such as gloves, wallets, suede shoes, and leather jackets.

 

In medicine

Pigs, both as live animals and as a source of post-mortem tissues, are valuable animal models because of their biological, physiological, and anatomical similarities to human beings. For instance, human skin is very similar to the pigskin, therefore pigskin has been used in many preclinical studies.

 

Pigs are good non-human candidates for organ donation to humans, and in 2021 became the first animal to successfully donate an organ to a human body. The procedure used a donor pig genetically engineered not to have a specific carbohydrate that the human body considers a threat–Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose. Pigs are good for human donation as the risk of cross-species disease transmission is reduced by the considerable phylogenetic distance from humans. They are readily available, and the danger of creating new human diseases is low as domesticated pigs have been in close contact with humans for thousands of years.

 

In culture

Pigs, widespread in societies around the world since Neolithic times, have been used for many purposes in art, literature, and other expressions of human culture. In classical times, the Romans considered pork the finest of meats, enjoying sausages, and depicting them in their art. Across Europe, pigs have been celebrated in carnivals since the Middle Ages, becoming specially important in Medieval Germany in cities such as Nuremberg, and in Early Modern Italy in cities such as Bologna. Pigs, especially miniature breeds, are occasionally kept as pets.

 

In literature, both for children and adults, pig characters appear in allegories, comic stories, and serious novels. In art, pigs have been represented in a wide range of media and styles from the earliest times in many cultures. Pig names are used in idioms and animal epithets, often derogatory, since pigs have long been linked with dirtiness and greed, while places such as Swindon are named for their association with swine. The eating of pork is forbidden in Islam and Judaism, but pigs are sacred in some other religions.

Biennale di Venezia 2014 - 14th International Architecture Exhibition - Fundamentals.

Fundamentals consists of three interlocking exhibitions:

1.Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014 is an invitation to the national pavilions to show the process of the erasure of national characteristics.

2.Elements of Architecture, in the Central Pavilion, pays close attention to the fundamentals of our buildings used by any architect, anywhere, anytime.

3.Monditalia dedicates the Arsenale to a single theme – Italy – with exhibitions, events, and theatrical productions.

 

The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, titled Fundamentals, directed by Rem Koolhaas and organized by la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, was open to the public from June 7 through November 23, 2014, in Venica Italy. 65 National Participations were exhibiting in the historic pavilions in the Giardini, in the Arsenale, and in the city of Venice. They examine key moments from a century of modernization. Together, the presentations start to reveal how diverse material cultures and political environments transformed a generic modernity into a specific one. Participating countries show, each in their own way, a radical splintering of modernity's in a century where the homogenizing process of globalization appeared to be the master narrative

 

Absorbing Modernity 1914–2014 has been proposed for the contribution of all the pavilions, and they too are involved in a substantial part of the overall research project, whose title is Fundamentals. The history of the past one hundred years prelude to the Elements of Architecture section hosted in the Central Pavilion, where the curator offers the contemporary world those elements that should represent the reference points for the discipline: for the architects but also for its dialogue with clients and society. Monditalia section in the Corderie with 41 research projects, reminds us of the complexity of this reality without complacency or prejudice, which is paradigmatic of what happens elsewhere in the world; complexities that must be deliberately experienced as sources of regeneration. Dance, Music, Theatre and Cinema with the programmes of the directors will participate in the life of the section, with debates and seminars along the six-month duration of the exhibition.

 

Elements of Architecture / Central Pavilions

This exhibition is the result of a two-year research studio with the Harvard Graduate School of Design and collaborations with a host of experts from industry and academia. Elements of Architecture looks under a microscope at the fundamentals of our buildings, used by any architect, anywhere, anytime: the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the roof, the door, the window, the façade, the balcony, the corridor, the fireplace, the toilet, the stair, the escalator, the elevator, the ramp. The exhibition is a selection of the most revealing, surprising, and unknown moments from a new book, Elements of Architecture, that reconstructs the global history of each element. It brings together ancient, past, current, and future versions of the elements in rooms that are each dedicated to a single element. To create diverse experiences, we have recreated a number of very different environments – archive, museum, factory, laboratory, mock-up, simulation.

 

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This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

The Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris, France.

 

The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, under the direction of the French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. About 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.

 

Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623. With his death came Louis XIV who expanded the château into the beginnings of a palace that went through several changes and phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the de facto capital of France. This state of affairs was continued by Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, who primarily made interior alterations to the palace, but in 1789 the royal family and capital of France returned to Paris. For the rest of the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles was largely abandoned and emptied of its contents, and the population of the surrounding city plummeted.

 

Napoleon, following his coronation as Emperor, used Versailles as a summer residence from 1810 to 1814, but did not restore it. Following the Bourbon Restoration, when the king was returned to the throne, he resided in Paris and it was not until the 1830s that meaningful repairs were made to the palace. A museum of French history was installed within it, replacing the apartments of the southern wing.

 

The palace and park were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979 for its importance as the center of power, art, and science in France during the 17th and 18th centuries. The French Ministry of Culture has placed the palace, its gardens, and some of its subsidiary structures on its list of culturally significant monuments.

 

History

Main article: History of the Palace of Versailles

An engraving of Louis XIII's château as it appeared in 1652

Versailles around 1652, engraving by Jacques Gomboust [fr]

In 1623, Louis XIII, King of France, built a hunting lodge on a hill in a favorite hunting ground, 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris and 16 kilometers (10 mi) from his primary residence, the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye The site, near a village named Versailles, was a wooded wetland that Louis XIII's court scorned as being generally unworthy of a king; one of his courtiers, François de Bassompierre, wrote that the lodge "would not inspire vanity in even the simplest gentleman". From 1631 to 1634, architect Philibert Le Roy replaced the lodge with a château for Louis XIII, who forbade his queen, Anne of Austria, from staying there overnight, even when an outbreak of smallpox at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1641 forced Louis XIII to relocate to Versailles with his three-year-old heir, the future Louis XIV.

 

When Louis XIII died in 1643, Anne became Louis XIV's regent, and Louis XIII's château was abandoned for the next decade. She moved the court back to Paris, where Anne and her chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, continued Louis XIII's unpopular monetary practices. This led to the Fronde, a series of revolts against royal authority from 1648 to 1653 that masked a struggle between Mazarin and the princes of the blood, Louis XIV's extended family, for influence over him. In the aftermath of the Fronde, Louis XIV became determined to rule alone. Following Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis XIV reformed his government to exclude his mother and the princes of the blood, moved the court back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and ordered the expansion of his father's château at Versailles into a palace.

 

Louis XIV had hunted at Versailles in the 1650s, but did not take any special interest in Versailles until 1661. On 17 August 1661, Louis XIV was a guest at a sumptuous festival hosted by Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, at his palatial residence, the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis XIV was impressed by the château and its gardens, which were the work of Louis Le Vau, the court architect since 1654, André Le Nôtre, the royal gardener since 1657, and Charles Le Brun, a painter in royal service since 1647. Vaux-le-Vicomte's scale and opulence inspired Louis XIV's aesthetic sense, but also led him to imprison Fouquet that September, as he had also built an island fortress and a private army. Louis XIV was also inspired by Vaux-le-Vicomte, and he recruited its authors for his own projects. Louis XIV replaced Fouquet with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a protégé of Mazarin and enemy of Fouquet, and charged him with managing the corps of artisans in royal employment. Colbert acted as the intermediary between them and Louis XIV, who personally directed and inspected the planning and construction of Versailles.

 

Construction

Work at Versailles was at first concentrated on gardens, and through the 1660s, Le Vau only added two detached service wings and a forecourt to the château. But in 1668–69, as a response to the growth of the gardens, and victory over Spain in the War of Devolution, Louis XIV decided to turn Versailles into a full-scale royal residence. He vacillated between replacing or incorporating his father's château, but settled on the latter by the end of the decade, and from 1668 to 1671, Louis XIII's château was encased on three sides in a feature dubbed the enveloppe. This gave the château a new, Italianate façade overlooking the gardens, but preserved the courtyard façade, resulting in a mix of styles and materials that dismayed Louis XIV and that Colbert described as a "patchwork". Attempts to homogenize the two façades failed, and in 1670 Le Vau died, leaving the post of First Architect to the King vacant for the next seven years.

 

Le Vau was succeeded at Versailles by his assistant, architect François d'Orbay. Work at the palace during the 1670s focused on its interiors, as the palace was then nearing completion, though d'Orbay expanded Le Vau's service wings and connected them to the château, and built a pair of pavilions for government employees in the forecourt. In 1670, d'Orbay was tasked by Louis XIV with designing a city, also called Versailles, to house and service Louis XIV's growing government and court. The granting of land to courtiers for the construction of townhouses that resembled the palace began in 1671. The next year, the Franco-Dutch War began and funding for Versailles was cut until 1674, when Louis XIV had work begun on the Ambassadors' Staircase , a grand staircase for the reception of guests, and demolished the last of the village of Versailles.

 

Following the end of the Franco-Dutch War with French victory in 1678, Louis XIV appointed as First Architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, an experienced architect in Louis XIV's confidence, who would benefit from a restored budget and large workforce of former soldiers. Mansart began his tenure with the addition from 1678 to 1681 of the Hall of Mirrors, a renovation of the courtyard façade of Louis XIII's château, and the expansion of d'Orbay's pavilions to create the Ministers' Wings in 1678–79. Adjacent to the palace, Mansart built a pair of stables called the Grande and Petite Écuries from 1679 to 1682 and the Grand Commun, which housed the palace's servants and general kitchens, from 1682 to 1684. Mansart also added two entirely new wings in Le Vau's Italianate style to house the court, first at the south end of the palace from 1679 to 1681 and then at its north end from 1685 to 1689.

 

War and the resulting diminished funding slowed construction at Versailles for the rest of the 17th century. The Nine Years' War, which began in 1688, stopped work altogether until 1698. Three years later, however, the even more expensive War of the Spanish Succession began and, combined with poor harvests in 1693–94 and 1709–10, plunged France into crisis. Louis XIV thus slashed funding and canceled some of the work Mansart had planned in the 1680s, such as the remodeling of the courtyard façade in the Italianate style. Louis XIV and Mansart focused on a permanent palace chapel, the construction of which lasted from 1699 to 1710.

 

Louis XIV's successors, Louis XV and Louis XVI, largely left Versailles as they inherited it and focused on the palace's interiors. Louis XV's modifications began in the 1730s, with the completion of the Salon d'Hercule, a ballroom in the north wing, and the expansion of the king's private apartment, which required the demolition of the Ambassadors' Staircase In 1748, Louis XV began construction of a palace theater, the Royal Opera of Versailles at the northernmost end of the palace, but completion was delayed until 1770; construction was interrupted in the 1740s by the War of the Austrian Succession and then again in 1756 with the start of the Seven Years' War. These wars emptied the royal treasury and thereafter construction was mostly funded by Madame du Barry, Louis XV's favorite mistress. In 1771, Louis XV had the northern Ministers' Wing rebuilt in Neoclassical style by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, his court architect, as it was in the process of falling down. That work was also stopped by financial constraints, and it remained incomplete when Louis XV died in 1774. In 1784, Louis XVI briefly moved the royal family to the Château de Saint-Cloud ahead of more renovations to the Palace of Versailles, but construction could not begin because of financial difficulty and political crisis. In 1789, the French Revolution swept the royal family and government out of Versailles forever.

 

Role in politics and culture

The Palace of Versailles was key to Louis XIV's politics, as an expression and concentration of French art and culture, and for the centralization of royal power. Louis XIV first used Versailles to promote himself with a series of nighttime festivals in its gardens in 1664, 1668, and 1674, the events of which were disseminated throughout Europe by print and engravings. As early as 1669, but especially from 1678, Louis XIV sought to make Versailles his seat of government, and he expanded the palace so as to fit the court within it. The moving of the court to Versailles did not come until 1682, however, and not officially, as opinion on Versailles was mixed among the nobility of France.

 

By 1687, however, it was evident to all that Versailles was the de facto capital of France, and Louis XIV succeeded in attracting the nobility to Versailles to pursue prestige and royal patronage within a strict court etiquette, thus eroding their traditional provincial power bases. It was at the Palace of Versailles that Louis XIV received the Doge of Genoa, Francesco Maria Imperiale Lercari in 1685, an embassy from the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1686, and an embassy from Safavid Iran in 1715.[

 

Louis XIV died at Versailles on 1 September 1715 and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, then the duke of Anjou, who was moved to Vincennes and then to Paris by Louis XV's regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. Versailles was neglected until 1722, when Philippe II removed the court to Versailles to escape the unpopularity of his regency, and when Louis XV began his majority. The 1722 move, however, broke the cultural power of Versailles, and during the reign of Louis XVI, courtiers spent their leisure in Paris, not Versailles.

 

During Christmas 1763, Mozart and his family visited Versailles and dined with the kings. The 7-year-old Mozart played several works during his stay and later dedicated his first two harpsichord sonatas, published in 1764 in Paris, to Madame Victoria, daughter of Louis XV.

 

In 1783, the palace was the site of the signing of the last two of the three treaties of the Peace of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolutionary War. On September 3, British and American delegates, led by Benjamin Franklin, signed the Treaty of Paris at the Hôtel d'York (now 56 Rue Jacob) in Paris, granting the United States independence. On September 4, Spain and France signed separate treaties with England at the Palace of Versailles, formally ending the war.

 

The King and Queen learned of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July 1789, while they were at the palace, and remained isolated there as the Revolution in Paris spread. The growing anger in Paris led to the Women's March on Versailles on 5 October 1789. A crowd of several thousand men and women, protesting the high price and scarcity of bread, marched from the markets of Paris to Versailles. They took weapons from the city armory, besieged the palace, and compelled the King and royal family and the members of the National Assembly to return with them to Paris the following day.

 

As soon as the royal family departed, the palace was closed. In 1792, the National Convention, the new revolutionary government, ordered the transfer of all the paintings and sculptures from the palace to the Louvre. In 1793, the Convention declared the abolition of the monarchy and ordered all of the royal property in the palace to be sold at auction. The auction took place between 25 August 1793 and 11 August 1794. The furnishings and art of the palace, including the furniture, mirrors, baths, and kitchen equipment, were sold in seventeen thousand lots. All fleurs-de-lys and royal emblems on the buildings were chambered or chiseled off. The empty buildings were turned into a storehouse for furnishings, art and libraries confiscated from the nobility. The empty grand apartments were opened for tours beginning in 1793, and a small museum of French paintings and art school was opened in some of the empty rooms.

 

By virtue of an order issued by the Versailles district directorate in August 1794, the Royal Gate was destroyed, the Cour Royale was cleared and the Cour de Marbre lost its precious floor.

 

19th century – history museum and government venue

When Napoleon became Emperor of the French in 1804, he considered making Versailles his residence but abandoned the idea because of the cost of the renovation. Prior to his marriage with Marie-Louise in 1810, he had the Grand Trianon restored and refurnished as a springtime residence for himself and his family, in the style of furnishing that it is seen today.

 

In 1815, with the final downfall of Napoleon, Louis XVIII, the younger brother of Louis XVI, became King, and considered returning the royal residence to Versailles, where he had been born. He ordered the restoration of the royal apartments, but the task and cost was too great. Louis XVIII had the far end of the south wing of the Cour Royale demolished and rebuilt (1814–1824) to match the Gabriel wing of 1780 opposite, which gave greater uniformity of appearance to the front entrance. Neither he nor his successor Charles X lived at Versailles.

 

The French Revolution of 1830 brought a new monarch, Louis-Philippe to power, and a new ambition for Versailles. He did not reside at Versailles but began the creation of the Museum of the History of France, dedicated to "all the glories of France", which had been used to house some members of the royal family. The museum was begun in 1833 and inaugurated on 30 June 1837. Its most famous room is the Galerie des Batailles (Hall of Battles), which lies on most of the length of the second floor of the south wing. The museum project largely came to a halt when Louis Philippe was overthrown in 1848, though the paintings of French heroes and great battles still remain in the south wing.

 

Emperor Napoleon III used the palace on occasion as a stage for grand ceremonies. One of the most lavish was the banquet that he hosted for Queen Victoria in the Royal Opera of Versailles on 25 August 1855.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the palace was occupied by the general staff of the victorious German Army. Parts of the château, including the Gallery of Mirrors, were turned into a military hospital. The creation of the German Empire, combining Prussia and the surrounding German states under William I, was formally proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871. The Germans remained in the palace until the signing of the armistice in March 1871. In that month, the government of the new Third French Republic, which had departed Paris during the War for Tours and then Bordeaux, moved into the palace. The National Assembly held its meetings in the Opera House.

 

The uprising of the Paris Commune in March 1871, prevented the French government, under Adolphe Thiers, from returning immediately to Paris. The military operation which suppressed the Commune at the end of May was directed from Versailles, and the prisoners of the Commune were marched there and put on trial in military courts. In 1875 a second parliamentary body, the French Senate, was created and held its meetings for the election of a President of the Republic in a new hall created in 1876 in the south wing of the palace. The French Senate continues to meet in the palace on special occasions, such as the amendment of the French Constitution.

 

20th century

The end of the 19th and the early 20th century saw the beginning of restoration efforts at the palace, first led by Pierre de Nolhac, poet and scholar and the first conservator, who began his work in 1892. The conservation and restoration were interrupted by two world wars but have continued until the present day.

 

The palace returned to the world stage in June 1919, when, after six months of negotiations, the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending the First World War, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. Between 1925 and 1928, the American philanthropist and multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave $2,166,000, the equivalent of about thirty million dollars today, to restore and refurbish the palace.

 

More work took place after World War II, with the restoration of the Royal Opera of Versailles. The theater was reopened in 1957, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

 

In 1978, parts of the palace were heavily damaged in a bombing committed by Breton terrorists.

 

Starting in the 1950s, when the museum of Versailles was under the directorship of Gérald van der Kemp, the objective was to restore the palace to its state – or as close to it as possible – in 1789 when the royal family left the palace. Among the early projects was the repair of the roof over the Hall of Mirrors; the publicity campaign brought international attention to the plight of post-war Versailles and garnered much foreign money including a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

 

One of the more costly endeavors for the museum and France's Fifth Republic has been to repurchase as much of the original furnishings as possible. Consequently, because furniture with a royal provenance – and especially furniture that was made for Versailles – is a highly sought-after commodity on the international market, the museum has spent considerable funds on retrieving much of the palace's original furnishings.

 

21st century

In 2003, a new restoration initiative – the "Grand Versailles" project – was started, which began with the replanting of the gardens, which had lost over 10,000 trees during Cyclone Lothar on 26 December 1999. One part of the initiative, the restoration of the Hall of Mirrors, was completed in 2006. Another major project was the further restoration of the backstage areas of the Royal Opera of Versailles in 2007 to 2009.

 

The Palace of Versailles is currently owned by the French state. Its formal title is the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. Since 1995, it has been run as a Public Establishment, with an independent administration and management supervised by the French Ministry of Culture.

 

The grounds of the palace will host the equestrian competition during the 2024 Summer Olympics.

 

Architecture and plan

The Palace of Versailles is a visual history of French architecture from the 1630s to the 1780s. Its earliest portion, the corps de logis, was built for Louis XIII in the style of his reign with brick, marble, and slate, which Le Vau surrounded in the 1660s with Enveloppe, an edifice that was inspired by Renaissance-era Italian villas. When Mansart made further expansions to the palace in the 1680s, he used the Enveloppe as the model for his work. Neoclassical additions were made to the palace with the remodeling of the Ministers' Wings in the 1770s, by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, and after the Bourbon Restoration.

 

The palace was largely completed by the death of Louis XIV in 1715. The eastern facing palace has a U-shaped layout, with the corps de logis and symmetrical advancing secondary wings terminating with the Dufour Pavilion on the south and the Gabriel Pavilion to the north, creating an expansive cour d'honneur known as the Royal Court (Cour Royale). Flanking the Royal Court are two enormous asymmetrical wings that result in a façade of 402 metres (1,319 ft) in length. Covered by around a million square feet (10 hectares) of roof, the palace has 2,143 windows, 1,252 chimneys, and 67 staircases.[

 

The palace and its grounds have had a great influence on architecture and horticulture from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th century. Examples of works influenced by Versailles include Christopher Wren's work at Hampton Court Palace, Berlin Palace, the Palace of La Granja, Stockholm Palace, Ludwigsburg Palace, Karlsruhe Palace, Rastatt Palace, Nymphenburg Palace, Schleissheim Palace, and Esterházy Palace.

 

Royal Apartments

The construction in 1668–1671 of Le Vau's enveloppe around the outside of Louis XIII's red brick and white stone château added state apartments for the king and the queen. The addition was known at the time as the château neuf (new château). The grands appartements (Grand Apartments, also referred to as the State Apartments[141][142]) include the grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine. They occupied the main or principal floor of the château neuf, with three rooms in each apartment facing the garden to the west and four facing the garden parterres to the north and south, respectively. The private apartments of the king (the appartement du roi and the petit appartement du roi) and those of the queen (the petit appartement de la reine) remained in the château vieux (old château). Le Vau's design for the state apartments closely followed Italian models of the day, including the placement of the apartments on the main floor (the piano nobile, the next floor up from the ground level), a convention the architect borrowed from Italian palace design.

 

The king's State Apartment consisted of an enfilade of seven rooms, each dedicated to one of the known planets and their associated titular Roman deity. The queen's apartment formed a parallel enfilade with that of the grand appartement du roi. After the addition of the Hall of Mirrors (1678–1684) the king's apartment was reduced to five rooms (until the reign of Louis XV, when two more rooms were added) and the queen's to four.

 

The queen's apartments served as the residence of three queens of France – Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche, wife of Louis XIV, Marie Leczinska, wife of Louis XV, and Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI. Additionally, Louis XIV's granddaughter-in-law, Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy, duchesse de Bourgogne, wife of the Petit Dauphin, occupied these rooms from 1697 (the year of her marriage) to her death in 1712.

 

Ambassador's Staircase

The Ambassadors' Staircase (Escalier des Ambassadeurs) was an imperial staircase built from 1674 to 1680 by d'Orbay. Until Louis XV had it demolished in 1752 to create a courtyard for his private apartments, the staircase was the primary entrance into the Palace of Versailles and the royal apartments especially. It was entered from the courtyard via a vestibule that, cramped and dark, contrasted greatly with the tall, open space of the staircase – famously lit naturally with a skylight – so as to overawe visitors.

 

The staircase and walls of the room that contained it were clad in polychrome marble and gilded bronze, with decor in the Ionic order. Le Brun and painted the walls and ceiling of the room according to a festive theme to celebrate Louis XIV's victory in the Franco-Dutch War. On the wall immediately above the staircase were trompe-l'œil paintings of people from the Four Parts of the World looking into the staircase over a balustrade, a motif repeated on the ceiling fresco. There they were joined by allegorical figures for the twelve months of the year and various Classical Greek figures such as the Muses. A marble bust of Louis XIV, sculpted by Jean Warin in 1665–66, was placed in a niche above the first landing of the staircase.

 

The State Apartments of the King

The construction of the Hall of Mirrors between 1678 and 1686 coincided with a major alteration to the State Apartments. They were originally intended as his residence, but the King transformed them into galleries for his finest paintings, and venues for his many receptions for courtiers. During the season from All-Saints Day in November until Easter, these were usually held three times a week, from six to ten in the evening, with various entertainments.

 

The Salon of Hercules

This was originally a chapel. It was rebuilt beginning in 1712 under the supervision of the First Architect of the King, Robert de Cotte, to showcase two paintings by Paolo Veronese, Eleazar and Rebecca and Meal at the House of Simon the Pharisee, which was a gift to Louis XIV from the Republic of Venice in 1664. The painting on the ceiling, The Apotheosis of Hercules, by François Lemoyne, was completed in 1736, and gave the room its name.

 

The Salon of Abundance

The Salon of Abundance was the antechamber to the Cabinet of Curios (now the Games Room), which displayed Louis XIV's collection of precious jewels and rare objects. Some of the objects in the collection are depicted in René-Antoine Houasse's painting Abundance and Liberality (1683), located on the ceiling over the door opposite the windows.

 

The Salon of Venus

This salon was used for serving light meals during evening receptions. The principal feature in this room is Jean Warin's life-size statue of Louis XIV in the costume of a Roman emperor. On the ceiling in a gilded oval frame is another painting by Houasse, Venus subjugating the Gods and Powers (1672–1681). Trompe-l'œil paintings and sculpture around the ceiling illustrate mythological themes.

 

The Salon of Mercury

The Salon of Mercury was the original State Bedchamber when Louis XIV officially moved the court and government to the palace in 1682. The bed is a replica of the original commissioned by King Louis-Philippe in the 19th century when he turned the palace into a museum. The ceiling paintings by the Flemish artist Jean Baptiste de Champaigne depict the god Mercury in his chariot, drawn by a rooster, and Alexander the Great and Ptolemy surrounded by scholars and philosophers. The Automaton Clock was made for the King by the royal clockmaker Antoine Morand in 1706. When it chimes the hour, figures of Louis XIV and Fame descend from a cloud.

 

The Salon of Mars

The Salon of Mars was used by the royal guards until 1782, and was decorated on a military theme with helmets and trophies. It was turned into a concert room between 1684 and 1750, with galleries for musicians on either side. Portraits of Louis XV and his Queen, Marie Leszczinska, by the Flemish artist Carle Van Loo decorate the room today.

 

The Salon of Apollo

The Salon of Apollo was the royal throne room under Louis XIV, and was the setting for formal audiences. The eight-foot-high silver throne was melted down in 1689 to help pay the costs of an expensive war, and was replaced by a more modest throne of gilded wood. The central painting on the ceiling, by Charles de la Fosse, depicts the Sun Chariot of Apollo, the King's favorite emblem, pulled by four horses and surrounded by the four seasons.

 

The Salon of Diana

The Salon of Diana was used by Louis XIV as a billiards room, and had galleries from which courtiers could watch him play. The decoration of the walls and ceiling depicts scenes from the life of the goddess Diana. The celebrated bust of Louis XIV by Bernini made during the famous sculptor's visit to France in 1665 is on display here.

 

Private apartments of the King and Queen

The apartments of the King were the heart of the château; they were in the same location as the rooms of Louis XIII, the creator of the château, on the first floor (second floor US style). They were set aside for the personal use of Louis XIV in 1683. He and his successors Louis XV and Louis XVI used these rooms for official functions, such as the ceremonial lever ("waking up") and the coucher ("going to bed") of the monarch, which was attended by a crowd of courtiers.

 

The King's apartment was accessed from the Hall of Mirrors from the Oeil de Boeuf antechamber or from the Guardroom and the Grand Couvert, the ceremonial room where Louis XIV often took his evening meals, seated alone at a table in front of the fireplace. His spoon, fork, and knife were brought to him in a golden box. The courtiers could watch as he dined.

 

The King's bedchamber had originally been a Drawing Room before Louis XIV transformed it into his own bedroom in 1701. He died there on 1 September 1715. Both Louis XV and Louis XVI continued to use the bedroom for their official awakening and going to bed. On 6 October 1789, from the balcony of this room Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, joined by the Marquis de Lafayette, looked down on the hostile crowd in the courtyard, shortly before the King was forced to return to Paris.

 

The bed of the King is placed beneath a carved relief by Nicolas Coustou entitled France watching over the sleeping King. The decoration includes several paintings set into the paneling, including a self-portrait of Antony van Dyck.

 

Private apartments of The Queen

The petit appartement de la reine is a suite of rooms that were reserved for the personal use of the queen. Originally arranged for the use of the Marie-Thérèse, consort of Louis XIV, the rooms were later modified for use by Marie Leszczyńska and finally for Marie-Antoinette. The Queen's apartments and the King's Apartments were laid out on the same design, each suite having seven rooms. Both suites had ceilings painted with scenes from mythology; the King's ceilings featured male figures, the Queen's featured females.

 

Hall of Mirrors

The Hall of Mirrors is a long gallery at the westernmost part of the palace that looks out onto the gardens. The hall was built from 1678 to 1681 on the site of a terrace Le Vau built between the king and queen's suites. The hall is clad in marble and decorated in a modified version of the Corinthian order, with 578 mirrors facing 17 windows and reflecting the light provided by them. The ceiling fresco, painted by Le Brun over the next four years, embellishes the first 18 years of Louis XIV's reign in 30 scenes, 17 of which are military victories over the Dutch. The fresco depicts Louis XIV himself alongside Classical figures in the scenes celebrating moments in his reign such as the beginning of personal rule in 1661, breaking from earlier frescoes at Versailles that used allegories derived from Classical and mythological scenes.

 

The Salon of War and the Salon of Peace bookend the Hall of Mirrors on its northern and southern ends respectively. The Salon of War, constructed and decorated from 1678 to 1686, celebrates French victories in the Franco-Dutch War with marble panels, gilded bronze trophies of arms, and a stucco bas-relief of Louis XIV on horsebask riding over his enemies. The Salon of Peace is decorated in the same fashion but according to its eponymous theme.

 

Royal Chapel

The Royal Chapel of Versailles is located at the southern end of the north wing. The building stands 40-meter (130 ft) high, and measures 42 meters (138 ft) long and 24 meters (79 ft) wide. The chapel is rectangular with a semicircular apse, combining traditional, Gothic royal French church architecture with the French Baroque style of Versailles. The ceiling of the chapel is constituted by an unbroken vault, divided into three frescos by Antoine Coypel, Charles de La Fosse, and Jean Jouvenet. The palette of motifs beneath the frescoes glorify the deeds of Louis IX, and include images of David, Constantine, Charlemagne, and Louis IX, fleur de lis, and Louis XIV's monogram. The organ of the chapel was built by Robert Clicquot and Julien Tribuot in 1709–1710.

 

Louis XIV commissioned the chapel, its sixth, from Mansart and Le Brun in 1683–84. It was the last building constructed at Versailles during Louis XIV's reign. Construction was delayed until 1699, however, and it was not completed until 1710. The only major modification to the chapel since its completion was the removal of a lantern from its roof in 1765. A full restoration of the chapel began in late 2017 and lasted into early 2021.

 

Royal Opera

The Royal Opera of Versailles was originally commissioned by Louis XIV in 1682 and was to be built at the end of the North Wing with a design by Mansart and Vigarani. However, due to the expense of the King's continental wars, the project was put aside. The idea was revived by Louis XV with a new design by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1748, but this was also temporarily put aside. The project was revived and rushed ahead for the planned celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, and Marie-Antoinette. For economy and speed, the new opera was built almost entirely of wood, which also gave it very high quality acoustics. The wood was painted to resemble marble, and the ceiling was decorated with a painting of the Apollo, the god of the arts, preparing crowns for illustrious artists, by Louis Jean-Jacques Durameau. The sculptor Augustin Pajou added statuary and reliefs to complete the decoration. The new Opera was inaugurated on 16 May 1770, as part of the celebration of the royal wedding.

 

In October 1789, early in the French Revolution, the last banquet for the royal guardsmen was hosted by the King in the opera, before he departed for Paris. Following the Franco-German War in 1871 and then the Paris Commune until 1875, the French National Assembly met in the opera, until the proclamation of the Third French Republic and the return of the government to Paris.

 

Museum of the History of France

Shortly after becoming King in 1830, Louis Philippe I decided to transform the palace into a museum devoted to "All the Glories of France," with paintings and sculpture depicting famous French victories and heroes. Most of the apartments of the palace were entirely demolished (in the main building, practically all of the apartments were annihilated, with only the apartments of the king and queen remaining almost intact), and turned into a series of several large rooms and galleries: the Coronation Room (whose original volume was left untouched by Louis-Philippe), which displays the celebrated painting of the coronation of Napoleon I by Jacques-Louis David; the Hall of Battles; commemorating French victories with large-scale paintings; and the 1830 room, which celebrated Louis-Philippe's own coming to power in the French Revolution of 1830. Some paintings were brought from the Louvre, including works depicting events in French history by Philippe de Champaigne, Pierre Mignard, Laurent de La Hyre, Charles Le Brun, Adam Frans van der Meulen, Nicolas de Largillière, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Jean-Marc Nattier, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Hubert Robert, Thomas Lawrence, Jacques-Louis David, and Antoine-Jean Gros. Others were commissioned especially for the museum by prominent artists of the early 19th century, including Eugène Delacroix, who painted Saint Louis at the French victory over the British in the Battle of Taillebourg in 1242. Other painters featured include Horace Vernet and François Gérard. A monumental painting by Vernet features Louis Philippe himself, with his sons, posing in front of the gates of the palace.

 

The overthrow of Louis Philippe in 1848 put an end to his grand plans for the museum, but the Gallery of Battles is still as it was, and is passed through by many visitors to the royal apartments and grand salons. Another set of rooms on the first floor has been made into galleries on Louis XIV and his court, displaying furniture, paintings, and sculptures. In recent years, eleven rooms on the ground floor between the Chapel and the Opera have been turned into a history of the palace, with audiovisual displays and models.

 

Estate of Versailles

The estate of Versailles consists of the palace, the subsidiary buildings around it, and its park and gardens. As of June 2021, the estate altogether covers an area of 800 hectares (8.0 km2; 2,000 acres), with the park and gardens laid out to the south, west, and north of the palace. The palace is approached from the east by the Avenue de Paris, measuring 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to a gate between the Grande and Petite Écuries. Beyond these stables is the Place d'Armes, where the Avenue de Paris meets the Avenue de Sceaux and Avenue de Saint-Cloud (see map), the three roads that formed the main arteries of the city of Versailles. Exactly where the three roads meet is a gate leading into the cour d'honneur. hemmed in by the Ministers' Wings. Beyond is the Royal Gate and the main palace, which wraps around the Royal and finally Marble Courts

 

The estate was established by Louis XIII as a hunting retreat, with a park just to the west of his château. From 1661, Louis XIV expanded the estate until, at its greatest extent, the estate was made up by the Grand Parc , a hunting ground of 15,000 hectares (150 km2; 37,000 acres), and the gardens, called the Petit Parc, which covered 1,700 hectares (17 km2; 4,200 acres). A 25-mile (40 km) long, 10-foot (3.0 m) high wall with 24 gateways enclosed the estate.

 

The landscape of the estate had to be created from the bog that surrounded Louis XIII's château using landscape architecture usually employed in fortress building. The approach to the palace and the gardens were carefully laid out via the moving of earth and construction of terraces. The water from the marsh was marshalled into a series of lakes and ponds around Versailles, but these reservoirs were not sufficient for the palace, city, or gardens. Great lengths were taken to supply Versailles with water, such as the damming of the river Bièvre to create an inflow in the 1660s, the construction of an enormous pumping station at the river Seine near Marly-le-Roi in 1681, and an attempt to divert water from the river Eure with a canal in the later 1680s.

 

Gardens

The gardens of Versailles, as they have existed since the reign of Louis XIV, are the work of André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre's gardens were preceded by a simple garden laid out in the 1630s by landscape architects Jacques Boyceau and Jacques de Nemours, which he rearranged along an east–west axis that, because of Louis XIV's land purchases and the clearing of woodland, were expanded literally as far as could be seen. The resulting gardens were a collaboration between Le Nôtre, Le Brun, Colbert, and Louis XIV, marked by rigid order, discipline, and open space, with axial paths, flowerbeds, hedges, and ponds and lakes as motifs. They became the epitome of the French formal garden style, and have been very influential and widely imitated or reproduced.

 

Subsidiary structures

The first of the subsidiary structures of the Palace of Versailles was the Versailles Menagerie [fr],[199][200] built by Le Vau between the years 1662 and 1664, at the southern end of the Grand Canal. The apartments, overlooking the pens, were renovated by Mansart from 1698 to 1700, but the Menagerie fell into disuse in 1712. After a long period of decay, it was demolished in 1801. The Versailles Orangery, just to the south of the palace, was first built by Le Vau in 1663, originally as part of the general moving of earth to create the Estate.[191] It was also modified by Mansart, who, from 1681 to 1685, totally rebuilt it and doubled its size.

 

In late 1679, Louis XIV commissioned Mansart to build the Château de Marly, a retreat at the edge of Versailles's estate, about 5 miles (8.0 km) from the palace. The château consisted of a primary residential building and twelve pavilions, in Palladian style placed in two rows on either side of the main building. Construction was completed in 1686, when Louis XIV spent his first night there. The château was nationalized and sold in 1799, and subsequently demolished and replaced with industrial buildings. These were themselves demolished in 1805, and then in 1811 the estate was purchased by Napoleon. On 1 June 2009, the grounds of the Château de Marly were ceded to the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles.

 

La Lanterne, is a hunting lodge named after the lantern that topped the nearby Menagerie that was built in 1787 by Philippe Louis de Noailles, then the palace governor. It has since 1960 been a state residence.

 

Petit Trianon

The Petit Trianon, whose construction from 1762 to 1768 led to the advent of the names "Grand" and "Petit Trianon", was constructed for Louis XV and the Madame du Barry in the Neoclassical style by Gabriel. The building has a piano nobile, basement, and attic, with five windows on each floor. On becoming king, Louis XVI gave the Petit Trianon to Marie Antoinette, who remodeled it, relaid its gardens in the then-current English and Oriental styles, and formed her own court there.

 

In 1668, Louis XIV purchased and demolished the hamlet of Trianon, near the northern tip of the Grand Canal, and in its place, he commissioned Le Vau to construct a retreat from court, remembered as the Porcelain Trianon. Designed and built by Le Vau in 1670, it was the first example of Chinoiserie (faux Chinese) architecture in Europe, though it was largely designed in French style. The roof was clad not with porcelain but with delftware, and was thus prone to leaks, so in 1687 Louis XIV ordered it demolished. Nevertheless, the Porcelain Trianon was itself influential and copycats were built across Europe.

 

The Grand Trianon

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

 

To replace the Porcelain Trianon, Louis XIV tasked Mansart with the construction in 1687 of the Grand Trianon, built from marble in three months. The Grand Trianon has a single story, except for its attached service wing, which was modified by Mansart in 1705–06. The east façade has a courtyard while the west faces the gardens of the Grand Trianon, and between them a peristyle. The interiors are mostly original,[214] and housed Louis XIV, the Madame de Maintenon, Marie Leszczynska, and Napoleon, who ordered restorations to the building. Under de Gaulle, the north wing of the Grand Trianon became a residence of the President of France.

 

The Queen's hamlet and Theater

Near the Trianons are the French pavilion, built by Gabriel in 1750 between the two residences, and the Queen's Theater and Queen's Hamlet, built by architect Richard Mique in 1780 and from 1783 to 1785 respectively. These were both built at the behest of Marie Antoinette; the theater, hidden in the gardens, indulged her appreciation of opera and is absolutely original, and the hamlet to extend her gardens with rustic amenities. The building scheme of the Queen's Hamlet includes a farmhouse (the farm was to produce milk and eggs for the queen), a dairy, a dovecote, a boudoir, a barn that burned down during the French Revolution, a mill and a tower in the form of a lighthouse.

 

Modern political and ceremonial functions

The palace still serves political functions. Heads of state are regaled in the Hall of Mirrors; the bicameral French Parliament—consisting of the Senate (Sénat) and the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale)—meet in joint session (a congress of the French Parliament) in Versailles to revise or otherwise amend the French Constitution, a tradition that came into effect with the promulgation of the 1875 Constitution. For example, the Parliament met in joint session at Versailles to pass constitutional amendments in June 1999 (for domestic applicability of International Criminal Court decisions and for gender equality in candidate lists), in January 2000 (ratifying the Treaty of Amsterdam), and in March 2003 (specifying the "decentralized organization" of the French Republic).

 

In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed the global financial crisis before a congress in Versailles, the first time that this had been done since 1848, when Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte gave an address before the French Second Republic. Following the November 2015 Paris attacks, President François Hollande gave a speech before a rare joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles. This was the third time since 1848 that a French president addressed a joint session of the French Parliament at Versailles. The president of the National Assembly has an official apartment at the Palace of Versailles. In 2023 a state visit by Charles III to France included a state banquet at the Palace.

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This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

Kumbabhishegam or Consecration is a Hindu Temple ritual that is believed to homogenize,synergize and unite the mystic powers of the deityKumbha means the Head and denotes the crown of the temple,usually in the Gopuram or Tower ang abishgam is ritual bathin with holy waters

U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) continued his Local Food Tour at De Smet Dairy in Bosque Farms, New Mexico’s only Grade A dairy farm and bottling facility for raw milk and pasteurized, non-homogenized milk and yogurt. Heinrich explored the family history behind the dairy and how their dairy cows are free grazing and grass-fed year-round, in addition to being free of hormones, antibiotics, and GMOs.

“Many times too, I go up North, like a hundred miles North we have the Apaches, a couple of hundred miles further North we have the Navajos. If I want to paint a painting of a wagon, I often have to go as far as Canyon de Chelly [on the Navajo Reservation.] They’re getting scarce. Our way of life is homogenizing in such a way that they use trucks instead of horse and a wagon.” -Ted DeGrazia Documentary 1976

  

"Wagons Ho!” on display at the Gallery in the Sun through January 20th, 2016. Open daily from 10-4; free admission.

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This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

What I like about homemade sauces is that they're not perfectly homogenized. They have texture. There's some stuff happening in them.

 

Also, you can put a humanly appropriate amount of sugar in it. There's no chance getting that in an American store.

Weathered shales in the Devonian of Kentucky, USA.

 

These are weathered shales in the New Albany Shale, a Devonian-aged formation in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and eastern Missouri. The unit is dominated by dark-colored marine mudshales of Late Devonian age. These black shales were deposited in a moderately deep, anoxic seafloor environment. This was a widespread lithofacies during the Late Devonian's Global Anoxia Event. The New Albany Shale is equivalent to the Ohio Shale, the Antrim Shale, and the Chattanooga Shale in surrounding states.

 

The New Albany Shale's member terminology varies from region to region. In southern Indiana and adjacent areas of Kentucky, the New Albany consists of (from the base upward): Blocher Member, Selmier Member, Morgan Trail Member, Camp Run Member, and Clegg Creek Member.

 

The rocks in the lower part of the photo are the Blocher Member, which consists of dolomitic black shales (dolosiltites, actually). The fissile nature of Blocher rocks is due to post-depositional compaction. Blocher beds are rich in organic carbon and have been homogenized by bioturbation.

 

The two recessive-weathering, soft, gray shale horizons in the ~middle to upper parts of the picture are the basal beds of the Morgan Trail Member. The actual lowermost Morgan Trail beds are absent here, as is the entire Selmier Member. So at this site, the Blocher-Morgan Trail contact is an unconformity, and also represents the Frasnian-Famennian boundary. In conformable sections, the Selmier Member-Morgan Trail Member contact is the Frasnian-Famennian boundary.

 

Unconformities are surfaces of erosion and/or nondeposition of sediments. If the beds above and below the contact have the same orientation (in this case, ~horizontal), the surface is a disconformity or paraconformity. Disconformities have obvious paleotopography along the contact. Paraconformities lack obvious paleotopography, and are often difficult to recognize initially.

 

The Morgan Trail Member here has black shales with sharp bases, overlain by gray shales. The interbedded gray shale-black shale interval is relatively shallow water. Bedding in the upper Morgan Trail is more massive. Marcasite nodules (FeS2 - iron sulfide; "fool's gold") are present in the upper Morgan Trail Member.

 

Stratigraphy: Morgan Trail Member unconformably overlying the Blocher Member, New Albany Shale, upper Frasnian Stage to lower Famennian Stage, middle Upper Devonian

 

Locality: roadcut along the western side of the south-bound entrance ramp to Interstate 65 at the Route 245-Interstate 65 interchange, north-northeast of Belmont & south of Sherpherdsville, south-central Bullitt County, north-central Kentucky, USA (37° 55' 24.45" North latitude, 85° 41' 18.33" West longitude)

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

Info. at:

 

Schieber, J. & R. Lazar (eds.). 2004. Devonian black shales of the eastern U.S. New insights into sedimentology and stratigraphy from the subsurface and outcrops in the Illinois and Appalachian Basins. Field Guide for the 2004 Annual Field Conference of the Great Lakes Section of SEPM. Indiana Geological Survey Open-File Study 04-05. 90 pp.

 

Cinderella

 

You always read about it:

the plumber with the twelve children

who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.

From toilets to riches.

That story.

 

Or the nursemaid,

some luscious sweet from Denmark

who captures the oldest son's heart.

from diapers to Dior.

That story.

 

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,

eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,

the white truck like an ambulance

who goes into real estate

and makes a pile.

From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

 

Or the charwoman

who is on the bus when it cracks up

and collects enough from the insurance.

From mops to Bonwit Teller.

That story.

 

Once

the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed

and she said to her daughter Cinderella:

Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile

down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.

The man took another wife who had

two daughters, pretty enough

but with hearts like blackjacks.

Cinderella was their maid.

She slept on the sooty hearth each night

and walked around looking like Al Jolson.

Her father brought presents home from town,

jewels and gowns for the other women

but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.

She planted that twig on her mother's grave

and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.

Whenever she wished for anything the dove

would drop it like an egg upon the ground.

The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

 

Next came the ball, as you all know.

It was a marriage market.

The prince was looking for a wife.

All but Cinderella were preparing

and gussying up for the event.

Cinderella begged to go too.

Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils

into the cinders and said: Pick them

up in an hour and you shall go.

The white dove brought all his friends;

all the warm wings of the fatherland came,

and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.

No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,

you have no clothes and cannot dance.

That's the way with stepmothers.

 

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave

and cried forth like a gospel singer:

Mama! Mama! My turtledove,

send me to the prince's ball!

The bird dropped down a golden dress

and delicate little slippers.

Rather a large package for a simple bird.

So she went. Which is no surprise.

Her stepmother and sisters didn't

recognize her without her cinder face

and the prince took her hand on the spot

and danced with no other the whole day.

 

As nightfall came she thought she'd better

get home. The prince walked her home

and she disappeared into the pigeon house

and although the prince took an axe and broke

it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.

These events repeated themselves for three days.

However on the third day the prince

covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax

and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.

Now he would find whom the shoe fit

and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.

He went to their house and the two sisters

were delighted because they had lovely feet.

The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on

but her big toe got in the way so she simply

sliced it off and put on the slipper.

The prince rode away with her until the white dove

told him to look at the blood pouring forth.

That is the way with amputations.

They just don't heal up like a wish.

The other sister cut off her heel

but the blood told as blood will.

The prince was getting tired.

He began to feel like a shoe salesman.

But he gave it one last try.

This time Cinderella fit into the shoe

like a love letter into its envelope.

 

At the wedding ceremony

the two sisters came to curry favor

and the white dove pecked their eyes out.

Two hollow spots were left

like soup spoons.

 

Cinderella and the prince

lived, they say, happily ever after,

like two dolls in a museum case

never bothered by diapers or dust,

never arguing over the timing of an egg,

never telling the same story twice,

never getting a middle-aged spread,

their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.

Regular Bobbsey Twins.

That story.

 

--Anne Sexton

"La ciudad de piedra de Zanzíbar es un magnífico ejemplo de las ciudades comerciales swahilíes del litoral del África Oriental. Ha conservado su tejido y paisaje urbanos prácticamente intactos, así como muchos edificios soberbios que ponen de manifiesto la peculiar cultura de la región, en la que se han fundido y homogeneizado a lo largo de más de un milenio elementos muy diversos de las civilizaciones de África, Arabia, la India y Europa."

 

Fuente: whc.unesco.org/en/list/173

 

"The Stone Town of Zanzibar is a fine example of the Swahili coastal trading towns of East Africa. It retains its urban fabric and townscape virtually intact and contains many fine buildings that reflect its particular culture, which has brought together and homogenized disparate elements of the cultures of Africa, the Arab region, India, and Europe over more than a millennium."

Classically trained in piano and violin, Edgy, a fifth generation Hawai‘i-born writer-producer-editor, studied fine art at San Francisco Art Institute. One of Hawai‘i’s premiere filmmakers, Edgy’s nationally award-winning films include The Hawaiians - Reflecting Spirit and Paniolo O Hawai‘i. She is founder of Pacific Network.tv, a Hawai‘i-based internet portal to the world - a nexus for arts, culture, and environmental news, entertainment, and educational programming from the Pacific region, streamed free to the world. Edgy’s television work includes a number of popular series - Artists of Hawai‘i, Local Justice, America's first interactive TV courtroom series, Shaka Shakedown, and a prime time one-hour special on education - How We Learn.

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

Weathered black shales disconformably overlying limestones in the Devonian of Kentucky, USA.

 

The rocks in the upper part of the photo are weathered black shales of the New Albany Shale, a Devonian-aged formation in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and eastern Missouri. The unit is dominated by dark-colored marine mudshales of Late Devonian age. These black shales were deposited in a moderately deep, anoxic seafloor environment. This was a widespread lithofacies during the Late Devonian's Global Anoxia Event. The New Albany Shale is equivalent to the Ohio Shale, the Antrim Shale, and the Chattanooga Shale in surrounding states.

 

The basal New Albany here is the Blocher Member - it consists of dolomitic black shales (dolosiltites, actually). The fissile nature of Blocher rocks is due to post-depositional compaction. Blocher beds are rich in organic carbon and have been homogenized by bioturbation.

 

The rocks in the lower part of the picture are the Middle Devonian North Vernon Limestone, which is part of a widespread sheet of Devonian carbonates that extends from New York State to the Midwest. The North Vernon Limestone represents deposition in a subtropical, shallow-water, carbonate platform environment. The limestone here is fossiliferous, with decent-sized camerate crinoid columnals. An encrinite bed is present in the top-preserved North Vernon.

 

Just above the top of the North Vernon Limestone is a thin, lensoidal lag unit with phosphatic nodules, glauconitic pellets, and conodonts.

 

The New Albany-North Vernon contact represents missing time - such stratigraphic boundaries are called unconformities, which are surfaces of erosion and/or non-deposition of sediments. This is a disconformity, with horizontal sedimentary rocks above and below the contact.

 

Oxidative weathering of pyrite (FeS2 - iron sulfide; "fool's gold") at the New Albany-North Vernon boundary has produced iron oxide minerals such as reddish-brown hematite and yellowish-brown limonite. The iron oxides have stained the underlying rocks via descending meteoric waters (rain and runoff). The end result is a "bleeding unconformity".

 

Stratigraphy: lowermost-preserved New Albany Shale (uppermost Givetian Stage to lower Frasnian Stage, uppermost Middle Devonian to lower Upper Devonian) disconformably over the Beechwood Member of the North Vernon Limestone (Givetian Stage, upper Middle Devonian)

 

Locality: roadcut along the western side of the south-bound entrance ramp to Interstate 65 at the Route 245-Interstate 65 interchange, north-northeast of Belmont & south of Sherpherdsville, south-central Bullitt County, north-central Kentucky, USA (37° 55' 24.45" North latitude, 85° 41' 18.33" West longitude)

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

Info. at:

 

Schieber, J. & R. Lazar (eds.). 2004. Devonian black shales of the eastern U.S. New insights into sedimentology and stratigraphy from the subsurface and outcrops in the Illinois and Appalachian Basins. Field Guide for the 2004 Annual Field Conference of the Great Lakes Section of SEPM. Indiana Geological Survey Open-File Study 04-05. 90 pp.

 

I noticed this girl walking along the street with her ice cream cone, and thought I would get a photo of her. But then my bus suddenly pulled ahead and left her behind, before I could get a shot.... but then, a block later, it got stuck in a traffic jam and just sat there for a few minutes. Lo and behold, the girl continued walking along, and eventually drew alongside the bus. I think she spotted me as I took this photo, but she was clearly focused on enjoying her ice cream...

 

Note: I chose this photo, among the 10 that I uploaded to Flickr on the evening of Jun 25, 2011, as my "photo of the day."

 

Moving into 2013, the photo was published in a May 19, 2013 blog simply titled "Athens."

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

06.06.2015

"Tutaj upał jest zawsze ;)"

 

Zdjęcie prezentujące wieże wymienników ciepła oraz silosy homogenizacji mąki surowcowej widziane pomiędzy piecami obrotowymi Cementowni Warta II. Temperatura w miejscu wykonywania fotografii była naprawdę bardzo wysoka, co ciekawe miałem także możliwość poruszanie się galerią wzdłuż pieca. Przebywanie w bezpośrednim rejonie pieca nawet w upalny dzień wiąże się z koniecznością założenia ubioru, tak aby uchronić skórę przed poparzeniami. W sumie, w zimę przy piecu musi być naprawdę fajnie ;)

Portfolio || Flickr Archive || Instagram

 

This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

AIN SOKHNA: In the labyrinthine world of politics, ever more complicated by the global phenomenon of the “businessman-politician” it’s not always easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

Nothing is simpler than lumping the usual suspects together – politicians with powerful party affiliations, who double as businessmen, running huge conglomerates, and developing mega-projects that target the crème de la crème of society and, of course, making a sizable fortune in the process.

 

So when the chairman of a weighty establishment like Amer Group, National Democratic Party member and former MP Mansour Amer, organizes a field visit for the press to tour his project in Ain Sokhna, it’s difficult not to be suspicious of his “real” intentions.

 

After all, we are journalists and it’s our job to be suspicious of those with power and influence.

 

But first, a disclaimer: I don’t usually accept such invitations because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that most of these “site trips” are only after some good free publicity.

 

So why did I go? I was simply curious to meet the man whose new concept in Porto Marina in the North Coast was the talk of the town all summer. But if I thought there was nothing worth writing about, I said to myself, I won’t write a single word.

 

When we arrived at Porto Sokhna, we were greeted warmly by an extremely down-to-earth Amer, who ushered us into French café/patisserie Alain Le Notre, one of Amer Group’s restaurants which include other international chains like Chili’s and Johnny Carino’s.

 

I was surprised to find that even though the first phase of the project was not complete, a huge part of it was fully functional, with sizable luxury hotel rooms, restaurants and a marina boasting some very sleek yachts.

 

After getting the dime tour of the completed part of the facility, we were driven up a craggy mountain road about 190 meters above sea level, where a tent was pitched to house the press roundtable discussion.

 

There was nothing there but the tent and the power of Amer’s contagious imagination, which had us envision his plans for this rough plateau of seemingly impenetrable mountain overlooking the glorious Red Sea: A residential and vacation resort covering 2.5 million square meters of cliff face with the highest point measuring some 270 square meters above sea level.

 

This would be a good 20-or so minute drive uphill, except that when Amer is through with it, residents and vacationers won’t have to drive anywhere, all they’ll need to do is hop on to Egypt’s first and only cable car.

 

“And when you reach the highest peak, you’ll find yourself at a picturesque replica of an ancient Italian village packed with designer boutiques, restaurants and coffee shops,” he explained.

 

All I was thinking was why on earth would anybody come to Ain Sokhna to buy an Armani suit, or a pair of Christian Dior boots?

 

Only during the ensuing discussion did I comprehend the scale of Amer Group’s Porto Sokhna project, dubbed their most ambitious enterprise yet.

 

At a cost of LE 3 billion, Amer said, “we are creating a destination and changing the map of tourism in the area.”

 

The source of funding, he explained, was a combination of personal, pre-sale and bank loans, which will not exceed 10 percent of the total cost.

 

Banking on Ain Sokhna’s year-round warm climate, Amer sees no reason why this destination would not be as popular as the Swiss Alps and the Lebanese mountains.

 

And there’s no dearth of superlatives when it comes to listing the facilities on offer: a 2 million-square meter world class, 18-hole mountain golf course, a yacht marina, the largest spa compound in the region housing five spa resorts of various themes over a 5000-square meter area, three shopping malls with a total number of 260 shops, restaurants and cinemas, the largest swimming pool in the country at 30,000 square meters, and a 250-person capacity gymnasium.

 

With a luxurious hotel, hotel apartments, villas and ranches, Amer Groups hopes to promote the vacation home concept where the Group would lease the apartments year round on behalf of the owners in return for 30 percent of the rent value.

 

“By offering complete housekeeping facilities, the owners, who don’t spend more than one month of the year there, will get a return on their investment and we will be keeping the destination alive all year. With 400 hotel rooms and 1,690 vacation homes, we will target 2,686,400 tourist nights per year,” said Amer.

 

“We want to change the notion of Ain Sokhna as a weekend destination, and rebrand it as ‘Cairo’s Beach’.”

 

Powering this massive project, he said, is the strategic decision to allow charter flights to land at Cairo Airport, which means that vacationers are merely a couple of hours’ drive away from Ain Sokhna.

 

Marketing it mainly as a family destination, Amer reaffirms his commitment to the Group’s no-alcohol and none-smoking policy — none of his facilities sell alcohol or shisha, but guests and residents are free to bring their own drinks — and the resort’s focus on sports, where he hopes to attract teams from all over the world to hold their training camps.

 

Another interesting addition to the mix, though I’m not quite sure how it fits in, were plans to build a boarding school that offers world-class education and enjoys all the sports facilities available at the site.

 

Asked whether he’s targeting Egyptian or foreign buyers, Amer said that it made no difference. “The point is that now the owners will be the new stake-holders.”

 

“But will average Egyptians be able to afford any of this ‘elite’ living as you advertise it?” I asked Amer.

 

“I am not targeting the highest-end buyer,” he said. “Where else in the world would you be able to buy a luxury apartment overlooking a golf course for $50,000? As for the hotel rates, it’s a matter of supply and demand. The more rooms available, the lower the rates.”

 

Suites at the 650-room hotel at Porto Marina, however, cost anywhere between LE 4,000-7,500 per night, while a standard double room goes for LE 1,200-2,000 per night.

 

I wasn’t convinced.

 

And as we embarked on the bumpy ride down the hill and I was once more faced with the massive concrete construction site that lay beneath, just a couple of hundred meters from the marina, I suddenly wondered about the environmental impact of tampering with the Red Sea coast’s topography.

 

What about marine life? And will the new Koraymat highway be able to absorb all the truck traffic and improve road safety? How can Porto Sokhna market itself as a health tourism destination when merely 40 km away, there’s an industrial zone with cement factories? What about homogenization — Porto Marina, Porto Sokhna and perhaps the newest kid on the block Porto Golf — all replicas of each other? Is that a good thing?

 

Then I remembered that this project alone provides jobs for about 7,000 people — nearly 8 million paid working days until it is complete in November 2009.

 

Enough said. (FROM NET)

Explored on June 8, 2012

 

Alternate titles: "Couple Sucking Face", "Dilbert's Secret Rendezvous with Colonel Sanders", "Intimacy Unlocked!", "Private Moments on Public Display", "How to Secretly Photograph People in Unguarded Situations and Post Them Publicly In Order to Further Your Career", "Slice of Wonder Bread", "Asphalt, Cracked Paint and Rocks".

 

I caught this couple going at it on the IRT Flushing Line. It was late, they thought they were alone but the lighting was perfect and they happened to be in front of an ironic ad. That's all the incentive I needed! Click, title, post! But wait…

 

Due to some electrical issue with the tracks ahead, we were stopped in a cellular dead zone which made posting the photo immediately, impossible. Damn rain! But this gave me time to reflect on what I had done. I had essentially just captured the intimate moment of two complete strangers with the intent to broadcast it to an international network of voyeurs.

 

Normally, I would be feeling great knowing that, once the photo was posted, my "camera" would soon be chiming with the comforting notification sounds of retweets, likes and favs. My followers and I would be able to live another day vicariously through the moments of others. "I'm just like them!" "I'm glad I'm not just like them!"

 

But instead of the usual warm feeling of accomplishment and self satisfaction, I felt a nagging pang of guilt. No wait, that is impossible. Lets call it, "uncertainty".

 

It occurred to me that I certainly value my privacy. I don't like it when others steal my "moments" and claim them as theirs. I don't think I would be cool with someone posting my…um, habits in a "public" restroom for all to see. Is the public subway any different? How is it different? Both have doors. Both are under the same unwritten "laws" of public decency. Where does one draw the line?

 

After smiling quietly to myself at the irony of questioning privacy issues in public restrooms while on the Flushing line, I came to the realization that I just didn't care, or perhaps it didn't matter. After all, as far as I'm concerned, the world revolves around me and my ability to use a camera to take pictures for public display. This is a unique skill shared only by millions of others and must be preserved at all costs. But how?

 

For the most part, I know nothing about the people I photograph, their thoughts, motivations, dreams. Frankly, I'm sure most of their expressions are due to being pissed off that some stranger is taking their picture without permission. Caught! LOL! That, or they are just too exhausted from trying to make ends meet that they just don't feel like metaphorically holding hands with their fellow "man" and singing Kumbaya on a crowded subway. Then there are the shots of "freaks on streets". Strange people are funny!

 

But this is NYC. These moments are as uncommon as a soccer mom in a suburban shopping mall or a pair of shoes on feet. But one can't just post average photos of common occurrences without a hook. How would people know just how great I was at capturing the extraordinary if I posted ordinary images and left it up to the viewer to interpret them?

 

That's when I noticed the newspapers strewn all around me. Stories. Of course! Through the respected art of storytelling I could not only present my work in a greater light than perhaps it deserved, but I could simultaneously reduce the potential for the viewer to question my act of exploitation. In hindsight, I realize this was probably a silly concern. After all, this is the age of the "Social Disease"; a time when everyone knows where everyone is and what they are eating. Boundaries are continuously being opened, blurred and homogenized. And this is great, right?

 

So "Love's Fleeting Embrace" it is! Simple, sappy, saccharine. People will get it and be able to apply it to their own experiences within an "Instagram second". I don't know if these people love each other. For all I know, one or both could be prostitutes! I don't know how fleeting this moment is, but unrequited love sells product! And lets be honest, misdirection and misrepresentation works. Don't believe me? How many of you looked at this photo and had even a passing concern for the privacy of its subjects?

 

That's what I thought.

 

Another in my "Street Photography" series where questions about questioning are brought into question; questionably.

Les Lotissements

More graffiti, on what appears to be an abandoned building in the middle of the city...

 

Note: I chose this photo, among the ten that I uploaded to Flickr on the evening of Jun 29, 2011, as my "photo of the day". It's obviously dominated by graffiti, but it's not the angry, confrontational "political" graffiti that I saw in most other parts of Athens; instead, it's a colorful, artistic, almost exuberant form of "playful" graffiti. And the wall of the old building was interesting, too, especially in contrast the more-or-less whitewashed buildings in other parts of the city...

 

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When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

5/14/98! Oh the fun of early merger eras, before homogenized fleets of orange GE's took over! Here BN SD40-2 7064 leads B40-8W 526 and ATSF (one of the last three!) F45 6550 on a westbound stack train!

4/12/11 NOTES FROM GM HIP-HOP SURVEY SESSION 3 of 3

(also included at bottom is session 1) [ To see the rest of this, if it gets cut off, go to hearingtheword2.posterous.com/41211-notes-from-hip-hop-su... ] HIP-hop session #3 of 3 (B. Santelli leading) : [he's reviewing some books as I arrive] ...Tricia rose, hop hop wars..I took her place at rutgers....another..written colloquial....book..new history of.."big payback"...also nelson George..fellow journalist..jersey,,opinionated, but well-written.I was a rollng stone writer..

 

'500 greatest albums"..not many hip hop..very white..mtv did a series on greatest hop hop..wanted to go over greatest emcees. 10) ll cool j, 9 eminem, 8) ice cube 7) big daddy kane 6) krx-1 5) nas 4) rakim (william griffin, aka ra) 3) notorious b.I.g, aka biggie, 2) tupac

1) jayzee [conversation]..rock roll hall fame..they put us rolling stone writers..together..sppsd to pick 500..sppsd to be fun, but..by wed we were @ eachothers throats..who's missing? No females. Lauren hill? ..[what about lil wayne?]

 

& the albums? 10) pub enemy, nation of millions 9) tupac 8) 7) nwa 6)jayzee 5)run dmc raising hell

4) biggie, ready to die, 3). ..2)? 1)paid in full (eric b. & rakim [spare, stripped down..rhyming, flawless,..his fav, raising hell ..6 of 10 from gangsta rap era ..[has this guy abandoned anglos..has he caved? Or is he speaking to his primary audience ? Only a handful of whites in the room of maybe 50]

 

...hip hop orig was new york centric..like 50's in memphis & orleans..but now things changing..begin. here in L.A. large af am pop in late 80's..lot of kids rapping , deejaying..public enemy (long island), ..why so amazing..first class..am bl roots of hip hop ..we mentioned gil scott herron..changing..g.master flash.. some dies..pub enemy brings it back.chuck d. Knows his ...pub enemy makes a political mess. ..from a white perspective..bob dylan..

 

Fear of a black planet..nation of millions..huge..brought over to white...white intells..get more intrsted..then nwa and tupac..gangsta rap..west coast..using what pub enemy doing back east..more outrageous & angry than pub enemy..

 

What we hear..chuck D....at rock of fame..had him come & lecture ..he said it was a refl of blues..language previously couched..in blues..now able to scream it..listen to tupac, ... in harlem..best pedigree..black panther..he was deep into it..early life a mess..what tupac ... shakur.this man had a..he was a 5 tool player....genuine anger..he was intelligent..bitter but intelligent..most important..listen to cadence of words..anyone can rhyme..but cadence..

 

Eminem..too many words..don't apprec his stuff as much..tupac best ever..right in middle..perfect storm..east west..1990's..mid 90's..bitter rivalry east v west ..ironic ...and tupac ...then ----- killed..neither murder solved..//Why a feud ? East jealous? Tupac..death row l.a..; bad boy east..so 2 diff schools forming..

Then puff daddy..sean combs (aka diddy, p diddy, puff daddy, p daddy) .west... tupac..

 

2 "m words" .1) MEDIA..hip hop mags..source..vibe..'88 mtv raps ..2) MONEY ..early 90's..can make money..on radio...mtv..also white element..beastie boys..middle class white kids in suburbs..

 

Bold personalities..incendiary..tupac murdered..later biggie (notorious B.I.G, Real name Christopher Wallace, aka biggie smalls) killed..media gets hold of it ..society says its out of control....when Biggie dies..album..double platinum..

Also the tree..acid jazz, socially conscious hip hop, funk jazz, trip hop, some from england ..england didn't embrace hip hop at first ..

 

Arrested development..? Hip hop? Some music lost relevancy..blues, big band ..glenn miller..ragtime..some become "historical"..mid-90's..hip hop not dying, but branching out..moody blues..I hated it...but difference between hating versus respecting [I actually liked moody blues & saw them @ hollywood bowl]

 

Who else ? Outcasts, wootang, lords of underground, onyx,.[several others shouted out] .hip hop 90's taking over...Now beyond nyc & LA..master P...new orleans..tree exploding..geographic connections..diff sound..good businessman..he also played b-ball..also atlanta...in south, but northern sensib.,,,also houston..health..multi-billion $ business..mainstreaming of hip hop,,,gangsta rap dies out...invention, re-invention..

 

...also, rise of detroit..eminem..major figure...brings detroit to forefront..making detroit hip..and then kid rock ..real..metal..fringe genres..coming together w/ hop hop..limp biscit, korn,..

 

Today? Hip hop becoming irrelevant? ..making lots of money..stop changing..less experimentation..less bold, ..fashion from hip hop ...u know u become mainstream when grammy recognizes u..heresy for me to say but..

Recording academy..being in biz..producer, writer, ..

 

[Plays vid eminem & elton jon..given hip hop's homophobic culture..this was seminal] [ was it a seminal moment as the beginning of the END of hip-hop, as it lost its verve?] ..2006 nas comes out saying hip hop dead..didn't want to stay stuck in rut...had nas here....rock hall of fame brings in hip hop, grammy awards..world knows hip hop

 

After we did whitehouse thing..state dept..calls..cultural diplomacy..obama revived it.. they asked me to organize hop hop to go to muslim countries.[hip hop to muslim countries as a form of diplomacy ?! Please explain how that would appease muslims or appeal to muslims who already think of America as godless] .as did armstrong & ellington 50 yrs ago ...I couldn't run it..

 

Where is hop hop now ? Ring tone..commercialize..sound same..its on life support now..homogenized..mentions nicky menaj opening for britney spears in upcoming tour..360 degrees ..piracy..economy ..

 

Country music still buys cd's ..loyalty..not download..not w/ hip hop....need audience with means to support act ..when economy of art form goes away..trouble ..younger gen doesn't feel the concept of spportin.."

 

BELOW are the NOTES from SESSION 1 of 3

(I missed session 2 )

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

 

3/29/11 NOTES FROM HIP-HOP SURVEY COURSE (1 of 3) taught by Bob @ GM: "...learn more abt music forums....like hip hop..whats a middle age white guy teaching hip hop..I'm a musical historian...af am music my specialty..not hip hop.this class not like the elvis class.this is a survey course..3 periods as an overview..will have other courses..hip hop america's pop music now last quarter century..its a survey class..people who live this culture..if u want to add, embellish..can never learn too much..my expertise. Af am music..also reggae..after hip hop comes bob marley exhibit..a hip hop museum ready to launch..in bronx..I'm on board...maybe russel simmons on board..anybody see him here a few weeks ago....others coming chris blackwell, ..pbs special..kate..@ whitehouse..kate did this exhibit..don't need to agree..its interpretive..subjectivity..otherwise just read in book ..used to teach @ rutgers..this is not academia..try to do this in colloquial way..not preach to u..meant to be entertaining..some here b/c I asked u to come..I didn't come quickly to hip hop..even tho I was there in the early 70's...think of 20th century..america's century..come to age as superpower..after fall of comm ..also musically, no country can touch what we have given to the world musically in 20th century..separate bl & wh culture..look @ af am contribs..as to amt..# of new forms..brilliant artists..overall impact.entire world..not all clear cut..jazz black music form..but dig down.others contrib too ..but in general..louis armstrong et al..blues blues jazz, soul, funk, r & b, disco, hip hop, bee bop swing, cool, fusion,,of all these forms..all given due..endorsed exported..except hip hop until now...revol music..challenges..polit..most recent..hasn't gotten its due.celeb gospel blues...maybe too controversial to get credit..still...what made it so..give & take of african cult..also anglo irish..also racism..extra tension..in nutshell..bl & wh celbr..where r we now..first time..af ams bouncing ...haven't had major music..lately..last was grunge..late 80's, 90's..music slowed down ?ess imp..25% decrease in concert att...here to ..soul music..motown..also...and atlantic..golden age..also rock roll..then 1970's..chronolog..musically '63 to '73..that's the 60's music era..hip hop..not 60's ..bronx..how go from soul ..then..to funk...I don't know re hip hop in '73 ..have to wait 6 years..before recorded artifact..rappers delight ..sugar hill gang..why in this ? .69 71 motown losing lustre..stevie wonder..migrated..motown leaves detroit comes here..but not like it used to be..sly & family stone..loses sensib as..couple key bands & artists..2 huge..gil scott herron ..last poets..black..music...."when revol comes.."..gangsta rap..not on radio..last poets..many blacks didn't even know of this music..marvin gaye..more known..cnsdrd greatest of all times..70-73 ..clip.."far too many of u dying.."...[red hat]..also "sounds of philadelphia"..the oj's..signed in cleve but rcrded in phillie.."love train" ....revolution vs love..this is backdrop to bronx ..no q..rock surfaces memphis ..why hip hop fr bronx..music to be created & sustained..not just artist but audience..in bronx..it was like beirut or baghdad..suffered incredibly..ny in bad condition..bronx pushed aside..gangs ..drugs..south bronx..maybe mother cabrini projrcts chicago..maybe south l.a....become so isolated..create in a vacum w/o outside interference or ack..seattle..grunge..a seam..pearl jam, nirvana..already formed b/f world knew..a lot carribeans settled nyc ..jamaicans..brooklyn..1962 jamaica indep..many got out..s. bronx...late 60's..kid campbell..clive ..from jamaica..brings..reggae..sound systems..everything outdoors ..disc jockey....toast over dub plates..jamaicans come to usa with this..clive campbell..longs for jamaica..wonders what he's doing in bronx..sound system..he didn't know he was creating history...invit..come to dj cool hercs party set up jamaica style..earliest hip hop...rap..part of af am cult..verbal battles..here at herks party..af ams and jamaicans together..'73..sudden concept of spinning records..unique way, art form..74 75..another frm..also hispanic & gay..disco..gets no respect...but it was important..w/o disco no m. Jackson, no usher..in manhattan..records..disc spun..if white grate dead, almond bros,..underground movement, black hispanic gay..dance again..mixing..never leave dance floor..77 sat night fever..mst imp of all time..j. travolta..exported disco cult..drugs..all this happ.. bee gees..trammpps...burn baby burn..disco inferno..red & white outfits..early hip hop would borrow from.some day will do disco shoe exhibit....or rush..sex pistols.springsteen..u had to select what u would embrace....people dressed their music..

 

Then bob marley..new sensib..lively up yourself..all this happening..rappers delight..sugarhill gang....soul train on tv..imp for black..this was seminal..just happened to catch it on camera..not the best

 

Three main entities..curtis blow..then up to run dmc ..hip hop is developing a consc style.that will explode...grand wizard theatre..scratching..then grand master flash. Popularized it..then .barbada (?)..flash a seminal giant..

 

Dj & mc..back then dj..was the guy..age of mc in future..dancing why they're spinning records..bee boy bee girl..bboy break dancing..some of best break dancers were latino ..

 

Tagging..grafitti..becomes part..cey dams..tagging did a piece here ..been dodging cops for 3 decades...there's a f you mentality in bronx..didn't want to be part of discos..taggers..socs & psys studied.. I was in zurich..most expensive place in world..cab..graffitti wall..

 

[He periodically makes some of his prejudices obvious..re "conservative zurich"..wouldn't apprec it in des moines iowa.."no offense to des moines"..let's "rock n roll"..(it was a term for sexual icourse)..he's talking to white christians....jazz also fr black culture ..means sex icourse.."

St Monica's - This is a impressive old stone building. Its basement provides one of the Dehumanising Horrors of the slave trade. A stone staircase leads down from the entrance hallway to what is reputed to be the dungeon where slaves were kept before being taken to market.

 

The East African Slave Trade Exhibit.

 

Stone Town, because of its unique Architecture & Culture, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.

 

Contains fine buildings that refiect its particular culture, which has brought together & homogenized disparate elements of cultures of Portuguese, British, Africa, the Arab region, India over more than a millenium.

Entry in category 4. Video loop; Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Melanie Gut

 

To extract all protein from tissue we have to homogenize the samples as good as possible.

The tissue sample is placed in buffer and small glas beads are added. This mixture is shook fastly to destroy the tissue and tear it into small pieces which then are treated with chemicals to extract proteins.

  

This man clearly looks disgruntled, and he was stomping across the street from a park (out of view, on the left side of the frame) where there were a bunch of protesters and demonstraters ...

 

Note: this photo was published in a Jun 28, 2011 blog titled "Griekenland gaat plat."

 

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When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

Italien / Lombardei - Gardasee

 

Three-Church-tour at Salò

 

Drei-Kirchen-Rundgang bei Salò

 

Lake Garda has a lot to offer in cultural terms. Near Salò in south Lake Garda, you can combine visits to various places of pilgrimage on a wonderful hike while enjoying the beautiful surroundings.

 

The three-church tour runs over a nine-kilometre contemplative hiking trail. It leads through the typical landscape of southern Lake Garda to the three churches of pilgrimage of Sanctuary Madonna del Rio, Santuario della Madonna di Buon Consiglio and Santuario San Bartolomeo.

 

The hike starts just before the town of Renzano. Here, you can park the car and reach your first destination: the village of Renzano. In the village of Renzano, path number 16 begins, which leads to the first place of pilgrimage Madonna del Rio. The wild, yellow-painted church dates from the 18th century. At that time, the Virgin Mary appeared in a nearby grotto and left her footprints in white stone. These impressions are still testimony to the miraculous event. To the left of the church, a forest path takes you to a lovely waterfall.

 

The second stage leads through the woods, past the villages of Milordino and Milord, to Bagnolo with the picturesque, cypress-surrounded Sanctuary of the Madonna di Buon Consiglio at 516 metres.

 

You reach the third and last destination via path 17b. First, it goes to the Passo della Stacca at 458 metres. Then you follow the number 17 towards Bassa Via del Garda to Gardesina and the stone Santuario San Bartolomeo at 480 metres.

 

Just below the church, path number 17 leads through olive groves to the Gardesana Occidentale, where it goes back to the starting point. Overall, this, not to be underestimated, circular walk with reflection factor, can be hiked in 4.5 hours.

 

(garda-see.com)

 

Lake Garda (Italian: Lago di Garda [ˈlaːɡo di ˈɡarda] or (Lago) Benaco [beˈnaːko]; Eastern Lombard: Lach de Garda; Venetian: Ƚago de Garda; Latin: Benacus; Ancient Greek: Βήνακος) is the largest lake in Italy. It is a popular holiday location in northern Italy, about halfway between Brescia and Verona, and between Venice and Milan on the edge of the Dolomites. Glaciers formed this alpine region at the end of the last Ice Age. The lake and its shoreline are divided between the provinces of Verona (to the south-east), Brescia (south-west), and Trentino (north). The name Garda, which the lake has been referred to in documents dating to the 8th century, comes from the town of the same name. It is evolved from the Germanic word warda, meaning "place of guard", "place of observation" or "place of safety".

 

Geography

 

The northern part of the lake is narrower, surrounded by mountains, the majority of which belong to the Gruppo del Baldo. The shape is typical of a moraine valley, probably having been formed under the action of a Paleolithic glacier. Although traces of the glacier's actions are evident today, in more recent years it has been hypothesised that the glacier occupied a previously existing depression, created by stream erosion 5 to 6 million years ago.

 

The lake has numerous small islands and five main ones, the largest being Isola del Garda, where, in 1220 St. Francis of Assisi founded a monastery. In its place now stands a 19th-century building in the Venetian Gothic style. Nearby to the south is Isola San Biagio, also known as the Isola dei Conigli ("Island of the Rabbits"). Both are offshore of San Felice del Benaco, on the lake's western side. The three other main islands are Isola dell'Olivo, Isola di Sogno, and Isola di Trimelone, all farther north near the eastern side. The main tributary is the Sarca River, others include the Ponale River (fed by Lago di Ledro), the Varone/Magnone River (via the Cascate del Varone) and various streams from both mountainsides, while the only outlet is the Mincio River (79 metres (259 ft), at Peschiera). The subdivision is created by the presence of a fault submerged between Sirmione and Punta San Vigilio which is almost a natural barrier that hampers the homogenization between the water of the two zones.

 

If the water level of the Adige river is excessive, water is diverted to the lake through the Mori-Torbole tunnel.

 

History

 

Battle of Lake Benacus, in which Roman forces defeated the Alamanni on the shores of Lake Garda, in the year 268.

Battle between Milan and Venetian Republic in 1438 following the military engineering feat of galeas per montes.

Battle of Rivoli, in 1797 during the French campaign of Napoleon I in Italy against Austria.

Battle of Solferino in 1859, during the Italian Risorgimento. The terrible aftermath of this battle led to the Geneva Convention and the formation of the Red Cross.

The lake was the site of naval battles in 1866 between Italy and Austria.

As persuaded by the Nazis, Benito Mussolini established the capital of his Italian Social Republic in late 1943 in a villa in the town of Salò on its shores. It served as a nexus for military operations and communications for German troops who occupied northern Italy in late 1943 during World War II.

 

Mythology

 

According to the Greco-Roman mythology, the River Mincius was the child of the Lake Benacus.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Der Gardasee hat in kultureller Hinsicht vieles zu bieten. Am südlichen Gardasee bei Salò können Sie die Besichtigung verschiedener Wallfahrtsorte bei einer herrlichen Wanderung kombinieren und gleichzeitig die wunderschöne Gegend genießen.

 

Der Drei-Kirchen-Rundgang in Salò verläuft über einen neun Kilometer langen beschaulichen Wanderweg. Dieser führt durch die typische Landschaft am südlichen Gardasee zu den drei Wallfahrtskirchen Santuario Madonna del Rio, Santuario della Madonna di Buon Consiglio und Santuario San Bartolomeo.

 

Die Wanderung beginnt kurz vor dem Ort Renzano. Hier kann das Auto geparkt und gleich das erste Ziel angesteuert werden: das Dorf Renzano. Dort beginnt der Weg Nr. 16, der bis zum ersten Wallfahrtsort Madonna del Rio führt. Die wild umwachsene, gelb getünchte Kirche stammt aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Damals soll in einer nahegelegenen Grotte die Gottesmutter Maria erschienen sein und ihre Fußabdrücke in weißem Stein hinterlassen haben. Diese Abdrücke sollen noch heute Zeugnis über das wundersame Ereignis ablegen. Links von der Kirche bringt ein Waldweg zum Wasserfall des Ortes.

 

Die zweite Etappe führt durch den Wald, vorbei an den Ortschaften Milordino und Milord, nach Bagnolo mit dem malerischen, von Zypressen umgebenen Santuario della Madonna di Buon Consiglio auf 516 Metern.

 

Das dritte und letzte Ziel kann über den Weg 17b erreicht werden. Zunächst geht es zum Passo della Stacca auf 458 Metern. Danach geht es der Nr. 17 folgend weiter Richtung Bassa Via del Garda bis nach Gardesina und dem steinernen Santuario San Bartolomeo auf 480 Metern.

 

Direkt unter der Kirche führt der Weg Nr. 17 durch Olivenhaine bis auf die Gardesana Occidentale von der es wieder zurück zum Ausgangspunkt geht. Insgesamt kann diese, nicht zu unterschätzende, Rundwanderung mit Besinnungsfaktor in 4,5 Stunden erwandert werden.

 

(garda-see.com)

 

Der Gardasee (italienisch Lago di Garda oder Bènaco), einer der oberitalienischen Seen, ist der größte See Italiens, benannt nach der Gemeinde Garda am Ostufer. Sein antiker Name lautete von etwa 200 v. Chr. bis 800 n. Chr. Lacus benacus. Der Name soll von einer alten Gottheit namens Benacus abstammen. Der Gardasee wurde in der vergangenen Eiszeit durch einen Seitenast des Etschgletschers geformt, dessen Spuren man noch heute verfolgen kann, insbesondere durch die Endmoränen um das Südufer z. B. bei Lonato del Garda, Solferino, Valeggio sul Mincio und Custoza. Erste Besiedlungen des Seeufers datieren um das Jahr 2000 v. Chr.

 

Geographie

 

Lage

 

Der Gardasee liegt zwischen den Alpen im Norden und der Po-Ebene im Süden und ist daher ein Alpenrandsee. Der Norden des Sees gehört zur Region Trentino-Südtirol, der Westen zur Lombardei und der Osten zu Venetien. Damit teilen sich die drei Provinzen Trient (Norden), Verona (Osten) und Brescia (Westen) die Verwaltung.

 

Das nördliche Ufer des Sees ist von Zweitausendern der Gardaseeberge wie dem Monte Baldo umsäumt; das südliche Ufer liegt bereits in der norditalienischen Tiefebene.

 

In der Nähe des Sees befinden sich bekannte Weinbaugebiete:

 

Südlich von Desenzano del Garda liegt das Lugana-Gebiet

Östlich vom Gardasee finden sich die Gebiete des Bardolino- und des Soave-Weins

Ebenfalls östlich (zwischen dem Gardasee und Verona) liegt das Valpolicella-Gebiet

 

Zu- und Abflüsse

 

Der Gardasee wird hauptsächlich durch den Fluss Sarca gespeist. Dieser fließt am Nordende bei Torbole in den See. Als Mincio verlässt der Fluss bei Peschiera del Garda den Gardasee und fließt später in den Po. Neben den insgesamt 25 Zuflüssen gibt es noch einen künstlichen Zufluss in Form des 1959 fertiggestellten Etsch-Gardasee-Tunnels, dessen Tunnelausgang am südlichen Ortsausgang von Torbole liegt und der im Falle einer stark Hochwasser führenden Etsch geöffnet wird.

 

Pegel

 

Der Pegelnullpunkt liegt bei Peschiera del Garda bei 64,027 m s.l.m. Er unterliegt zum Teil starken saisonalen Schwankungen, da das Wasser des Gardasees über seinen Abfluss Mincio zur Bewässerung der intensiv landwirtschaftlich genutzten Flächen zwischen Verona und Mantua genutzt wird. Zum anderen sind die Schwankungen auch durch die Wasserentnahme für die Stromerzeugung im Oberlauf der Sarca bedingt.

 

Der Pegeltiefstand wurde in den Jahren 2003 und 2007 mit jeweils 8 cm unter Pegelnull erreicht, der Höchststand lag am 2. Juli 1879 bei 216 cm über Pegelnull. 1960 stand der Pegel bei 212 cm aufgrund der Öffnung des Etsch-Gardasee-Tunnels. Nicht festlegen lässt sich der Pegel von 1673 und 1746, als der Ort Desenzano del Garda überschwemmt wurde. Außer in Peschiera wird der Pegelstand auch in Riva del Garda und Torri del Benaco gemessen.

 

Inseln

 

Im See befinden sich fünf Inseln, die größte, Isola del Garda mit der Villa Borghese, liegt in der Nähe von Salò. Etwa zwei Kilometer südlich davon, ebenfalls in der Bucht von Manerba und San Felice, liegt die Isola San Biagio auch als „i Conigli“ (deutsch: die Kaninchen) bezeichnet. San Biagio ist ein beliebtes Ausflugsziel, das mit dem Boot oder zu Fuß vom Festland (je nach Wasserstand hüfttief oder trockenen Fußes) erreicht werden kann. Vor Assenza (zwischen Porto di Brenzone und Malcesine) liegt die Isola di Trimelone, diese ist allerdings militärisches Sperrgebiet. Etwas weiter nördlich von Trimelone liegt bei Malcesine im Val di Sogno die Isola del Sogno und nördlich davon die Isola dell’Olivo.

 

Geschichte

 

Aus der Bronzezeit stammen zahlreiche Pfahlbautensiedlungen, die direkt am Seeufer oder im unmittelbaren Hinterland des Gardasees errichtet wurden und seit 2011 zum UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe zählen.

 

Die Schlacht am Lacus Benacus (lateinisch für Gardasee) wurde im November des Jahres 268 an den Ufern des Gardasees in Norditalien zwischen Alamannen und Römern unter Kaiser Claudius Gothicus ausgetragen.

 

Unter den Signorie fiel der Gardasee zwischen dem 13. und 14. Jahrhundert unter den Einflussbereich der Scaliger, die zahlreiche Burgen insbesondere an den östlichen und südlichen Uferorten (Malcesine, Torri del Benaco, Lazise und Sirmione) errichteten. Im 15. Jahrhundert wurde der See und seine Uferorte zum Schauplatz im Kampf um die Vorherrschaft in Oberitalien zwischen dem Herzogtum Mailand unter den Viscontis und der Republik Venedig. Als militärische Glanzleistung zählte hierbei der Transport einer venezianischen Flotte vom Etschtal über die Berge nach Torbole im Jahr 1439, ein von der Republik Venedig als Galeas per montes bezeichnetes Unternehmen. Mit der im Frieden von Lodi 1454 festgelegten Grenze am Fluss Adda fiel der Gardasee endgültig unter den Einflussbereich der Dogenrepublik. Letztere baute insbesondere Peschiera am strategisch wichtigen Abfluss des Mincio zur Festung aus, die 2017 von der UNESCO zum Weltkulturerbe erklärt wurde.

 

Während des Spanischen Erbfolgekrieges zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts versuchte General Vendôme mit seinen Truppen über das Nordufer in Richtung Norden vorzustoßen und hinterließ eine Spur der Verwüstung. Dabei wurden zahlreiche Burgen von den Franzosen zerstört, wie Castel Penede in Nago, die Burg von Arco oder Castel Drena, die als Ruinen erhalten sind. Am 19. April 1706 schlug Vendôme in der Schlacht bei Calcinato am Südufer des Sees die kaiserlichen Truppen unter dem Oberbefehl von Christian Detlev von Reventlow.

 

Die Schlacht bei Rivoli, die im Ersten Koalitionskrieg im Januar 1797 in der Nähe des Ortes Rivoli (südöstlich von Garda) stattfand, war ein Schlüsselerfolg der französischen Armee unter Napoleon Bonaparte im Italienfeldzug über ein zahlenmäßig überlegenes habsburgisches Heer unter Feldmarschall Alvinczy. Aufgrund des Vertrages von Pressburg vom 26. Dezember 1805, mit dem die Grafschaft Tirol zu Bayern fiel, gehörte die Nordspitze des Gardasees von Anfang 1806 bis Anfang 1810 als sogenannter Etschkreis zum Königreich Bayern und anschließend, wie der übrige See auch, zum Königreich Italien. Nach dem Wiener Kongress 1815 fiel der gesamte See dem Kaisertum Österreich zu und war Bestandteil des Königreichs Lombardo-Venetien.

 

Die Schlacht von Solferino am Südufer war die Entscheidungsschlacht im Sardinischen Krieg zwischen dem Kaisertum Österreich und dem Königreich Sardinien und dessen Verbündetem Frankreich unter Napoléon III. Durch die Niederlage der Österreicher bei Solferino am 24. Juni 1859 wurde der Weg zur Einigung Italiens frei gemacht. Die Grausamkeit der Schlacht und die Hilflosigkeit der verwundeten Soldaten veranlassten Henry Dunant (1828–1910) zur Gründung des Roten Kreuzes und führten zur Vereinbarung der Genfer Konvention von 1864.

 

Nach dem Verlust der Lombardei und dem dazugehörigen Westufer des Gardasees 1859, verlor Österreich 1866 nach dem Dritten Italienischen Unabhängigkeitskrieg mit Venetien auch das Ostufer, nur die Nordspitze, mit Riva del Garda, verblieb bis 1918 bei Österreich-Ungarn. Der See wurde in dieser Zeit auch „Gartsee“ genannt. Während des Ersten Weltkrieges verlief die Front direkt am Nordufer des Sees entlang, an dem zahlreiche Festungsanlagen errichtet worden waren.

 

Nach dem Sturz Mussolinis 1943 wurde auf Forderung der deutschen, nationalsozialistischen Regierung in Nord- und Mittelitalien die Marionettenregierung der faschistischen Italienischen Sozialrepublik (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, auch: Republik von Salò) unter Mussolinis Führung als Gegenregierung installiert, die im gleichnamigen Ort am Westufer des Gardasees ihren Regierungssitz hatte. Der Staat bestand zwischen dem 23. September 1943 und dem 25. April 1945. Am 30. April 1945 endete mit der Befreiung von Torbole und Riva durch die 10. US-Gebirgsdivision der Zweite Weltkrieg am Gardasee.

 

Tourismus

 

Der Gardasee ist ein beliebtes Reiseziel. Rund um den See gibt es Hotels, Pensionen, Ferienwohnungen und Campingplätze. Ein Großteil der Ferienunterkünfte ist von Ende März bis Anfang Oktober geöffnet. Die Hauptsaison ist Juli und speziell der August. In den Wintermonaten sind die meisten Hotels, Cafés und Restaurants geschlossen. 2018 gab es am Ufer 24 Millionen Übernachtungen.

 

Am Südufer des Sees befinden sich zahlreiche Freizeitparks wie das Gardaland oder das Canevaworld. Das Nordufer ist vor allem bei Kletterern, Mountainbikern und Surfern beliebt.

 

(Wikipedia)

Pedestrian bridge is part of the Calvin S. Hamilton Pedway:

 

"The Calvin S. Hamilton Pedway, as the system is formally known, is a network of elevated walkways that was first presented in the 1970 Concept Los Angeles: The Concept for the Los Angeles General Plan. Hamilton was the city planning director at the time, having taken the position in 1964. The plan, adopted by the city in 1974, promoted dense commercial developments connected to one another by a rapid transit system. The plan was abandoned in 1981 when federal funding for the project was eliminated. Hamilton stepped down from his position in 1985 after a criminal investigation."

www.kcet.org/socal/departures/landofsunshine/block-by-blo...

 

"The pedways fall within the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, but the organization's CEO says its strained resources can only cover maintenance crews on the pedways about once a week."

articles.latimes.com/2013/may/23/opinion/la-ed-pedways-20...

 

----

 

Westin Bonaventure:

404 South Figueroa Street

Built: 1974–76.

Architect: John Portman

 

ZIMAS data:

Central City Community Plan Area, Los Angeles State Enterprise Zone, Freeway Adjacent Advisory Notice for Sensitive Uses, Greater Downtown Housing Incentive Area, General Plan Land Use ="Regional Center Commercial", Downtown Adaptive Reuse Incentive Area, Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project, w/in 500 feet of USC Hybrid High, Downtown Center Business Improvement District, Central City Revitalization Zone

 

Assessment:

Assessed Land Val.: $31,878,705

Assessed Improvement Val.: $20,033,803

Last Owner Change: 12/18/95

Last Sale Amount: $260,002

...

Year Built: 1976

 

Famous for the elevators, the revolving cocktail lounge, the mirror glass exterior, et cetera et cetera, and for being the star of a famous essay by Fredric Jameson on postmodernism.

 

Before I get into that, let me just say that what I currently find interesting about the Westin Bonaventure and the urbanism of this section of Figueroa and Bunker Hill in general are the really complex histories about what was happening with and against modernism from the 1950s through the 1980s, especially in Los Angeles, especially with regards to Bunker Hill, housing, car culture, et cetera.

 

But with the Westin Bonaventure in particular, I'm also interested in visual/formal comparisons with both Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago (1975), the BMW headquarters in Munich (1968–73), and LaForet Harajuku (1975–80).

www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/arts/design/adapting-prentice-...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Headquarters

www.mori.co.jp/en/img/article/en081121.pdf

 

Or in terms of textures and materials, there's the more local Samuel Goldwyn Theater:

www.flickr.com/photos/jannon/4653822940/

(There used to be a lot more examples in Los Angeles of mirror glass facades combined with concrete, but I feel like a lot have been torn down.)

 

Because of its dramatic qualities and because of how Jameson explicated them, people don't really talk about this building in the context of Brutalism, even though that style arguably was just as interested in dramatic effects and complexity. (There's also the totally different social uses of the "main" buildings of each style as well, of course.)

 

Of course, I'm probably just massively ignorant and there are a ton of good books already out there that are full of chapters that explicitly talk about connections between architecture and urban planning in Los Angeles and the UK, with lovely details about Victor Gruen Associates and Milton Keynes and the Barbican and the Glendale Galleria. Even better if they also bring in Metabolism and connections with what was going on in Japan. Particularly since Mori Yoshiko seems a lot more important and successful at building the massive city-in-a-city projects than John Portman, on the whole. Anyway, if so, let me know what they are?

 

Jameson's essay (or at least the beginning of it):

newleftreview.org/I/146/fredric-jameson-postmodernism-or-... (original version, 1984, sub required)

books.google.com/books?id=oRJ9fh9BK8wC&lpg=PA39&v... (book version, first few pages of the part on the Westin Bonaventure)

books.google.com/books?id=wfd-c0blcb0C&lpg=PA103&... (another book version, w/ an intro by Asa Berger, again the first few pages about the Westin Bonaventure)

 

More of other people quoting Jameson:

" In Frederick Jameson’s essay on the utterly bizarre Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, he describes a 'postmodern hyperspace,' an emblem of the 80s trend in which building design hoped to create hermetically sealed miniature cities. At the Bonaventure, human activity is directed in a space threaded with fitness centers, plants that thrive without any natural light and functionless open spaces offering the blank hyperreality of grandeur and respite contained in concrete."

www.newmediacaucus.org/wp/a-room-to-view/

 

"Citing the example of the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles, Jameson argues that 'this latest mutation in space -- postmodern hyperspace -- has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world'. The effect on cultural politics, according to Jameson, is that the subject 'submerged' by this postmodern hyperspace is deprived of the 'critical distance' that makes possible the 'positioning of the cultural act outside of the massive Being of capital.'"

muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/summary/v029/29.3reynolds.html

 

"Its reflective glass façades seemed to disappear into their surroundings. Behind them (for those who could afford it) there opened up a city within a city. Portman’s Hotels—where client, financier, and architect were all one and the same—are for Jameson the epitome of late-capitalist space. He writes of the lobby: 'I am tempted to say that such space makes it impossible for us to use the language of volume or volumes any longer, since these are impossible to seize. ... A constant busyness gives the feeling that emptiness is here absolutely packed, that it is an element within which you yourself are immersed, without any of that distance that formerly enabled the perception of perspective or volume. You are in this hyperspace up to your eyes and your body.'"

www.olafureliasson.net/studio/pdf/Ursprung_Taschen_S.pdf

 

Or drawing on Jameson:

"In his book Postmodern Geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory (1989), Edward W. Soja describes the hotel as 'a concentrated representation of the restructured spatiality of the late capitalist city: fragmented and fragmenting, homogeneous and homogenizing, divertingly packaged yet curiously incomprehensible, seemingly open in presenting itself to view but constantly pressing to enclose, to compartmentalize, to circumscribe, to incarcerate. Everything imaginable appears to be available in this micro-urb but real places are difficult to find, its spaces confuse an effective cognitive mapping, its pastiche of superficial reflections bewilder co-ordination and encourage submission instead. Entry by land is forbidding to those who carelessly walk but entrance is nevertheless encouraged at many different levels. Once inside, however, it becomes daunting to get out again without bureaucratic assistance. In so many ways, its architecture recapitulates and reflects the sprawling manufactured spaces of Los Angeles' (p. 243-44)."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westin_Bonaventure_Hotel

See also Soja on Jameson on the Westin Bonaventure for the BBC: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWlu3OlvL58

 

"Writing from California, Jameson imagined the whole new era was summed up in the alienating 'disorientation' one felt in hotels like John Portman's Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles. Lost in its lobby, without any 'cognitive map,' Jameson found an allegory of a supposedly late phase in capitalism (coming before what?), which explained the kind of space to which French theory had unwittingly been leading us. For architecture, the art closest to capitalism, was the one best able to point out late capitalism's 'totality.' Frank Gehry, for one, was not pleased; more generally, at the very moment Jameson was confidently offering his allegory, architects like Gehry were departing from so-called po-mo (quotationalist, historicist) architecture, often to rediscover modernist strategies. Indeed, the architects that the Museum of Modern Art would group together in a 1988 exhibition as 'deconstructivists' (e.g., Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman) were linked less by any sustained interest in Derrida than by their contempt for postmodernism. Jameson, though, was unable or unwilling to give up the 'totality-allegory' view of works, and in the face of this and other difficulties, he was gradually forced to admit that he no longer knew what to do with the categories modernity and postmodernity. In the absence of new works or ideas to 'totalize,' he tried to look back and reassert the Marxist sources of critical theory, now itself in a late or disappointed state."

—John Rajchman, "Unhappy Returns: John Rajchman on the Po-Mo Decade. (Writing the '80s)," Artforum International, Vol. 41 (2003), No. 8

www.questia.com/library/1G1-101938549/unhappy-returns-joh...

 

"The programmed music of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles follows patterns of use typical to that of most programmed music. In the large open expanse of the lobby/atrium, music is always playing in the background. During the mornings and early afternoon typical small jazz group arrangements are played, never with vocals, and as the day progresses and the bar opens for the evening the music slowly shifts towards a more upbeat genre, signaling to the guests that the objectified content of the contemporary nightlife experience is beginning. Speaking to the maître d’ at the reception desk, however, he informed me that the neither the amplitude of the music nor its aesthetic intensity ever crosses above a consciousness level threshold where any guest would be forced to acknowledge its presence."

music.columbia.edu/~alec/page2/assets/Muzak%20as%20the%20...

 

"Downtown Los Angeles is notoriously quiet in the evening; the streets develop an abandoned, out-of-season feel, and the BonaVista Lounge shared some of this atmosphere. At first we were the only customers. Two people drinking alone in a revolving restaurant -- now there's an existential image for you. . . . It had been a clear, sunny day and now the sky was coalescing into a spectacular sunset. Because we were downtown we had a close-up view of some very untypical Los Angeles features: the few skyscrapers in this essentially low-rise city, shiny corporate blocks; then beyond them were the more familiar Los Angeles sights -- mountains, interweaving freeways, the vast ground-hugging grids of street lights, all bathed in a deep orange light. I wasn't so naïve, or so easily satisfied, as to think that I'd really found the perfect revolving restaurant; but for an hour or so, with the city far below, with a Cloud Buster in my hand, I found it hard to imagine anything better."

www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/travel/done-to-a-turn-at-360-d...

 

"The Westin Bonaventure Hotel looks like something out of Robocop. Typical of architect John C. Portman Junior's style, at its heart is a large atrium and multi-story labyrinth of walkways, shops, and mostly empty seating pods. The building's inward orientation and imposing exterior make it feel, if not as impregnable as a fortress ideally is, something like an arcology, biosphere or space station. It's designed to provide everything one would need for tourists and business travelers within its walls, although most of it shuts down after lunch. I just managed to grab a bánh mì from Mr. Baguette before its closing time of 3:00 pm. Forced to order my food to-go, after wandering around the building I ventured back out into the lawless outlands."

www.kcet.org/socal/departures/landofsunshine/block-by-blo...

 

www.thebonaventure.com

www.thebonaventure.com/history/

www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/property/overview/index.htm...

www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/events/kreider-oleary...

www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/travel/22iht-hotdesign.html?pa...

www.artslant.com/ny/articles/show/11785

memory.loc.gov/phpdata/pageturner.php?type=contactminor&a...

 

John Portman:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Portman,_Jr.

www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/garden/john-portman-symphonic-...

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

I don't think any of these people look like "typical" Greek citizens. If you didn't know better, you might well think this photograph was taken somewhere in South America

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

 

Biennale di Venezia 2014 - 14th International Architecture Exhibition - Fundamentals.

Fundamentals consists of three interlocking exhibitions:

1.Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014 is an invitation to the national pavilions to show the process of the erasure of national characteristics.

2.Elements of Architecture, in the Central Pavilion, pays close attention to the fundamentals of our buildings used by any architect, anywhere, anytime.

3.Monditalia dedicates the Arsenale to a single theme – Italy – with exhibitions, events, and theatrical productions.

 

The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, titled Fundamentals, directed by Rem Koolhaas and organized by la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, was open to the public from June 7 through November 23, 2014, in Venica Italy. 65 National Participations were exhibiting in the historic pavilions in the Giardini, in the Arsenale, and in the city of Venice. They examine key moments from a century of modernization. Together, the presentations start to reveal how diverse material cultures and political environments transformed a generic modernity into a specific one. Participating countries show, each in their own way, a radical splintering of modernity's in a century where the homogenizing process of globalization appeared to be the master narrative

 

Absorbing Modernity 1914–2014 has been proposed for the contribution of all the pavilions, and they too are involved in a substantial part of the overall research project, whose title is Fundamentals. The history of the past one hundred years prelude to the Elements of Architecture section hosted in the Central Pavilion, where the curator offers the contemporary world those elements that should represent the reference points for the discipline: for the architects but also for its dialogue with clients and society. Monditalia section in the Corderie with 41 research projects, reminds us of the complexity of this reality without complacency or prejudice, which is paradigmatic of what happens elsewhere in the world; complexities that must be deliberately experienced as sources of regeneration. Dance, Music, Theatre and Cinema with the programmes of the directors will participate in the life of the section, with debates and seminars along the six-month duration of the exhibition.

 

Elements of Architecture / Central Pavilions

This exhibition is the result of a two-year research studio with the Harvard Graduate School of Design and collaborations with a host of experts from industry and academia. Elements of Architecture looks under a microscope at the fundamentals of our buildings, used by any architect, anywhere, anytime: the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the roof, the door, the window, the façade, the balcony, the corridor, the fireplace, the toilet, the stair, the escalator, the elevator, the ramp. The exhibition is a selection of the most revealing, surprising, and unknown moments from a new book, Elements of Architecture, that reconstructs the global history of each element. It brings together ancient, past, current, and future versions of the elements in rooms that are each dedicated to a single element. To create diverse experiences, we have recreated a number of very different environments – archive, museum, factory, laboratory, mock-up, simulation.

The last half of '66, just out of high school, time to set out in the world, to seek my fortune. I ended up working the railroad by day, teaching guitar by night.

 

It wasn't to last long, Vietnam was raging, and anybody not in school soon found themselves wearing green (instead of railroad blue) real soon. Besides, (though I didn't know it at the time), the ill-fated Casey Jones was an ancestor from the Welsh branch of the family tree--so railroading was a career field was probably best abandoned after that summer.

 

I gathered a few skills that helped me endure the military time that was inevitably to come (type 60 wpm, shoot a camera, drive truck, answer a phone with a suitably homogenized midwest/California accent)--and headed down the road on Life's Journey.

 

Looking back at my past self, what magical words of advice would I share? "Facebook"? "Craigslist, Microsoft, digital photography?" (This was a time when "Honda" meant 50cc minibikes.) No, even if I could do it, there would be no projecting the future into that past. "I am from the future and here to tell you, jump into computers and meld CB radio to your typewriter (already an IBM Selectric)--move to Palo Alto, and look for these guys, Gates & Allen, and tell them you want to clean their garage for free?" Hah. Leave the poor kid alone, he'll find his own way.

 

It's what I try to remind myself with my own kids now. Stay in the present. Every moment gets shattered and battered by the past and future--instead, trust the moment! There will always be enough money, perhaps not as much as you might like, but enough. Enough food, enough whatever, as long as you enjoy the present, and learn from the dog. Stay awake, live like your grandparents, and Be "Bhole Baba" (easily pleased).

     

Portfolio || Flickr Archive || Instagram

 

This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

Times Square, NYC

 

by navema

www.navemastudios.com

 

Times Square is a major intersection in Manhattan, a borough of New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. The Times Square area consists of the blocks between Sixth and Eighth Avenues from east to west, and West 40th and West 53rd Streets from south to north, making up the western part of the commercial area of Midtown Manhattan.

 

Times Square, nicknamed "The Crossroads of the World," has achieved the status of an iconic world landmark and has become a symbol of New York City. Times Square is principally defined by its spectaculars, animated, digital advertisements.

 

HISTORY:

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia where he served under George Washington. Scott's Manor House was at what is now 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices across Broadway in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

Also in 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles coast-to-coast through 13 states to its Western Terminus in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theaters, music halls, and upscale hotels. Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of the Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayor Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (1994–2002) led an effort to "clean up" the area, increasing security, closing pornographic theaters, pressuring drug dealers and "squeegee men" to relocate, and opening more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors, on the other hand, argue that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

The theaters of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have long made them one of New York's iconic images, and a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square now rivals that of Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons."

 

Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar and Carmine's, along with a number of multiplex movie theaters. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal is to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid.

 

Times Square is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop. On December 31, 1907, a ball signifying New Year's Day was first dropped at Times Square, and the Square has held the main New Year's celebration in New York City ever since.

Due to Foundation, I suddenly got a bit interested in economies and political systems and saw this lying around (in papa's messy bookshelf). I couldn't find the Foundation sequels in any bookshop here so until I did, I thought I might as well read this book. Was not boring or slow or trivial or too academic - a nice fun pop eco book :).

 

Some nice parts:

 

He proved that not only are all perfect markets efficient, all efficient outcomes can be achieved using a competitive market, by adjusting the starting position.

 

We recognize that food, clothes, and houses cannot be free or we would quickly run out of them. It is because roads are free that we have run out of spare road space.

 

In a world where environmentalism is merely a moral issue, even the environmentalists themselves cannot work out the environmental impact of everyday decisions. Which is worse: disposable diapers (which clog up landfill sites) or washable diapers (where the washing process uses electricity and releases polluting detergents)? Even with the best will in the world, it is hard to know how to make the right choice. More importantly, the diaper problem, like any other environmental issue large or small, will certainly not be solved by a tiny minority arguing inconclusively over the morally appropriate individual action. While the Green minority lacks the right signals about environmental damage to act appropriately, the majority of people would not inconvenience themselves even if they understood environmental problems. Both information and incentives are necessary, and as we discovered in chapter 3, markets can provide both. Economists have long been in the forefront of analyzing environmental problems, and this double difficulty is why they advocate externality pricing. Economists care about the environment but dream of a world where it is no longer an issue that invites moral posturing, but is properly integrated into markets and the world of truth, which would provide both the information and the incentives necessary to persuade ordinary people to behave in an environmentally responsible way. In such a world, we would all have clear signals about the costs of our actions within a market price.

 

Just as negative externalities will tend to lead to too much pollution or congestion, positive externalities will leave us undervaccinated, with scruffy neighbors, and a dearth of pleasant cafés. And while negative externalities attract all the attention, positive externalities may be even more important: so many of the things that make life worth living are, in fact, subject to positive externalities and are underprovided: freedom from disease, honesty in public life, vibrant neighborhoods, and technological innovation. Once we realize the importance of positive externalities, the obvious solution is the mirror image of the policies we considered to deal with negative externalities: instead of an externality charge, an externality subsidy.

 

Most economics has very little to do with GDP. Economics is about who gets what and why. Clean air and smooth-flowing traffic are part of the “economy” in this sense. It’s possible that congestion charging would increase GDP because people would get to work more quickly and produce more, and prices in stores would be lower because of more efficient distribution. But it’s perfectly possible that congestion charging would reduce GDP. This does not, in fact, matter in the slightest. We know for certain that it would make us better off in a much more meaningful sense: that we would have many new choices open to us about where we go and what we do. There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.

 

This isn’t to say that share prices are completely out of touch with reality—simply that many major fund managers, who make decisions concerning vast sums of money, are being paid to follow fashion instead of pick the right shares. That’s bound to mean that the stock market will make mistakes.

 

The hidden premise is that if we are in an economic revolution, shares should be very valuable. This premise is wrong. Shares should rise in price only if there’s good reason to think that future profits will be high.

 

The lesson of the story might appear to be that self-interested and ambitious people in power are often the cause of wastefulness in developing countries. The truth is a little sadder than that. Self-interested and ambitious people are in positions of power, great and small, all over the world. In many places, they are restrained by the law, the press, and democratic opposition. Cameroon’s tragedy is that there is nothing to hold self-interest in check.

 

The legal reforms necessary are often trivial; and while they still rely on sensible and benevolent government, all it takes is a single minister with his head and his heart in the right place, rather than hoping for an entire civil service to permanently reform.

 

Like racial intermixing, economic and cultural integration will take a long time. Furthermore, new ideas and new technologies are always arriving. Globalization will never homogenize what we have, not while new ideas are always appearing and adding fresh ingredients to the slowly turning blender of economic integration. Those who fear a terrible global sameness must remember that new ideas, welcome or unwelcome, will always arise faster than they can be mixed in.

 

In 2003, Yang Li did what many Chinese workers have done: she left home to work in a sweatshop in the Pearl River delta. A month later, after working thirteen-hour shifts, she decided to go home and start her own business—a hair salon. “Every day at the factory was just work, work,” she says. “My life here is comfortable.” Yang Li’s parents had to survive the Cultural Revolution; her grandparents, the Great Leap Forward. Yang Li has real choices, and she lives in a country where those choices mean something for her quality of life. She tried factory work and decided it wasn’t for her. Now she says that “I can close the salon whenever I want.”

Economics is about Yang Li’s choice.

Weathered black shales disconformably overlying limestones in the Devonian of Kentucky, USA.

 

The rocks in the upper part of the photo are weathered black shales of the New Albany Shale, a Devonian-aged formation in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and eastern Missouri. The unit is dominated by dark-colored marine mudshales of Late Devonian age. These black shales were deposited in a moderately deep, anoxic seafloor environment. This was a widespread lithofacies during the Late Devonian's Global Anoxia Event. The New Albany Shale is equivalent to the Ohio Shale, the Antrim Shale, and the Chattanooga Shale in surrounding states.

 

The basal New Albany here is the Blocher Member - it consists of dolomitic black shales (dolosiltites, actually). The fissile nature of Blocher rocks is due to post-depositional compaction. Blocher beds are rich in organic carbon and have been homogenized by bioturbation.

 

The rocks in the lower part of the picture are the Middle Devonian North Vernon Limestone, which is part of a widespread sheet of Devonian carbonates that extends from New York State to the Midwest. The North Vernon Limestone represents deposition in a subtropical, shallow-water, carbonate platform environment. The limestone here is fossiliferous, with decent-sized camerate crinoid columnals. An encrinite bed is present in the top-preserved North Vernon.

 

Just above the top of the North Vernon Limestone is a thin, lensoidal lag unit with phosphatic nodules, glauconitic pellets, and conodonts.

 

The New Albany-North Vernon contact represents missing time - such stratigraphic boundaries are called unconformities, which are surfaces of erosion and/or non-deposition of sediments. This is a disconformity, with horizontal sedimentary rocks above and below the contact.

 

Oxidative weathering of pyrite (FeS2 - iron sulfide; "fool's gold") at the New Albany-North Vernon boundary has produced iron oxide minerals such as reddish-brown hematite and yellowish-brown limonite. The iron oxides have stained the underlying rocks via descending meteoric waters (rain and runoff). The end result is a "bleeding unconformity".

 

Stratigraphy: lowermost-preserved New Albany Shale (uppermost Givetian Stage to lower Frasnian Stage, uppermost Middle Devonian to lower Upper Devonian) disconformably over the Beechwood Member of the North Vernon Limestone (Givetian Stage, upper Middle Devonian)

 

Locality: roadcut along the western side of the south-bound entrance ramp to Interstate 65 at the Route 245-Interstate 65 interchange, north-northeast of Belmont & south of Sherpherdsville, south-central Bullitt County, north-central Kentucky, USA (37° 55' 24.45" North latitude, 85° 41' 18.33" West longitude)

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Info. at:

 

Schieber, J. & R. Lazar (eds.). 2004. Devonian black shales of the eastern U.S. New insights into sedimentology and stratigraphy from the subsurface and outcrops in the Illinois and Appalachian Basins. Field Guide for the 2004 Annual Field Conference of the Great Lakes Section of SEPM. Indiana Geological Survey Open-File Study 04-05. 90 pp.

 

I'm pretty sure this is the National Library. Maybe the pigeons were all waiting for the library to open, so they could go in and check out a couple books...

 

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When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.