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To create the iconic curving forms of the cruise-ship terminal in Porto, Portugal, architect Luís Pedro Silva began working from the project’s territorial context rather than simply seeking a display of formal prowess. The powerful oval drum of its main volume, with its spiraling central atrium and exterior ramps, is charged with both centripetal and centrifugal force, gathering all the vectors of movement that come together in the terminal from sea and land, and spinning them back out again to their various destinations. Before receiving the commission, Silva, who has degrees in architecture and urban planning from Porto University, worked on a strategic plan for the entire port as a member of a team of economists, engineers, and other specialists. The building and its new dock bring together the group’s ideas for increasing the port’s efficiency, promoting a growing tourist industry, and improving connections to the area’s attractions.
Leixões, the port, occupies a small inlet on the Atlantic Ocean 6 miles north of the historic city center of Porto. It is protected by two breakwaters that reach more than 2,500 feet into the sea, each with a dock on its harbor side. The tightly confined waterway houses facilities for container ships, oil tankers, a fishing fleet, and a recreational marina. It’s a node of heavy industry that interrupts the rocky beaches of the coast, separating seaside promenades designed by Portugal’s two Pritzker Prize winners: Eduardo Souto de Moura to the south, in Matosinhos, and Álvaro Siza to the north, in Leça da Palmera, where his outdoor swimming pools and Tea House are nestled into the rocks.
In the first phase of the plan, finished in 2011, Silva and his team moved the cruise-ship dock from the inner harbor to a new pier at the end of the southern breakwater, for more direct access to the city and to accommodate ships up to 1,000 feet long. The terminal was completed in a second phase last year. In the near future, the pier and terminal will open to the general public, allowing the building, with its rooftop viewing deck, to truly function as a destination rather than just a curiosity when seen from Souto de Moura’s seaside promenade, where its dramatic forms stand out against the horizon.
Silva set the terminal in the elbow of the angled breakwater, and in plan it resembles a hinge or spring, with ramps and arms curving out in different directions toward the marina, the new pier, and the shore. Inside, these pedestrian paths come together in a spiraling oval ramp around the central atrium. The uncoiling arms diagram the different systems of movement through the building. From a cruise ship, for example, a breezeway carries passengers over the service areas of the dock to the terminal. Ramps and escalators bring them down to the ground level, where they pass through customs and baggage handling (or vice-versa), to connect to tour buses or smaller boats for trips to the city and the Douro wine region, or eventually to a tram line that is planned to run along the coast.
In the original program, the upper section of the terminal was meant to house a shopping concourse and a restaurant, but Portugal’s ongoing financial slump made investors hard to find. While Silva was developing the design, these floors were taken on by the University of Porto’s Marine Science and Technology Research Park. The architect rather awkwardly converted the commercial spaces into laboratories, with floor-to-ceiling glazed storefronts facing the atrium but with no exterior windows, and with offices on mezzanines accessed via spiral stairs. He installed a research aquarium in the basement, and converted the top-floor restaurant into a multi-use event credits space. Yet this unlikely partnership with the university does bring life to the building, as well as steady revenue, and allows the center’s scientists to be close to the sea.
Silva worked with local manufacturers to develop a hexagonal ceramic tile with a tilted face to clad the building, updating the Portuguese tradition of painted-tile facades. He rotated the tiles, placing them in varying relations to each other, like barnacles or shells, to create an uneven surface. “They give the building a human scale,” he says.
Glistening in the light, the curving walls of the building read like ribbons looping around themselves in an irregular tangle. Echoes of two Guggenheims are evident—Wright’s in New York and Gehry’s in Bilbao. Silva affirms, however, that Siza is his most important reference: “The way our bodies move in a space, and the way a space invites you forward.” Like Souto de Moura, whose early buildings were very Miesian, Silva may be using Wright and Gehry to mitigate the influence of Siza’s eccentric, rectilinear forms. Whatever the case, he develops the terminal’s looping ramps and drum with an elegant economy of means, and makes this formal repertoire his own.
Claude Monet -
The Magpie - 1868-1869
There is something magical about a landscape painted by Claude Monet. No matter the time or the season, he captures the nuanced variations of light. Monet was the founding artist of French Impressionism in the 1860s, and his style of loose, quick, and instantaneous painting revolutionized the Western art world. After decades of society’s rejection, French Impressionism eventually gained popularity, and it maintains its popularity today after more than 160 years since its birth. Magpie by Monet is a snowscape masterpiece that captures the artistry of French Impressionism and the spirit of the winter season.
Claude Monet painted Magpie during the winter of 1868-1869. It is an oil on canvas that measures 130 cm long by 89 cm high (51 in by 35 in). The canvas is almost a perfect 2:3 rectangle with the height being almost two-thirds its length. The composition is a winter landscape blanketed by snow. A stone wall perfectly divides the image into two equal horizontal spaces. The space below the wall is the foreground, and the space above the wall is the background. A black-gray magpie sits on a wooden gate near the left mid-ground. A house surrounded by pine and oak trees stands in the right background, immediately behind the wall. The bird, wall, and trees cast diagonal shadows upon the foreground snow, adding a sense of visual movement to an otherwise still moment. Only the occasional chirp of the magpie breaks the scene’s icy silence.
Approximately 80 km (50 mi) northwest of Rouen and 200 km (124 mi) northwest of Paris is the coastal town of Étretat. Claude Monet frequently visited Étretat because he appreciated its dramatic seaside cliffs. However, the interior landscape of Étretat also fascinated Monet because Magpie depicts an Étretat snowscape. During the winter of 1868-1869, the snow was particularly heavy in Étretat, and Monet captured the deep snow layer in this painting. The brown stone wall is almost entirely white with its hefty snowcap, the trees resemble ice sculptures, and the ground is a white carpet. However, Monet adds depth and interest to the snowscape with countless shades of cream, varied with countless infusions of blue and gray.
Claude Monet is most famous for his waterscapes featuring water lilies. Therefore, his snowscapes like Magpie receive far less attention and praise by the general public. However, the overshadowing of Magpie and other wintery scenes does not diminish their artistic merit. Monet became famous for his play of light upon water, but his play of light upon snow is just as majestic. Snow has a magical quality of simultaneously reflecting and absorbing light. Snow is the physical solid manifestation of water, hence it has similar refractive properties as liquid water. However, snow does not move and ripple as water because of its solid volume and mass. Therefore, illuminated snow can twinkle and shimmer like millions of diamonds as it catches the light upon its irregular solid surfaces.
Day two of our trip down to Wanaka Central Otago. February 20, 2018 New Zealand.
We didn't get accommodation in Wanaka last night and they were all booked out until the 25th. We went on to Cromwell .. some there but we did book for today. We finally found a place to stay in the camping ground in Alexandra. Now we are making our way back to Cromwell for the next two nights.
Mt Difficulty Wines is located in Bannockburn, well within an hour's drive of both Queenstown and Wanaka. The Cellar Door is known as much for its dramatic views of rugged rock and thyme landscapes as it is for its stylish wine.
www.newzealand.com/ie/plan/business/mt-difficulty-wines-c...
Flanked by columns, the barrel vaulted entrance of this three bedroom home is echoed in its dramatic arched windows and gables. In this house plan, interior columns add elegance while visually dividing foyer from dining room and great room from kitchen. The great room is made even larger by its cathedral ceiling and bank of windows, including an arched clerestory window. A box bay window adds space to the formal dining room, while the kitchen features an angled center island with breakfast counter for the busy family. The floor plan's master suite, secluded on the first floor, boasts his and her walk-in closets and garden tub with skylight. Two bedrooms upstairs share another skylit bath. *Photographed home may have been modified from the original construction documents.* www.dongardner.com/house-plan/248/the-barclay/
Opened in 1927 as The Hotel Beverly, the building was considered to be one of famed architect Emery Roth’s most successful creations, inspiring even legendary artist Georgia O’Keeffe to paint it from her apartment across the street. Purchased in 1997 by the Denihan Hospitality Group (DHG), formerly Affinia Hospitality, the building began its dramatic restoration, opening in Spring of 1999.
The award-winning team that handled the challenging renovation project included the internationally known interior design firm Di Leonardo International and the prominent architectural firm of Ronald Schmidt & Associates. The renovation has not only restored Emery Roth’s neglected 1927 architectural treasure to its original grandeur, but has transformed the building into a classic for the future.
The Benjamin was named for Benjamin J. Denihan, Sr., founder of the original company (presently DHG) who turned a small family dry cleaning business into a successful company and later, a collection of New York hotels. Today, 9 hotels are owned and managed by his son and daughter. It is their mission to uphold the genuine values and superior standards established by Denihan years ago. The Benjamin is a tribute to the success and reputation of this man and the company he built.
Llyn Llech Owain Country Park is is a stunning 158-acre expanse of woods and lakeland near Cross Hands with nature trails, an adventure area and visitor centre. At the heart of this spectacular park is its dramatic lake which is surrounded by peat bog and there’s a lovely myth associated with Llyn Lech Owain. Legend has it that Owain Lawgoch ("Owain of the Red Hand" - who led an army of French mercenaries against the English in the Hundred Years' War), was entrusted to look after a well on the mountain named Mynydd Mawr. Each day, after extracting enough water for himself and his horse, Owain was always careful to replace the stone but on one occasion he forgot and a torrent of water poured down the side of the mountain. The resultant lake was hence named Llyn Lech Owain - the lake of Owain’s slab. Today, specially constructed paths allow for safe access over the bog and around the lake. The paths are well-surfaced and accessible to wheelchair-users. A forest track provides a longer walk or cycle ride around the country park and there’s a rough mountain bike trail for the more adventurous cyclist. Much of the park consists of coniferous woodland, planted by the Forestry Commission during the 1960s and there are also areas of dry heath and broad-leaved woodland.
The Colorado River is the principal river of the southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. The 1,450-mile (2,330 km) river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. and two Mexican states. Rising in the central Rocky Mountains in the U.S., the river flows generally southwest across the Colorado Plateau before reaching Lake Mead on the Arizona–Nevada line, where it turns south towards the international border. After entering Mexico, the Colorado forms a large delta, emptying into the Gulf of California between Baja California and Sonora.
Known for its dramatic canyons and whitewater rapids, the Colorado is a vital source of water for agricultural and urban areas in the southwestern desert lands of North America. The river and its tributaries are controlled by an extensive system of dams, reservoirs and aqueducts, which furnish water for irrigation and municipal supplies of almost 40 million people both inside and outside the watershed. The Colorado's steep drop through its gorges is also utilized for the generation of significant hydroelectric power, and its major dams regulate peaking power demands in much of the Intermountain West. Since the mid-20th century, intensive water consumption has dewatered the lower course of the river such that it no longer reaches the sea except in years of heavy runoff.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
Sunset on the River - 1867
George Inness (1825 - 1894)
The play of sunshine and shadow across the scene of cows grazing and thunderclouds in the distance creates a dynamic mood in the landscape. George Inness believed there was a direct correspondence between the natural and spiritual realms, as theorized by the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). The artist hoped that, by showing the drama and dynamism of nature, his paintings would transport viewers to a higher emotional or mental plane.
George Inness distinguished himself among the Hudson River School painters by pursuing a more modern aesthetic of landscape painting. Unlike his contemporaries, who believed in creating realistic canvases of nature's vastness, Inness felt that "paintings were not necessarily pictures, and it was the artist's function, even his obligation, by an aesthetic and expressive reorganization, to interpret nature and not merely depict it." (as quoted in N. Cikovsky, Jr. and M. Quick, George Inness, Los Angeles, California, 1985, p. 19) Inness' New York based works from the 1860s are widely admired today because they are closest to the familiar manner of Hudson River School painting in those years. Yet these works also begin to show the artist's painting philosophy of incorporating atmospheric climate and expression which brings deeper spiritual meaning into his compositions. Inness went on to produce a body of work marked by a more subjective and ultimately more modern aesthetic than that of his contemporaries. With its dramatic composition and high degree of finish, Sunset on the River is an extraordinary masterwork from this important transitional phase in the artist's career.
Painted in 1867 near the town of Leeds, New York, Sunset on the River presents an expansive view of cattle grazing in a broad pasture which slopes toward a river, partially visible on the left. On the right a stone wall borders a road, along which a covered wagon moves toward a mill with a smoking chimney near the water. From a slightly elevated vantage point, the viewer looks across the expanse to another light-struck pasture in the middle ground extending to wooded foothills, which give rise to a large mountain in the distance. Storm clouds fill the sky, dappling the land with dark streaks intermingled with bursts of light which pierce the foliage and rake across the landscape.
Inness' use of light and atmosphere in Sunset on the River evokes mood and meaning. Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., writes: "In all of the paintings of the 1860's, nature is not merely depicted straightforwardly, but is made articulate: moods of calm are emphatically peaceful, rainbows are clearly portentous, storms are dramatic and threatening, sunsets are gloriously radiant, and bleakness is unmistakably harsh and cold. In 1865, a writer remarked that Inness 'signally [possessed the power of] seizing upon the critical moment in some marked phase of nature.' The result is that one is made aware of the spiritual significance of nature through the way in which its visible forms and effects reflect some higher power." (George Inness, London, 1971, p. 38) The painting's dramatically changing sky, along with the tranquil setting of workers setting off to the mill, seems to express a sense of hope and prosperity in the wake of the Civil War. Very likely, Inness' contemporaries saw in this painting a theme that would pervade American art after the war--the return to peace, industry, and prosperity. The movement and energy of the present work's lush brushwork, paint texture and strong color choices underscore the emotional sense of calm after a storm.
Michael Quick considers Sunset on the River a stunning success of Inness' style of the 1860s. He writes: "This handsome, fully developed painting, with its dramatic lighting and clouds, is one of the most impressive of 1867, looking ahead to the more emotional interpretation of nature seen in Inness's work at the end of the decade. The view is based upon a sketch he used again in Approaching Storm, 1869. In this case, both the foreground and the distance are deeper, and the season is full summer, rather than fall. An unusual element is the mill with its smoking chimney, near what appears to be a building in ruins. Inness drew attention to the mill by both silhouetting it against the lighted field beyond and by making it the object of the road's long diagonal. Brick textile mills were numerous in the Leeds area, but this factory seems out of place in the otherwise entirely pastoral landscape. The textured foreground and the blacklighting of the trees are also unusual for works of 1867, no doubt reflecting the extra effort to add interest to this painting." (George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. one, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2007, p. 278) His inclusion of the factory and its workers appears here to add an element of the contemporary to his idealized landscape. Where other artists of the 1850s and 1860s might choose to render more purely pastoral views, Inness embraced the new.
All of the artistic devices evident in Sunset on the River convey emotional power. The painting's dramatic recession, extreme contrasts and strong color scheme induce the spiritual response that Inness began to suggest in the 1860s, and continued to evoke in his paintings throughout his career.
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This World Class attraction was everything we expected and more. Construction has just begun on a major expansion, but that has been managed in such a way that it does not in any way detract from the experience now.
This album focuses on the artwork inside the buildings and on the other interior spaces including the Eleven Restaurant and the Gift Shop. A separate album posted a few days ago is devoted to the two April mornings that we spent exploring just some of the trails that crisscross the 120 acres of Arkansas forest around the museum.
Alice Walton and her co-creative team can be proud of the vision and execution of everything on this 120 acre site.
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"Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, spearheaded the Walton Family Foundation's involvement in developing Crystal Bridges. The museum's glass-and-wood design by architect Moshe Safdie and engineer Buro Happold features a series of pavilions nestled around two creek-fed ponds and forest trails. The 217,000 square feet complex includes galleries, several meeting and classroom spaces, a library, a sculpture garden, a museum store designed by architect Marlon Blackwell, a restaurant and coffee bar, named Eleven after the day the museum opened, "11/11/11". Crystal Bridges also features a gathering space that can accommodate up to 300 people. Additionally, there are outdoor areas for concerts and public events, as well as extensive nature trails. It employs approximately 300 people, and is within walking distance of downtown Bentonville."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Bridges_Museum_of_American_Art
crystalbridges.org/nature-trails/
...
REFORD GARDENS | LES JARDINS DE METIS
Beautiful flowers at Reford Gardens.
Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
From Wikipedia:
Elsie Stephen Meighen - born January 22, 1872, Perth, Ontario - and Robert Wilson Reford - born in 1867, Montreal - got married on June 12, 1894.
Elsie Reford was a pioneer of Canadian horticulture, creating one of the largest private gardens in Canada on her estate, Estevan Lodge in eastern Québec. Located in Grand-Métis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, her gardens have been open to the public since 1962 and operate under the name Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.
Born January 22, 1872 at Perth, Ontario, Elsie Reford was the eldest of three children born to Robert Meighen and Elsie Stephen. Coming from modest backgrounds themselves, Elsie’s parents ensured that their children received a good education. After being educated in Montreal, she was sent to finishing school in Dresden and Paris, returning to Montreal fluent in both German and French, and ready to take her place in society.
She married Robert Wilson Reford on June 12, 1894. She gave birth to two sons, Bruce in 1895 and Eric in 1900. Robert and Elsie Reford were, by many accounts, an ideal couple. In 1902, they built a house on Drummond Street in Montreal. They both loved the outdoors and they spend several weeks a year in a log cabin they built at Lac Caribou, south of Rimouski. In the autumn they hunted for caribou, deer, and ducks. They returned in winter to ski and snowshoe. Elsie Reford also liked to ride. She had learned as a girl and spent many hours riding on the slopes of Mount Royal. And of course, there was salmon-fishing – a sport at which she excelled.
In her day, she was known for her civic, social, and political activism. She was engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the Montreal Maternity Hospital and she was also the moving force behind the creation of the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal, the first women club in Canada. She believed it important that the women become involved in debates over the great issues of the day, « something beyond the local gossip of the hour ». Her acquaintance with Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, led to her involvement in organizing, in 1908, Québec City’s tercentennial celebrations. The event was one of many to which she devoted herself in building bridges with French-Canadian community.
During the First World War, she joined her two sons in England and did volunteer work at the War Office, translating documents from German into English. After the war, she was active in the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies, and the National Association of Conservative Women.
In 1925 at the age of 53 years, Elsie Reford was operated for appendicitis and during her convalescence, her doctor counselled against fishing, fearing that she did not have the strength to return to the river.”Why not take up gardening?” he said, thinking this a more suitable pastime for a convalescent woman of a certain age. That is why she began laying out the gardens and supervising their construction. The gardens would take ten years to build, and would extend over more than twenty acres.
Elsie Reford had to overcome many difficulties in bringing her garden to life. First among them were the allergies that sometimes left her bedridden for days on end. The second obstacle was the property itself. Estevan was first and foremost a fishing lodge. The site was chosen because of its proximity to a salmon river and its dramatic views – not for the quality of the soil.
To counter-act nature’s deficiencies, she created soil for each of the plants she had selected, bringing peat and sand from nearby farms. This exchange was fortuitous to the local farmers, suffering through the Great Depression. Then, as now, the gardens provided much-needed work to an area with high unemployment. Elsie Reford’s genius as a gardener was born of the knowledge she developed of the needs of plants. Over the course of her long life, she became an expert plantsman. By the end of her life, Elsie Reford was able to counsel other gardeners, writing in the journals of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society. Elsie Reford was not a landscape architect and had no training of any kind as a garden designer. While she collected and appreciated art, she claimed no talents as an artist.
Elsie Stephen Reford died at her Drummond Street home on November 8, 1967 in her ninety-sixth year.
In 1995, the Reford Gardens ("Jardins de Métis") in Grand-Métis were designated a National Historic Site of Canada, as being an excellent Canadian example of the English-inspired garden.(Wikipedia)
Visit : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Reford
Visit : www.refordgardens.com
LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
Créés par Elsie Reford de 1926 à 1958, ces jardins témoignent de façon remarquable de l’art paysager à l’anglaise. Disposés dans un cadre naturel, un ensemble de jardins exhibent fleurs vivaces, arbres et arbustes. Le jardin des pommetiers, les rocailles et l’Allée royale évoquent l’œuvre de cette dame passionnée d’horticulture. Agrémenté d’un ruisseau et de sentiers sinueux, ce site jouit d’un microclimat favorable à la croissance d’espèces uniques au Canada. Les pavots bleus et les lis, privilégiés par Mme Reford, y fleurissent toujours et contribuent , avec d’autres plantes exotiques et indigènes, à l’harmonie de ces lieux.
Created by Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958, these gardens are an inspired example of the English art of the garden. Woven into a natural setting, a series of gardens display perennials, trees and shrubs. A crab-apple orchard, a rock garden, and the Long Walk are also the legacy of this dedicated horticulturist. A microclimate favours the growth of species found nowhere else in Canada, while the stream and winding paths add to the charm. Elsie Reford’s beloved blue poppies and lilies still bloom and contribute, with other exotic and indigenous plants, to the harmony of the site.
Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada
Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Gouvernement du Canada – Government of Canada
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To create the iconic curving forms of the cruise-ship terminal in Porto, Portugal, architect Luís Pedro Silva began working from the project’s territorial context rather than simply seeking a display of formal prowess. The powerful oval drum of its main volume, with its spiraling central atrium and exterior ramps, is charged with both centripetal and centrifugal force, gathering all the vectors of movement that come together in the terminal from sea and land, and spinning them back out again to their various destinations. Before receiving the commission, Silva, who has degrees in architecture and urban planning from Porto University, worked on a strategic plan for the entire port as a member of a team of economists, engineers, and other specialists. The building and its new dock bring together the group’s ideas for increasing the port’s efficiency, promoting a growing tourist industry, and improving connections to the area’s attractions.
Leixões, the port, occupies a small inlet on the Atlantic Ocean 6 miles north of the historic city center of Porto. It is protected by two breakwaters that reach more than 2,500 feet into the sea, each with a dock on its harbor side. The tightly confined waterway houses facilities for container ships, oil tankers, a fishing fleet, and a recreational marina. It’s a node of heavy industry that interrupts the rocky beaches of the coast, separating seaside promenades designed by Portugal’s two Pritzker Prize winners: Eduardo Souto de Moura to the south, in Matosinhos, and Álvaro Siza to the north, in Leça da Palmera, where his outdoor swimming pools and Tea House are nestled into the rocks.
In the first phase of the plan, finished in 2011, Silva and his team moved the cruise-ship dock from the inner harbor to a new pier at the end of the southern breakwater, for more direct access to the city and to accommodate ships up to 1,000 feet long. The terminal was completed in a second phase last year. In the near future, the pier and terminal will open to the general public, allowing the building, with its rooftop viewing deck, to truly function as a destination rather than just a curiosity when seen from Souto de Moura’s seaside promenade, where its dramatic forms stand out against the horizon.
Silva set the terminal in the elbow of the angled breakwater, and in plan it resembles a hinge or spring, with ramps and arms curving out in different directions toward the marina, the new pier, and the shore. Inside, these pedestrian paths come together in a spiraling oval ramp around the central atrium. The uncoiling arms diagram the different systems of movement through the building. From a cruise ship, for example, a breezeway carries passengers over the service areas of the dock to the terminal. Ramps and escalators bring them down to the ground level, where they pass through customs and baggage handling (or vice-versa), to connect to tour buses or smaller boats for trips to the city and the Douro wine region, or eventually to a tram line that is planned to run along the coast.
In the original program, the upper section of the terminal was meant to house a shopping concourse and a restaurant, but Portugal’s ongoing financial slump made investors hard to find. While Silva was developing the design, these floors were taken on by the University of Porto’s Marine Science and Technology Research Park. The architect rather awkwardly converted the commercial spaces into laboratories, with floor-to-ceiling glazed storefronts facing the atrium but with no exterior windows, and with offices on mezzanines accessed via spiral stairs. He installed a research aquarium in the basement, and converted the top-floor restaurant into a multi-use event credits space. Yet this unlikely partnership with the university does bring life to the building, as well as steady revenue, and allows the center’s scientists to be close to the sea.
Silva worked with local manufacturers to develop a hexagonal ceramic tile with a tilted face to clad the building, updating the Portuguese tradition of painted-tile facades. He rotated the tiles, placing them in varying relations to each other, like barnacles or shells, to create an uneven surface. “They give the building a human scale,” he says.
Glistening in the light, the curving walls of the building read like ribbons looping around themselves in an irregular tangle. Echoes of two Guggenheims are evident—Wright’s in New York and Gehry’s in Bilbao. Silva affirms, however, that Siza is his most important reference: “The way our bodies move in a space, and the way a space invites you forward.” Like Souto de Moura, whose early buildings were very Miesian, Silva may be using Wright and Gehry to mitigate the influence of Siza’s eccentric, rectilinear forms. Whatever the case, he develops the terminal’s looping ramps and drum with an elegant economy of means, and makes this formal repertoire his own.
Detail of the patchwork of medieval glass remaining from various windows throughout the Minster re-assembled to fill the great east window.
There is a danger of running out of superlatives when trying to describe Beverley Minster. It is not only the second finest non-cathedral church in the country but is architecturally a far finer building than most of our cathedrals themselves! It will come as a surprise to many visitors to find this grand edifice simply functions today as a parish church and has never been more than collegiate, a status it lost at the Reformaton. What had added to its mystique and wealth was its status as a place of pilgrimage housing the tomb of St John of Beverley, which drew visitors and revenue until the Reformation brought an end to such fortunes and the shrine was destroyed (though the saint's bones were later rediscovered and reinterred in the nave). That this great church itself survived this period almost intact is little short of a miracle in itself.
There has been a church here since the 8th century but little remains of the earlier buildings aside from the Saxon chair near the altar and the Norman font in the nave. The present Minster's construction spans the entirety of the development of the Gothic architecture but forms a surprisingly harmonious whole nevertheless, starting with Early English in the 13h century choir and transepts (both pairs) with their lancet windows in a building phase that stopped at the first bays of the nave. Construction was then continued with the nave in the 14th century but only the traceried windows betray the emergent Decorated style, the design otherwise closely followed the work of the previous century which gives the Minster's interior such a pleasingly unified appearance (the only discernable break in construction within can be seen where the black purbeck-marble ceased to be used for certain elements beyond the eastern bay of the nave). Finally the building was completed more or less by 1420 with the soaring west front with its dramatic twin-towers in Perpendicular style (the east window must have been enlarged at this point too to match the new work at the west end).
The fabric happily survived the Reformation intact aside from the octagonal chapter-house formerly adjoining the north choir aisle which was dismantled to raise money by the sale of its materials while the church's fate was in the balance (a similar fate was contemplated for the rest of the church by its new owners until the town bought it for retention as a parish church for £100). The great swathes of medieval glass alas were mostly lost, though seemingly as much to neglect and storm-damage in the following century than the usual iconoclasm. All that survived of the Minster's original glazing was collected to form the patchwork display now filling the great east window, a colourful kaleidoscope of fragments of figures and scenes. Of the other furnishings the choir stalls are the major ensemble and some of the finest medieval canopied stalls extant with a full set of charming misericords (though most of these alas are not normally on show).
There are suprisingly few monuments of note for such an enormous cathedral-like church, but the one major exception makes up for this, the delightful canopied Percy tomb erected in 1340 to the north of the high altar. The tomb itself is surprisingly plain without any likeness remaining of the deceased, but the richly carved Decorated canopy above is alive with gorgeous detail and figurative embellishments. There are further carvings to enjoy adorning the arcading that runs around the outer perimeter of the interior, especially the north nave aisle which has the most rewarding carved figures of musicians, monsters and people suffering various ailments, many were largely restored in the 19th century but still preserve the medieval spirit of irreverent fun.
To summarise Beverley Minster would be difficult other than simply adding that if one enjoys marvelling at Gothic architecture at its best then it really shouldn't be missed and one should prioritise it over the majority of our cathedrals. It is a real gem and a delight to behold, and is happily normally open and welcoming to visitors (who must all be astonished to find this magnificent edifice is no more than a simple parish church in status!). I thoroughly enjoyed this, my second visit here (despite the best efforts of the poor weather!).
This is Anneli. I think rather than try to write a story here about Anneli I will simply copy and paste one of her facebook posts here. She's a painter, activist, mom, graphic designer, adventurer, writer and all around great person to know. I loved hanging out with her and painting her portrait. We actually collaborated on this one. I painted in pencil and watercolor and left it for her to work on. Then she painted in the background with oils. She dropped it off yesterday and I photographed it and continued working on it some more in Artrage 5, a digital painting software.
This story by Anneli comes from an adventure she took last year with her friend, Jonathan, traveling from Maine to Iceland on a container ship.
Day 5, Friday | Amuse-Bouche
We left Newfoundland last night after 12 hours loading, unloading, and fueling up before our ocean crossing. It took us about 3 days to get there from Portland, Maine. I had really big plans to write an entry every day, but have now realized I will just have to write when I have the opportunity. Mainly because I can no longer remember what day it is, and just to further mess with us they keep pushing the clock forward a half or a whole hour every day.
Argentia, Newfoundland is a small Canadian port out in nowhere, far east at the edge of the ocean. We woke up yesterday morning to see a landscape out our window that was reminiscent of Lofoten, Norway, with its dramatic and exaggerated mountains. There were people on small skiffs cruising the bay picking off puffins with rifles before scooping them into nets. FYI: Up here, guns don’t kill puffins — men and women in black ski masks kill puffins. The port was literally a concrete dock with a few small buildings and pretty much nothing else. No stores, restaurants, shops — it is about as functional as it gets. So much for tax-free shopping — not that we need anything.
Since we started on this trip, Jonathan and I have been literally and figuratively stunned by the amount of hearty food we’ve been served. Not just some Cheerios from a box, either — serious, home-cooked, no-bullshit hot meals at 8:00, 12:00, 18:00 — and for good measure there is some sort of baked pastries and coffee at 15:00 just in case the other three meals aren’t enough to give you cardiac arrest. If you have a problem with gluten, meat, or sugar — this trip is decidedly not for you.
Yesterday everyone had their hot breakfast as usual and suited up to go out and do their respective jobs. This was really the first time we had an opportunity to see them in action as they secured Selfoss to the shore and started a long, hard day juggling massive containers on and off the ship, in a snow shower no less. One thing is increasingly apparent: this is no work for pussies. The alcohol ban on board makes a lot more sense when you understand what a detail oriented job this is. Mistakes can result in huge losses, not only in profit but in lives. Precision and safety are everything.
Knowing this, our meals make more sense as well. Hearty traditional food for hard work — but it also it means important downtime for the crew. Something steady, dependable and enjoyable. A family meal of sorts where everyone gathers for their food. And arguably a nice reward for not dropping a container on someone. The food is the social connection, along with hanging out in the smoking room. Kalli tells me that the “smoking room” is a newer concept, that smoking used to be an important social connection between all the crew onboard, a common pastime that has been somewhat toned down by the designation of a specific area for this activity.
“I guess I need to start smoking,” I tell Kalli. I’ve probably smoked a half a pack since the beginning of the trip in second-hand smoke alone.
He shrugs, “It’s never too late to start.”
Just a few days ago, still somewhat full from some delicious hot lunch only a few hours earlier, I’m working in our cabin when Captain Kalli comes by. Jonathan is presumably hanging off the ship somewhere like a squirrel with his GoPro.
“There’s a special surprise for coffee time today,” he says.
Naturally, I’m delighted at this unexpected news. I love surprises.
“Where is Jonathan? There’s a surprise for him, too,” he continues.
“Oh, I’m sure he’s still on the ship. Hopefully.”
Excited by the prospect of a surprise, I scurry down to the mess room and am met by Jona, the only female crew member. She is holding a plate for me. The anticipation is palpable.
A cream puff! Who doesn’t love cream puffs? A cream puff shaped like a…
A chocolate covered penis cream puff.
I burst out laughing. Jona is visibly pleased.
“I made these for you,” she says, proudly. “Here’s one for Jonathan,” she shows me the plate with a pair of beautifully formed, perky breasts.
Jonathan is not yet here and has no idea that a spectacular set of boobies are waiting for him along with some delicious cocoa.
“You are an artist, Jona.”
I’m about one coconut sprinkled testicle in when Jonathan shows up and receives his plate, somewhat dumbfounded. He clearly wasn’t expecting this either.
“You get the boobs,” I say matter-of-factly in-between a mouth full of balls. There really is no proper etiquette for eating these sorts of things.
I look around and can confirm that everyone else has normal cream puffs. I am at once honored and flattered. After eating the lamb testicles in aspic a few days ago, I feel that this is some sort of reward. We’re officially in now. Phallic karma.
Done with my cream puff, and after a few highly inappropriate comments about the pastry that I won’t mention here, I head for the smoking room.
I think I need a cigarette.
Cathedral Peak and Cathedral Lakes are stunning natural landmarks located in Yosemite National Park, California. Cathedral Peak, standing at 10,912 feet, is a striking granite pinnacle renowned for its dramatic spire and challenging climbing routes. It was first ascended by the famous naturalist John Muir in 1869. Below the peak, Cathedral Lakes consist of two beautiful alpine lakes, the Upper and Lower Cathedral Lakes, nestled amidst picturesque meadows and surrounded by the Sierra Nevada's majestic peaks. The area is a popular destination for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts, offering breathtaking views, serene landscapes, and opportunities for rock climbing, camping, and photography.
A newly installed window in the north aisle, designed and made by Helen Whittaker of the Barley Studio, commemorates the local dead of the Afghan War.
All Saints in Pavement, York is distinguished by its dramatic octagonal tower, a major landmark of the city and masterpiece of late medieval architecture. The church itself is of mainly 14th/15th century date, though lost its chancel in the following centuries. The west window contains reset late 14th century panels depicting the Passion.
This church is generally open and welcoming to visitors.
🇬🇧 English
Lao Shan (Laoshan) is a sacred mountain on China’s eastern coast, near Qingdao, famous for its dramatic granite peaks, clear springs, and strong Taoist heritage.
It is considered one of the birthplaces of Taoism, with temples dating back over 2,000 years. Laoshan is renowned for its pure mountain water, believed to have exceptional quality, and for its rare combination of mountain landscapes and direct sea views, which is unusual in China.
The mountain has long inspired poets, philosophers, and martial artists, symbolizing harmony between nature, spirit, and the Dao.
🇨🇳 中文（简体）
崂山（Lao Shan） 位于中国山东省青岛市东部，是中国著名的道教名山之一。
崂山以奇峰怪石、清泉瀑布和临海山景而闻名，是中国少有的“海上第一名山”。这里被认为是道教的重要发源地之一，至今仍保留着大量古老的道观。
崂山的山泉水极为著名，被认为清澈甘甜，富含灵气，长期被用于茶叶和传统养生文化中。
🇭🇷 Hrvatski
Lao Shan (Laoshan) je sveta planina na istočnoj obali Kine, u blizini Qingdaoa, poznata po strmim granitnim vrhovima, čistim izvorima i snažnoj daoističkoj tradiciji.
Smatra se jednim od najvažnijih povijesnih središta taoizma, s hramovima starima više od dvije tisuće godina. Posebnost Lao Shana je rijetka kombinacija planine i mora, gdje se s vrhova pruža pogled izravno na Žuto more.
Planina simbolizira sklad prirode, duhovnosti i dugovječnosti te ima važno mjesto u kineskoj filozofiji i kulturi.
Sunset on the River - 1867
George Inness (1825 - 1894)
The play of sunshine and shadow across the scene of cows grazing and thunderclouds in the distance creates a dynamic mood in the landscape. George Inness believed there was a direct correspondence between the natural and spiritual realms, as theorized by the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). The artist hoped that, by showing the drama and dynamism of nature, his paintings would transport viewers to a higher emotional or mental plane.
George Inness distinguished himself among the Hudson River School painters by pursuing a more modern aesthetic of landscape painting. Unlike his contemporaries, who believed in creating realistic canvases of nature's vastness, Inness felt that "paintings were not necessarily pictures, and it was the artist's function, even his obligation, by an aesthetic and expressive reorganization, to interpret nature and not merely depict it." (as quoted in N. Cikovsky, Jr. and M. Quick, George Inness, Los Angeles, California, 1985, p. 19) Inness' New York based works from the 1860s are widely admired today because they are closest to the familiar manner of Hudson River School painting in those years. Yet these works also begin to show the artist's painting philosophy of incorporating atmospheric climate and expression which brings deeper spiritual meaning into his compositions. Inness went on to produce a body of work marked by a more subjective and ultimately more modern aesthetic than that of his contemporaries. With its dramatic composition and high degree of finish, Sunset on the River is an extraordinary masterwork from this important transitional phase in the artist's career.
Painted in 1867 near the town of Leeds, New York, Sunset on the River presents an expansive view of cattle grazing in a broad pasture which slopes toward a river, partially visible on the left. On the right a stone wall borders a road, along which a covered wagon moves toward a mill with a smoking chimney near the water. From a slightly elevated vantage point, the viewer looks across the expanse to another light-struck pasture in the middle ground extending to wooded foothills, which give rise to a large mountain in the distance. Storm clouds fill the sky, dappling the land with dark streaks intermingled with bursts of light which pierce the foliage and rake across the landscape.
Inness' use of light and atmosphere in Sunset on the River evokes mood and meaning. Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., writes: "In all of the paintings of the 1860's, nature is not merely depicted straightforwardly, but is made articulate: moods of calm are emphatically peaceful, rainbows are clearly portentous, storms are dramatic and threatening, sunsets are gloriously radiant, and bleakness is unmistakably harsh and cold. In 1865, a writer remarked that Inness 'signally [possessed the power of] seizing upon the critical moment in some marked phase of nature.' The result is that one is made aware of the spiritual significance of nature through the way in which its visible forms and effects reflect some higher power." (George Inness, London, 1971, p. 38) The painting's dramatically changing sky, along with the tranquil setting of workers setting off to the mill, seems to express a sense of hope and prosperity in the wake of the Civil War. Very likely, Inness' contemporaries saw in this painting a theme that would pervade American art after the war--the return to peace, industry, and prosperity. The movement and energy of the present work's lush brushwork, paint texture and strong color choices underscore the emotional sense of calm after a storm.
Michael Quick considers Sunset on the River a stunning success of Inness' style of the 1860s. He writes: "This handsome, fully developed painting, with its dramatic lighting and clouds, is one of the most impressive of 1867, looking ahead to the more emotional interpretation of nature seen in Inness's work at the end of the decade. The view is based upon a sketch he used again in Approaching Storm, 1869. In this case, both the foreground and the distance are deeper, and the season is full summer, rather than fall. An unusual element is the mill with its smoking chimney, near what appears to be a building in ruins. Inness drew attention to the mill by both silhouetting it against the lighted field beyond and by making it the object of the road's long diagonal. Brick textile mills were numerous in the Leeds area, but this factory seems out of place in the otherwise entirely pastoral landscape. The textured foreground and the blacklighting of the trees are also unusual for works of 1867, no doubt reflecting the extra effort to add interest to this painting." (George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. one, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2007, p. 278) His inclusion of the factory and its workers appears here to add an element of the contemporary to his idealized landscape. Where other artists of the 1850s and 1860s might choose to render more purely pastoral views, Inness embraced the new.
All of the artistic devices evident in Sunset on the River convey emotional power. The painting's dramatic recession, extreme contrasts and strong color scheme induce the spiritual response that Inness began to suggest in the 1860s, and continued to evoke in his paintings throughout his career.
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This World Class attraction was everything we expected and more. Construction has just begun on a major expansion, but that has been managed in such a way that it does not in any way detract from the experience now.
This album focuses on the artwork inside the buildings and on the other interior spaces including the Eleven Restaurant and the Gift Shop. A separate album posted a few days ago is devoted to the two April mornings that we spent exploring just some of the trails that crisscross the 120 acres of Arkansas forest around the museum.
Alice Walton and her co-creative team can be proud of the vision and execution of everything on this 120 acre site.
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"Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, spearheaded the Walton Family Foundation's involvement in developing Crystal Bridges. The museum's glass-and-wood design by architect Moshe Safdie and engineer Buro Happold features a series of pavilions nestled around two creek-fed ponds and forest trails. The 217,000 square feet complex includes galleries, several meeting and classroom spaces, a library, a sculpture garden, a museum store designed by architect Marlon Blackwell, a restaurant and coffee bar, named Eleven after the day the museum opened, "11/11/11". Crystal Bridges also features a gathering space that can accommodate up to 300 people. Additionally, there are outdoor areas for concerts and public events, as well as extensive nature trails. It employs approximately 300 people, and is within walking distance of downtown Bentonville."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Bridges_Museum_of_American_Art
crystalbridges.org/nature-trails/
...
Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais
Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais is a Roman Catholic parish church located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, on Place Saint-Gervais in the Marais district, east of City Hall (Hôtel de Ville). The current church was built between 1494 and 1657, on the site of two earlier churches; the facade, completed last, was the first example of the French baroque style in Paris. The organists of the church included Louis Couperin and his nephew François Couperin, two of the most celebrated composers and musicians of the Baroque period; the organ they used can still be seen today. The church contains remarkable examples of medieval carved choir stalls, stained glass from the 16th century, 17th century sculpture, and modern stained glass by Sylvie Gaudin and Claude Courageux. Saint-Gervais was a parish church until 1975, when it became the headquarters of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem.
History
A church dedicated to Saints Gervasius and Protasius, two Christian martyrs from Milan, is recorded as existing on the site in the 7th century, making it one of the first parish churches on the right bank in Paris. It was attended mostly by boatmen and fishermen, because it was close to the river port at the Place de Grève. It was built on a slight hill, the Monceau Saint-Gervais, to be safe from the floods of the Seine. After the completion of the wall of Philippe-Auguste, built between 1190 and 1209, the neighborhood was protected against attack and the population began to grow. The church had come under the sponsorship of several of the important confreries or guilds of Paris, including the wine-merchants. With their financial help, a larger church was built on the site in the early 13th century. .[1]
Construction of the present church began in 1494, but was delayed by the Wars of religion and by a shortage of funds. It was begun in the Gothic style; the chapels of the apse were finished in 1530 and the transept in 1578.[2] While the interior of the church was largely Gothic, the facade was built in an original new style, the French Baroque, on a plan by architect Salomon de Brosse (1571–1626). The first stone of the facade was placed by the young King Louis XIII in 1616. Between 1600 and 1628, a second row of chapels was built on the north side including the golden chapel ornamented with painted woodwork.[3]
During the 17th and 18th century the church was attended by many members of the aristocratic families who lived in the Marais, including Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, and the Chancellor of Louis XIV, Michel Le Tellier, whose funeral monument is found in the church.
Beginning in 1653, the church employed and sheltered the Couperin family, one of the most famous dynasties of French musicians, for more than two centuries. On one side of the church, the home of the celebrated harpsichordists, organists, and composers still stands, with a plaque commemorating the Couperins' tenure. The organ used by Louis and François Couperin still exists today inside the church; it was built by the most famous organ builders of the time, François-Henri Clicquot, Louis-Alexandre Clicquot, and Robert Clicquot.
In the 18th century, the facade of the church was greatly admired, though it was nearly blocked from view by a row of houses. Voltaire wrote, "It is a masterpiece which is lacking nothing except a place from which to see it." The houses blocking the view were finally demolished in 1854, opening up the view of the facade. .[4]
During the French Revolution, the church was emptied of many of its treasures and turned into a Temple of Reason and Youth, before being returned to the Church in 1802.
On 29 March 1918, a German shell, fired by the long-range "Paris Gun", fell on the church, killing 91 people and wounding 68 others; the explosion collapsed the roof when a Good Friday service was in progress. This was the worst single incident involving a loss of civilian lives during the German bombardment of Paris in 1918.[5] Among those killed was Rose-Marie Ormond Andre-Michel, the niece and a favorite model of John Singer Sargent.[6]
In 1975 the church became the headquarters of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, founded in that same year by Père Pierre-Marie Delfieu with the authorisation of the then Archbishop of Paris, François Marty. The order is devoted to carrying on monastic life in an urban context; most of its members work part-time in civil occupations. The church is known for its distinctive and ecumenical liturgy; for example, adopting Lutheran hymn music and Orthodox troparia. The order has founded several other communities in France, at Mont St. Michel, Vezelay, and Magdala Sologne and elsewhere in Europe, in Florence, Brussels, Cologne, Warsaw, and Montreal.
Five new stained glass windows by Sylvie Gaudin were added to the southwest chevet of the church in 1993–95. Another series of six windows by Claude Courageux was added in the early 2000s in the upper level of the church, in the south nave, the transept and the choir, replacing those destroyed over the centuries.[7]
Facade
The facade of the church was begun in 1616, well after the nave of the church, with the cornerstone laid by Louis XIII. The design was by Salomon de Brosse (1571–1626), whose other major Paris work was the Luxembourg Palace. While the nave of the church was late or flamboyant gothic, the facade introduced an entirely new classical style, which opened the way for the French Baroque. The facade placed the three classical orders of architecture one atop the other. The ground floor featured three bays with pairs of columns with capitals of the simplest Doric order, with a classical pediment. Above this is a level of three bays with columns of the ionic order, and above that is a single bay with paired columns of the Corinthian order, holding up a curved pediment. In order to attach the new facade to the gothic portion of the church, de Brosse designed a traverse and two semicircular chapels on either side of the facade. The facade served as model for other churches in France and Europe, most notably the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, the church of the Jesuits, not far away in the Marais, which was the first church in Paris built entirely in the new style. [8]
Since the Middle Ages, an elm tree has been planted in front of the church; it served as a meeting place, and a place where disputes were sometimes settled by judges. The trees were replanted regularly over the centuries. Carvings of the trees from earlier centuries are found on the walls of some of the neighboring buildings.
Nave
The nave of the church (1600–1620) is notable for its dramatic height and the simplicity and purity of its lines. While the lower level of the nave is late gothic, the upper level of the nave shows the influence of the Renaissance, with large semi-circular arches containing a series of large stained glass windows, filling the church with light. The upper windows are 21st-century, by Claude Courageux, illustrating the story of Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, and the patriarchs and their spouses. The ceiling of the nave, where the arches of the walls come together in an elaborate embroidery, symbolizes the vaults of heaven.
Choir stalls
The wooden choir stalls (16th–17th century), from the reigns of François I and Henri II, are richly carved with scenes of daily life, the different professions, and grotesque animals. Out of sight from those attending mass, they were designed as a place where the Canons of the church could relax during the service. Some of the figures were too intimate for more puritanical later centuries, and had to be censored, including a carved image of a man and woman bathing together.[8]
Chapel of the Virgin
The chapel of the Virgin, at the back of the church, has a dramatic late gothic vaulted ceiling, featuring a hanging crown of stone 2.5 meters in diameter, and abstract designs resembling flames. The room is often used for silent meditation by church visitors. The chapel has some of the oldest stained glass windows in the flamboyant gothic style, made by Jean Chastellain in 1517, illustrating the life of the Virgin Mary. [8] Another remarkable window by Chastellain, "The Judgement of Solomon", made in 1533 in the colorful Renaissance style, is found in a side chapel.
Painting and sculpture
The church contains a number of notable works of art.
- A painting by the Venetian artist Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734), Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Vital intercede for the souls in Pugatory, located in the Chapel of Saint Philomene. This was brought from Venice to Paris by Napoleon after his Italian campaign.
- The paintings The Beheading of John the Baptist and The Adoration of the Magi by Claude Vignon (1593–1670), located in the Chapel of the Virgin.
- A statue of Christ carved in oak by Antoine-Augustin Préault (1809-1879) in the Chapel of the Virgin.
- Statues from the funeral monument of Michel Tellier (1603–1685) the Chancellor of Louis XIV, by Pierre Mazeline (1632–1685) and Simon Hurtelle (1648–1724). The figures include the Chancellor, in prayer; a weeping 'genie' praying at his feet; and two draped figures representing Faith and Religion. Two other figures from the group, Justice and Prudence, are found in the Louvre.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St-Gervais-et-St-Protais
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St Gervais et St Protais has 21 mid 16th century misericords and 21 early 17th century misericords.
More information can be found here:-
www.misericords.co.uk/stgervaisandstprotais.html
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Saint Gervais Saint Protais Church - Paris
A church dedicated to the twin martyrs Gervais and Protais
Saint Gervais Saint Protais Church is located on the eastern side of the Hôtel-de-Ville.
It stands on a hillock known as Monceau Saint-Gervais and replaced the Chapelle Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais.
This chapel served the fishing village that developed on the small mound during the 5th century. This community was one of the few on the Rive Droite, which then was a vast marsh today known as Marais.
The chapel was dedicated to the twin Roman officers who were martyred under the reign of Nero (1st century AD).
Place Saint-Gervais, the church square was initially called Carrefour de l'Orme. It was named after the huge elm that marked its centre and was felled at the French Revolution.
It was enlarged and renamed during Haussmann's renovation of Paris of the mid 19th century.
The cemetery was decommissioned in 1765 to give way to Place Baudoyer, the square that serves the town hall of the 4th district.
Sarcophagi and burial artifacts dating back to the 1st century AD were discovered during construction works.
Saint Gervais Saint Protais Church ,is a fine illustration of French architecture.
The Hôtel-de-Ville district developed in the 13th century and gave rise to a thriving community. The little Saint Gervais Saint Protais Chapel became obsolete, a larger church was much needed!
However, the construction of the new church dragged on from 1494 to 1660 due to the lack of funds.
Amazingly, this slow progress turned Saint Gervais Saint Protais Church into a perfect illustration of the evolution of French architecture.
Salomon de Brosse designed the French Baroque (Jesuit Style) facade with the three classical orders, the first of its style in Paris.
The 25m high Gothic Flamboyant nave and the 16th and 17th century stained glass windows are equally impressive.
Francois-Henri Clicquot built the organ in 1601. The wind-chests, reeds and two-thirds of its stops are original and turn the instrument into one of the oldest organs in Paris.
The composer François Couperin is among the prestigious organists who played in Saint Gervais Saint Protais Church, which is to this day a major centre of Sacred Music.
The church has two other, but smaller, organs which are located in the side chapels
www.travelfranceonline.com/saint-gervais-saint-protais-ch...
See also:-
www.spottinghistory.com/view/4397/st-gervais-et-st-protai...
East 42nd Street, Midtown Manhattan
The Chrysler Building, a stunning statement in the Art Deco style by architect William Van Alen, embodies the romantic essence of the New York City skyscraper. Built in 1928-30 for Walter P. Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation, it was "dedicated to world commerce and industry."- The tallest building in the world when completed in 1930, it stood proudly on the New York skyline as a personal symbol of Walter Chrysler and the strength of his corporation.
History of Construction
The Chrysler Building had its beginnings in an office building project for William H. Reynolds, a real-estate developer and promoter and former New York State senator. Reynolds had acquired a long-term lease in 1921 on a parcel of property at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street owned by the Cooper Union tor the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1927 architect William Van Alen was hired to design an office tower to be called the Reynolds Building for the site. Publicized as embodying new principles in skyscraper design,*' the projected building was to be 67 stories high rising 808 feet, and it was "to be surmounted by a glass dome, which when lighted from within, will give the effect of a great jewelled sphere."-' In October, 1928, however, the office building project and the lease on the site were taken over by Walter P. Chrysler, head of the Chrysler Corporation, who was seeking to expand his interests into the real estate field.
Walter Percy Chrysler (1875-1940), one of America's foremost automobile manufacturers, was a self-made man who worked his way up through the mechanical an; manufacturing aspects of the railroad business before joining the Buick Motor Company as works manager in 1912. Because of his success in introducing new processes and efficiencies into the automobile plant, he rose quickly through the administrative ranks of General Motors (which had absorbed Buick) before personality conflicts with William C. Durant, head of General Motors, forced Chrysler to leave. In 1921 he reorganized Willys-Overland Company, and then took over as chairman of the reorganization and management committee of the Maxwell Motor Company, eventually assuming the presidency. This enabled Chrysler to introduce in 1924 the car bearing his name which presented such innovations as four-wheel hydraulic brakes and high compression motor.
Over 50 million dollars worth of cars were sold the first year, and in 1925, the Maxwell Motor Company became the Chrysler Corporation, Dodge Brothers was acquired in 1928 giving the Chrysler Corporation additional manufacturing facilities, a famous line of cars, and putting it in a position to challenge the leadership of Ford and General Motor By 1935, when Chrysler retired from the presidency of the Chrysler Corporation to become chairman of the board, the company was second in the automobile industry ir. volume of production.
It was while Chrysler was aggressively expanding his corporation in 1928 that he took over the office building project from Reynolds. In his autobiography, Chrysler said that he had the building constructed so that his sons would have something to be responsible for. He could not have been unaware, however, that the building would become a personal symbol and further the image of the Chrysler Corporation — even though no corporate funds were used in its financing or construction. To that end Chrysler worked with architect William Van Alen to make the building a powerful and striking design.
William Van Alen (1882-1954) studied at Pratt Institute before beginning his architectural career in the office or Clarence True, a speculative builder. Severs! years later while continuing his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute 01 Design in the atelier of Donn Barber, Van Alen entered the office of Clinton * Russell as a designer. In 1908 he won the Paris Prize of the Beaux-Arts Institute and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Atelier lLaloux. According to architect Francis S. Swales, "
His work at the Ecole indicated that the training was providing him with the mental freedom necessary to think independently, instead of merely the usual school -cargo of elements of architecture and a technique or competition by rules."0 Returning to New York in 1912 he introduced the concept of "garden11 apartments and also designed the Albemarle Building, a skyscraper without cornices. In the 1920s he became known for his innovative shop-front designs and for a series of restaurants for the Child's chain. With the Chrysler Building, Van Alen was able to apply modern principles of design to the skyscraper but at the same time created such a striking image that critic Kenneth Murchison dubbed him "the Ziegfield of his profession.
'In the 1930s he pioneered in prefabricated housing designs although they were never widely produced. Van Alen served for four years in the 1940s as director of sculpture for the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and he was a member of the American Institute of Architects and the National Academy of Design.
Work began on the Chrysler Building on October 15, 1928, when Chrysler acquire the lease, with clearance of the site. Construction proceeded rapidly; foundations to a depth of 69 feet were completed early in 1929, and the steel framework was completed by the end of September of that year.
The design of the building, however, was altered from that for Reynolds. Chrysler, in his autobiography, credits himself for suggesting that it be taller than the 1000-foot Eiffel Tower. The design of the crowning dome was also changed, and the addition of a spire, which the architect called a "vertex," made the Chrysler at 1046 feet the tallest building in the world at the time. Kenneth Murchison fancifully depicts Chrysler urging Van Alen to win the race to construct the world's tallest building.
Van Alen himself had personal reasons for achieving this goal, as a former partner, ii. Craig Severance, was constructing the Bank of Manhattan, 40 Wall Street, at the same time with the aim of making it the world's tallest skyscraper. Thinking that the Chrysler Building would be only 925 feet high, Severance added a 50-foot flagpole to his building making it 927 feet. Meanwhile, Van Alen designed the 185-foot spire which would make the Chrysler Building the tallest. The spire was fabricated, then delivered to the building in five sections, and assembled secret at the 65th floor.
In November, 1929, it was finally raised into position by a 20-ton derrick through a fire tower in the center of the building, then riveted i place, the whole operation taking about 90 minutes. This engineering feat capture the popular imagination as well as that of professionals, and it helped to further the progressive image of the Chrysler Building. However, the Chrysler lost its height distinction two years later with the construction of the Empire State Building.
The first tenants moved into the Chrysler Building in April, 1930, even though construction was not completed. Formal opening ceremonies were held on May 27, 1930 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the 42nd Street Property Owners and Merchants Association. A bronze tablet was placed in the lobby of the building "in recongnition of Mr. Chrysler's contribution to civic advancement." The building was considered finished in August, 1930, but curiously, the completion date recorded in the records of the Manhattan Building Department is February 19, 1932.
The Chrysler Building and Art Deco
Waiter P. Chrysler wanted a progressive image and a personal symbol. Van Alen strove* to create such an image using the tenets of modernism as he interpreted them. In so doing he designed a building which has come to be regarded as one of the outstanding examples of Art Deco architecture.
The term. Art Deco, which is also referred to by several different names such as the Style Moderne and Modernistic, is adopted from the Exposition International: des Arts Decoratifs et Industrie]s Modernes--an important European influence or. the American Art Deco sty!e--held in Paris in 1925.
In the period following the first World War, architects in Europe and the united States had begun to simplify traditional design forms and to use -industrial materials in innovative ways in order to characterize the modern age.
The Art Deco style seemed to lend itself particularly well to skyscraper design because the skyscraper, more than any other building type, epitomized progress, innovation, and a new modern age. Although the Art Deco style was short-lived, it coincided with a great building boom at the end of the 1920s in New York. The many-skyscrapers which were erected in the Art Deco style gave New York and its skyline a characteristic and romantic image, popularized in theater and films, which persisted until the next great building boom of the early 1960s. In the Chrysler Building, Van Alen used a variety of materials, techniques, and design forms which are characteristic of Art Deco.
The Chrysler Building rises 77 stories in a series of setbacks which accord with the regulations of the 1916 New York zoning prdinance. As a freestanding tower occupying about half a block, the building is visible from four sides. Like many Art Deco architects. Van Alen believed strongly in designing steel structures so that they would not be imitative of masonry construction.'- Also unlike many earlier skyscrapers, the design of the Chrysler did not follow the formula of a column with ornamental base, bare shaft, and ornamental capital; rather the design was to be of interest throughout the entire height.13 Both the great height of the building and the mandated setbacks aided Van Alen in making this design decision,
The first four stories of the building cover the entire site arid are faced with polished black Shastone granite at the first story and white Georgian marble above. The most striking features of this portion of the building are the two entrances, on Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Each entrance rises for h height of three stories in proscenium fashion and is enframed by Shastone granite. Set back within the deep reveals of the entrances are sets of revolving doors beneath intricately patterned metal and glass screens.
The treatment is such as to heighten the dramatic effect of entering the building --a concern of Art Deco design There is a one-story entrance on 43rd Street. Also at first story level are iarge show windows for shops, framed in metal. Windows for offices may be seen at the second, third, and fourth stories. Ornamental spandrels are set at the bases of the second story windows. The exposed metal frames of the entries and windows art of "Nirosta" steel, a kind of rust-resistant, chromium nickel steel, manufactured for the first time in the United States specifically for the Chrysler Building according to a German formula from Krupp. This use of a new. material is in keeping with Art Deco principles.
Above the fourth story, the building is penetrated on the east and west sides by light courts extending to the face of the tower, while on the north and south the structure gradually rises in a series of setbacks. The facing of the walls through the first setback at the sixteenth story is of white brick with contrast! white marble strips creating a basketweave pattern. The use of a variety of colo and textures is characteristic of Art Deco. Windows are set in a regular grid pattern. An. unusual feature of all windows in the building is that they have no reveals; frames are set flush with the walls. This was seen is another means of indicating modernity and progress.
In the next setback, ending at the twenty-fourth floor, there is a vertical emphasis with piers of white brick alternating with vertical window strips. Aluminum spandrels between the windows aid this effect. Spandrels at the twentieth twenty-first, and twenty-second floors are adorned with polished abstract relief ornament. At the corners of the twenty-fourth floor are placed conventionalized pineapples, about nine feet high, of "Nirosta" steel, which had been fabricated < the site.
The next three stories, through the twenty-seventh, form the third setback. Horizontal banding and zigzag motifs in gray and black brick contrast with the verticality of the setback below. The fourth setback, to the thirty-first story marks the emergence of the tower shaft from the lower masses. At the thirty-first floor the corners of the building are extended outward and crowned by huge ornamental Chrysler radiator caps in "Nirosta" steel, spanning about 15 feet.
The- extension was necessary to overcome the optical effect that would otherwise make the tower appear wider at the top than at the base. Also at this floor is a frieze ir. gra; and white brick of stylized racing automobiles with polished steel hub caps. Th ornamental features are overt symbols of the Chrysler Corporation and characteristic of the types of effects created by Art Deco architects.
The building had a number of innovative and desirable features. THe soundproofed office partitions were of steel made in interchangeable sections so that arranges! of any office suite could be changed quickly and conveniently. Under-floor duct systems carried wiring for telephone and electric outlets.
The elevators, specifically at Chrysler's instruction, were capable of speeds of 1000 feet per minute although city codes in effect in 1930 only allowed 700 feet per minute. The building also had three of the longest continuous elevator shafts in the world To enhance public access to the building, an underground arcade led to the IRT subway system. The connection was strongly opposed by the IRT, but Chrysler prevailed and the passageway was built at his expense. In the dome was the private-Cloud Club, which still exists, and, in the very topmost floor, a public observation deck.
On display was Walter P. Chrysler's box of handmade tools, the emblem of his enterprise and personal success. The observatory has been closed for many years.
Conclusion
Critics such as Lewis Mumford who favored the International Style denigrated the Chrysler Building for its "inane romanticism,... meaningless voluptuousness, ... /and/ void symbolism," " but it was these qualities which captured the popular imagination and helped make it one of the most famous buildings in New York. We can appreciate the comments of the editor of Architectural Porum who wrote:
It stands by itself, something apart and alone. It is simply the realization, the fulfillment in metal and masonry, of a one-man dream, a dream of such ambition and such magnitude as to defy the comprehension and the criticism of ordinary men or by ordinary standards.
The Chrysler Building still stands proudly in the New York skyline, its gleaming spire and soaring tower capturing the eye and imagination of the viewer. While it may no longer symbolize the Chrysler Corporation, it still embodies the romantic essence of the Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, with its dramatic effects, elegant materials, and vivid ornamental details. Built as a monument to progress in commerce and industry, it remains as one of New York's finest office buildings and great examples of the Art Deco style.
- From the 1978 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Midtown Manhattan, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Chanin Building, built in 1927-29, rises 56 stories at the comer of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Designed by the architectural firm of Sloan & Robertson with sculptural decoration by Rene Chambellan, it is a major example of Art Deco architecture in New York City. Erected under the supervision of the Chanin Construction Company, the building still serves as the organization’s headquarters.
Irwin S. Chanin (b.1892) established his firm in 1919 to build one-family houses in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, after studying engineering at Cooper union, working on subway construction in New York and Philadelphia, and participating in the construction of a poison gas factory for the U.S. Amy during World War I.
His first venture in Bensonhurst was so successful that he brought his brother Henry I. Chanin (1893-1973) into the firm, and they proceeded to build more houses and also apartment buildings in Brooklyn and then erected an office building in downtown Brooklyn. Extending their activities to Manhattan in 1924, they constructed the Fur Center Building. 'That same year the Chan ins expanded into the theater business, 'eventually building eight theaters, including the fabulous 6000-seat Roxy. The Chanins also managed a number of these theaters.
The 1400-roan Hotel Lincoln, on Eighth Avenue between 44th and 45th. Streets was completed and opened by the Chanins in 1S28. Following the completion of the Chanin Building in 1929, the firm expanded its activities into the Manhattan apartment field, building the Majestic and Century apartment houses on Central Park West. Extensive suburban building activity occupied much of the firm's tire during the 1930s and 1940s. A notable example was Green Acres, a residential park community in Valley Stream, Long Island, begun in 1936. During World War II the firm built 2000 pro-fabricated dwellings in Newport News,Virginia, five hangars at National Airport in Washington, the Naval Or dance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland, and five Navy powder magazine buildings in Indian Head, Maryland.
Tte firm has also built numerous manufacturing buildings in the New York City area and the impressive Coney Island Pumping Station for the City of New York. By 1952 when Irwin S. Chanin was profiled in the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, the Chanin Organization was composed of approximately 25 firms and corporations engaged in architecture, engineering, and construction, and in ownership and operation of real estate.
In August 1926 the Chanins acquired a 105-year leasehold on the site of the Manhattan Storage Warehouse on the west side of Lexington Avenue between 41st and 42nd Streets in order to build their new office tower. Plans were filed and work begun in 1927. When the steel structure work was completed on July 2, 1928, the Chanins followed their traditional practice of driving two gold rivets into a column on the uppermost floor. On January 23, 1929, exactly one year after Irwin S. Chanin drove the first rivet into the st.ee! frame, construction was completed—testimony to the skill of the workmen and the efficiency of the Chanin Construction Company. It was opened for business that January 29 and was hailed as "another step in the evolution of the skyscraper . At that time, it was the first major skyscraper to have been built in the area around Grand Central Terminal, anticipating a major shift in the business district of the city. Other notable skyscrapers such as the Chrysler and Daily News Buildings soon followed. Its 660-foot height was then exceeded only by the Woolworth Building and Metropolitan Life Tower in New York and the Cleveland Terminal Building in Cleveland. Irwin S. Chanin was not, however, interested in creating the world's tallest office building but rather in building an efficient, up-to-date, progressive structure that would attract the modern business man and be a credit to the Chanin firm.
To create this image, he commissioned the architectural firm of Sloan & Robertson.
Sloan & Robertson was one of the major New York architectural firms of the 1920s and '30s. John Sloan (1888-1954) studied architecture at New York University, then supervised construction for the U. S. Army In various capacities between 1900 and 1920. In private practice in 1920, he received the commission for the Pershing Square Building, 100 East U2nd Street. He formed a partnership in 1924 with T. Markoe Robertson (1878.-1962) who had been educated at Yale University and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In addition to the Chanin Building, the firm was responsible for the Graybar Building, 420 Lexington Avenue; the Maritime Exchange Building, 80 Broad Street; the 29 Broadway Office Building; the Plaza Building, 625 Madison Avenue; apartment buildings at 1 Beekman Place and 895 Park Avenue; and alterations, modernization, and an annex for the St. Regis Hotel.
The firm was also active 'in the design of buildings for hospitals and institutions, including the House of Detention for Women at 10 Greenwich Avenue, the Ward's Island Sewage Disposal Plant, the Rikers Island Penitentiary, buildings for the Harlem Hospital, and the Southampton Hospital, Architectural plans for the West Side Elevated Highway between Canal and 72nd Streets and the New York State exhibit building, marine amphitheatre and stage at the 1939 New York World's Fair were also carried out by the firm. In the Chanin Building as in so much of their work during the 1930s, they created a striking example of Art Deco architecture, using that most characteristic Art Deco building type, the skyscraper.
The Chanin Building rises 56 stories in a series of setbacks culminating in a tower, designed in accordance with the 1916 zoning ordinance. The site itself, which was bounded by streets on three sides, was governed by three sets of zoning rules. This made the tower rather than the street frontage the controlling factor in regard to massing. Critic Matlack Price praised the Chanin Building as "an impressive realization of the most hopeful predictions that were made years ago, when the zoning laws first imposed the set-back restrictions on tall structures. At once it becane necessary to design in
masses rather than in facades." The design of the tower was also influenced by the widely-publicized entry submitted by Eliel Saarinen in the competition for a new building for the Chicago Tribune (1922) .
The Saarinen design proved a fertile source for many Art Deco architects.
The first 17 stories completely cover tine plot except on the center of trie Lexington Avenue facade which is recessed above the fourth story. Major setbacks begin above the seventeenth story, forming a pyramidal base for the tower which rises uninterrupted from the thirtieth to the fifty-second story. The upper four stories of the tower are further recessed and accented with buttresses. The steel frame is clad with buff brick, terra cotta, and limestone, and is ornamented in such a way as to emphasize seme of the special functions within.
As was the customary in skyscraper design, the architects were interested in establishing a clearly-defined base for the composition and a strong interest at and relationship to the street. The first floor was intended for shops. Originally the plate glass shop windows were enclosed by bronze enframements set in Belgian black marble.
Later alterations have obscured sane of the original detail. Also at first floor level are major entrances on Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Above the first floor runs a bronze frieze telling the story of evolution. It shows different kinds of plant and animal life, beginning with low marine forms, then more complex forms, and finally birds and fish. At the second and third floors, which were intended for financial institutions, are triple window groups framed in bronze and divided between the floors by bronze spandrel panels with characteristic Art Deco ornament.
Each window group is flanked by limestone piers with ornamented terra-cotta capitals. Hie windows above the entrances are given a distinctive treatment with ornamental spandrel panels of a different design. Incorporated into the window framing are curved bronze supports holding canopies above the entrances. The canopies themselves have been altered. The fourth story is completely covered with an elaborate pattern of stylized plant forms executed in terra cotta. The use of such stylized forms is a characteristic associated with Art Deco design.
Trie ornament on these floors was designed by the noted architectural sculptor Rene Chambellan (1893-1955) in collaboration with Jacques Delamarre (b. 1907), head of the architectural staff of the Chanin Construction Company. Among the buildings for which Chambellan executed architectural sculpture were Radio City Music Hall and other buildings at Rockefeller Center, the East Side Airline Terminal, the Russell Sage Foundation Building, the Tribune Ttwer in Chicago, the Stirling Library at Yale, and the Pershing Stadium in Vincennes, France.
In the Chanin Building Delamarre was responsible for many of the details of the interior design and through the years supervised the many projects which the Chanin organization chose to design "in-house." Chambellan and Delamarre also collaborated on the design of the sculptural reliefs and bronze grilles adorning the vestibules inside the building entrances. They symbolically portray various aspects of the theme "the City of Opportunity," telling "the story of a city in which it is possible for a nan to rise from a humble station to wealth and influence by sheer power of his mind and hands." This, in fact, was a tribute to the success and achievement of Irwin S. Chanin.
Cc\ the Lexington Avenue side, a series of buttresses at the fifth and sixth stories accent the recessed portion of the facade. The form of these buttresses echoes the form of those at tine crown of the tower. Buttress forms extending from the thirtieth to the forty-ninth floor also accentuate the comers of the brick-faced tower.
The termination of the buttress forms at the forty-ninth floor indicates sore of the special functions in the floors above. The fiftieth and the fifty-first floors-now converted to office space— originally housed a theater which was to serve the theatrical division of the Chanin Organization. The Chanin offices continue to be housed in the crcKn of the tower which begins at tiie fifty-second floor. The most prominent features of the crown are the protruding buttresses which provide a distinctive termination for the tower.
Projecting ornament executed in abstract patterns at the fifty-second floor adds further interest to the Tower. Originally a battery of 212 flood-lights illuminated the crown of the tower at night adding to its dramatic effect of the skyline. This emphasis on dramatic illumination is another quality associated with Art Deco architecture, and it is characteristically displayed in one of Hugh Ferriss' noted renderings of the buildings.
When completed in 1929 the Chanin Building was praised by architectural, critic Matlack Price as being "a splendid contribution to twentieth century architecture.. .that.. .powerfully rationalizes all the novel features of this new style,-and.. .a splendid contribution to the architecture of all time because it is a good design."
The quality of the design and the ornament continue to delight and are now recognized as exemplifying the characteristics of the Art Deco skyscraper. it remains a striking visual asset to the Grand Central area and continues to function successfully as an office building.
- From the 1978 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Afton Canyon's surface water makes it unique in the southern California desert. Known locally as "The Grand Canyon of the Mojave" for its dramatic geological formations, this is the only place where the Mojave River flows above ground year-round - providing significant riparian (riverbank) wildlife habitat amid the desert. Since prehistoric times, the natural bounty created by this water source has made Afton Canyon a focus for living things. Dense willows and cottonwoods shaded the river, and thickets of mesquite produced bean pods for food. The ponds, marshes and streams provided habitat for a wide variety of wildlife species.
Photo by Jesse Pluim, BLM.
The Colorado River is the principal river of the Southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. The 1,450-mile (2,330 km) river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. and two Mexican states. Rising in the central Rocky Mountains in the U.S., the river flows generally southwest across the Colorado Plateau and through the Grand Canyon before reaching Lake Mead on the Arizona–Nevada line, where it turns south toward the international border. After entering Mexico, the Colorado approaches the large Colorado River Delta where it naturally emptied into the Gulf of California between Baja California and Sonora, though it no longer reaches its delta or the sea.
Known for its dramatic canyons and whitewater rapids, the Colorado is a vital source of water for agricultural and urban areas in the southwestern desert lands of North America. The river and its tributaries are controlled by an extensive system of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts, which divert 90% of its water in the U.S. alone to furnish irrigation and municipal water supply for almost 40 million people both inside and outside the watershed. The Colorado's large flow and steep gradient are used for generating hydroelectric power, and its major dams regulate peaking power demands in much of the Intermountain West. Since the mid-20th century, intensive water consumption has dried the lower 100 miles (160 km) of the river such that it has not consistently reached the sea since the 1960s.
Europeans first entered the Colorado Basin in the 16th century, when explorers from Spain began mapping and claiming the area, which later became part of Mexico upon its independence in 1821. Early contact between foreigners and natives was generally limited to the fur trade in the headwaters and sporadic trade interactions along the lower river. After the greater Colorado River basin became part of the U.S. in 1846, the bulk of the river's course was still largely the subject of myths and speculation. Several expeditions charted the Colorado in the mid-19th century, one of which, led by John Wesley Powell in 1869, was the first to run the rapids of the Grand Canyon. American explorers collected valuable information that would later be used to develop the river for navigation and water supply. Large-scale settlement of the lower basin began in the mid- to late-19th century, with steamboats providing transportation from the Gulf of California to landings along the Colorado River that linked to wagon roads into the interior of New Mexico Territory. Lesser numbers settled in the upper basin, which was the scene of major gold strikes in Arizona and Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s.
Major engineering of the river basin began around the start of the 20th century, with many guidelines established in a series of domestic and international treaties known as the "Law of the River". The U.S. federal government was the main driving force behind the construction of hydraulic engineering projects in the river system, although many state and local water agencies were also involved. Most of the major dams in the river basin were built between 1910 and 1970, and the system keystone, Hoover Dam, was completed in 1935. The Colorado is now considered among the most controlled and litigated rivers in the world, with every drop of its water fully allocated. The damming and diversion of the Colorado River system have been flashpoint issues for the environmental movement in the American Southwest because of their impacts on the ecology and natural beauty of the river and its tributaries. During the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, environmental organizations vowed to block any further development of the river, and a number of later dam and aqueduct proposals were defeated by citizen opposition. As demands for Colorado River water continue to rise, the level of human development and control of the river continues to generate controversy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
Midtown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Chrysler Building, a stunning statement in the Art Deco style by architect William Van Alen, embodies the romantic essence of the New York City skyscraper. Built in 1928-30 for Walter P. Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation, it was "dedicated to world commerce and industry."- The tallest building in the world when completed in 1930, it stood proudly on the New York skyline as a personal symbol of Walter Chrysler and the strength of his corporation.
History of Construction
The Chrysler Building had its beginnings in an office building project for William H. Reynolds, a real-estate developer and promoter and former New York State senator. Reynolds had acquired a long-term lease in 1921 on a parcel of property at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street owned by the Cooper Union tor the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1927 architect William Van Alen was hired to design an office tower to be called the Reynolds Building for the site. Publicized as embodying new principles in skyscraper design,*' the projected building was to be 67 stories high rising 808 feet, and it was "to be surmounted by a glass dome, which when lighted from within, will give the effect of a great jewelled sphere."-' In October, 1928, however, the office building project and the lease on the site were taken over by Walter P. Chrysler, head of the Chrysler Corporation, who was seeking to expand his interests into the real estate field.
Walter Percy Chrysler , one of America's foremost automobile manufacturers, was a self-made man who worked his way up through the mechanical an; manufacturing aspects of the railroad business before joining the Buick Motor Company as works manager in 1912. Because of his success in introducing new processes and efficiencies into the automobile plant, he rose quickly through the administrative ranks of General Motors before personality conflicts with William C. Durant, head of General Motors, forced Chrysler to leave. In 1921 he reorganized Willys-Overland Company, and then took over as chairman of the reorganization and management committee of the Maxwell Motor Company, eventually assuming the presidency. This enabled Chrysler to introduce in 1924 the car bearing his name which presented such innovations as four-wheel hydraulic brakes and high compression motor.
Over 50 million dollars worth of cars were sold the first year, and in 1925, the Maxwell Motor Company became the Chrysler Corporation, Dodge Brothers was acquired in 1928 giving the Chrysler Corporation additional manufacturing facilities, a famous line of cars, and putting it in a position to challenge the leadership of Ford and General Motor By 1935, when Chrysler retired from the presidency of the Chrysler Corporation to become chairman of the board, the company was second in the automobile industry ir. volume of production.
It was while Chrysler was aggressively expanding his corporation in 1928 that he took over the office building project from Reynolds. In his autobiography, Chrysler said that he had the building constructed so that his sons would have something to be responsible for. He could not have been unaware, however, that the building would become a personal symbol and further the image of the Chrysler Corporation — even though no corporate funds were used in its financing or construction. To that end Chrysler worked with architect William Van Alen to make the building a powerful and striking design.
William Van Alen studied at Pratt Institute before beginning his architectural career in the office or Clarence True, a speculative builder. Severs! years later while continuing his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute 01 Design in the atelier of Donn Barber, Van Alen entered the office of Clinton * Russell as a designer. In 1908 he won the Paris Prize of the Beaux-Arts Institute and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Atelier lLaloux. According to architect Francis S. Swales, "
His work at the Ecole indicated that the training was providing him with the mental freedom necessary to think independently, instead of merely the usual school -cargo of elements of architecture and a technique or competition by rules."0 Returning to New York in 1912 he introduced the concept of "garden11 apartments and also designed the Albemarle Building, a skyscraper without cornices. In the 1920s he became known for his innovative shop-front designs and for a series of restaurants for the Child's chain. With the Chrysler Building, Van Alen was able to apply modern principles of design to the skyscraper but at the same time created such a striking image that critic Kenneth Murchison dubbed him "the Ziegfield of his profession.
'In the 1930s he pioneered in prefabricated housing designs although they were never widely produced. Van Alen served for four years in the 1940s as director of sculpture for the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and he was a member of the American Institute of Architects and the National Academy of Design.
Work began on the Chrysler Building on October 15, 1928, when Chrysler acquire the lease, with clearance of the site. Construction proceeded rapidly; foundations to a depth of 69 feet were completed early in 1929, and the steel framework was completed by the end of September of that year.
The design of the building, however, was altered from that for Reynolds. Chrysler, in his autobiography, credits himself for suggesting that it be taller than the 1000-foot Eiffel Tower. The design of the crowning dome was also changed, and the addition of a spire, which the architect called a "vertex," made the Chrysler at 1046 feet the tallest building in the world at the time. Kenneth Murchison fancifully depicts Chrysler urging Van Alen to win the race to construct the world's tallest building.
Van Alen himself had personal reasons for achieving this goal, as a former partner, ii. Craig Severance, was constructing the Bank of Manhattan, 40 Wall Street, at the same time with the aim of making it the world's tallest skyscraper. Thinking that the Chrysler Building would be only 925 feet high, Severance added a 50-foot flagpole to his building making it 927 feet. Meanwhile, Van Alen designed the 185-foot spire which would make the Chrysler Building the tallest. The spire was fabricated, then delivered to the building in five sections, and assembled secret at the 65th floor.
In November, 1929, it was finally raised into position by a 20-ton derrick through a fire tower in the center of the building, then riveted i place, the whole operation taking about 90 minutes. This engineering feat capture the popular imagination as well as that of professionals, and it helped to further the progressive image of the Chrysler Building. However, the Chrysler lost its height distinction two years later with the construction of the Empire State Building.
The first tenants moved into the Chrysler Building in April, 1930, even though construction was not completed. Formal opening ceremonies were held on May 27, 1930 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the 42nd Street Property Owners and Merchants Association. A bronze tablet was placed in the lobby of the building "in recongnition of Mr. Chrysler's contribution to civic advancement." The building was considered finished in August, 1930, but curiously, the completion date recorded in the records of the Manhattan Building Department is February 19, 1932.
The Chrysler Building and Art Deco
Waiter P. Chrysler wanted a progressive image and a personal symbol. Van Alen strove* to create such an image using the tenets of modernism as he interpreted them. In so doing he designed a building which has come to be regarded as one of the outstanding examples of Art Deco architecture.
The term. Art Deco, which is also referred to by several different names such as the Style Moderne and Modernistic, is adopted from the Exposition International: des Arts Decoratifs et Industrie]s Modernes--an important European influence or. the American Art Deco sty!e--held in Paris in 1925.
In the period following the first World War, architects in Europe and the united States had begun to simplify traditional design forms and to use -industrial materials in innovative ways in order to characterize the modern age.
The Art Deco style seemed to lend itself particularly well to skyscraper design because the skyscraper, more than any other building type, epitomized progress, innovation, and a new modern age. Although the Art Deco style was short-lived, it coincided with a great building boom at the end of the 1920s in New York. The many-skyscrapers which were erected in the Art Deco style gave New York and its skyline a characteristic and romantic image, popularized in theater and films, which persisted until the next great building boom of the early 1960s. In the Chrysler Building, Van Alen used a variety of materials, techniques, and design forms which are characteristic of Art Deco.
The Chrysler Building rises 77 stories in a series of setbacks which accord with the regulations of the 1916 New York zoning prdinance. As a freestanding tower occupying about half a block, the building is visible from four sides. Like many Art Deco architects. Van Alen believed strongly in designing steel structures so that they would not be imitative of masonry construction.'- Also unlike many earlier skyscrapers, the design of the Chrysler did not follow the formula of a column with ornamental base, bare shaft, and ornamental capital; rather the design was to be of interest throughout the entire height.13 Both the great height of the building and the mandated setbacks aided Van Alen in making this design decision,
The first four stories of the building cover the entire site arid are faced with polished black Shastone granite at the first story and white Georgian marble above. The most striking features of this portion of the building are the two entrances, on Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Each entrance rises for h height of three stories in proscenium fashion and is enframed by Shastone granite. Set back within the deep reveals of the entrances are sets of revolving doors beneath intricately patterned metal and glass screens.
The treatment is such as to heighten the dramatic effect of entering the building --a concern of Art Deco design There is a one-story entrance on 43rd Street. Also at first story level are iarge show windows for shops, framed in metal. Windows for offices may be seen at the second, third, and fourth stories. Ornamental spandrels are set at the bases of the second story windows. The exposed metal frames of the entries and windows art of "Nirosta" steel, a kind of rust-resistant, chromium nickel steel, manufactured for the first time in the United States specifically for the Chrysler Building according to a German formula from Krupp. This use of a new. material is in keeping with Art Deco principles.
Above the fourth story, the building is penetrated on the east and west sides by light courts extending to the face of the tower, while on the north and south the structure gradually rises in a series of setbacks. The facing of the walls through the first setback at the sixteenth story is of white brick with contrast! white marble strips creating a basketweave pattern. The use of a variety of colo and textures is characteristic of Art Deco. Windows are set in a regular grid pattern. An. unusual feature of all windows in the building is that they have no reveals; frames are set flush with the walls. This was seen is another means of indicating modernity and progress.
In the next setback, ending at the twenty-fourth floor, there is a vertical emphasis with piers of white brick alternating with vertical window strips. Aluminum spandrels between the windows aid this effect. Spandrels at the twentieth twenty-first, and twenty-second floors are adorned with polished abstract relief ornament. At the corners of the twenty-fourth floor are placed conventionalized pineapples, about nine feet high, of "Nirosta" steel, which had been fabricated < the site.
The next three stories, through the twenty-seventh, form the third setback. Horizontal banding and zigzag motifs in gray and black brick contrast with the verticality of the setback below. The fourth setback, to the thirty-first story marks the emergence of the tower shaft from the lower masses. At the thirty-first floor the corners of the building are extended outward and crowned by huge ornamental Chrysler radiator caps in "Nirosta" steel, spanning about 15 feet.
The- extension was necessary to overcome the optical effect that would otherwise make the tower appear wider at the top than at the base. Also at this floor is a frieze ir. gra; and white brick of stylized racing automobiles with polished steel hub caps. Th ornamental features are overt symbols of the Chrysler Corporation and characteristic of the types of effects created by Art Deco architects.
The building had a number of innovative and desirable features. THe soundproofed office partitions were of steel made in interchangeable sections so that arranges! of any office suite could be changed quickly and conveniently. Under-floor duct systems carried wiring for telephone and electric outlets.
The elevators, specifically at Chrysler's instruction, were capable of speeds of 1000 feet per minute although city codes in effect in 1930 only allowed 700 feet per minute. The building also had three of the longest continuous elevator shafts in the world To enhance public access to the building, an underground arcade led to the IRT subway system. The connection was strongly opposed by the IRT, but Chrysler prevailed and the passageway was built at his expense. In the dome was the private-Cloud Club, which still exists, and, in the very topmost floor, a public observation deck.
On display was Walter P. Chrysler's box of handmade tools, the emblem of his enterprise and personal success. The observatory has been closed for many years.
Conclusion
Critics such as Lewis Mumford who favored the International Style denigrated the Chrysler Building for its "inane romanticism,... meaningless voluptuousness, ... /and/ void symbolism," " but it was these qualities which captured the popular imagination and helped make it one of the most famous buildings in New York. We can appreciate the comments of the editor of Architectural Porum who wrote:
It stands by itself, something apart and alone. It is simply the realization, the fulfillment in metal and masonry, of a one-man dream, a dream of such ambition and such magnitude as to defy the comprehension and the criticism of ordinary men or by ordinary standards.
The Chrysler Building still stands proudly in the New York skyline, its gleaming spire and soaring tower capturing the eye and imagination of the viewer. While it may no longer symbolize the Chrysler Corporation, it still embodies the romantic essence of the Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, with its dramatic effects, elegant materials, and vivid ornamental details. Built as a monument to progress in commerce and industry, it remains as one of New York's finest office buildings and great examples of the Art Deco style.
- From the 1978 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Heavens Peak, with its dramatic tilted stratifications, rises to 8987 feet on the west side of Glacier National Park, Montana. This view is from the Going-to-the-Sun Road.
View my collections on flickr here: Collections
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Sunset on the River - 1867
George Inness (1825 - 1894)
The play of sunshine and shadow across the scene of cows grazing and thunderclouds in the distance creates a dynamic mood in the landscape. George Inness believed there was a direct correspondence between the natural and spiritual realms, as theorized by the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). The artist hoped that, by showing the drama and dynamism of nature, his paintings would transport viewers to a higher emotional or mental plane.
George Inness distinguished himself among the Hudson River School painters by pursuing a more modern aesthetic of landscape painting. Unlike his contemporaries, who believed in creating realistic canvases of nature's vastness, Inness felt that "paintings were not necessarily pictures, and it was the artist's function, even his obligation, by an aesthetic and expressive reorganization, to interpret nature and not merely depict it." (as quoted in N. Cikovsky, Jr. and M. Quick, George Inness, Los Angeles, California, 1985, p. 19) Inness' New York based works from the 1860s are widely admired today because they are closest to the familiar manner of Hudson River School painting in those years. Yet these works also begin to show the artist's painting philosophy of incorporating atmospheric climate and expression which brings deeper spiritual meaning into his compositions. Inness went on to produce a body of work marked by a more subjective and ultimately more modern aesthetic than that of his contemporaries. With its dramatic composition and high degree of finish, Sunset on the River is an extraordinary masterwork from this important transitional phase in the artist's career.
Painted in 1867 near the town of Leeds, New York, Sunset on the River presents an expansive view of cattle grazing in a broad pasture which slopes toward a river, partially visible on the left. On the right a stone wall borders a road, along which a covered wagon moves toward a mill with a smoking chimney near the water. From a slightly elevated vantage point, the viewer looks across the expanse to another light-struck pasture in the middle ground extending to wooded foothills, which give rise to a large mountain in the distance. Storm clouds fill the sky, dappling the land with dark streaks intermingled with bursts of light which pierce the foliage and rake across the landscape.
Inness' use of light and atmosphere in Sunset on the River evokes mood and meaning. Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., writes: "In all of the paintings of the 1860's, nature is not merely depicted straightforwardly, but is made articulate: moods of calm are emphatically peaceful, rainbows are clearly portentous, storms are dramatic and threatening, sunsets are gloriously radiant, and bleakness is unmistakably harsh and cold. In 1865, a writer remarked that Inness 'signally [possessed the power of] seizing upon the critical moment in some marked phase of nature.' The result is that one is made aware of the spiritual significance of nature through the way in which its visible forms and effects reflect some higher power." (George Inness, London, 1971, p. 38) The painting's dramatically changing sky, along with the tranquil setting of workers setting off to the mill, seems to express a sense of hope and prosperity in the wake of the Civil War. Very likely, Inness' contemporaries saw in this painting a theme that would pervade American art after the war--the return to peace, industry, and prosperity. The movement and energy of the present work's lush brushwork, paint texture and strong color choices underscore the emotional sense of calm after a storm.
Michael Quick considers Sunset on the River a stunning success of Inness' style of the 1860s. He writes: "This handsome, fully developed painting, with its dramatic lighting and clouds, is one of the most impressive of 1867, looking ahead to the more emotional interpretation of nature seen in Inness's work at the end of the decade. The view is based upon a sketch he used again in Approaching Storm, 1869. In this case, both the foreground and the distance are deeper, and the season is full summer, rather than fall. An unusual element is the mill with its smoking chimney, near what appears to be a building in ruins. Inness drew attention to the mill by both silhouetting it against the lighted field beyond and by making it the object of the road's long diagonal. Brick textile mills were numerous in the Leeds area, but this factory seems out of place in the otherwise entirely pastoral landscape. The textured foreground and the blacklighting of the trees are also unusual for works of 1867, no doubt reflecting the extra effort to add interest to this painting." (George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. one, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2007, p. 278) His inclusion of the factory and its workers appears here to add an element of the contemporary to his idealized landscape. Where other artists of the 1850s and 1860s might choose to render more purely pastoral views, Inness embraced the new.
All of the artistic devices evident in Sunset on the River convey emotional power. The painting's dramatic recession, extreme contrasts and strong color scheme induce the spiritual response that Inness began to suggest in the 1860s, and continued to evoke in his paintings throughout his career.
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This World Class attraction was everything we expected and more. Construction has just begun on a major expansion, but that has been managed in such a way that it does not in any way detract from the experience now.
This album focuses on the artwork inside the buildings and on the other interior spaces including the Eleven Restaurant and the Gift Shop. A separate album posted a few days ago is devoted to the two April mornings that we spent exploring just some of the trails that crisscross the 120 acres of Arkansas forest around the museum.
Alice Walton and her co-creative team can be proud of the vision and execution of everything on this 120 acre site.
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"Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, spearheaded the Walton Family Foundation's involvement in developing Crystal Bridges. The museum's glass-and-wood design by architect Moshe Safdie and engineer Buro Happold features a series of pavilions nestled around two creek-fed ponds and forest trails. The 217,000 square feet complex includes galleries, several meeting and classroom spaces, a library, a sculpture garden, a museum store designed by architect Marlon Blackwell, a restaurant and coffee bar, named Eleven after the day the museum opened, "11/11/11". Crystal Bridges also features a gathering space that can accommodate up to 300 people. Additionally, there are outdoor areas for concerts and public events, as well as extensive nature trails. It employs approximately 300 people, and is within walking distance of downtown Bentonville."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Bridges_Museum_of_American_Art
crystalbridges.org/nature-trails/
...
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The William J. Syms Operating Theater, built 1890-1892, was the most advanced operating theater in the world when it opened and one of the first equipped for aseptic surgery. The result of a collaboration of the architect William Wheeler Smith and the prominent American surgeon Charles McBurney, the building represented the attempt in the 19th century to reconcile architecture with technological advances.
The appearance of the building, subtle and simple in detail but striking in its massing, especially in the form of its semi-conical roof, is expressive of the unusual functional demands of the building, an effort to harmonize the design with the other Roosevelt Hospital buildings, and the well-developed personal style of the architect for medical buildings.
Syms was the fourth of several major pavilions (see below) built as part of the pavilion plan 'of Roosevelt Hospital begun in 18 69, and as such is both part of one of the earliest pavilion plan hospitals in America, and a rare early survivor of a once highly influential approach to hospital design. Syms was the center of medical education in New York City in its early years, and it was the site of numerous advances in surgical practice at a time when modern surgery was taking shape.
Roosevelt Hospital
The Syms Operating Theater was one of a series of pavilions built according to the original pavilion plan of Roosevelt Hospital. The pavilion plan was an important early step, proposed by the French Academy of Sciences in 1788 but not executed until much later, in applying scientific knowledge to the design of hospitals. At first it called for small parallel two-story buildings, called pavilions, set in a symmetrical plan oriented for access to light and air.
Disease and infections were believed to be carried in vapors, odors, dirt, and other "miasms" which were dispelled by light and goo d ventilation. Later, improved lighting and mechanical ventilation systems led to the acceptance of larger pavilion buildings. Syms' location, siting, massing, and exterior detail as well as its institutional history all relate to the original plan for Roosevelt Hospital and to the architecture of its early buildings.
Roosevelt Hospital was established by the bequest of James Henry Roosevelt (1800-1863) who left about $1,000,000 to build a hospital "for the reception and relief of sick and diseased persons."2 Roosevelt Hospital occupies the full block bounded by 58th and 59th Streets and Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Although the land was part of the 1811 Commissioners Plan of Streets, 59th Street was only opened in 1851, and in 1866 when Roosevelt Hospital bought its site the area was still mostly scattered houses and small farms. The trustees of the hospital adopted the pavilion plan in 1866. This was among the earliest in the United States and, as far as is known, the first in New York City.
Although no early plan of the hospital survives, the original intention was to build a series of four parallel pavilions. In the first building campaign (1869-72), the prominent New York architect, Carl Pfeiffer, designed all the major buildings, three pavilions along 59th Street. They were built in the High Victorian Gothic Style with red brick walls and light colored "Ohio Stone" trim, and had lively roof lines. The one-story Surgical Pavilion next to the future site of the Syms Operating Theater was the smallest and most simply detailed of the group. The pavilion plan was largely adhered to in several expansions of the hospital, including a group of buildings designed by W. Wheeler Smith in the 1880s and 1890s, until about 1940.
Surgery, Medical Education, and Operating Theaters
In the 19th century, surgery developed from a remedy of last resort to a common medical procedure, in part due to the introduction of anesthesia in 1847 and to the development of two theories of modern surgery, antiseptic surgery developed by Joseph Lister in 1867, followed by aseptic surgery about 1890. The operating theater was developed in the early 19th century on the model of anatomical theaters which had been the center of medical training since the Renaissance.
In the 1870s, many new operating theaters, including the first one at Roosevelt Hospital, were built for the rapidly growing population of student surgeons. Usually incorporated in larger hospital buildings but occasionally occupying their own pavilions, these were well-ventilated wood rooms, often decorated, amply lit by large windows and gas lamps, which accommodated up to 3 00 observers. The best-known operating theater of this generation was at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, built between 1877 and 1885.
These were superseded by a new generation of operating theaters about 189 0 for aseptic surgery, among the very first of which were the McLane Operating Room^ (now demolished), designed in 18 9 0 by W. Wheeler Smith at Roosevelt Hospital for gynecological surgery, and the Syms Operating Theater. These had improved heat and ventilation from mechanical forced air systems, improved lighting from electric lights, and, with the understanding that absolute cleanliness was essential, smooth, impervious materials for all surfaces.
Aseptic operating rooms were bright, clean, hard, undecorated spaces, they were the "high tech" spaces of their day. They utilized the latest technology to produce places suitable for the latest medical practices in a rapidly changing period.
History of Syms Operating Theater
The Syms Operating Theater was built with $3 50,000 left by William J. Syms (1818-89), $250,000 to build the theater and the remainder to be invested as an endowment for its work. Syms expressed in his will the desire to erect an operating theater which would be "an enduring monument to himself" and of "great service to suffering humanity."8
Syms was a partner in the New York firm of Blunt and Syms, for more than 2 5 years the largest gunmaker and dealer in New York. Syms was also a founder of the Metropolitan Gas Company and the Forty-second and Grand Street Railroad Company, and he was President of the Franklin Telegraph Company and Vice-president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. At his death, the Times said that he was' "one of the largest land and house owners" in New York.
Syms stipulated that the surgeon, Dr. Charles McBurney (1845-1913) would have complete charge of the building's design and operation. McBurney was a prominent New York surgeon and professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
In the year before William Syms died, McBurney achieved international recognition for his identification of the diagnostic point on the abdomen for appendicitis, still called "McBurney's Point." In his years at Syms, he described "McBurney's Incision," a method for removing the appendix, and made numerous other well publicized advances in the practice of surgery. Under McBurney, Syms became a world renowned center for surgeons. McBurney had been called when President McKinley was shot because of his long experience in treating such cases at Roosevelt Hospital.
Indeed, McBurney took an active role in the design of the Syms Operating Theater. He made a tour of the most modern operating facilities in Europe and America including "all the large hospitals in England, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland" and worked closely with the architect, W. Wheeler Smith, in the design of Syms. It appears that McBurney wrote a detailed program for the building and closely critiqued Smith's plans, finally accepting a fourth effort.13
Application for a building permit was made on October 15, 1890 and the building was completed on October 17, 1890. It opened on November 3, 1892 and at that time was considered the most advanced operating theater in the world.
In addition to "McBurney's Incision," described above, which was developed largely at Syms, a number of other notable surgical advances were made here. These included the popularization of the use of rubber gloves, the invention of the "Roosevelt clamp," the first use by Thomas Bennett of the nitrous oxide-ether sequence and his subsequent development of the Bennett inhaler, and the development of the Connell Airway Anesthetometer by Dr. Karl Connell."
Design and Construction
The design of the Syms Operating Theater followed the very latest standards for a scientifically correct surgical operating theater. Syms was planned to serve several complex objectives and its simple exterior form belies the substantial complexity of the interior. Named for its dramatic focal point, the surgical amphitheater, the building also contained numerous additional rooms with varied requirements for light, air, and location. These included visitors' rooms, recovery rooms, living quarters for nurses and assistant surgeons, a decorated private chief surgeon's room, laboratory rooms, rooms for photography and
microscopes, two small operating rooms, surgeons' rooms, an ether room, various preparation rooms for bandages, instrument sterilization and storage, and separate circulation systems for visitors, the surgical staff, patients, and residents of the building. Visitors entered the building from the street; patients and medical staff entered via the connecting corridor to the surgical ward next door.
The Syms Operating Theater, a "fireproof" building,17 was built of loadbearing brick walls above a stone foundation with rolled-iron floor and roof beams and brick floor arches, and a slate roof. In addition, iron was used extensively for lintels and to create special spaces and features, notably the wheel-ramp leading from the amphitheater to the recovery room, and the amphitheater itself. The amphitheater, whose design was an innovative solution to the problem of lighting such spaces, had a semi-conical iron roof structure supporting tiers of skylights that provided diffused light without glare to the arena.
Exterior materials include Haverstraw brick with Trenton molded brick and terra-cotta details, granite window trim, copper downspouts, slate roofing, and "Hayes Skylights." Inside, "No device has been omitted to repel the invasion of dirt and dust...," to dispel dampness, or to admit light.
These devices included mosaic tile floors with curved corners, light colored impermeable wall surfaces of marble and painted hard plaster, cement floors in the amphitheater, floor traps, and a basement floor of cement mixed with felt to absorb moisture.
The building had a sophisticated heating and ventilating system operated from an engine room and a fan room in the basement. Important features of the system visible from the outside are the air intake tower which projects above the west wing of the building abutting the recovery rooms, brick chimneys in a symmetrical arrangement on either side of the amphitheater roof, and the massive exhaust chimney at the rear of the amphitheater roof.
In designing the exterior of the Syms Operating Theater the architect endeavored to make the building harmonize with its High Victorian Gothic style neighbors at Roosevelt Hospital in its setback from the street, the massing of its volumes, the contrasting use of red brick with light stone trim, and picturesque roof form. In particular, it related to the old Surgical Pavilion next door in the height of its one-story wings and in the rhythm and placement of its stone lintels.
While the round entrance arch and the main exhaust chimney recall the Romanesque, the overall design reflects the personal approach of the architect for hospital buildings. The principal features were decorative detail largely confined to variations of color and texture in flat walls, recessed windows which minimized
interior reveals, curved corners, and modest cornices. In 1892 when it opened, the restrained use of decorative detail was unusual for a prominent medical building. Most contemporary New York hospital buildings were more stylish and more lavishly ornamented, built generally for private paying patients or institutions with religious affiliations. Their designs may have been more fully in the hands of institutional benefactors or architects rather than doctors, and their outward appearances had more to do with aesthetic or conventional symbolic associations than with the practical function of a hospital. For example, Presbyterian Hospital, built in the Romanesque Revival Style at the same time as Syms, was designed by J.C. Cady and was a picturesque composition of Richardsonian elements that conveyed both an ecclesiastical and a club-like character to the building, and St. Luke's Hospital, designed by Ernest Flagg the year Syms opened employed a Beaux-Arts composition and French Baroque ornament in a sophisticated way that conveyed the power, permanence, and reliability of the institution.
In contrast to these, at Syms the exterior appearance was considered important but secondary to the primary scientific function of the building.20 Making a virtue of a restricted budget for its exterior, the design appears neither frugal nor lacking expressiveness, but serious and straightforward, evoking the high place of medical science in determining its form, and the priority of science over symbolism in the medical care to be provided within.
As a work of architecture, Syms must be seen in the context of hospital buildings and operating spaces not just in New York City but internationally. In this context it is a remarkable building representative of an alliance of medical science and architecture that produced some of the most advanced buildings of the 19th century.2-1
William Wheeler Smith22
William Wheeler Smith (1838-1908), designer of the Syms Operating Theater, practiced architecture in New York from 18 65 to 1908. During an unusually long career, he designed a number of notable buildings including the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church (1872, demolished ca. 1933) at 48th Street and Fifth Avenue; the James White Building (1881), a cast-iron commercial structure, now a designated New York City landmark, at 361 Broadway; the W. & J. Sloane Store (1882), a large commercial structure now included in the Ladies Mile Historic District; and the Syms Operating Theater. Smith was successful and well regarded in his day but most of his major buildings have been demolished and little else survives to give us a full picture of his life and career.
Born in New York City, "Mr. Smith was described by his friends and associates as an 'old school architect' who had inherited the fondness and ability for his profession from his father, a well-known builder of this city.112 3 He apprenticed with one of the leading architects of the day, James Renwick, and studied at the University of London. He practiced on his own from about 1865 until his death in 1S08.
Along with his architectural practice Smith invested in real estate. He left an estate worth more than $3,000,000, almost all of which was to build "a country sanitarium for poor convalescents who must be sent away from St. Luke's [Hospital] before they have fully regained their strength."
Smith's philanthropic interest in hospitals was long standing. Over a period of many years he designed several buildings for Roosevelt Hospital including the Syms Operating Theater, without pay.
Smith's career seems to fall into two periods, an early period of general practice and a later period of specialization in hospital architecture and real estate development. The hospital and medical buildings, including the Sloane Maternity Hospital (1886), the College of Physicians and Surgeons (1888), and the Vanderbilt Clinic (1889) , all on the block across 59th Street from Roosevelt Hospital (and all demolished), and the McLane Operating Room (1890), the Accident Building (1898) (both demolished), the Syms Operating Theater, and Private Patients Pavilion (1896) of Roosevelt Hospital all resembled one another. A late project of Smith's was the Kingston Avenue Hospital in Brooklyn. A perspective rendering shows a pavilion plan hospital organized much like McKim, Mead, and White's Columbia College Campus and in the same general style.
Later History
Syms was refurbished in 1934 but remained an operating theater only until 1941 when the new Private Patients pavilion was opened with new surgical rooms. For some time, Roosevelt's role as a teaching hospital had been diminished, styles of teaching surgery had changed, and the theatrical presentation to large crowds was considered obsolete.
In 1942 the blood bank and mortuary of the Hospital were moved into Syms. In 1948, Syms was used as a temporary emergency room. In 1953 the rear portion of the building (17 feet 6 inches deep) was removed to make way for the new Tower Building, the upper tier of skylights was covered in copper sheets, the semi-opaque glass on the ground floor was replaced by clear glass, the amphitheater was gutted, and the building was occupied by the Department of Pathology.
Since that time, air-conditioning equipment has been placed in the front lawn, ducts have been run through several windows, parts ' of the areaway have been obstructed by pipes, trees have been allowed to grow in the front lawn, and the old amphitheater and other spaces have been remodeled to suit changing office and laboratory space needs of the Hospital.
Description
The Syms Operating Theater is a nearly rectangular structure at the southwest corner of West 59th Street and Ninth Avenue. The building is set back on its two street fronts behind narrow planted strips which are bordered along the sidewalk by an iron fence on a granite base with granite capped brick posts.
In its massing the building consists of a central block with an elongated semi-conical roof, one-story wings on either side, a narrow three-story L-shaped wing adjacent to the central block on the south and west sides, and a square air intake tower adjacent to the west side of this wing above the one-story wing.
The walls of the building are brick with curved corners. Brick is of two types, each laid in the same plane in Flemish bond and differentiated by their finish: smooth and evenly colored around windows and corners, rough and varicolored between windows. The smooth brick framing was in a form suggesting quoins creating two-story bays at the basement and first story levels. Windows have granite sills and lintels and occasional granite mullions in wider windows, sometimes with egg and dart moldings or block modillions of terra cotta.
The roof, whose distinctive form signals the amphitheater below, is crowned by a decorative iron finial in the form of a caduceus surmounted by a fleur-de-lis, and is clad in two tiers of skylights across the front, slate shingles on the sides, and tin flashing.
The roof is pierced by a large unadorned chimney in either flank, above the back wall of the amphitheater, and a massive exhaust chimney behind the amphitheater with a Romanesque corbelled cornice. The building is entered through a large rounded arch of glazed brick which is reached by a short flight of stairs. Above this arch is a granite panel with raised letters saying "The Wm. J. Syms Operating Theater of the Roosevelt Hospital, 1891."
Alterations
Today the exterior of the building is as built except for the loss of the entire south facade (the new facade abuts the adjacent Tower Building), the loss of the southernmost bays of the east and west facades, the addition of copper sheeting over the principal skylights, the presence of modern HVAC equipment, and the overgrowth of the lawn.
Although the alterations to the building are extensive (more so on the interior, which is not the subject of this designation, than on the exterior) and mostly irreversible, the visual character of this highly distinctive building is still largely intact. Its subtly decorated flat brick walls with rounded corners, its strong entranceway and name panel, its massing as visible from most angles, and especially the distinctive shape of its roof are all present.
- From the 1989 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
"White Sands National Monument is in the northern Chihuahuan Desert in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It's known for its dramatic landscape of rare white gypsum sand dunes. Trails through the dunes include the raised Interdune Boardwalk and the Dune Life Nature Trail, dotted with interpretive exhibits on wildlife and other features. " A popular activity here is sledding on the dunes using plastic discs or elongated sleds.
Barsana Monastery - Maramures - Romania
Barsana Monastery - -
Barsana monastery, one of the main attractions in Maramures, Romania
When UNESCO designated parts of the Maramures Region in Northern Transylvania a WORLD HERITAGE site, it was aimed at protecting the stylized wooden architecture and its dramatic vernacular. Of particular appeal are the tall spires of orthodox churches that dot the area. One of these is the recently constructed Barsana Monastery complex - actually a convent with sixteen nuns. Created in post-Communist years on the site of a church abandoned in 1790, the complex has become a significant cultural and religious attraction. Its 56 meter-tall (180 feet) spired church is reputedly the tallest wooden structure in Europe.
www.flickr.com/photos/wwwdragos/7614653774/in/set-7215762...
Lexington Avenue
The Chrysler Building, a stunning statement in the Art Deco style by architect William Van Alen, embodies the romantic essence of the New York City skyscraper. Built in 1928-30 for Walter P. Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation, it was "dedicated to world commerce and industry."- The tallest building in the world when completed in 1930, it stood proudly on the New York skyline as a personal symbol of Walter Chrysler and the strength of his corporation.
History of Construction
The Chrysler Building had its beginnings in an office building project for William H. Reynolds, a real-estate developer and promoter and former New York State senator. Reynolds had acquired a long-term lease in 1921 on a parcel of property at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street owned by the Cooper Union tor the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1927 architect William Van Alen was hired to design an office tower to be called the Reynolds Building for the site. Publicized as embodying new principles in skyscraper design,*' the projected building was to be 67 stories high rising 808 feet, and it was "to be surmounted by a glass dome, which when lighted from within, will give the effect of a great jewelled sphere."-' In October, 1928, however, the office building project and the lease on the site were taken over by Walter P. Chrysler, head of the Chrysler Corporation, who was seeking to expand his interests into the real estate field.
Walter Percy Chrysler (1875-1940), one of America's foremost automobile manufacturers, was a self-made man who worked his way up through the mechanical an; manufacturing aspects of the railroad business before joining the Buick Motor Company as works manager in 1912. Because of his success in introducing new processes and efficiencies into the automobile plant, he rose quickly through the administrative ranks of General Motors (which had absorbed Buick) before personality conflicts with William C. Durant, head of General Motors, forced Chrysler to leave. In 1921 he reorganized Willys-Overland Company, and then took over as chairman of the reorganization and management committee of the Maxwell Motor Company, eventually assuming the presidency. This enabled Chrysler to introduce in 1924 the car bearing his name which presented such innovations as four-wheel hydraulic brakes and high compression motor.
Over 50 million dollars worth of cars were sold the first year, and in 1925, the Maxwell Motor Company became the Chrysler Corporation, Dodge Brothers was acquired in 1928 giving the Chrysler Corporation additional manufacturing facilities, a famous line of cars, and putting it in a position to challenge the leadership of Ford and General Motor By 1935, when Chrysler retired from the presidency of the Chrysler Corporation to become chairman of the board, the company was second in the automobile industry ir. volume of production.
It was while Chrysler was aggressively expanding his corporation in 1928 that he took over the office building project from Reynolds. In his autobiography, Chrysler said that he had the building constructed so that his sons would have something to be responsible for. He could not have been unaware, however, that the building would become a personal symbol and further the image of the Chrysler Corporation — even though no corporate funds were used in its financing or construction. To that end Chrysler worked with architect William Van Alen to make the building a powerful and striking design.
William Van Alen (1882-1954) studied at Pratt Institute before beginning his architectural career in the office or Clarence True, a speculative builder. Severs! years later while continuing his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute 01 Design in the atelier of Donn Barber, Van Alen entered the office of Clinton * Russell as a designer. In 1908 he won the Paris Prize of the Beaux-Arts Institute and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Atelier lLaloux. According to architect Francis S. Swales, "
His work at the Ecole indicated that the training was providing him with the mental freedom necessary to think independently, instead of merely the usual school -cargo of elements of architecture and a technique or competition by rules."0 Returning to New York in 1912 he introduced the concept of "garden11 apartments and also designed the Albemarle Building, a skyscraper without cornices. In the 1920s he became known for his innovative shop-front designs and for a series of restaurants for the Child's chain. With the Chrysler Building, Van Alen was able to apply modern principles of design to the skyscraper but at the same time created such a striking image that critic Kenneth Murchison dubbed him "the Ziegfield of his profession.
'In the 1930s he pioneered in prefabricated housing designs although they were never widely produced. Van Alen served for four years in the 1940s as director of sculpture for the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and he was a member of the American Institute of Architects and the National Academy of Design.
Work began on the Chrysler Building on October 15, 1928, when Chrysler acquire the lease, with clearance of the site. Construction proceeded rapidly; foundations to a depth of 69 feet were completed early in 1929, and the steel framework was completed by the end of September of that year.
The design of the building, however, was altered from that for Reynolds. Chrysler, in his autobiography, credits himself for suggesting that it be taller than the 1000-foot Eiffel Tower. The design of the crowning dome was also changed, and the addition of a spire, which the architect called a "vertex," made the Chrysler at 1046 feet the tallest building in the world at the time. Kenneth Murchison fancifully depicts Chrysler urging Van Alen to win the race to construct the world's tallest building.
Van Alen himself had personal reasons for achieving this goal, as a former partner, ii. Craig Severance, was constructing the Bank of Manhattan, 40 Wall Street, at the same time with the aim of making it the world's tallest skyscraper. Thinking that the Chrysler Building would be only 925 feet high, Severance added a 50-foot flagpole to his building making it 927 feet. Meanwhile, Van Alen designed the 185-foot spire which would make the Chrysler Building the tallest. The spire was fabricated, then delivered to the building in five sections, and assembled secret at the 65th floor.
In November, 1929, it was finally raised into position by a 20-ton derrick through a fire tower in the center of the building, then riveted i place, the whole operation taking about 90 minutes. This engineering feat capture the popular imagination as well as that of professionals, and it helped to further the progressive image of the Chrysler Building. However, the Chrysler lost its height distinction two years later with the construction of the Empire State Building.
The first tenants moved into the Chrysler Building in April, 1930, even though construction was not completed. Formal opening ceremonies were held on May 27, 1930 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the 42nd Street Property Owners and Merchants Association. A bronze tablet was placed in the lobby of the building "in recongnition of Mr. Chrysler's contribution to civic advancement." The building was considered finished in August, 1930, but curiously, the completion date recorded in the records of the Manhattan Building Department is February 19, 1932.
The Chrysler Building and Art Deco
Waiter P. Chrysler wanted a progressive image and a personal symbol. Van Alen strove* to create such an image using the tenets of modernism as he interpreted them. In so doing he designed a building which has come to be regarded as one of the outstanding examples of Art Deco architecture.
The term. Art Deco, which is also referred to by several different names such as the Style Moderne and Modernistic, is adopted from the Exposition International: des Arts Decoratifs et Industrie]s Modernes--an important European influence or. the American Art Deco sty!e--held in Paris in 1925.
In the period following the first World War, architects in Europe and the united States had begun to simplify traditional design forms and to use -industrial materials in innovative ways in order to characterize the modern age.
The Art Deco style seemed to lend itself particularly well to skyscraper design because the skyscraper, more than any other building type, epitomized progress, innovation, and a new modern age. Although the Art Deco style was short-lived, it coincided with a great building boom at the end of the 1920s in New York. The many-skyscrapers which were erected in the Art Deco style gave New York and its skyline a characteristic and romantic image, popularized in theater and films, which persisted until the next great building boom of the early 1960s. In the Chrysler Building, Van Alen used a variety of materials, techniques, and design forms which are characteristic of Art Deco.
The Chrysler Building rises 77 stories in a series of setbacks which accord with the regulations of the 1916 New York zoning prdinance. As a freestanding tower occupying about half a block, the building is visible from four sides. Like many Art Deco architects. Van Alen believed strongly in designing steel structures so that they would not be imitative of masonry construction.'- Also unlike many earlier skyscrapers, the design of the Chrysler did not follow the formula of a column with ornamental base, bare shaft, and ornamental capital; rather the design was to be of interest throughout the entire height.13 Both the great height of the building and the mandated setbacks aided Van Alen in making this design decision,
The first four stories of the building cover the entire site arid are faced with polished black Shastone granite at the first story and white Georgian marble above. The most striking features of this portion of the building are the two entrances, on Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Each entrance rises for h height of three stories in proscenium fashion and is enframed by Shastone granite. Set back within the deep reveals of the entrances are sets of revolving doors beneath intricately patterned metal and glass screens.
The treatment is such as to heighten the dramatic effect of entering the building --a concern of Art Deco design There is a one-story entrance on 43rd Street. Also at first story level are iarge show windows for shops, framed in metal. Windows for offices may be seen at the second, third, and fourth stories. Ornamental spandrels are set at the bases of the second story windows. The exposed metal frames of the entries and windows art of "Nirosta" steel, a kind of rust-resistant, chromium nickel steel, manufactured for the first time in the United States specifically for the Chrysler Building according to a German formula from Krupp. This use of a new. material is in keeping with Art Deco principles.
Above the fourth story, the building is penetrated on the east and west sides by light courts extending to the face of the tower, while on the north and south the structure gradually rises in a series of setbacks. The facing of the walls through the first setback at the sixteenth story is of white brick with contrast! white marble strips creating a basketweave pattern. The use of a variety of colo and textures is characteristic of Art Deco. Windows are set in a regular grid pattern. An. unusual feature of all windows in the building is that they have no reveals; frames are set flush with the walls. This was seen is another means of indicating modernity and progress.
In the next setback, ending at the twenty-fourth floor, there is a vertical emphasis with piers of white brick alternating with vertical window strips. Aluminum spandrels between the windows aid this effect. Spandrels at the twentieth twenty-first, and twenty-second floors are adorned with polished abstract relief ornament. At the corners of the twenty-fourth floor are placed conventionalized pineapples, about nine feet high, of "Nirosta" steel, which had been fabricated < the site.
The next three stories, through the twenty-seventh, form the third setback. Horizontal banding and zigzag motifs in gray and black brick contrast with the verticality of the setback below. The fourth setback, to the thirty-first story marks the emergence of the tower shaft from the lower masses. At the thirty-first floor the corners of the building are extended outward and crowned by huge ornamental Chrysler radiator caps in "Nirosta" steel, spanning about 15 feet.
The- extension was necessary to overcome the optical effect that would otherwise make the tower appear wider at the top than at the base. Also at this floor is a frieze ir. gra; and white brick of stylized racing automobiles with polished steel hub caps. Th ornamental features are overt symbols of the Chrysler Corporation and characteristic of the types of effects created by Art Deco architects.
The building had a number of innovative and desirable features. THe soundproofed office partitions were of steel made in interchangeable sections so that arranges! of any office suite could be changed quickly and conveniently. Under-floor duct systems carried wiring for telephone and electric outlets.
The elevators, specifically at Chrysler's instruction, were capable of speeds of 1000 feet per minute although city codes in effect in 1930 only allowed 700 feet per minute. The building also had three of the longest continuous elevator shafts in the world To enhance public access to the building, an underground arcade led to the IRT subway system. The connection was strongly opposed by the IRT, but Chrysler prevailed and the passageway was built at his expense. In the dome was the private-Cloud Club, which still exists, and, in the very topmost floor, a public observation deck.
On display was Walter P. Chrysler's box of handmade tools, the emblem of his enterprise and personal success. The observatory has been closed for many years.
Conclusion
Critics such as Lewis Mumford who favored the International Style denigrated the Chrysler Building for its "inane romanticism,... meaningless voluptuousness, ... /and/ void symbolism," " but it was these qualities which captured the popular imagination and helped make it one of the most famous buildings in New York. We can appreciate the comments of the editor of Architectural Porum who wrote:
It stands by itself, something apart and alone. It is simply the realization, the fulfillment in metal and masonry, of a one-man dream, a dream of such ambition and such magnitude as to defy the comprehension and the criticism of ordinary men or by ordinary standards.
The Chrysler Building still stands proudly in the New York skyline, its gleaming spire and soaring tower capturing the eye and imagination of the viewer. While it may no longer symbolize the Chrysler Corporation, it still embodies the romantic essence of the Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, with its dramatic effects, elegant materials, and vivid ornamental details. Built as a monument to progress in commerce and industry, it remains as one of New York's finest office buildings and great examples of the Art Deco style.
- From the 1978 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
East 42nd Street, Midtown Manhattan
The Chrysler Building, a stunning statement in the Art Deco style by architect William Van Alen, embodies the romantic essence of the New York City skyscraper. Built in 1928-30 for Walter P. Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation, it was "dedicated to world commerce and industry."- The tallest building in the world when completed in 1930, it stood proudly on the New York skyline as a personal symbol of Walter Chrysler and the strength of his corporation.
History of Construction
The Chrysler Building had its beginnings in an office building project for William H. Reynolds, a real-estate developer and promoter and former New York State senator. Reynolds had acquired a long-term lease in 1921 on a parcel of property at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street owned by the Cooper Union tor the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1927 architect William Van Alen was hired to design an office tower to be called the Reynolds Building for the site. Publicized as embodying new principles in skyscraper design,*' the projected building was to be 67 stories high rising 808 feet, and it was "to be surmounted by a glass dome, which when lighted from within, will give the effect of a great jewelled sphere."-' In October, 1928, however, the office building project and the lease on the site were taken over by Walter P. Chrysler, head of the Chrysler Corporation, who was seeking to expand his interests into the real estate field.
Walter Percy Chrysler (1875-1940), one of America's foremost automobile manufacturers, was a self-made man who worked his way up through the mechanical an; manufacturing aspects of the railroad business before joining the Buick Motor Company as works manager in 1912. Because of his success in introducing new processes and efficiencies into the automobile plant, he rose quickly through the administrative ranks of General Motors (which had absorbed Buick) before personality conflicts with William C. Durant, head of General Motors, forced Chrysler to leave. In 1921 he reorganized Willys-Overland Company, and then took over as chairman of the reorganization and management committee of the Maxwell Motor Company, eventually assuming the presidency. This enabled Chrysler to introduce in 1924 the car bearing his name which presented such innovations as four-wheel hydraulic brakes and high compression motor.
Over 50 million dollars worth of cars were sold the first year, and in 1925, the Maxwell Motor Company became the Chrysler Corporation, Dodge Brothers was acquired in 1928 giving the Chrysler Corporation additional manufacturing facilities, a famous line of cars, and putting it in a position to challenge the leadership of Ford and General Motor By 1935, when Chrysler retired from the presidency of the Chrysler Corporation to become chairman of the board, the company was second in the automobile industry ir. volume of production.
It was while Chrysler was aggressively expanding his corporation in 1928 that he took over the office building project from Reynolds. In his autobiography, Chrysler said that he had the building constructed so that his sons would have something to be responsible for. He could not have been unaware, however, that the building would become a personal symbol and further the image of the Chrysler Corporation — even though no corporate funds were used in its financing or construction. To that end Chrysler worked with architect William Van Alen to make the building a powerful and striking design.
William Van Alen (1882-1954) studied at Pratt Institute before beginning his architectural career in the office or Clarence True, a speculative builder. Severs! years later while continuing his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute 01 Design in the atelier of Donn Barber, Van Alen entered the office of Clinton * Russell as a designer. In 1908 he won the Paris Prize of the Beaux-Arts Institute and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Atelier lLaloux. According to architect Francis S. Swales, "
His work at the Ecole indicated that the training was providing him with the mental freedom necessary to think independently, instead of merely the usual school -cargo of elements of architecture and a technique or competition by rules."0 Returning to New York in 1912 he introduced the concept of "garden11 apartments and also designed the Albemarle Building, a skyscraper without cornices. In the 1920s he became known for his innovative shop-front designs and for a series of restaurants for the Child's chain. With the Chrysler Building, Van Alen was able to apply modern principles of design to the skyscraper but at the same time created such a striking image that critic Kenneth Murchison dubbed him "the Ziegfield of his profession.
'In the 1930s he pioneered in prefabricated housing designs although they were never widely produced. Van Alen served for four years in the 1940s as director of sculpture for the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and he was a member of the American Institute of Architects and the National Academy of Design.
Work began on the Chrysler Building on October 15, 1928, when Chrysler acquire the lease, with clearance of the site. Construction proceeded rapidly; foundations to a depth of 69 feet were completed early in 1929, and the steel framework was completed by the end of September of that year.
The design of the building, however, was altered from that for Reynolds. Chrysler, in his autobiography, credits himself for suggesting that it be taller than the 1000-foot Eiffel Tower. The design of the crowning dome was also changed, and the addition of a spire, which the architect called a "vertex," made the Chrysler at 1046 feet the tallest building in the world at the time. Kenneth Murchison fancifully depicts Chrysler urging Van Alen to win the race to construct the world's tallest building.
Van Alen himself had personal reasons for achieving this goal, as a former partner, ii. Craig Severance, was constructing the Bank of Manhattan, 40 Wall Street, at the same time with the aim of making it the world's tallest skyscraper. Thinking that the Chrysler Building would be only 925 feet high, Severance added a 50-foot flagpole to his building making it 927 feet. Meanwhile, Van Alen designed the 185-foot spire which would make the Chrysler Building the tallest. The spire was fabricated, then delivered to the building in five sections, and assembled secret at the 65th floor.
In November, 1929, it was finally raised into position by a 20-ton derrick through a fire tower in the center of the building, then riveted i place, the whole operation taking about 90 minutes. This engineering feat capture the popular imagination as well as that of professionals, and it helped to further the progressive image of the Chrysler Building. However, the Chrysler lost its height distinction two years later with the construction of the Empire State Building.
The first tenants moved into the Chrysler Building in April, 1930, even though construction was not completed. Formal opening ceremonies were held on May 27, 1930 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the 42nd Street Property Owners and Merchants Association. A bronze tablet was placed in the lobby of the building "in recongnition of Mr. Chrysler's contribution to civic advancement." The building was considered finished in August, 1930, but curiously, the completion date recorded in the records of the Manhattan Building Department is February 19, 1932.
The Chrysler Building and Art Deco
Waiter P. Chrysler wanted a progressive image and a personal symbol. Van Alen strove* to create such an image using the tenets of modernism as he interpreted them. In so doing he designed a building which has come to be regarded as one of the outstanding examples of Art Deco architecture.
The term. Art Deco, which is also referred to by several different names such as the Style Moderne and Modernistic, is adopted from the Exposition International: des Arts Decoratifs et Industrie]s Modernes--an important European influence or. the American Art Deco sty!e--held in Paris in 1925.
In the period following the first World War, architects in Europe and the united States had begun to simplify traditional design forms and to use -industrial materials in innovative ways in order to characterize the modern age.
The Art Deco style seemed to lend itself particularly well to skyscraper design because the skyscraper, more than any other building type, epitomized progress, innovation, and a new modern age. Although the Art Deco style was short-lived, it coincided with a great building boom at the end of the 1920s in New York. The many-skyscrapers which were erected in the Art Deco style gave New York and its skyline a characteristic and romantic image, popularized in theater and films, which persisted until the next great building boom of the early 1960s. In the Chrysler Building, Van Alen used a variety of materials, techniques, and design forms which are characteristic of Art Deco.
The Chrysler Building rises 77 stories in a series of setbacks which accord with the regulations of the 1916 New York zoning prdinance. As a freestanding tower occupying about half a block, the building is visible from four sides. Like many Art Deco architects. Van Alen believed strongly in designing steel structures so that they would not be imitative of masonry construction.'- Also unlike many earlier skyscrapers, the design of the Chrysler did not follow the formula of a column with ornamental base, bare shaft, and ornamental capital; rather the design was to be of interest throughout the entire height.13 Both the great height of the building and the mandated setbacks aided Van Alen in making this design decision,
The first four stories of the building cover the entire site arid are faced with polished black Shastone granite at the first story and white Georgian marble above. The most striking features of this portion of the building are the two entrances, on Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Each entrance rises for h height of three stories in proscenium fashion and is enframed by Shastone granite. Set back within the deep reveals of the entrances are sets of revolving doors beneath intricately patterned metal and glass screens.
The treatment is such as to heighten the dramatic effect of entering the building --a concern of Art Deco design There is a one-story entrance on 43rd Street. Also at first story level are iarge show windows for shops, framed in metal. Windows for offices may be seen at the second, third, and fourth stories. Ornamental spandrels are set at the bases of the second story windows. The exposed metal frames of the entries and windows art of "Nirosta" steel, a kind of rust-resistant, chromium nickel steel, manufactured for the first time in the United States specifically for the Chrysler Building according to a German formula from Krupp. This use of a new. material is in keeping with Art Deco principles.
Above the fourth story, the building is penetrated on the east and west sides by light courts extending to the face of the tower, while on the north and south the structure gradually rises in a series of setbacks. The facing of the walls through the first setback at the sixteenth story is of white brick with contrast! white marble strips creating a basketweave pattern. The use of a variety of colo and textures is characteristic of Art Deco. Windows are set in a regular grid pattern. An. unusual feature of all windows in the building is that they have no reveals; frames are set flush with the walls. This was seen is another means of indicating modernity and progress.
In the next setback, ending at the twenty-fourth floor, there is a vertical emphasis with piers of white brick alternating with vertical window strips. Aluminum spandrels between the windows aid this effect. Spandrels at the twentieth twenty-first, and twenty-second floors are adorned with polished abstract relief ornament. At the corners of the twenty-fourth floor are placed conventionalized pineapples, about nine feet high, of "Nirosta" steel, which had been fabricated < the site.
The next three stories, through the twenty-seventh, form the third setback. Horizontal banding and zigzag motifs in gray and black brick contrast with the verticality of the setback below. The fourth setback, to the thirty-first story marks the emergence of the tower shaft from the lower masses. At the thirty-first floor the corners of the building are extended outward and crowned by huge ornamental Chrysler radiator caps in "Nirosta" steel, spanning about 15 feet.
The- extension was necessary to overcome the optical effect that would otherwise make the tower appear wider at the top than at the base. Also at this floor is a frieze ir. gra; and white brick of stylized racing automobiles with polished steel hub caps. Th ornamental features are overt symbols of the Chrysler Corporation and characteristic of the types of effects created by Art Deco architects.
The building had a number of innovative and desirable features. THe soundproofed office partitions were of steel made in interchangeable sections so that arranges! of any office suite could be changed quickly and conveniently. Under-floor duct systems carried wiring for telephone and electric outlets.
The elevators, specifically at Chrysler's instruction, were capable of speeds of 1000 feet per minute although city codes in effect in 1930 only allowed 700 feet per minute. The building also had three of the longest continuous elevator shafts in the world To enhance public access to the building, an underground arcade led to the IRT subway system. The connection was strongly opposed by the IRT, but Chrysler prevailed and the passageway was built at his expense. In the dome was the private-Cloud Club, which still exists, and, in the very topmost floor, a public observation deck.
On display was Walter P. Chrysler's box of handmade tools, the emblem of his enterprise and personal success. The observatory has been closed for many years.
Conclusion
Critics such as Lewis Mumford who favored the International Style denigrated the Chrysler Building for its "inane romanticism,... meaningless voluptuousness, ... /and/ void symbolism," " but it was these qualities which captured the popular imagination and helped make it one of the most famous buildings in New York. We can appreciate the comments of the editor of Architectural Porum who wrote:
It stands by itself, something apart and alone. It is simply the realization, the fulfillment in metal and masonry, of a one-man dream, a dream of such ambition and such magnitude as to defy the comprehension and the criticism of ordinary men or by ordinary standards.
The Chrysler Building still stands proudly in the New York skyline, its gleaming spire and soaring tower capturing the eye and imagination of the viewer. While it may no longer symbolize the Chrysler Corporation, it still embodies the romantic essence of the Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, with its dramatic effects, elegant materials, and vivid ornamental details. Built as a monument to progress in commerce and industry, it remains as one of New York's finest office buildings and great examples of the Art Deco style.
- From the 1978 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The William J. Syms Operating Theater, built 1890-1892, was the most advanced operating theater in the world when it opened and one of the first equipped for aseptic surgery. The result of a collaboration of the architect William Wheeler Smith and the prominent American surgeon Charles McBurney, the building represented the attempt in the 19th century to reconcile architecture with technological advances.
The appearance of the building, subtle and simple in detail but striking in its massing, especially in the form of its semi-conical roof, is expressive of the unusual functional demands of the building, an effort to harmonize the design with the other Roosevelt Hospital buildings, and the well-developed personal style of the architect for medical buildings.
Syms was the fourth of several major pavilions (see below) built as part of the pavilion plan 'of Roosevelt Hospital begun in 18 69, and as such is both part of one of the earliest pavilion plan hospitals in America, and a rare early survivor of a once highly influential approach to hospital design. Syms was the center of medical education in New York City in its early years, and it was the site of numerous advances in surgical practice at a time when modern surgery was taking shape.
Roosevelt Hospital
The Syms Operating Theater was one of a series of pavilions built according to the original pavilion plan of Roosevelt Hospital. The pavilion plan was an important early step, proposed by the French Academy of Sciences in 1788 but not executed until much later, in applying scientific knowledge to the design of hospitals. At first it called for small parallel two-story buildings, called pavilions, set in a symmetrical plan oriented for access to light and air.
Disease and infections were believed to be carried in vapors, odors, dirt, and other "miasms" which were dispelled by light and goo d ventilation. Later, improved lighting and mechanical ventilation systems led to the acceptance of larger pavilion buildings. Syms' location, siting, massing, and exterior detail as well as its institutional history all relate to the original plan for Roosevelt Hospital and to the architecture of its early buildings.
Roosevelt Hospital was established by the bequest of James Henry Roosevelt (1800-1863) who left about $1,000,000 to build a hospital "for the reception and relief of sick and diseased persons."2 Roosevelt Hospital occupies the full block bounded by 58th and 59th Streets and Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Although the land was part of the 1811 Commissioners Plan of Streets, 59th Street was only opened in 1851, and in 1866 when Roosevelt Hospital bought its site the area was still mostly scattered houses and small farms. The trustees of the hospital adopted the pavilion plan in 1866. This was among the earliest in the United States and, as far as is known, the first in New York City.
Although no early plan of the hospital survives, the original intention was to build a series of four parallel pavilions. In the first building campaign (1869-72), the prominent New York architect, Carl Pfeiffer, designed all the major buildings, three pavilions along 59th Street. They were built in the High Victorian Gothic Style with red brick walls and light colored "Ohio Stone" trim, and had lively roof lines. The one-story Surgical Pavilion next to the future site of the Syms Operating Theater was the smallest and most simply detailed of the group. The pavilion plan was largely adhered to in several expansions of the hospital, including a group of buildings designed by W. Wheeler Smith in the 1880s and 1890s, until about 1940.
Surgery, Medical Education, and Operating Theaters
In the 19th century, surgery developed from a remedy of last resort to a common medical procedure, in part due to the introduction of anesthesia in 1847 and to the development of two theories of modern surgery, antiseptic surgery developed by Joseph Lister in 1867, followed by aseptic surgery about 1890. The operating theater was developed in the early 19th century on the model of anatomical theaters which had been the center of medical training since the Renaissance.
In the 1870s, many new operating theaters, including the first one at Roosevelt Hospital, were built for the rapidly growing population of student surgeons. Usually incorporated in larger hospital buildings but occasionally occupying their own pavilions, these were well-ventilated wood rooms, often decorated, amply lit by large windows and gas lamps, which accommodated up to 3 00 observers. The best-known operating theater of this generation was at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, built between 1877 and 1885.
These were superseded by a new generation of operating theaters about 189 0 for aseptic surgery, among the very first of which were the McLane Operating Room^ (now demolished), designed in 18 9 0 by W. Wheeler Smith at Roosevelt Hospital for gynecological surgery, and the Syms Operating Theater. These had improved heat and ventilation from mechanical forced air systems, improved lighting from electric lights, and, with the understanding that absolute cleanliness was essential, smooth, impervious materials for all surfaces.
Aseptic operating rooms were bright, clean, hard, undecorated spaces, they were the "high tech" spaces of their day. They utilized the latest technology to produce places suitable for the latest medical practices in a rapidly changing period.
History of Syms Operating Theater
The Syms Operating Theater was built with $3 50,000 left by William J. Syms (1818-89), $250,000 to build the theater and the remainder to be invested as an endowment for its work. Syms expressed in his will the desire to erect an operating theater which would be "an enduring monument to himself" and of "great service to suffering humanity."8
Syms was a partner in the New York firm of Blunt and Syms, for more than 2 5 years the largest gunmaker and dealer in New York. Syms was also a founder of the Metropolitan Gas Company and the Forty-second and Grand Street Railroad Company, and he was President of the Franklin Telegraph Company and Vice-president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. At his death, the Times said that he was' "one of the largest land and house owners" in New York.
Syms stipulated that the surgeon, Dr. Charles McBurney (1845-1913) would have complete charge of the building's design and operation. McBurney was a prominent New York surgeon and professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
In the year before William Syms died, McBurney achieved international recognition for his identification of the diagnostic point on the abdomen for appendicitis, still called "McBurney's Point." In his years at Syms, he described "McBurney's Incision," a method for removing the appendix, and made numerous other well publicized advances in the practice of surgery. Under McBurney, Syms became a world renowned center for surgeons. McBurney had been called when President McKinley was shot because of his long experience in treating such cases at Roosevelt Hospital.
Indeed, McBurney took an active role in the design of the Syms Operating Theater. He made a tour of the most modern operating facilities in Europe and America including "all the large hospitals in England, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland" and worked closely with the architect, W. Wheeler Smith, in the design of Syms. It appears that McBurney wrote a detailed program for the building and closely critiqued Smith's plans, finally accepting a fourth effort.13
Application for a building permit was made on October 15, 1890 and the building was completed on October 17, 1890. It opened on November 3, 1892 and at that time was considered the most advanced operating theater in the world.
In addition to "McBurney's Incision," described above, which was developed largely at Syms, a number of other notable surgical advances were made here. These included the popularization of the use of rubber gloves, the invention of the "Roosevelt clamp," the first use by Thomas Bennett of the nitrous oxide-ether sequence and his subsequent development of the Bennett inhaler, and the development of the Connell Airway Anesthetometer by Dr. Karl Connell."
Design and Construction
The design of the Syms Operating Theater followed the very latest standards for a scientifically correct surgical operating theater. Syms was planned to serve several complex objectives and its simple exterior form belies the substantial complexity of the interior. Named for its dramatic focal point, the surgical amphitheater, the building also contained numerous additional rooms with varied requirements for light, air, and location. These included visitors' rooms, recovery rooms, living quarters for nurses and assistant surgeons, a decorated private chief surgeon's room, laboratory rooms, rooms for photography and
microscopes, two small operating rooms, surgeons' rooms, an ether room, various preparation rooms for bandages, instrument sterilization and storage, and separate circulation systems for visitors, the surgical staff, patients, and residents of the building. Visitors entered the building from the street; patients and medical staff entered via the connecting corridor to the surgical ward next door.
The Syms Operating Theater, a "fireproof" building,17 was built of loadbearing brick walls above a stone foundation with rolled-iron floor and roof beams and brick floor arches, and a slate roof. In addition, iron was used extensively for lintels and to create special spaces and features, notably the wheel-ramp leading from the amphitheater to the recovery room, and the amphitheater itself. The amphitheater, whose design was an innovative solution to the problem of lighting such spaces, had a semi-conical iron roof structure supporting tiers of skylights that provided diffused light without glare to the arena.
Exterior materials include Haverstraw brick with Trenton molded brick and terra-cotta details, granite window trim, copper downspouts, slate roofing, and "Hayes Skylights." Inside, "No device has been omitted to repel the invasion of dirt and dust...," to dispel dampness, or to admit light.
These devices included mosaic tile floors with curved corners, light colored impermeable wall surfaces of marble and painted hard plaster, cement floors in the amphitheater, floor traps, and a basement floor of cement mixed with felt to absorb moisture.
The building had a sophisticated heating and ventilating system operated from an engine room and a fan room in the basement. Important features of the system visible from the outside are the air intake tower which projects above the west wing of the building abutting the recovery rooms, brick chimneys in a symmetrical arrangement on either side of the amphitheater roof, and the massive exhaust chimney at the rear of the amphitheater roof.
In designing the exterior of the Syms Operating Theater the architect endeavored to make the building harmonize with its High Victorian Gothic style neighbors at Roosevelt Hospital in its setback from the street, the massing of its volumes, the contrasting use of red brick with light stone trim, and picturesque roof form. In particular, it related to the old Surgical Pavilion next door in the height of its one-story wings and in the rhythm and placement of its stone lintels.
While the round entrance arch and the main exhaust chimney recall the Romanesque, the overall design reflects the personal approach of the architect for hospital buildings. The principal features were decorative detail largely confined to variations of color and texture in flat walls, recessed windows which minimized
interior reveals, curved corners, and modest cornices. In 1892 when it opened, the restrained use of decorative detail was unusual for a prominent medical building. Most contemporary New York hospital buildings were more stylish and more lavishly ornamented, built generally for private paying patients or institutions with religious affiliations. Their designs may have been more fully in the hands of institutional benefactors or architects rather than doctors, and their outward appearances had more to do with aesthetic or conventional symbolic associations than with the practical function of a hospital. For example, Presbyterian Hospital, built in the Romanesque Revival Style at the same time as Syms, was designed by J.C. Cady and was a picturesque composition of Richardsonian elements that conveyed both an ecclesiastical and a club-like character to the building, and St. Luke's Hospital, designed by Ernest Flagg the year Syms opened employed a Beaux-Arts composition and French Baroque ornament in a sophisticated way that conveyed the power, permanence, and reliability of the institution.
In contrast to these, at Syms the exterior appearance was considered important but secondary to the primary scientific function of the building.20 Making a virtue of a restricted budget for its exterior, the design appears neither frugal nor lacking expressiveness, but serious and straightforward, evoking the high place of medical science in determining its form, and the priority of science over symbolism in the medical care to be provided within.
As a work of architecture, Syms must be seen in the context of hospital buildings and operating spaces not just in New York City but internationally. In this context it is a remarkable building representative of an alliance of medical science and architecture that produced some of the most advanced buildings of the 19th century.2-1
William Wheeler Smith22
William Wheeler Smith (1838-1908), designer of the Syms Operating Theater, practiced architecture in New York from 18 65 to 1908. During an unusually long career, he designed a number of notable buildings including the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church (1872, demolished ca. 1933) at 48th Street and Fifth Avenue; the James White Building (1881), a cast-iron commercial structure, now a designated New York City landmark, at 361 Broadway; the W. & J. Sloane Store (1882), a large commercial structure now included in the Ladies Mile Historic District; and the Syms Operating Theater. Smith was successful and well regarded in his day but most of his major buildings have been demolished and little else survives to give us a full picture of his life and career.
Born in New York City, "Mr. Smith was described by his friends and associates as an 'old school architect' who had inherited the fondness and ability for his profession from his father, a well-known builder of this city.112 3 He apprenticed with one of the leading architects of the day, James Renwick, and studied at the University of London. He practiced on his own from about 1865 until his death in 1S08.
Along with his architectural practice Smith invested in real estate. He left an estate worth more than $3,000,000, almost all of which was to build "a country sanitarium for poor convalescents who must be sent away from St. Luke's [Hospital] before they have fully regained their strength."
Smith's philanthropic interest in hospitals was long standing. Over a period of many years he designed several buildings for Roosevelt Hospital including the Syms Operating Theater, without pay.
Smith's career seems to fall into two periods, an early period of general practice and a later period of specialization in hospital architecture and real estate development. The hospital and medical buildings, including the Sloane Maternity Hospital (1886), the College of Physicians and Surgeons (1888), and the Vanderbilt Clinic (1889) , all on the block across 59th Street from Roosevelt Hospital (and all demolished), and the McLane Operating Room (1890), the Accident Building (1898) (both demolished), the Syms Operating Theater, and Private Patients Pavilion (1896) of Roosevelt Hospital all resembled one another. A late project of Smith's was the Kingston Avenue Hospital in Brooklyn. A perspective rendering shows a pavilion plan hospital organized much like McKim, Mead, and White's Columbia College Campus and in the same general style.
Later History
Syms was refurbished in 1934 but remained an operating theater only until 1941 when the new Private Patients pavilion was opened with new surgical rooms. For some time, Roosevelt's role as a teaching hospital had been diminished, styles of teaching surgery had changed, and the theatrical presentation to large crowds was considered obsolete.
In 1942 the blood bank and mortuary of the Hospital were moved into Syms. In 1948, Syms was used as a temporary emergency room. In 1953 the rear portion of the building (17 feet 6 inches deep) was removed to make way for the new Tower Building, the upper tier of skylights was covered in copper sheets, the semi-opaque glass on the ground floor was replaced by clear glass, the amphitheater was gutted, and the building was occupied by the Department of Pathology.
Since that time, air-conditioning equipment has been placed in the front lawn, ducts have been run through several windows, parts ' of the areaway have been obstructed by pipes, trees have been allowed to grow in the front lawn, and the old amphitheater and other spaces have been remodeled to suit changing office and laboratory space needs of the Hospital.
Description
The Syms Operating Theater is a nearly rectangular structure at the southwest corner of West 59th Street and Ninth Avenue. The building is set back on its two street fronts behind narrow planted strips which are bordered along the sidewalk by an iron fence on a granite base with granite capped brick posts.
In its massing the building consists of a central block with an elongated semi-conical roof, one-story wings on either side, a narrow three-story L-shaped wing adjacent to the central block on the south and west sides, and a square air intake tower adjacent to the west side of this wing above the one-story wing.
The walls of the building are brick with curved corners. Brick is of two types, each laid in the same plane in Flemish bond and differentiated by their finish: smooth and evenly colored around windows and corners, rough and varicolored between windows. The smooth brick framing was in a form suggesting quoins creating two-story bays at the basement and first story levels. Windows have granite sills and lintels and occasional granite mullions in wider windows, sometimes with egg and dart moldings or block modillions of terra cotta.
The roof, whose distinctive form signals the amphitheater below, is crowned by a decorative iron finial in the form of a caduceus surmounted by a fleur-de-lis, and is clad in two tiers of skylights across the front, slate shingles on the sides, and tin flashing.
The roof is pierced by a large unadorned chimney in either flank, above the back wall of the amphitheater, and a massive exhaust chimney behind the amphitheater with a Romanesque corbelled cornice. The building is entered through a large rounded arch of glazed brick which is reached by a short flight of stairs. Above this arch is a granite panel with raised letters saying "The Wm. J. Syms Operating Theater of the Roosevelt Hospital, 1891."
Alterations
Today the exterior of the building is as built except for the loss of the entire south facade (the new facade abuts the adjacent Tower Building), the loss of the southernmost bays of the east and west facades, the addition of copper sheeting over the principal skylights, the presence of modern HVAC equipment, and the overgrowth of the lawn.
Although the alterations to the building are extensive (more so on the interior, which is not the subject of this designation, than on the exterior) and mostly irreversible, the visual character of this highly distinctive building is still largely intact. Its subtly decorated flat brick walls with rounded corners, its strong entranceway and name panel, its massing as visible from most angles, and especially the distinctive shape of its roof are all present.
- From the 1989 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
REFORD GARDENS | LES JARDINS DE METIS
Beautiful flowers at Reford Gardens.
Papaver orientale, the Oriental poppy, is a perennial flowering plant native to the Caucasus, northeastern Turkey, and northern Iran.
Oriental poppies grow a mound of leaves that are hairy and finely dissected in spring. They gather energy and bloom in mid-summer. After flowering the foliage dies away entirely, a property that allows their survival in the summer drought of Central Asia. Gardeners can place late-developing plants nearby to fill the developing gap.
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaver_orientale
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Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
From Wikipedia:
Elsie Stephen Meighen - born January 22, 1872, Perth, Ontario - and Robert Wilson Reford - born in 1867, Montreal - got married on June 12, 1894.
Elsie Reford was a pioneer of Canadian horticulture, creating one of the largest private gardens in Canada on her estate, Estevan Lodge in eastern Québec. Located in Grand-Métis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, her gardens have been open to the public since 1962 and operate under the name Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.
Born January 22, 1872 at Perth, Ontario, Elsie Reford was the eldest of three children born to Robert Meighen and Elsie Stephen. Coming from modest backgrounds themselves, Elsie’s parents ensured that their children received a good education. After being educated in Montreal, she was sent to finishing school in Dresden and Paris, returning to Montreal fluent in both German and French, and ready to take her place in society.
She married Robert Wilson Reford on June 12, 1894. She gave birth to two sons, Bruce in 1895 and Eric in 1900. Robert and Elsie Reford were, by many accounts, an ideal couple. In 1902, they built a house on Drummond Street in Montreal. They both loved the outdoors and they spend several weeks a year in a log cabin they built at Lac Caribou, south of Rimouski. In the autumn they hunted for caribou, deer, and ducks. They returned in winter to ski and snowshoe. Elsie Reford also liked to ride. She had learned as a girl and spent many hours riding on the slopes of Mount Royal. And of course, there was salmon-fishing – a sport at which she excelled.
In her day, she was known for her civic, social, and political activism. She was engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the Montreal Maternity Hospital and she was also the moving force behind the creation of the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal, the first women club in Canada. She believed it important that the women become involved in debates over the great issues of the day, « something beyond the local gossip of the hour ». Her acquaintance with Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, led to her involvement in organizing, in 1908, Québec City’s tercentennial celebrations. The event was one of many to which she devoted herself in building bridges with French-Canadian community.
During the First World War, she joined her two sons in England and did volunteer work at the War Office, translating documents from German into English. After the war, she was active in the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies, and the National Association of Conservative Women.
In 1925 at the age of 53 years, Elsie Reford was operated for appendicitis and during her convalescence, her doctor counselled against fishing, fearing that she did not have the strength to return to the river.”Why not take up gardening?” he said, thinking this a more suitable pastime for a convalescent woman of a certain age. That is why she began laying out the gardens and supervising their construction. The gardens would take ten years to build, and would extend over more than twenty acres.
Elsie Reford had to overcome many difficulties in bringing her garden to life. First among them were the allergies that sometimes left her bedridden for days on end. The second obstacle was the property itself. Estevan was first and foremost a fishing lodge. The site was chosen because of its proximity to a salmon river and its dramatic views – not for the quality of the soil.
To counter-act nature’s deficiencies, she created soil for each of the plants she had selected, bringing peat and sand from nearby farms. This exchange was fortuitous to the local farmers, suffering through the Great Depression. Then, as now, the gardens provided much-needed work to an area with high unemployment. Elsie Reford’s genius as a gardener was born of the knowledge she developed of the needs of plants. Over the course of her long life, she became an expert plantsman. By the end of her life, Elsie Reford was able to counsel other gardeners, writing in the journals of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society. Elsie Reford was not a landscape architect and had no training of any kind as a garden designer. While she collected and appreciated art, she claimed no talents as an artist.
Elsie Stephen Reford died at her Drummond Street home on November 8, 1967 in her ninety-sixth year.
In 1995, the Reford Gardens ("Jardins de Métis") in Grand-Métis were designated a National Historic Site of Canada, as being an excellent Canadian example of the English-inspired garden.(Wikipedia)
Visit : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Reford
Visit : www.refordgardens.com
LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
Créés par Elsie Reford de 1926 à 1958, ces jardins témoignent de façon remarquable de l’art paysager à l’anglaise. Disposés dans un cadre naturel, un ensemble de jardins exhibent fleurs vivaces, arbres et arbustes. Le jardin des pommetiers, les rocailles et l’Allée royale évoquent l’œuvre de cette dame passionnée d’horticulture. Agrémenté d’un ruisseau et de sentiers sinueux, ce site jouit d’un microclimat favorable à la croissance d’espèces uniques au Canada. Les pavots bleus et les lis, privilégiés par Mme Reford, y fleurissent toujours et contribuent , avec d’autres plantes exotiques et indigènes, à l’harmonie de ces lieux.
Created by Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958, these gardens are an inspired example of the English art of the garden. Woven into a natural setting, a series of gardens display perennials, trees and shrubs. A crab-apple orchard, a rock garden, and the Long Walk are also the legacy of this dedicated horticulturist. A microclimate favours the growth of species found nowhere else in Canada, while the stream and winding paths add to the charm. Elsie Reford’s beloved blue poppies and lilies still bloom and contribute, with other exotic and indigenous plants, to the harmony of the site.
Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada
Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Gouvernement du Canada – Government of Canada
© Copyright
This photo and all those in my Photostream are protected by copyright. No one may reproduce, copy, transmit or manipulate them without my written permission.
Lassen Volcanic National Park, 2014
Digital illustration, watermarked
Original 12 x 9 inches | Displayed 32 x 24 inches
This symmetrical cone of loose scoria (gaseous lava) bears the name of the type of volcano it so precisely represents. Less visited than other volcanoes in Lassen Volcanic National Park, it is a spectacular sight for those who stray off the beaten path. A steep trail on its northeast face is both intimidating and enticing; an invitation to persevere through the strenuous 700-foot climb. Whether you climb to the summit or hike to its base, Cinder Cone reveals the story of its dramatic eruption, ending just over 300 years ago. Find the story in its double-rimmed crater, lake-creating lava flow, and colorful ash deposits known as the Painted Dunes.
We are in Kuta in Bali, on the bar street, and like anywhere else, this bar street comes alive at night. You can get an ideas as to why we could not stop here for a quick walk up and down the street- this is a one way street is quite narrow. I was not inclined to walk here anyway, as it was the bar district, despite it being daytime when it is relatively more safe. Just off this street is Kuta beach. Sunbathing and people-watching are also popular along the broad sands of Kuta Beach, which stretches north toward low-key Legian and upscale Seminyak resort areas. Shoppers head to Kuta's large malls, and vendors sell everything from jewellery to cold beer. Raucous bars and clubs draw crowds of backpackers. A water park nearby is filled with slides and pools set amidst tropical landscaping. The Bali Bombing Memorial stands on the site of the 2002 terror attacks that targeted two nightclubs- you have just seen pictures of those. (see previous pictures). Northwest of Kuta, the Tanah Lot temple is known for its dramatic setting on bluffs overlooking the Indian Ocean- we are headed there now- see pictures later in this album. (Bali, Indonesia, May 2018)
Architect: Klas Anshelm
Built in: 1957
Client: The City of Lund
Prehistory
Lund Konsthall is the result of a donation from the Old Savings’ Bank (today’s Finn Savings’ Bank) to the City of Lund. In 1953 the City Council decided to accept the gift and invited six architects for a competition to design the new art gallery. In 1954 the jury unanimously decided that Klas Anshelm’s proposal should be realized.
Architecture
Klas Anshelm (1914–1980) was a well-known and busy architect in Lund. With its monolithic brick façade Lunds Konsthall became one of Sweden’s finest exhibition venues. Its dramatic and yet restrained form is well adapted to contemporary art, and also blends in with the medieval architecture of Lund.
Renovations
Lunds Konsthall has not fully retained its original architectural expression, but it has escaped thorough reconstruction. In 1997 the building was renovated with support from the Finn Savings’ Bank and in 2004 it underwent a lighter renovation, aiming at restoring as much as possible of the original architecture.
History
‘I have tried to achieve an environment, tried to achieve a spatial frame for objects, and also to facilitate the changing of light bulbs.’
Klas Anshelm, Architect
Source: Lunds Konsthall - History.
The images from Lunds Konsthall was taken during the exhibition - The Opposite of Me Is I by the artist Miriam Bäckström.
The building replaced a meat inspection facility ... “there were exhibited dead rabbits and chickens, it was quite a stylish facility with overhead light and so. Here you display painted bunnies and chickens ...“explained Anshelm 1979 in an interview.
More pictures from Lunds Konsthall here.
The Colorado River is the principal river of the Southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. The 1,450-mile (2,330 km) river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. and two Mexican states. Rising in the central Rocky Mountains in the U.S., the river flows generally southwest across the Colorado Plateau and through the Grand Canyon before reaching Lake Mead on the Arizona–Nevada line, where it turns south toward the international border. After entering Mexico, the Colorado approaches the large Colorado River Delta where it naturally emptied into the Gulf of California between Baja California and Sonora, though it no longer reaches its delta or the sea.
Known for its dramatic canyons and whitewater rapids, the Colorado is a vital source of water for agricultural and urban areas in the southwestern desert lands of North America. The river and its tributaries are controlled by an extensive system of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts, which divert 90% of its water in the U.S. alone to furnish irrigation and municipal water supply for almost 40 million people both inside and outside the watershed. The Colorado's large flow and steep gradient are used for generating hydroelectric power, and its major dams regulate peaking power demands in much of the Intermountain West. Since the mid-20th century, intensive water consumption has dried the lower 100 miles (160 km) of the river such that it has not consistently reached the sea since the 1960s.
Europeans first entered the Colorado Basin in the 16th century, when explorers from Spain began mapping and claiming the area, which later became part of Mexico upon its independence in 1821. Early contact between foreigners and natives was generally limited to the fur trade in the headwaters and sporadic trade interactions along the lower river. After the greater Colorado River basin became part of the U.S. in 1846, the bulk of the river's course was still largely the subject of myths and speculation. Several expeditions charted the Colorado in the mid-19th century, one of which, led by John Wesley Powell in 1869, was the first to run the rapids of the Grand Canyon. American explorers collected valuable information that would later be used to develop the river for navigation and water supply. Large-scale settlement of the lower basin began in the mid- to late-19th century, with steamboats providing transportation from the Gulf of California to landings along the Colorado River that linked to wagon roads into the interior of New Mexico Territory. Lesser numbers settled in the upper basin, which was the scene of major gold strikes in Arizona and Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s.
Major engineering of the river basin began around the start of the 20th century, with many guidelines established in a series of domestic and international treaties known as the "Law of the River". The U.S. federal government was the main driving force behind the construction of hydraulic engineering projects in the river system, although many state and local water agencies were also involved. Most of the major dams in the river basin were built between 1910 and 1970, and the system keystone, Hoover Dam, was completed in 1935. The Colorado is now considered among the most controlled and litigated rivers in the world, with every drop of its water fully allocated. The damming and diversion of the Colorado River system have been flashpoint issues for the environmental movement in the American Southwest because of their impacts on the ecology and natural beauty of the river and its tributaries. During the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, environmental organizations vowed to block any further development of the river, and a number of later dam and aqueduct proposals were defeated by citizen opposition. As demands for Colorado River water continue to rise, the level of human development and control of the river continues to generate controversy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
Llyn Llech Owain Country Park is is a stunning 158-acre expanse of woods and lakeland near Cross Hands with nature trails, an adventure area and visitor centre. At the heart of this spectacular park is its dramatic lake which is surrounded by peat bog and there’s a lovely myth associated with Llyn Lech Owain. Legend has it that Owain Lawgoch ("Owain of the Red Hand" - who led an army of French mercenaries against the English in the Hundred Years' War), was entrusted to look after a well on the mountain named Mynydd Mawr. Each day, after extracting enough water for himself and his horse, Owain was always careful to replace the stone but on one occasion he forgot and a torrent of water poured down the side of the mountain. The resultant lake was hence named Llyn Lech Owain - the lake of Owain’s slab. Today, specially constructed paths allow for safe access over the bog and around the lake. The paths are well-surfaced and accessible to wheelchair-users. A forest track provides a longer walk or cycle ride around the country park and there’s a rough mountain bike trail for the more adventurous cyclist. Much of the park consists of coniferous woodland, planted by the Forestry Commission during the 1960s and there are also areas of dry heath and broad-leaved woodland.
Fonte : Wikipedia
Florence and the Machine (styled as Florence + the Machine) are an English indie rock band that formed in London in 2007, consisting of lead singer Florence Welch, Isabella Summers, and a collaboration of other artists. The band's music received praise across the media, especially from the BBC, which played a large part in their rise to prominence by promoting Florence and the Machine as part of BBC Introducing. At the 2009 Brit Awards they received the Brit Awards "Critics' Choice" award. The band's music is renowned for its dramatic and eccentric production and also Welch's powerful vocal performances.
The band's debut studio album, Lungs, was released on 6 July 2009, and held the number-two position for its first five weeks on the UK Albums Chart. On 17 January 2010, the album reached the top position, after being on the chart for twenty-eight consecutive weeks.As of October 2010, the album had been in the top forty in the United Kingdom for sixty-five consecutive weeks, making it one of the best-selling albums of 2009 and 2010. The group's second studio album, Ceremonials, released in October 2011, entered the charts at number one in the UK and number six in the US. The band's third album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, was released on 2 June 2015. It topped the UK charts, and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, their first to do so. The album reached number one in a total of eight countries and the top ten of twenty. Also in 2015, the band was the headlining act at Glastonbury Festival, making Florence Welch the first British female headliner this century.
Florence and the Machine's sound has been described as a combination of various genres, including rock and soul. Lungs won the Brit Award for Best British Album in 2010. Florence and the Machine has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards including Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album. Additionally, the band performed at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards and the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Concert
Iceland, a Nordic island nation, is defined by its dramatic landscape with volcanoes, geysers, hot springs and lava fields. Massive glaciers are protected in Vatnajökull and Snæfellsjökull national parks. Most of the population lives in the capital, Reykjavik, which runs on geothermal power and is home to the National and Saga museums, tracing Iceland’s Viking history. Iceland is it the most sparsely populated country in Europe.
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Visit: www.refordgardens.com/
MECONOPSIS BETONICIFOLIA
REFORD GARDENS | LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
From Wikipedia:
Elsie Stephen Meighen - born January 22, 1872, Perth, Ontario - and Robert Wilson Reford - born in 1867, Montreal - got married on June 12, 1894.
Elsie Reford was a pioneer of Canadian horticulture, creating one of the largest private gardens in Canada on her estate, Estevan Lodge in eastern Québec. Located in Grand-Métis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, her gardens have been open to the public since 1962 and operate under the name Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.
Born January 22, 1872 at Perth, Ontario, Elsie Reford was the eldest of three children born to Robert Meighen and Elsie Stephen. Coming from modest backgrounds themselves, Elsie’s parents ensured that their children received a good education. After being educated in Montreal, she was sent to finishing school in Dresden and Paris, returning to Montreal fluent in both German and French, and ready to take her place in society.
She married Robert Wilson Reford on June 12, 1894. She gave birth to two sons, Bruce in 1895 and Eric in 1900. Robert and Elsie Reford were, by many accounts, an ideal couple. In 1902, they built a house on Drummond Street in Montreal. They both loved the outdoors and they spend several weeks a year in a log cabin they built at Lac Caribou, south of Rimouski. In the autumn they hunted for caribou, deer, and ducks. They returned in winter to ski and snowshoe. Elsie Reford also liked to ride. She had learned as a girl and spent many hours riding on the slopes of Mount Royal. And of course, there was salmon-fishing – a sport at which she excelled.
In her day, she was known for her civic, social, and political activism. She was engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the Montreal Maternity Hospital and she was also the moving force behind the creation of the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal, the first women club in Canada. She believed it important that the women become involved in debates over the great issues of the day, « something beyond the local gossip of the hour ». Her acquaintance with Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, led to her involvement in organizing, in 1908, Québec City’s tercentennial celebrations. The event was one of many to which she devoted herself in building bridges with French-Canadian community.
During the First World War, she joined her two sons in England and did volunteer work at the War Office, translating documents from German into English. After the war, she was active in the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies, and the National Association of Conservative Women.
In 1925 at the age of 53 years, Elsie Reford was operated for appendicitis and during her convalescence, her doctor counselled against fishing, fearing that she did not have the strength to return to the river.”Why not take up gardening?” he said, thinking this a more suitable pastime for a convalescent woman of a certain age. That is why she began laying out the gardens and supervising their construction. The gardens would take ten years to build, and would extend over more than twenty acres.
Elsie Reford had to overcome many difficulties in bringing her garden to life. First among them were the allergies that sometimes left her bedridden for days on end. The second obstacle was the property itself. Estevan was first and foremost a fishing lodge. The site was chosen because of its proximity to a salmon river and its dramatic views – not for the quality of the soil.
To counter-act nature’s deficiencies, she created soil for each of the plants she had selected, bringing peat and sand from nearby farms. This exchange was fortuitous to the local farmers, suffering through the Great Depression. Then, as now, the gardens provided much-needed work to an area with high unemployment. Elsie Reford’s genius as a gardener was born of the knowledge she developed of the needs of plants. Over the course of her long life, she became an expert plantsman. By the end of her life, Elsie Reford was able to counsel other gardeners, writing in the journals of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society. Elsie Reford was not a landscape architect and had no training of any kind as a garden designer. While she collected and appreciated art, she claimed no talents as an artist.
Elsie Stephen Reford died at her Drummond Street home on November 8, 1967 in her ninety-sixth year.
In 1995, the Reford Gardens ("Jardins de Métis") in Grand-Métis were designated a National Historic Site of Canada, as being an excellent Canadian example of the English-inspired garden.(Wikipedia)
Visit : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Reford
Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
Créés par Elsie Reford de 1926 à 1958, ces jardins témoignent de façon remarquable de l’art paysager à l’anglaise. Disposés dans un cadre naturel, un ensemble de jardins exhibent fleurs vivaces, arbres et arbustes. Le jardin des pommetiers, les rocailles et l’Allée royale évoquent l’œuvre de cette dame passionnée d’horticulture. Agrémenté d’un ruisseau et de sentiers sinueux, ce site jouit d’un microclimat favorable à la croissance d’espèces uniques au Canada. Les pavots bleus et les lis, privilégiés par Mme Reford, y fleurissent toujours et contribuent , avec d’autres plantes exotiques et indigènes, à l’harmonie de ces lieux.
Created by Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958, these gardens are an inspired example of the English art of the garden. Woven into a natural setting, a series of gardens display perennials, trees and shrubs. A crab-apple orchard, a rock garden, and the Long Walk are also the legacy of this dedicated horticulturist. A microclimate favours the growth of species found nowhere else in Canada, while the stream and winding paths add to the charm. Elsie Reford’s beloved blue poppies and lilies still bloom and contribute, with other exotic and indigenous plants, to the harmony of the site.
Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada
Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Gouvernement du Canada – Government of Canada
© Copyright
This photo and all those in my Photostream are protected by copyright. No one may reproduce, copy, transmit or manipulate them without my written permission.
White Sands National Monument is in the northern Chihuahuan Desert in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It's known for its dramatic landscape of rare white gypsum sand dunes. Trails through the dunes include the raised Interdune Boardwalk and the Dune Life Nature Trail, dotted with interpretive exhibits on wildlife and other features. Dunes Drive is a looped road from the White Sands Visitor Center to the dune field.
Lake Como, in Northern Italy’s Lombardy region, is an upscale resort area known for its dramatic scenery. The namesake lake's deep-blue waters are set against the rugged, forested foothills of the Alps. All along the coast are luxury hotels, some with swimming pools that float in the lake. Mediterranean villas with formal gardens, some open to the public, dot the shore.
REFORD GARDENS | LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
COUCHER DE SOLEIL -Sainte-Flavie QC
Golden light.
Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
Photo taken close to REFORD GARDENS. (Sainte-Flavie)
From Wikipedia:
Elsie Stephen Meighen - born January 22, 1872, Perth, Ontario - and Robert Wilson Reford - born in 1867, Montreal - got married on June 12, 1894.
Elsie Reford was a pioneer of Canadian horticulture, creating one of the largest private gardens in Canada on her estate, Estevan Lodge in eastern Québec. Located in Grand-Métis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, her gardens have been open to the public since 1962 and operate under the name Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.
Born January 22, 1872 at Perth, Ontario, Elsie Reford was the eldest of three children born to Robert Meighen and Elsie Stephen. Coming from modest backgrounds themselves, Elsie’s parents ensured that their children received a good education. After being educated in Montreal, she was sent to finishing school in Dresden and Paris, returning to Montreal fluent in both German and French, and ready to take her place in society.
She married Robert Wilson Reford on June 12, 1894. She gave birth to two sons, Bruce in 1895 and Eric in 1900. Robert and Elsie Reford were, by many accounts, an ideal couple. In 1902, they built a house on Drummond Street in Montreal. They both loved the outdoors and they spend several weeks a year in a log cabin they built at Lac Caribou, south of Rimouski. In the autumn they hunted for caribou, deer, and ducks. They returned in winter to ski and snowshoe. Elsie Reford also liked to ride. She had learned as a girl and spent many hours riding on the slopes of Mount Royal. And of course, there was salmon-fishing – a sport at which she excelled.
In her day, she was known for her civic, social, and political activism. She was engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the Montreal Maternity Hospital and she was also the moving force behind the creation of the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal, the first women club in Canada. She believed it important that the women become involved in debates over the great issues of the day, « something beyond the local gossip of the hour ». Her acquaintance with Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, led to her involvement in organizing, in 1908, Québec City’s tercentennial celebrations. The event was one of many to which she devoted herself in building bridges with French-Canadian community.
During the First World War, she joined her two sons in England and did volunteer work at the War Office, translating documents from German into English. After the war, she was active in the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies, and the National Association of Conservative Women.
In 1925 at the age of 53 years, Elsie Reford was operated for appendicitis and during her convalescence, her doctor counselled against fishing, fearing that she did not have the strength to return to the river.”Why not take up gardening?” he said, thinking this a more suitable pastime for a convalescent woman of a certain age. That is why she began laying out the gardens and supervising their construction. The gardens would take ten years to build, and would extend over more than twenty acres.
Elsie Reford had to overcome many difficulties in bringing her garden to life. First among them were the allergies that sometimes left her bedridden for days on end. The second obstacle was the property itself. Estevan was first and foremost a fishing lodge. The site was chosen because of its proximity to a salmon river and its dramatic views – not for the quality of the soil.
To counter-act nature’s deficiencies, she created soil for each of the plants she had selected, bringing peat and sand from nearby farms. This exchange was fortuitous to the local farmers, suffering through the Great Depression. Then, as now, the gardens provided much-needed work to an area with high unemployment. Elsie Reford’s genius as a gardener was born of the knowledge she developed of the needs of plants. Over the course of her long life, she became an expert plantsman. By the end of her life, Elsie Reford was able to counsel other gardeners, writing in the journals of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society. Elsie Reford was not a landscape architect and had no training of any kind as a garden designer. While she collected and appreciated art, she claimed no talents as an artist.
Elsie Stephen Reford died at her Drummond Street home on November 8, 1967 in her ninety-sixth year.
In 1995, the Reford Gardens ("Jardins de Métis") in Grand-Métis were designated a National Historic Site of Canada, as being an excellent Canadian example of the English-inspired garden.(Wikipedia)
Visit : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Reford
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Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
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LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
Créés par Elsie Reford de 1926 à 1958, ces jardins témoignent de façon remarquable de l’art paysager à l’anglaise. Disposés dans un cadre naturel, un ensemble de jardins exhibent fleurs vivaces, arbres et arbustes. Le jardin des pommetiers, les rocailles et l’Allée royale évoquent l’œuvre de cette dame passionnée d’horticulture. Agrémenté d’un ruisseau et de sentiers sinueux, ce site jouit d’un microclimat favorable à la croissance d’espèces uniques au Canada. Les pavots bleus et les lis, privilégiés par Mme Reford, y fleurissent toujours et contribuent , avec d’autres plantes exotiques et indigènes, à l’harmonie de ces lieux.
Created by Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958, these gardens are an inspired example of the English art of the garden. Woven into a natural setting, a series of gardens display perennials, trees and shrubs. A crab-apple orchard, a rock garden, and the Long Walk are also the legacy of this dedicated horticulturist. A microclimate favours the growth of species found nowhere else in Canada, while the stream and winding paths add to the charm. Elsie Reford’s beloved blue poppies and lilies still bloom and contribute, with other exotic and indigenous plants, to the harmony of the site.
Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada
Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Gouvernement du Canada – Government of Canada
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One of the many carvings adorning the wall arcading in the north aisle.
There is a danger of running out of superlatives when trying to describe Beverley Minster. It is not only the second finest non-cathedral church in the country but is architecturally a far finer building than most of our cathedrals themselves! It will come as a surprise to many visitors to find this grand edifice simply functions today as a parish church and has never been more than collegiate, a status it lost at the Reformaton. What had added to its mystique and wealth was its status as a place of pilgrimage housing the tomb of St John of Beverley, which drew visitors and revenue until the Reformation brought an end to such fortunes and the shrine was destroyed (though the saint's bones were later rediscovered and reinterred in the nave). That this great church itself survived this period almost intact is little short of a miracle in itself.
There has been a church here since the 8th century but little remains of the earlier buildings aside from the Saxon chair near the altar and the Norman font in the nave. The present Minster's construction spans the entirety of the development of Gothic architecture but forms a surprisingly harmonious whole nevertheless, starting with Early English in the 13h century choir and transepts (both pairs) with their lancet windows in a building phase that stopped at the first bays of the nave. Construction was then continued with the nave in the 14th century but only the traceried windows betray the emergent Decorated style, the design otherwise closely followed the work of the previous century which gives the Minster's interior such a pleasingly unified appearance (the only discernable break in construction within can be seen where the black purbeck-marble ceased to be used for certain elements beyond the eastern bay of the nave). Finally the building was completed more or less by 1420 with the soaring west front with its dramatic twin-towers in Perpendicular style (the east window must have been enlarged at this point too to match the new work at the west end).
The fabric happily survived the Reformation intact aside from the octagonal chapter-house formerly adjoining the north choir aisle which was dismantled to raise money by the sale of its materials while the church's fate was in the balance (a similar fate was contemplated for the rest of the church by its new owners until the town bought it for retention as a parish church for £100). The great swathes of medieval glass alas were mostly lost, though seemingly as much to neglect and storm-damage in the following century than the usual iconoclasm. All that survived of the Minster's original glazing was collected to form the patchwork display now filling the great east window, a colourful kaleidoscope of fragments of figures and scenes. Of the other furnishings the choir stalls are the major ensemble and some of the finest medieval canopied stalls extant with a full set of charming misericords (though most of these alas are not normally on show).
There are suprisingly few monuments of note for such an enormous cathedral-like church, but the one major exception makes up for this, the delightful canopied Percy tomb erected in 1340 to the north of the high altar. The tomb itself is surprisingly plain without any likeness remaining of the deceased, but the richly carved Decorated canopy above is alive with gorgeous detail and figurative embellishments. There are further carvings to enjoy adorning the arcading that runs around the outer perimeter of the interior, especially the north nave aisle which has the most rewarding carved figures of musicians, monsters and people suffering various ailments, many were largely restored in the 19th century but still preserve the medieval spirit of irreverent fun.
To summarise Beverley Minster would be difficult other than simply adding that if one enjoys marvelling at Gothic architecture at its best then it really shouldn't be missed and one should prioritise it over the majority of our cathedrals. It is a real gem and a delight to behold, and is happily normally open and welcoming to visitors (who must all be astonished to find this magnificent edifice is no more than a simple parish church in status!). I thoroughly enjoyed this, my second visit here (despite the best efforts of the poor weather!).
To create the iconic curving forms of the cruise-ship terminal in Porto, Portugal, architect Luís Pedro Silva began working from the project’s territorial context rather than simply seeking a display of formal prowess. The powerful oval drum of its main volume, with its spiraling central atrium and exterior ramps, is charged with both centripetal and centrifugal force, gathering all the vectors of movement that come together in the terminal from sea and land, and spinning them back out again to their various destinations. Before receiving the commission, Silva, who has degrees in architecture and urban planning from Porto University, worked on a strategic plan for the entire port as a member of a team of economists, engineers, and other specialists. The building and its new dock bring together the group’s ideas for increasing the port’s efficiency, promoting a growing tourist industry, and improving connections to the area’s attractions.
Leixões, the port, occupies a small inlet on the Atlantic Ocean 6 miles north of the historic city center of Porto. It is protected by two breakwaters that reach more than 2,500 feet into the sea, each with a dock on its harbor side. The tightly confined waterway houses facilities for container ships, oil tankers, a fishing fleet, and a recreational marina. It’s a node of heavy industry that interrupts the rocky beaches of the coast, separating seaside promenades designed by Portugal’s two Pritzker Prize winners: Eduardo Souto de Moura to the south, in Matosinhos, and Álvaro Siza to the north, in Leça da Palmera, where his outdoor swimming pools and Tea House are nestled into the rocks.
In the first phase of the plan, finished in 2011, Silva and his team moved the cruise-ship dock from the inner harbor to a new pier at the end of the southern breakwater, for more direct access to the city and to accommodate ships up to 1,000 feet long. The terminal was completed in a second phase last year. In the near future, the pier and terminal will open to the general public, allowing the building, with its rooftop viewing deck, to truly function as a destination rather than just a curiosity when seen from Souto de Moura’s seaside promenade, where its dramatic forms stand out against the horizon.
Silva set the terminal in the elbow of the angled breakwater, and in plan it resembles a hinge or spring, with ramps and arms curving out in different directions toward the marina, the new pier, and the shore. Inside, these pedestrian paths come together in a spiraling oval ramp around the central atrium. The uncoiling arms diagram the different systems of movement through the building. From a cruise ship, for example, a breezeway carries passengers over the service areas of the dock to the terminal. Ramps and escalators bring them down to the ground level, where they pass through customs and baggage handling (or vice-versa), to connect to tour buses or smaller boats for trips to the city and the Douro wine region, or eventually to a tram line that is planned to run along the coast.
In the original program, the upper section of the terminal was meant to house a shopping concourse and a restaurant, but Portugal’s ongoing financial slump made investors hard to find. While Silva was developing the design, these floors were taken on by the University of Porto’s Marine Science and Technology Research Park. The architect rather awkwardly converted the commercial spaces into laboratories, with floor-to-ceiling glazed storefronts facing the atrium but with no exterior windows, and with offices on mezzanines accessed via spiral stairs. He installed a research aquarium in the basement, and converted the top-floor restaurant into a multi-use event credits space. Yet this unlikely partnership with the university does bring life to the building, as well as steady revenue, and allows the center’s scientists to be close to the sea.
Silva worked with local manufacturers to develop a hexagonal ceramic tile with a tilted face to clad the building, updating the Portuguese tradition of painted-tile facades. He rotated the tiles, placing them in varying relations to each other, like barnacles or shells, to create an uneven surface. “They give the building a human scale,” he says.
Glistening in the light, the curving walls of the building read like ribbons looping around themselves in an irregular tangle. Echoes of two Guggenheims are evident—Wright’s in New York and Gehry’s in Bilbao. Silva affirms, however, that Siza is his most important reference: “The way our bodies move in a space, and the way a space invites you forward.” Like Souto de Moura, whose early buildings were very Miesian, Silva may be using Wright and Gehry to mitigate the influence of Siza’s eccentric, rectilinear forms. Whatever the case, he develops the terminal’s looping ramps and drum with an elegant economy of means, and makes this formal repertoire his own.
OPENING IN THE CIELING TO THE BALACONY;
Originally opened in 1921, the Lucas Theatre underwent a 12-year, $10 million dollar restoration project, and reopened on December 1, 2000.
In 2002, the theater was purchased by the Savannah College of Art and Design, which plans to incorporate the theater into its dramatic arts program.
It happened a long time ago, yet it seems like just yesterday: Denali National Park, Summer of 2010.
I had gone with a group of good friends to tour the 49th state, explore its amazing landscapes, check out its bountiful wildlife and perhaps return back with unforgivable memories.
And boy, did we get a load of all the three on that trip where we explored the Kenai Fjords, Denali National Park and attractions near Anchorage. But Denali was the icing on the cake of Alaska. With its dramatic scenery, vast open vistas, and the mighty peak opening up herself for a detailed portrait all made me decide this was the highlight of the trip.
I still remmeber the bone-jarring ride on a rattling shuttle into the heart of Denali: Four hours of gazing open-jawed at the Alaska Range interrupted frequently with stops to slow down and savor the wild scenery in front of us. It was one such point where this vista was shot: an icy river making its way from deep in the valleys of the Alaska range foothills to eventually join the McKinley river. While the summer greens had disappeared, the contrasting colors in the mountain ranges still made for some great images.
Denali National Park
AK USA
Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States of America
Summary
Soaring over Central Park, the profile of the San Remo is among the most important components of the magnificent skyline of Central Park West. The first of the twin-towered buildings which give Central Park West its distinctive silhouette, and one of the New York's last grand apartment houses built in the pre-Depression era, it was designed by Emery Roth, then at the pinnacle of his career as a specialist in apartment house architecture. A residential skyscraper in classical garb, the San Remo epitomizes Roth's ability to combine the traditional with the modern, an urbane amalgam of luxury and convenience, decorum and drama.
Development of Central Park West
Central Park West, the northern continuation of Eighth Avenue bordering on the park, is today one of New York's finest residential streets, but in the mid-nineteenth century it was a rural and inhospitable outpost, notable for its rocky terrain, browsing goats and ramshackle shanties. With the creation of Central Park in the 1860s, followed by Riverside Park (begun 1876), as well as a series of transportation improvements such as the Ninth Avenue Elevated Railroad (1879), the Upper West Side in general experienced a period of intense real estate speculation. The 1880were the first decade of major development, and set the pattern for the Upper West Side, where rowhouses line the side streets, and multiple dwellings, commercial and institutional structures are sited on the avenues.
Not surprisingly, those avenues closest to the parks. Central Park West and Riverside Drive, were immediately considered the most desirable. (Ninth Avenue, re-christened Columbus in 1890, Tenth Avenue, renamed Amsterdam in the same year, and Broadway—the Boulevard before 1899 — were all, in varying degrees marred by cable car and elevated railway lines.)
The potential of the parkside avenues for development as prime locations led to an anticipatory increase in land values; prices rose to such extravagant heights that many speculative builders shied away from row house and tenement construction, from which they would realize relatively meager returns, while the very wealthy, who could afford to build mansions, for the most part remained on the more fashionable East Side- As a result, the development of Central Park West lagged behind the general development of the Upper West Side. It was not until the turn of the century that Central Park West's construction boom began and it emerged as a- boulevard of elegant tall apartments punctuated by impressive institutional buildings—a kind of grand proscenium to the architectural variety show of the Upper West Side.
The stage had been set By two great monuments, the American Museum of Natural History between 77th and 81st Streets, (begun 1874, architects Vaux & Mould, and a designated New York City Landmark), and the Dakota, the pioneering luxury apartments at 72nd Street (1880-84. architect Henry Hardenbergh, and a designated New York City Landmark). Yet a survey of roughly a decade later revealed that more than half the block fronts along the park from 60th to 96th Streets remained vacant or contained only old, modest frame houses. A few rather unprepossessing apartment hotels (at
least, relative to the Dakota) were constructed in the early 1890s, among them the San Remo at 75th Street, designed in 1890 by architect Edward Angel 1.2 was described by Moses King in his Handbook as "an immense and imposing edifice, finely situated on the high ground of West 75th Street and facing on the lawns, woods and waters of Central Park. The rooms . . . are all in suites"; and more recently as "a ten-story, high Victorian pile, a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque details . . . unremarkable from an architectural standpoint except for the steep pyramidal towers at its corners."
Among the other apartment hotels on the avenue, were the Beresford at 81st Street, the Majestic (architect Alfred Zucker) just south of the Dakota, both erected in the early 1890s, and the El Dorado at 90th Street of 1901. These have all been replaced by their towered namesakes of the late 1920s and early '30s, but they had already been architecturally superceded by grand apartments houses of the early 1900s—such as the Prasada (1904) at 65th Street, the Langham (1905) at 73rd Street, the Kenilworth (1908) at 75th Street. This phase in Central Park West's development was interrupted by World War I, when construction ground to a halt. The second major phase of development began with the great prosperity of the '20s producing the Art Deco towered buildings, and Roth's Beresford and San Remo Apartments which now define the skyline.
The 1920s provided a generation of aspiring immigrants with the opportunity to move up in the world, both economically and geographically. Many Jewish immigrants, refugees from Csarist pogroms, had achieved prosperity in New York by the late 1920s, and looked from the Lower East Side and the Boroughs to the Upper West Side as a cultural and architectural haven. By the mid-1930s more than half the residents of the Upper West Side from 72nd to 96th Streets were Jewish, and more than a third of these families was headed by a parent born in Europe. Emery Roth was himself a Jewish immigrant of Horatio Algeresque stamina and optimism, a family man and Upper West Sider, although he arrived by a more circuitous route than most of his neighbors.
The Architect
Emery Roth was born in 1871 in the town or Galzecs, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When he was thirteen the family's fortunes took a turn for the worse, and it was decided that young Emery, alone, would immigrate to America. Passing through Ellis Island, he continued on to Chicago where his success story began.
When still a teenager living a hand to mouth existence in Bloomington, Illinois, Roth determined to become an architect. He worked for both a local builder and a local architect. In 1889, having won a national-government sponsored contest, the Maize Competition—for which he drew a living room utilizing the corn plant as a decorative motif—Roth took his $100 prize money and set out for Kansas City. Apparently he could not find architectural employment there, but while he was still in Bloomington, had applied to join the office of Burnham & Root. Offered the job by mail. Roth moved on to Chicago and worked under Charles Atwood (who had succeeded John W. Root after his death in 1891.) Roth helped to prepare drawings for the celebrated Palace of Fine Arts. While at the fair, he met Richard Morris Hunt, the recognized dean of American architects, who offered to hire him if he ever came to New York. After the fair, with true to form optimism, Roth made his way to New York, where Hunt's casual offer was honored. Assigned to draft interior perspectives for The Breakers, the Newport mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Roth came in contact with Ogden Codman, a noted architect, interior designer and socialite. In 1895 Roth went to work for Codman, where his decorative and planning abilities were sharpened.
By 1898 Roth believed himself ready for private practice. Two young architects, Theodore G. Stein and E. Yancy Cohen, after involved negotiations, sold Roth their architectural practice for $1000. As part of the agreement, Roth was entitled to represent himself as a partner in Stein, Cohen & Roth in order to capitalize on the good will of the existing firm. In fact, Roth was on his own.
Roth's first major commission was the Hotel Belleclaire of 1901-03 on upper Broadway, a designated New York City Landmark. While it was under construction Roth was approached by Leo and Alexander Bing, Manhattan real estate developers. The Bing brothers admired the Belleclaire and commissioned Roth to design a group of five-story apartment buildings in Washington Heights. This alliance inaugurated a lifelong association.
In the following years, Roth had several commissions, among them Bancroft Hall of 1910—a student housing facility for Columbia University, and a series of religious structures, including the Congregation Ahavith Achem of 1908 in Brooklyn and the First Reformed Hungarian Church of 1916 on East 69th Street in Manhattan.
The year 1918 was a traumatic one for Roth. He lost his vision in one eye, the result of glaucoma, and nearly died in the great influenza epidemic. But the prosperity of the 1920s was to carry him into a period of great achievement. After the hiatus in construction caused by the First World War, building was again undertaken. In New York City, a 1921 ordinance exempting new residential construction from real estate taxes for the next decade, opened the door to a building boom. The Bing brothers commissioned a series of apartment buildings and hotels from Roth, many of which Ruttenbaum aptly terras "fine background buildings," while two other developers, Samuel Minskoff and Harris H. Uris commissioned Roth to design a number of handsome medium height apartment houses which the architect dubbed "skyscratchers."
In 1926 Roth in association with Thomas Hastings, the surviving partner of the eminent firm of Carrere & Hastings, designed the Ritz Tower at Park Avenue and 57th Street, a 41-story apartment hotel In a neo-Renaissance style, its extreme height making it "a symbol of a new way to live for wealthy New Yorkers." After the Ritz Tower, Roth went on to design a host of luxury residential skyscrapers, among them the Oliver Cromwell Hotel on West 72nd Street (1928), the Beresford Apartments on Central Park West, and as a consultant to Margon & Holder, the Art Deco style El dorado Apartments also on Central Park West (1929-31, and a designated New York City Landmark). From the mid-1920s on, the signature of a major Roth apartment house was its tower(s). Initially designed to conceal water tanks, they evolved in the Beresford with its three towers into a major element of the design.
In the San Remo. among Roth's finest works, the towers are carried even further, becoming an integral component of this residential skyscraper. This fusing of the functional with the aesthetic was equally characteristic of his apartment plans. Roth's sons credit their father with the creation of the foyer plan, and if not the originator he was certainly a refiner of this type. Roth's best apartments seem effortlessly interlocked, wasteful corridor space reduced to a minimum, with spacious, well-lit rooms in their stead.
Roth's last great work was the Normandy Apartments on Riverside Drive of 1938-39 (a designated New York City Landmark), by which time his sons had joined the firm. The majority of his later buildings in concession to the Depression had smaller apartments and fewer amenities, while still maintaining high standards. Roth died in 1947, and his sons continued the firm, which has been prosperous and prolific.
The San Remo
In an advertisement of May 18, 1930, in the New York Times the San Remo was heralded as:
The Aristocrat of Central Park West Apartments Designed for You Built by the builders of the Beresford
Every detail of these sumptuous apartments has been carefully planned to make living in them the last word in luxury. Only private homes have ceilings as lofty as these and rooms as- spacious. Every chamber has its own colored tile bathroom and is well-supplied with deep closets. Many have dressing rooms too. The long galleries and living rooms with fireplaces offer splendid decorative possibilities. The kitchens have been fitted with the most modern appliances. Up in the towers are apartments such as New York has never before seen with windows on all four sides and views of Central Park, the Hudson, and Westchester. Other specially designed apartments have slate terraces overlooking the park.
Six to sixteen rooms, simplex and duplex apartments H.R.H. Construction Company 11
Contemporary writers essentially concurred with this euphoric description, and were impressed by the height of the building, the twin-towered silhouette, good plans and luxurious detailing. The New Yorker magazine (a publication which in 1930 seems, at least to modern eyes, to all but ignore the 1929 Crash) featured two articles on the San Remo, one by "Penthouse" [Marcia Clarke Davenport]. Davenport is impressed by the views, the size of the terraces and rooms, and "the remarkable sun and light everywhere." Perhaps a hint of the Depression can be detected in her interest in costs--"This is not one of the houses you use to illustrate that rents are lower on the West Side." An eighteen-room duplex was offered at $21,000 per year.
The second New Yorker contributor, "T-Square" [George S. Chappell] considers the San Remo in more strictly architectural terms and as a design by Roth "whose name must be inextricably associated with the development of this section" of Manhattan.
...the Italian baroque [is] skillfully adapted to modern conditions. Cornices are reduced to a minimum, becoming simply bandcourses, but such detail as is used is classic in derivation. The twin towers with their circular colonnades of Corinthian columns, crowned by bronze lanterns,
are fine in silhouette____ The proportions are
well-studied and the warm light brick used above the limestone substructure give a delightful effect.
Chappell also praises the watertank coverings and the innovative window design with upper and lower movable transoms.
Despite its popular success, the San Remo fell prey to the pervasive economic mayhem of the 1930s. A full year after it had officially opened, nearly a third of its apartments remained vacant, and the Bank of the United States which held its $5 million mortgage had collapsed, its officers charged with recklessly "gambling" on the San Remo. In an
effort to attract tenants rents were reduced, and some of the larger apartments were subdivided. But after a succession of owners and bankruptcies, in 1940 the San Remo was sold along with the Beresford, which was experiencing similar financial woes, for a mere $25,000 over existing mortgages.
In its near sixty-year history, the San Remo has had numerous well-known and famous tenants, among them David Nemerov and his wife, owners of Russeks Stores, and parents of Howard Nemerov, poet and critic, and Diane Arbus, photographer, Eddie Cantor, the singer and comedian, and more recently, singer Barry Manilow, and actors Dustin Hoffman, Diane Keaton, Tony Randall and Mary Tyler Moore.
Architectural Sources and Style
The San Remo is a skyscraper which, in the conservative early twentieth-century tradition, applies an historical style to a contemporary form. Roth, who had a lifelong predilection for classicizing styles (although he used others), here turned to the Late Italian Renaissance for inspiration,,. Broken pediments, both curved and triangular, cartouches, and boldly scaled pilasters and columns with composite capitals, and overlapping architectural elements—all hallmarks of the Late Italian Renaissance—are the components of the San Remo's detailing. Ruttenbaum has noted similarities in the crowning temples of the San Remo with the ancient Greek choragic monument of Lysicrates, which Roth had studied in his youth at the Chicago exposition. Certainly, there are parallels, especially in the proportions, but perhaps equally important are such Late Renaissance structures as Bramante's celebrated Tempietto in Rome, or—in terms of placement as much as form—Michelangelo's lantern atop St. Peter's dome.
Much closer to home are such general prototypes as McKim, Mead & White's Municipal Building of 1909-13, a skyscraper topped by a temple and designed in a neo-classical style.
Truly tall skyscrapers, rather than the "skyscratchers" of Roth's terminology, up until the 1920s had been almost exclusively erected as commercial structures. Roth's first very tall apartment building, the 41-story Ritz Tower of 1926, had been erected as an apartment hotel, for which less stringent building code requirements applied than for apartment houses. The Ritz Tower was exactly what the name implied—one preliminary scheme even called for a lantern clearly derived from the tower of the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio. In residential terms, this was a new building type, one which reached a fuller expression in the San Remo.
In early 1929, a new Multiple Dwelling Act was passed, allowing apartment houses of large ground area greater height and the use of towers. The San Remo, the first of the vast twin-towered West Side apartments, was designed in response to these new stipulations. An innovative design, based on Roth's experience with single-towered structures, it was quickly emulated: yet the sheer size and height of the San Remo apparently struck others as fundamentally "modern." The Century Apartments and the Majestic Apartments are exercises in the contemporary Art Deco style. Even the Normandy, Roth's own last great building combines elements of the Style Moderne with neo-Italian Renaissance motifs. Yet, as the architectural critic, Paul Goldberger (himself a resident of the San Remo) has remarked, "Roth's greatest gift was his ability to adapt Renaissance and classical details to modern building forms." 21
Description
The San Remo Apartments occupy the Central Park West blockfront from 74th to 75th Streets. A residential skyscraper, the main block of the building is 17 stories in height, with terraced setbacks from the 14th to 17th stories. Two symmetrical towers, each ten stories in height surmounted by elaborate suprastructures culminating in circular temples with lanterns give the building its dramatic profile. The building is executed in light brick. The first three stories are in rusticated limestone, lightly vermiculated at the first two stories, with smooth lower relief at the third. The facade is 26 bays wide, with two main entryways. The southern elevation is 19 bays wide, and the northern is 16. {The southern elevation is 180 feet in length, the northern, 150.) Each has a single main entrance. (There are four office entrances on the Central Park West facade, two on the south elevation, and three on the north. The towers are five bays wide on the facade and side elevations.
The rear, western elevation...which owing to its height above the side street rowhouses, is largely visible is executed in the same light brick, and is ranged around a T-shaped courtyard. The towers have terraced rear extensions. A large chimney abuts the north tower.
The facade and side elevations are articulated above the three-story base by shallow brick pilasters and slight projections signalized as pavilions by the Renaissance detailing at the upper stories. The facade of the main block of the building has a basic vertical arrangement of bays as: 1-1-1-6-1-6-1-6-1-1-1. At the terrace levels the central six bays and outermost three bays function as true pavilions between the setbacks. The towers have massive, pier-like enframements at the corners. Cornices are effectively and sparingly used to accentuate the upper stories of the main block of the building, the upper stories of the towers, and the suprastructures.
Architectural detailing, executed in stone, terra cotta and metal, is Late Italian Renaissance in character, and highlights entrances and window configurations at the upper stories. Balustrades, pilasters, engaged columns, broken pediments, both circular and triangular, garlands, urns, cartouches, scrolls, consoles and roundels are employed. The detail is executed in limestone up to the fourth story and in terra cotta above. The terraces have either terra-cotta balustrades or metal railings. The lantern is of copper. (All such detailing is described below.)
Detailing
Fenestration:
The windows are uniformly treated on the designed elevations, with metal casements featuring movable transoms above and below the principal windows. The upper transom swings out, the lower transom (or hopper) swings in. The central large windows open outward in the conventional manner. The windows have six panes (2 over 2 over 2). This innovative design was intended to facilitate the regulation of temperature and air circulation. There are some variations in width which reflect interior spaces (living rooms, bedrooms etc.) but the basic configuration remains the same, except in the second-story windows above the Central Park West entrances, and at the uppermost stories of the facade central pavilion, which are tripartite with nine panes of glass (3 over 3 over 3). On the rear elevation the windows are more varied in their treatment, with single double, triple and double leaf casement windows, some of which do not have the lower transom. A few windows have been altered, most notably on the rear tower elevations.
Main Entrances:
Facade [Central Park West] (two, symmetrically located at the 6-7th bays and 20-21st bays).
A broken triangular pediment surmounts the double doors , executed in bronze and glass with paneled, solid bronze transoms. The doors are each divided into three parts, with square panels ornamented by bronze medallions and bordering acanthus leaver set in a rectilinear bronze grillework. Metal and glass lanterns flank the doorway. A double-height limestone enframement surrounds the doorway and second-story tripartite window, and is composed of flanking pilasters with composite capitals , with reliefs depicting classical urns above, and supporting a dentiled curved, broken pediment. At the center of the pediment is a large scrolled cartouche draped by a garland which is looped over a rosette at each side. The doorways have sheltering canopies on bronze supports.
North [75 St.] and south [74th St.] elevations (one, located in the 13th bay, north side, and in the 11th bay, south side).
Both have deep reveals and limestone enframements with a surmounting console table on console-like supports with a central scrolled cartouche. The single bronze and glass doors follow the same design as those on the facade and have transoms with an octagonal panel with central medallion and acanthus leaves. Lanterns flank the doorways.
Office Entrances:
Facade [Central Park West] (four, symmetrically located at the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th bays).
These have limestone enframements and surmounting entablatures with scrolled ornamental keystones. The single doors are of bronze with a glazed upper panel and transom.
North elevation [75th St.] (three, at the 4th, 8th, and 15th bays).
These are detailed like those on the facade.
South elevation [74th St.] (two, at the 6th and 14th bays).
Set within deep reveals and enframed by the rusticated walls, each has a bronze door with a glazed upper panel and transom.
Service Entrances:
North [75th St.] and south [74th St.] elevations, (two, located at the rear of each elevation).
A rusticated wall which follows the design of the building walls and extends to the second story contains an arched doorway with a large keystone and is surmounted by a paneled overdoor. A decorative metal gate with a panel reading "Service" fills the archway. At the south elevation, a metal railing atop a brick wall extends westward along the property line.
Third Story Window Enframements:
Facade [Central Park West], north [75th St. ] and south [74th St.] elevations, (four, each set at the second bay from the Central Park West corners).
The windows have limestone relief enframements with side elements in the shape of a console in profile, and rosettes. .. . .
Fourth Story Window Enframements:
Facade [Central Park West] (two, symmetrically placed, 5-8th bays and 19-22nd bays).
A balustraded balcony set upon four large ornamented console brackets extends for four bays. The central two bays have a limestone enframement and are separated by a smooth limestone panel. Flanking pilasters support an entablature upon which a triangular broken pediment is superimposed. At the center is a scrolled escutcheon with a garland and ornamental tablet.
Facade [Central Park West], north [75th St.] and south [74th St.] elevations, (four, each set at the second bay from the Central Park West corners).
Each has an entablature with a superimposed triangular pediment, both dentil led, and a central ornamented keystone flanked by plain stones. Pilasters and enframements surround the windows which also have a balustrade executed in high relief.
Fourth Story Cartouche:
Facade [Central Park West] (one, between the 13th and 14th bays).
A large scrolled cartouche, placed at the center of the facade, it has the completion date of the building 19—30 placed to each side.
Eleventh-Twelfth Story Window Enframements:
Facade [Central Park West] (two, symmetrically located at the 5-8th and 19-22nd bays).
A balustrade on Four console brackets, which visually echoes the fourth-story treatment below, extends across four bays. A double-height, two-bay wide central section is recessed, with flanking brick pilasters, in which the capitals are seemingly "overlapped" by the outer wall surface. Two embossed rosettes appear in the panel which is enframed by bandcourses between the 11th and 12th stories. Two additional embossed rosettes appear in the outer bays. A scrolled cartouche with garlands draped over rosettes, similar to those of the facade main entrances, surmount the composition.
Thirteenth to Fifteenth Story Window Enframements:
Facade (Central Park West], north [75 th St. ] and south [74 th St.] elevations, (four, each set at the second bay from the Central Park West corners).
Placed similarly to the window enframement of the fourth story, these three-story compositions also serve to accentuate and anchor the Central Park West corners of the building. In each,, ornamented console brackets at the 13th story level support a balustered balcony one bay wide. At the 13th story and balcony level, are bandcourses which continue along the walls, articulating the designed elevations. The 14th-story windows are surmounted by curved broken pediments and ornamented at the center by escutcheons. Garlands and floral motifs appear below the pediments, upon the window frames. The 15th-story windows are surmounted by a scrolled escutcheon. Double height brick pilasters with rosettes flank the windows and support a broken triangular pediment. Cartouches appear at the center. The band courses of the pilasters and broken pediments also continue along the wall surfaces and here help to define the three-bay wide corner pavilions. These pavilions are further defined by flanking brick pilasters with rosettes.
Thirteenth to Seventeenth Story Window Enframements:
Facade [Central Park West] (one, at the 12-13th bays).
This composition, which signalizes the central six-bay wide pavilion, reiterates many of the elements of the four corner compositions just described, although it is two bays wide, rather than one. Ornamented consoles at the 13th story support the 14th story balustered balcony. Instead of two windows there are single tripartite windows. The 14th and 15th story windows are detailed like those at the corners, but here the broken pediment enframing the carouche is curved rather than triangular. The composition continues to the 16th and 17th stories, which are also flanked by brick pilasters. The tripartite window at the 16th story is richly enframed with a central garlanded tablet, and a broken triangular pediment. At the 17th story is a central garlanded cartouche. The central pavilion has terminating brick pilasters with embossed rosettes like those of the corner pavilions.
Twenty-third Story Window Enframements:
Facade [Central Park West], north [75th St.] and south [74th St.] elevations, (four, set in the central bays).
These window, set mid way on the designed elevations of the towers, function as medallions on the relatively unadorned tower shafts. The windows have elaborate enframements with ornamental keystones and curved, broken pediments.
Twenty-sixth - Twenty-seventh Story Window Enframements:
Facade [Central Park West], north [75th St. ] and south [74th St. ] elevations, (four, set in the 2-4th bays).
Set between bandcourses and balustrade and pediment level, which continue on the wall surfaces of the towers, are these three boldly scaled three-bay wide compositions. The central bay has a projecting balustrade and above, double-height engaged columns on brackets, with foliate capitals. These columns enframe the two windows and support a curved broken pediment. At the center of the pediment is a large cartouche. The side bays have balustrades and above, double-height pilasters on podia, with foliate capitals. These pilasters flank the two windows and support triangular broken pediments.
Suprastructure Window Enframements:
Facade [Central Park West], north [75th St.] and south [74th St.] elevations and the two inner faces of the towers (six, set at the second story of the suprastructure and in the penthouses).
These double-height compositions each include a framed window with flanking brick pilasters with embossed rosettes at capital-level. Above the window is a broken triangular pediment and a central escutcheon. Six small penthouses with semi-circular roofs have their facades placed above the pediments. The windows of these are curved at top and bottom and elaborately enframed and have metal grilles. They are each flanked by console brackets which support the curved pediment of the penthouse.
Temples:
North and south towers, (two, located at the top of the building).
Above the suprastructure each tower is surmounted by a circular temple of brick and terra cotta, set upon a base articulated by boldly scaled console brackets on eight buttressing pedestals. Large urns, draped with garlands, crown each pedestal and the intervening walls are ornamented with scrolled cartouches beneath balustrades. The temples, set on simple brick podia, are encircled by colonnades of smooth columns with foliate capitals. These support plain dentil led friezes beneath balustrades. Above on each tower is a circular base with copestones, which supports the crowing element — a fenestrated and electrified copper lantern, above elongated foliate scrolled consoles. (The temples and lanterns have recently been restored.)
- From the 1987 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Black's Beach, located in San Diego, California, is a popular stretch of coastline known for its dramatic cliffs and the Pacific Ocean. Adjacent to the Torrey Pines Gliderport, the beach is a significant natural area within the city. The cliffs themselves are composed of sedimentary rock, offering a striking geological feature that has been shaped by erosion over time. The beach is utilized by locals and visitors for various activities, including sunbathing and surfing, and is recognized for its scenic beauty.
The church was designed by the renowned architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who considered it one of his best works. It is a significant example of Roman Baroque architecture, known for its dramatic and immersive artistic experience. The sculpture on the left appears to be an angel, consistent with the Baroque vision of splendor and movement in art and architecture found in the church. The structure features prominent Corinthian columns and intricate cornices, showcasing notable chiaroscuro effects.
Hollyhock House is Wright's first Los Angeles project. Built between 1919 and 1923, it represents his earliest efforts to develop a regionally appropriate style of architecture for Southern California. Wright himself referred to it as California Romanza, using the musical term meaning "freedom to make one's own form".
In 1927, Aline Barnsdall gave Hollyhock House and eleven surrounding acres to the city of Los Angeles for use as a public art park in memory of her father, Theodore Barnsdall. For the next fifteen years the house was home to the California Art Club, which made full use of its dramatic design to stage plays and display art work.
The house was leased again in the 1940's and 1950's by Dorothy Clune Murray's Olive Hill Foundation. In each case, the house was altered to accommodate the needs and tastes of these organizations.
Located between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards just west of Vermont, the house sits at the crown of a hill planted in the 1890's as a producing olive grove. Named Barnsdall Park in honor of her father, this site has become home to the City's varied arts programs and is a destination for visitors from around the world.
The house was named for Barnsdall's favorite flower, the hollyhock, and abstract versions of it appear throughout the house in concrete, in furniture and in carpets.
A major rehabilitation initiated in 1974 provided improvements and repairs that helped restore much of the buildings original appearance.
In 1989, the autumnal color scheme of Aline Barnsdall's day was recreated in the living room, and in 1990, Wright's custom-designed living room furniture was replicated and installed in its proper location. Research and restoration remain active priorities for the future.
Photo taken on June 5, 2005