St Swithin, Frettenham, Norfolk

Frettenham is another large village in the otherwise intensely rural rolling fields between Norwich and the Broads. Someone I met in one of the Sprowston churches once told me that locals there thought of themselves as living in 'suburban Broadland', but I thought this was a better description of Frettenham. Arthur Mee noted in the 1930s that every cottage was given half an acre of land by the late Lord Suffield, although there appears to have been considerable building since then, perhaps on some of those half acres. I was disappointed to find that Post Office Road no longer had a post office, but School Lane still has a school, and heading out of the village to the north is Church Lane. You can see the tower of St Swithin from a fair distance, because it is a tall tower of a big church, quite a contrast with nearby Spixworth on the road to Norwich. But here, the church sits on its own, away from the village and out in the fields. The sprawling graveyard is lined with old trees, and there is perhaps a sense of loneliness and abandonment after the crisp suburban streets of the village. This is an illusion of course, because Frettenham church is still very much in use. But the churchyard is perhaps not an unreasonable suggestion of what we will find inside.

At first sight, St Swithin is a typical late medieval East Anglian church, with aisles and a clerestory. However, the rebuilding here was relatively early, as you can tell from the quatrefoil windows in the clerestory. The chancel is all Victorian, I think. A neat obelisk of a war memorial is set beside the south face of the tower. You step into a large, cluttered interior full of dusty light, rough and ready and full of interest. However, a striking, perhaps even jarring note is struck by some quite extraordinary recent additions of the mid 1980s. The first you see on entering is a brightly coloured St Christopher on the wall of the north aisle. Both St Christopher and the Christchild are rather sombre, the slippery rocks beneath the surface of the water perhaps concentrating the Saint's mind. Turning to the east, you see what is surely one of the most remarkable east windows in any Norfolk church. It depicts the Harrowing of Hell, the Risen Christ fending off Death while ushered by an angel. When I first visited in 2009, the churchwarden working at the back of the church told me that it was designed and installed by a working party from the Manpower Services Commission, a claim also made in the church guide, which seemed extraordinary to say the least.

In fact, it is quite true. The designer was Paul Greener, a young man of 24 who joined the Youth Opportunities Programme after being unemployed for six months. The working party were engaged on building and decoration repairs in the church, and being given a fairly free hand they decided to go a step further. The chargehand of the working party, Michael Lane and the young Paul Greener painted the decorative mural work that you see around the east window of the south aisle. It depicts the life of St Swithin in roundels connected by vines, although unfortunately it has more recently suffered badly from water soaking through at the top. However, at the time it was received very well by the parish, so the two suggested they might have a go at some stained glass. As Paul told me later, 'none of us had had any training at all, but we went on a simple course and I did some designs for the little chancel windows. I think I did two and Mike did two. Well. they seemed to be received well. despite the fact that neither of us knew what we were doing. I realised at the time that I was involved in some thing pretty unique!'

These first pieces are set into the upper lights of the chancel north windows. One depicts the keys of St Peter, another two fish. Another sympathetic mind, Richard Seaman, joined the project. Buoyed up by their success so far, the three suggested what would be their biggest legacies, the St Christopher in the north aisle, and the east window. The parish wanted a Resurrection scene, and so Paul made the design in the evening at home. He continues: 'I worked this up in to a first cartoon which got sent to Canterbury for perusal. Much to my surprise, it was accepted. The window itself was made in two places, in Frettenham church itself, and in a room at the Broadland District Council's waste disposal depot in Frettenham. We had to buy a kiln for the firing of the painted segments of glass. We knew virtually nothing of the technique of manufacture, and I remember we were allowed to buy a book on it. It was absolutely invaluable, and we would have struggled even more than we did without it. There were three of us working on it in the initial stages: me, Michael Lane and Richard Seaman. Then Mike left the MSC project for a job with Broadland Council. That left me and Richard to soldier on. However, Richard had a degree in painting, and between the two of us I think you will agree, we seemed to manage. I did most of the cutting of the glass, while Richard did most of the lead-work. We shared the glass painting and the firing, and all the soldering and cementing and the messy stuff. The making of the east window took about six to eight months, including the fitting of it, which I believe was about three weeks all told. During this time Richard was also working on the St. Christopher, of which I did but a small part. The window was unveiled at the Easter Sunday service in 1988.'

A remarkable story. Paul tells me that in later years he opened a shop in Norwich, and did a History of Art degree at the UEA. He went on to study Theology, and worked as an Interpreter for Norwich Museums Service. The story of what happened here in the late 1980s now seems like something out of a novel, and really deserves to be much better known.

But this modern work should not distract us from a fair number of good medieval survivals. There are some pieces of restored 15th Century glass reset in the south side of the chancel, both angels, one of them a St Gabriel from an Annunciation scene. The Purbeck marble font at the east end of the nave is reset on a modern shaft, but a great curiosity is a second font which has been set precariously on a pair of what appear to be carved Norman capitals at the est end of the south aisle.

The church has a number of brasses, some figures and others inscriptions. The best of these is to Alice Thorndon, who died in 1420, which has a remarkable rhyming epitaph in Middle English:

O cryst ihesu pyte and mercy haue

On Alys brimham that whylom was the wyff

Of gylys thorndon whych her’ y graue

And her deffende fro werre off fendys stryff

Make her partable of eternal lyff

By the meryt off thy passion

Whych wyth thy blood madyst our redempcion.

Nearby, the inscription to Richard Woodes, a rector here who died in 1620, tells us that he hadbeen a paynefull and profitable minister of God for 48 years. This hardly sounds like a compliment to modern ears, but presumably means that he was painstaking in his work, and was able to teach his flock the meaning of scripture, which was no more than any heartily protestant congregation of the early 17th Century would expect from their minister. Such Puritan sentiments would resound down the following half century, as hundreds of more sacramentally-minded ministers in East Anglia were hounded out by outraged parishioners and lost their parishes and homes to the sequestration courts of the Commonwealth period. They would be described in the witness accounts as 'scandalous ministers', and their charges would include drinking in alehouses and consorting with common whores, but their only real crime was that their theology and churchmanship disagreed with that laid down by the government, and they refused to collude with the Puritans' plan to recast the minds of the common people in their own mould.

Equally memorable with the 1980s work perhaps are the inscriptions on some of the ledger stones. Of Mary Reeve, who died in 1669, it was recorded that

Heaven hath its due for it her soule retaines,

the Dead her due for her good name remaines,

and Earth what's due for here her corps is layd,

Blessed was her end, while these three depbts were payd.

In 1810, Thomas Drake died, when being called to London by the illness of his beloved brother William Drake, he was stricken by the hand of death. Unfortunately, his brother predeceased him by six days, and not far off his own inscription tells us that he was late purser on board HM ship Centaur, and that he was a prisoner under Hider Ally and Tippo Saib ten years.

Finally, a nice roundel of glass with a shield for St Swithin, showing raindrops falling on roses, an echo of My Favourite Things, perhaps.

Ahhhh! Freedom….. to be groin-groped by blue-gloved Transportation Security Administration agents, or photographed "naked" in a full-body X-ray device? These are the choices Ben Franklin couldn’t have imagined when he wrote in his notes to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1775, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Some will cry that Franklin didn’t live in a post-9/11 world as they try to convince us that violations of our 4th Amendment rights are for our own good… as was every other whittling-away of the rights meant to protect the people from the power of the state – currently laying comfortably in bed with the power of big moneyed-interests with profit as the highest virtue.

With our elected politicians acting as representatives to the companies that pay them, it’s no surprise that the 2 companies that make the majority of airport security scanners have doubled their lobbying efforts over the past 9 months to convince Congress that “Security Theater” now playing at an airport near you is an absolute necessity.

Once again… just follow the money… and this time the trail leads right to the bank account of Michael Chertoff.

Chertoff left his position as the head of the Homeland Security Agency from February of 2005, to January of 2009 to form a consulting firm he titled “The Chertoff Group,” which, according to their website, “provides strategic security advice and assistance, risk management strategy and business development solutions for commercial and government clients on a broad array of homeland and national security issues.”

The Chertoff Group was promptly hired by OSI Systems - the parent company of an obscure company called Rapiscan Systems… which received (your tax dollars) stimulus money to install their x-ray machines at airports – with Chertoff himself exploiting terrorism incidents to his advantage by publishing an op-eds in the days following the Christmas Day bombings urging the use of the body-scanners and appearing on television as an expert after the attempted attack to advise the nation that it should invest in full-body scanners – for the good of the nation, of course.

The Huffington Post reported: "Almost unmentioned in these appearances: Chertoff has a lot to gain financially if some of these measures are adopted. Between his private consulting firm, The Chertoff Group, and seats on the boards of giant defense and security firms, he sits at the heart of the giant security nexus created in the wake of 9/11, in effect creating a shadow homeland security agency. Chertoff launched his firm just days after President Barack Obama took office, eventually recruiting at least 11 top officials from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as former CIA director General Michael Hayden and other top military brass and security officials."

But it goes deeper. Chertoff’s consulting firm, the Chertoff Group, represents OSI Systems, one of two companies licensed to sell full-body scanners to the TSA. OSI, maker of the Rapiscan machine, garnered attention recently because its CEO was one of the 200 business leaders invited to travel with President Barack Obama on his trip to India – with India now planning to install scanners at its airports.

Gonzalo Lira wrote: “ Even back when he was in office as Secretary of Homeland Security, Chertoff kept pushing the TSA to adopt full body scans—even though there were a host of problems with the policy:

• Body scanners are not inherently superior to other methods of preventing unlawful items from being taken on board an airplane. The very fact that an individual can (currently) “opt out” of a body scan, and instead be manually patted down proves that scanners do not have an inherent advantage over low-tech solutions.

• Body scanners are extraordinarily expensive—$150,000 each—a cost which might be better applied to hiring more TSA workers, and thereby increasing the flow-rate of passengers through security, which currently has reached bottle-neck proportions.

• Body scanners represent an as yet unquantified but real health danger. (I will discuss the specifics below).

• Body scanners are an obvious breach of civil liberties—a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment (unlawful search and seizure) and the rule of probable cause . . . unless we are going to redefine “probable cause” as meaning all airplane passengers by definition are likely engaged in criminal activity, and therefore there is probable cause to essentially strip-search each and every one of them.

But even in the face of these very obvious, very reasonable objections, Chertoff kept pushing the body scans during his tenure as head of the Homeland Security Agency.

Which would have been fine—if Chertoff hadn’t immediately upon resigning his post created The Chertoff Group, and then gone to work for Rapiscan: The manufacturer of these body scans.” Read the rest of the article here.

It’s clear that, as usual, the personal profit of a select few individuals is driving policy - not what is best for the nation.

If our elected representatives actually had the security of the nation at heart, they would adopt the intelligent security measures employed in Israel – but that would require paying a living wage to qualified agents – not lazily demanding that the public at large submit to public humiliation – or be forced to pose naked in one of Michael Chertoff’s personally-profitable x-ray machines.

But if we REALLY want to get radical about our safety and security, lets take Thom Hartmann’s advise:

“If we are serious about stopping Middle Eastern zealots from attacking us, instead of blowing up our own Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons, let's stop blowing up Middle Eastern countries.

When the Obama administration pulls our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and works hard to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian crisis, then I'll believe our government really cares about our safety.

Until then, it's just theatre - with a few millions in profit for Chertoff and his friends.”

Meanwhile, the Corporate Media are busy spinning the airport security molestations and invasive x-ray scans as “the price of freedom,” when they could be more accurately described as the “down payment on Serfdom” – making us compliant and malleable to intrusion right down to our very bones.

In Milton Mayer’s “They Thought They Were Free,” an average German described the process of a free people being systematically subjugated…

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

Our only hope to truly free ourselves from the threat of terrorism is in giving people more reasons to live for, than to die for. Making peace is the only answer… even if Peace isn’t profitable to those who seek to profit from scaring us into compliance.

From RepublicanDirtyTricks.com

Concourse Village, The Bronx; New York City, New York, United States

The Andrew Freedman Home, one of the most impressive edifices built in The Bronx during the first decades of the twentieth century, was erected in 1922-24 as a result of a generous bequest in the will of Andrew Freedman. Freedman, a capitalist who had a close relationship with the leaders of Tammany Hall, was involved with many profitable business ventures, notably the construction of the IRT, New York City's first subway line. He left most of his fortune for the establishment of a home for "aged and indigent persons of both sexes," but with the proviso that the residents of the home be poor people who had once been in good circumstances. The Board of Trustees, led by prominent lawyer Samuel Untermyer, purchased a large plot of land on the Grand Concourse, the most prestigious street in the Bronx, and commissioned a building from two notable New York architects - Joseph H. Freedlander and Harry Allan Jacobs.

The home is an exceptional example of a monumental building which, through its symmetrical massing, fenestration, and handsome detail, recalls the tradition of the Italian Renaissance palazzo. Its design displays many handsome architectural features, including a recessed loggia, balustraded terrace, finely cut stonework, and beautifully wrought, iron detail. The elegantly appointed building functioned as a refuge for the once affluent for fifty-nine years, from its opening in 1924 until 1983 when the Andrew Freedman Home ceased to operate and the building was purchased by the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council as housing for the elderly.

The Grand Concourse

In 1874, when New York City annexed the West Bronx , it was a sparsely settled region with few urban amenities.^ Following the annexation, residents of both Manhattan and the new wards advocated the establishment of large parks in the undeveloped region. In 1884, the New York State Legislature approved the purchase of approximately 4000 acres of parkland, primarily in the North Bronx. ^ This land was relatively inaccessible to most residents of the city since no roads or mass transit lines linked Manhattan to the new parkland. Thus, in 1890 the legislature established the Department of Street Improvements of the 23rd and 24th Wards with a mandate to lay out streets throughout the annexed district; the department's finest achievement was the Grand Concourse which made the new Bronx parks accessible from Manhattan.

The first commissioner of the new department was Louis J. Heintz who appointed Louis Risse as his chief engineer; it was Risse who was directly responsible for the planning of the Concourse. The inspiration for the Grand Concourse was the campaign waged by the Rider and Driver Club of New York City for the construction of a speedway on which its wealthy members could run horses and carriages. After facing opposition to the idea of a speedway along the west side of Central Park, the club began to advocate a speedway along Jerome Avenue in The Bronx. Heintz asked Risse for his opinion and, according to Risse,"... I was giving serious consideration to the necessity of supplying that missing link between the upper and lower park systems [Central Park and the Bronx parks] which the Commission had failed to provide in 1884.*"* Instead of Jerome Avenue, which is located on level ground near the Harlem River, Risse proposed that a "Speedway and Concourse" be erected on the ridge to the east.

The street that Risse proposed was to be more than just a speedway for pleasure driving and a convenient connection to the Bronx parks; it was also to be a luxurious residential boulevard. Risse contended that 'the great enhancement in real estate values which the construction of the Concourse must necessarily produce will repay the City many times over the original cost of the undertaking.*^

In fact, when Risse laid out the Concourse, he planned secondary roadways adjacent to the sidewalks that could be used by local traffic servicing the villas that were expected to appear along the roadway.

Plans for the new Grand Boulevard and Concourse were drawn up in 1893. Construction began in 1897 and progressed slowly; the Concourse was not officially opened until November 25,1909. As originally constructed, the Grand Concourse consisted of a fifty-eight-foot wide central speedway with a narrow central mall and thirty-seven-foot wide service roads separated from the main roadway by six-foot wide malls . It was planned to provide pedestrian sidewalks and promenades, bicycle paths, and vehicular driveways. The roadway began at Cedar Park on East 161st Street and extended north to Mosholu Parkway. In 1924, the Concourse was extended to the south as far as East 138th Street.

The large freestanding villas that Risse had envisioned were never built. Rather, apartment houses became virtually the exclusive type of residential construction along the Concourse when real estate development began in the second decade of the twentieth century. These buildings include modest five-story walk-ups and more impressive six-story elevator buildings. In addition to the apartment houses, a few public and institutional buildings were erected along the Concourse; the Andrew Freedman Home is the largest on the original length of the street.^

Andrew Freedman

The Andrew Freedman Home was founded as a result of an unusual bequest in the will of wealthy capitalist Andrew Freedman . Freedman was a native New Yorker who was educated in the city's public schools before beginning employment in a local dry goods store. He dabbled in law before entering the Held of real estate. Freedman was extremely successful in his real estate ventures, "by ways," according to one biographer, "that are no longer traceable

Freedman was allied with the Democratic party and with the leadership of Tammany Hall. He was a close friend and advisor to Tammany boss Richard Croker and was intimately involved in many financially lucrative Tammany schemes, although the exact nature of most of Freedman's financial dealings remains a mystety. An example of the financial alliance between Croker and Freedman came to light in 1900 during a New York State Assembly investigation into New York City's government. Freedman was a vice-president of the United States Fidelity & Casualty Company which bonded New York City employees. He obtained this bonding contract through Croker's influence. When questioned about this arrangement, Freedman admitted that he presented a portion of his commissions to Croker though he refused to say how much money had exchanged hands, telling the investigator 'that I wouldn't care to tell you because I don't want to let you know how much money I carry on my person.'**

Freedman was also a key player in the construction of the original subway line built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. His obituary opens by stating that he "did more perhaps than any other man to make possible the subway system in this city."*° However, Freedman's involvement was primarily behind the scenes. In a speech delivered at the opening ceremonies for the subway, August Belmont, the system's principal financial backer, commented that Freedman, although unheralded, deserved a fair share of the praise and credit since he was "among the first to appreciate the practicability of the project."**

Exactly what role Freedman played in the construction of the IRT and how this relates to Tammany Hall is not clearly understood. The story that is generally told is that it was he who brought the contractor John B. McDonald and financier August Belmont together. One version of the story recounts that Freedman urged McDonald to bid on the subway contract, promising him financial backing. He then formed a group that put up $150,000 for the bid and when additional financing was needed, persuaded August Belmont to become the project's major backer.*^ A variant has it that MacDonald went to Freedman requesting that he assist in raising the necessary deposit of $150,000. Freedman pledged $45,000 of his own money and found four friends willing to invest. On the day that the deposit was due, the group was still short $50,000 when Freedman thought of Belmont, another loyal Tammany supporter, who immediately "arranged

for the cash,. .. without reading the contract, and without any further talk."

There is probably little truth in these dramatic stories of three heroic individuals selflessly advancing money for the great subway construction project. As Wallace B. Katz has noted in his detailed investigation of the subway's construction, "this is a wonderful story, one that deserves to be part of the folklore of American Capitalism, but it lacks plausibility."**

Freedman, Belmont, McDonald, and the other four investors were all Tammany leaders and were undoubtedly well acquainted with each other. Tammany's involvement in the bidding was well known. In January 1900, when the bids for subway construction were received, the financiers' names were not known, but it was reported in the Mm York 7vHM that McDonald was "a Tammany contractor."*^ Katz concludes that "Belmont, McDonald, and Freedman maintained their stOTy concerning the origins of their partnership during the next twenty years, through civil suits and governmental investigations.... [since] it allowed the participants to this deal to deny what was both plausible and very likely true, that Belmont, Tammany, and the RTC [Rapid Transit Commission] had prearranged the entire matter."*^ Freedman continued to be closely involved with the subway, in particular as a director of companies responsible for much of the construction work.*^

The construction of the IRT was not Freedman's only major financial project. He was, for example, involved with the Shuberts in the construction of Broadway theaters. The Booth , Shubert , 44th Street , and Little theaters are said to have been financed by a syndicate composed of Freedman, lawyer Samuel Untermyer , and Cincinnati political boss George B. Cox.*^ To his contemporaries, Freedman was probably best known as the owner of the New York Baseball Club, commonly known as the "Giants," from 1894 until 1902. Freedman's tenure as owner of the Giants was not without conflict, as reported by Harold Seymour in his history of baseball:

Freedman's irascible personality,

quick temper, and aggressiveness

had him in constant trouble. . . . His turbulent years as Giant owner kept the League in constant turmoil, and made the New York observation that he had "an astonishing faculty for making enemies* seem like a gross understatement.

The Andrew Freedman Home

On December 8,1915, several weeks after his death, Andrew Freedman's will was made public.

Freedman left a sizable bequest to his brother Daniel, established a trust for his mother and sister, left small amounts of money to seven local homes and hospitals,^ and gave gifts to friends, including a bequest of a pair of large white pearl shirt buttons to Richard Croker. The bulk of Freedman's estate was to be used for the incorporation of the Andrew Freedman Home "for the free and gratuitous reception, shelter, nourishment, care and maintenance of aged and indigent persons of both sexes, and without regard to race or religious creed... [with the proviso that the selection of residents be confined to those].. . who have been in good circumstances but by reason of adverse fortune, have become poor and dependent, and that in case of husband and wife being received into the institution, provisions shall be made so that they may dwell together therein."^ The initial bequest to the new home totalled approximately $5,000, with additional funds to be added to the trust upon the death of his mother and sister.

Exactly why Freedman established this rather unusual charitable institution when he drew up his will in 1907 is not known. According to DeLancey Nicoll, a business associate of Freedman's, speaking at the opening ceremonies for the Andrew Freedman Home, "I always urged that he give his money to the unusual charities. He would say: 'No: the sick and the poor are cared for by everybody else now. Nobody has offered any refuge for people of this kind, and they need one even more than other unfortunates.'"^ His sister, Isabella Freedman, explained that "he believed that the worthy habits and traditions of affluence and refinement deserve recognition and

respect, and that people possessing them should not be allowed to live in penury.*^

The man most responsible for the organization of the Andrew Freedman Home and the construction of its building was Freedman's friend, business partner, and executor Samuel Untermyer . Untermyer, who became the first president of the Home's Board of Trustees, was one of the most prominent lawyers of his time. He was also close to the leaders of Tammany Hall and it is probably through this political connection that Untermyer and Freedman became friends.

Untermeyer developed Freedman's concept of a home for the once wealthy into one that sought to assist those who had not only been affluent, but were also cultured "gentlefolk." The qualifications for admission promulgated by the original trustees stated that, "the Home is intended for aged and indigent gentlefolk. This has been interpreted by the Board of Directors to mean that the applicants are to be persons of culture, education, and refinement."^ Although Freedman had ordered the novel requirement that couples be allowed to live together, it was Untermyer and the trustees who decided that admission to the home would be primarily for couples. Additional requirements were that new residents had to be between the ages of sixty and eighty, in good health, and had to have enough money for clothing and other personal expenses. With the exception of the personal allowance, all facilities, including room and board, were free.

In 1916, the Trustees obtained a Special Act of the Legislature that incorporated the home.^ The site, a large block bounded by the Grand Concourse, Walton Avenue, East 166th Street, and McClellan Street, was purchased by the Andrew Freedman Home in 1917.^ Construction was delayed by World War I and did not actually begin until 1922.^ The original section of the Home, the Italian Renaissance-inspired central pavilion designed by Joseph H. Freedlander and Harry Allan Jacobs, was dedicated on May 25, 1924. At the opening ceremony it was announced that "two wings would eventually be added to the present building."^ Construction of the north and south wings began in 1928. Instead of Freedlander and Jacobs, architect David Levy was commissioned to design the additions

Although an institution, the Andrew Freedman Home was planned to be as much like a private house as possible. The interiors were decorated by the prestigious interior design firm of L. Alavoine & Co. Public facilities on the first floor included a large living room "which in its decorations and its furnishings is all that might be expected in a fine and expensively equipped private home" ; an oak-paneled library; card and billiard rooms; and a spacious dining room decorated with chinoiserie.^ Sleeping rooms were located on the second and third floors. Married couples could live in a double room with a private bath or in two single rooms with a shared bath; single people also had their own rooms, but two singles shared a bath. Those who lived in the home were never referred to as 'inmates* , but were always called "members," as if they resided in a private clubhouse.

In exchange for free residence in the home, members had to abide by a series of rules. Among the rules were those that forbade tipping or reprimanding the employees, required all meals be taken in the dining room , and permitted members to take a vacation of up to four weeks per year.^

The first seventeen "members" -- five couples, five single women, and two single men - moved into the home in July, 1917. Although the contemporary press referred to the home as a retreat for former millionaires, the early residents mostly came from more modest backgrounds: jeweler, dressmaker, doctor, nurse, teacher, businessman, etc.^* Others who moved in later included engineers, politicians, actors, opera singers, and journalists. In the years before the home closed, many residents were German and Austrian Jewish refugees. At its peak, after the completion of the side wings in 1928, the home could accommodate about 130 residents.

The Architects^

The two architects who were responsible for the design of the original section of the Andrew Freedman Home, Joseph Henry Freedlander and Harry Allan Jacobs , were, by the 1920s, well-known members of New York's architectural establishment. This is the only project on which the two collaborated, although they undoubtedly were familiar with one another. Both architects were about the same age and both had attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. They were members of many of the same professional organizations, including the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects and the Architectural League of New York.

Joseph Freedlander was the more prominent and more talented of the two designers. He was bom in New York City and studied at M.I.T. before entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1895 Freedlander became one of the first three Americans to actually complete the Ecole curriculum and receive a diploma.^ He retained a deep affinity for the Ecole and for Beaux-Arts practices. Shortly after returning to New York he established an afcRfr that reproduced the French system of training.^ Later, he served as president of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects and was a founder and president of the American Soci6t4 des Architected Dipl6mes par le Gouvemement Franca is , organized by those who had received Ecole diplomas.

Freedlander was proficient in designing many different types of buildings and able to utilize diverse historic architectural styles. His Ecole training allowed him to excel in competitions, and many of his commissions were won in this manner. Among Freedlander's extant buildings in New York City are those for the New Harlem Hospital , the George Engel House at 17 East 74th Street , the French Institute of the United States at 22 East 60th Street , and the Museum of the City of New York . Outside of New York, he won competitions for the St. Louis Club ; the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Johnson City, Tennessee ; the Perry Memorial and International Peace Memorial at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie near Cleveland; the Portland Auditorium, Portland Oregon ; and the White Plains Municipal Building .

He was also responsible for a major expansion of the spa at Saratoga Springs . In addition, Freedlander designed three of the largest buildings erected in the Bronx in the 1920s and early 1930s -- the Freedman Home, the Bronx County Building , and the Bronx County Jail , the last two designed in association with Max Hausle.

Harry Allan Jacobs was also a native New Yorker. He studied at the Columbia School of Mines and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and was a winner of the American Academy's Prix de Rome. Although he designed commercial buildings, his specialty was town houses, including sixteen buildings and facade alterations in what is now the Upper East Side Historic District.

Freedlander and Jacobs probably became associated on the design of the Andrew Freedman Home through their personal contacts with important members of the home's Board of Trustees. Samuel Untermyer had been one of Joseph Freedlander's earliest clients. Shortly after Freedlander opened his office, he was commissioned by Untermyer to redesign Greystone, his home in Yonkers.^ One of Harry Allan Jacobs's first town houses was the Charles S. Guggenheimer House at 129 East 73rd Street of 1907 . Guggenheimer, who was a member of the Board of Trustees, was the son of Samuel Untermyer's half-brother and law partner Randolph Guggenheimer.^

Little is known about David Levy, the architect of the wings. He was in independent practice ior a brief period between 1928 and 1933.^ His most notable commission was the Jewish Theological Seminary , where he was associated with the firm of Gehron, Ross & Alley.

Design of the Andrew Freedman Home

The Andrew Freedman Home is characteristic of the traditional design found in New York during the 1920s. Almost all of the New York architects in the forefront of their profession during that decade had studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or in American architecture schools with Beaux-Arts curricula. Many had also traveled extensively in Europe and had a first-hand knowledge of the great monuments of that continent. Freedlander and Jacobs were both well trained and well traveled, and their design for the Andrew Freedman House reflects their Beaux-Arts education and the influence of European architectural precedents.

Following principles expounded at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Andrew Freedman Home is a building rooted in the traditions of European architecture. It is not, however, a copy of a specific building from the past. The design borrows freely from Italian Renaissance precedents, rearranging forms into a regularized and rigidly symmetrical composition. The major inspiration is the Palazzo Famese in Rome with its three-story massing, long thirteen-bay wide facade organization, and its ^tano ncMf articulated by rectangular windows with alternating triangular and segmentally-arched pediments.

While the Palazzo Famese was clearly the prototype, many other features of the home differ from the model: the somewhat elongated rustication of the first-story openings resembles that around the second-story windows of the Palazzo Gondi, Florence; the lamps flanking each entrance are modeled on that at the corner of the Palazzo Strozzi; and the tripartite arched loggia overlooking Walton Avenue resembles arcades, porches, and loggias found on many Italian Renaissance buildings. Not only does the design successfully combine features from a number of Renaissance precedents, but it also melds the rectilinear, balanced form of Italian Renaissance urban palazzi, such as the Palazzo Famese, with the setting and terraces of a rural villa. While the design relies on historical sources, the construction technology was modem; the Home is a steel-frame, fireproof structure with concrete floors and terracotta and brick partitions.

Description

The Andrew Freedman Home is located on a sloping site on the west side of the Grand Concourse; Walton Avenue is at a considerably lower elevation than the Concourse. The lot has a varied topography with a major rock outcropping near East 166th Street. Stone and concrete retaining walls run along the south and west sides of the lot and along the Grand Concourse just north of 166th Street. The building is sited near the west side of the lot, close to Walton Avenue, with a lawn and garden separating the home from the Concourse. The building is three stories facing the Concourse and four stories facing Walton Avenue. The structure consists of the original rectangular section dating from 1922-24 and the rectangular north and south wings added in 1928-31.

The original building is a symmetrical structure separated from the garden by a wide terrace with limestone balustrade railings. A broad flight of stone stairs, set in the center of the terrace, extends into the garden. At either end of the terrace are subsidiary stairs that connect with pedestrian walkways leading from the Concourse. Carved stone urns flank each of the stairs. The home is clad entirely in pale limestone/* The front facade of the original section is thirteen bays wide, with a rusticated ground story and smooth limestone ashlar above; quoins mark each of the comers of the building. The first story is articulated by round-arched openings, including windows with multipane wood casement sash and fixed wood transoms and a pair of entrances set into the shallow projecting fourth and tenth bays. Each entrance arch has a projecting keystone that visually supports a balustrade railing. Set within the entrances are omate iron double doors with iron transoms; pairs of iron lamps flank the entrances.

These wrought-iron elements and the iron canopies and window guards found elsewhere on the building were the work of FerTO Studio, Inc. The windows light the library , the card room , and the living room .

Two modest beltcourses separate the first and second stories. The rectangular second-story windows, with their multipane wood sash, are alternately capped by segmentally-arched and triangular pediments, each supported on modest brackets. The rectangular, multipane, third-story windows have no enframements. The facade is crowned by a deep copper cornice with a tall parapet that hides the fourth story. Three tall chimneys rise above the slightly sloping roof.

The side elevations of the original section, which are now concealed by the wings, were originally three bays wide and continued the main design features of the front facade. Balconies projected in front of the central windows on the second and third stories of the north elevation.^

The rear facade of the original section, facing Walton Avenue, is a full four stories tall and is massed with two-story projecting three-bay wide arms at either end. The ground story is the main entrance for those arriving by automobile. The driveway begins on McClellan Street, near Walton Avenue, and extends to a wide turn around in front of the central entrance. The rusticated ground story has a rectangular entrance with iron doors and a transom and an iron canopy . Flanking the entrance are pairs of rectangular windows with omate iron grilles. The focal point of this facade is a triple-arched loggia with French doors and iron railings located above the entrance. The loggia is flanked by niches and pairs of round-arched windows. The upper stories are articulated in a manner identical to that on the front.

The concrete retaining wall along Walton Avenue is pierced by the entrance to a passage that connects to the basement of the building, allowing goods to be delivered and garbage to be removed without disturbing the residents.

The north and south wings were designed in a style to match the original building. They are also clad in stone, but the stone is of a somewhat more yellow shade. The front facade of each of the two wings is six bays wide and is articulated in a manner similar to the original section. The openings of the first story of the north wing take the same form as those of the original building. In the south wing, the first story has six rectangular windows set within blind arches; three smaller rectangular openings also articulate this story. The upper stories of the wings have crisply-cut rectangular windows; there are no pediments at the second-story openings. As on the first story, each upper story of the south wing contains three smaller openings.

The rear facades of the wings are not symmetrical. The ground story of the north wing contains a mix of large and small windows and a single door. On the first story are round-arched windows of the same type seen on the front facade. The two upper stories contain three groups of windows without enframements, each consisting of two large openings separated by a smaller window. The McClellan Street elevation of this wing is three bays wide and is articulated in a manner identical to that on the front elevation of this wing, except that the central window on the second story is capped by a pediment. On the rear facade of the south wing, the ground story also has openings of varying sizes, while the first story consists of rectangular windows set within the same type of blind stone arch seen on the wing's front elevation. Large and small windows alternate on the upper stories.

The south elevation, set on a rock outcropping high above East 166th Street, has a central door in the basement flanked by windows. The first story contains windows set in blind arches, while the central window on the second story is accented with a pediment.

The Andrew Freedman Home continued to serve its original function until 1983, when the increasing cost of maintaining the facility forced the home to close.^ The building was purchased by the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council, a private not-for-profit organization that sponsors senior citizen housing projects in the Bronx. According to the Council's executive director at the time of the purchase: "our reopening of the home will insure the legacy of Andrew Freedman will continue to serve as a symbol of human dignity, but this time in a more universal sense because residents will come from different walks of life."** Although the building remained vacant for a period after its purchase by Mid-Bronx, it is now, once again, in use and its elegant rooms continue to serve the elderly.

- From the 2000 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

>- Profitable Place to Sell Your Photos Online -<

Follow me on:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | 500px

AndreyFilippov.com

Photo: Blurry

NOTES UNCUT:

Making Business with Open Source, Mårten Mickos

6M customers, same as sybase

Trying to build a profitable business by giving things away. Dolphin doesnt jump left to right like in the western world. Free and open is in love with business. Collaboration aand sharing gives you differentiation and competitive edge. When you get big a lot of your actions become defensive instead of creating new opportunities. Most popular os db, 50k downloads per day, may be the most popular db. 20M product copies seeding the market. 8M installations. 190% CAGR, 25 countries, 70% at home. Bezos: I base my business on the things that will not change.

OS is not the cause of the changes, but the most appropriate response to it. OS is a production model, not a business model. Don't assume something that is popular and new will be profitable. The world is flat and transparent. Aggregate power of the community than one community. Marten Mickos is Larry's worst nightmare. 60 developers competing against 1200. Experts driven more by fame than fortune. In FOSS, you solve a problem by publicly posing the question. In closed source, you must yourself find all the answers. That's expensive and time-consuming. No backup, then __. No CRM, then SugarCRM comes along. There is no social collaboration in the lamp stack and then rm comes along.

Sourceforge: 111k projects, 1,232k users. If a company had a million engineers, they would have to pay high salaries to a million engineers.

1 paying customer, 10 contributing users, 1k non-paying users. Never done anything in china, but there are users and Other companies invest and have -$200M, but we are still at zero. If you are going to use a database without paying, use ours. We have such a strong brand. With one, you could screw up for years, but don't do that.

Geoffrey More's Four culture slide from USBC 2005

Schmidt: "I know this is a shock, but not all the best programmers are sitting here in california.

Innovation happens

* in frugality

* in encounters

* where there is a need

It's not just about technology. I know many companies spend billions in R&D, but the best innovations happen when they dont have much money. If you close the door it doesn't happen, but if you tell them they have to travel to China with the money you give them, get out an innovate.

Spaceship One, $70M, no computer controlled descent.

Commercialization

# Community: those who spend time to save money

# Then customers: Those who spend money to save time

Differentiation drives the compelling reason to buy (2), but may cause a "compelling reason to abandon" (1)

Challenge is to balance these two. If you create too compelling reason to buy, it may be a reason to abandon. Be careful not alienating your community. Similar to publishing's balance of editorial and ads. Apache is most popular, 70% market share, goal of world domination, no money.

Balancing profit and freedom.

|JBoss|JBoss|

|RedHat|Fedora|

|IBM|ECLIPSE|

"Selling supprt for fre software is a legitimate ethical activity. As regards these details of how you sell the support, as far as I'm concerned, you should choose them so as to maximize your income" Stallman email Feb 2005.

Protect with:

- copyright

- trademarks, brand

-trade secrets

-superior service

-product stewardship

-mastery of supply and delivery chains

Softwre patents are detrimental to businesses large and small, open and closed, producers and users. Nosoftwarepatents.com

Why make it free? because a thriving ecosystem is stronger than any competitor. 5 guys, when he joined, but competing because of the ecosystem.

Why share? innovation happens elsewhere. brilliant minds are driven by fame more than fortune. People are not against us making money, they are against it if we have mis-communicated. Brand promises is the ultimate differentiator. OS isn't a hurdle, it's a ladder.

method of OS is nothing new, have always collaborated to build something bigger than we are ourselves. with the net you can collect that group around the wo

I was recently honored to be asked to speak at the Adweek 10th Anniversary Event in New York City! :) with Cheryl Shuman & Aimee Shuman Founders of www.BeverlyHillsCannabisClub.com

I'm so proud to be working with women to educate mainstream media about the benefits of cannabis. The past few weeks have been amazing. Today we filmed in the medical marijuana gardens here with the staff and videographer and photographers.If you like what you see and hear, join our private social network, www.BeverlyHillsCannabisClub.com

I wanted to share my photo & video diaries with you. As you all know, I recently signed with William Morris Endeavor to develop a reality series evolving around my work in the movement and in building my companies etc. I love sharing these video diaries from behind the scenes of day to day business. I believe that the real life day to day business in the cannabis world is far more interesting than most reality series I see on TV currently :) If you would like to see the REAL people behind the scenes of this movement to be a part of the series instead of using actors, then please support us in our vision. Please share everywhere. Some supportive comments would be great also. Let's make sure we have a lot of positive support out there in the mainstream and take this viral :) Marijuana is safer than alcohol!!!! Spread the word! :) Please share, like, comment, G+, tweet etc :)

Would you like to get your products, name or business out to the media and be a part of our world? Hire us! www.CherylShuman.com

Please support "Marijuana Moms" Women Who Prefer Cannabis Over Alcohol (It takes courage to be on the front lines of the drug war :) I hope that you'll check out my most recent media appearances :) :

About Cheryl Shuman:

Tom Cruise, Steven Tyler, Julia Roberts, Madonna, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Myers, Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, Fergie, Will.i.am and Michael Jackson are just a few of the names you'll find scrolling through the client files during the 25 year career of Cheryl Shuman. Known as the "Martha Stewart of Marijuana," Cheryl Shuman announces the formation of Green Asset International Inc.. Shuman brings decades of experience working with media, celebrities, marketing and health care in Beverly Hills. Shuman found her passion in the cannabis movement since 1996 working as an activist and legal cannabis patient. Since using cannabis therapy, she has survived cancer and injuries from two car crashes.

Shuman was the founder of Beverly Hills NORML producing the largest cannabis convention on earth known as KUSHCon. As the face of KUSH Magazine, Cheryl Shuman was a founding member of the NCIA, National Cannabis Industry Association. Shuman transformed her non-profit career into a thriving profitable media enterprise.

Her private medical cannabis collective, "The Beverly Hills Cannabis Club" is unlisted and membership is by referral only. Through her personal relationships and connections within Hollywood and the media, Cheryl Shuman has been named as one of the most influential women in the cannabis reform movement by international media. Her position within the cannabis industry creates the first and only company of its kind and at the forefront of entertainment marketing, celebrity endorsements, product placement integration, sponsorships, production and technology.

Cheryl Shuman Inc., is a business development company and acquisition vehicle, made news with an historic funding facility dedicated to the cannabis industry with plans to go public by 2014. Cheryl Shuman currently has a hot new reality TV series in development and is represented by the prestigious William Morris Endeavor Agency in Beverly Hills, California.

Cheryl Shuman

President & C.E.O.

www.CherylShuman.com

Beverly Hills Cannabis Club - Join Free Using "Cheryl Shuman" invitation code on:

www.BeverlyHillsCannabisClub.com

Social Network Links:

LinkedIN: www.LinkedIn.com/in/CherylShuman

Facebook: www.FaceBook.com/CherylShumanInc

Twitter: www.Twitter.com/CherylShuman

Twitter: www.Twitter.com/BeverlyHillsCC

YouTube: www.YouTube.com/BeverlyHillsCannabis

YouTube: www.YouTube.com/CherylShumanTheOnly

Vimeo: www.Vimeo.com/cherylshuman

Instagram: www.Instagram.com/cherylshuman

Thanks everyone! Let's make history together!!!

Much love and Respect, Thanks all!

Cheryl Shuman

I was recently honored to be asked to speak at the Adweek 10th Anniversary Event in New York City! :) with Cheryl Shuman & Aimee Shuman Founders of www.BeverlyHillsCannabisClub.com

I'm so proud to be working with women to educate mainstream media about the benefits of cannabis. The past few weeks have been amazing. Today we filmed in the medical marijuana gardens here with the staff and videographer and photographers.If you like what you see and hear, join our private social network, www.BeverlyHillsCannabisClub.com

I wanted to share my photo & video diaries with you. As you all know, I recently signed with William Morris Endeavor to develop a reality series evolving around my work in the movement and in building my companies etc. I love sharing these video diaries from behind the scenes of day to day business. I believe that the real life day to day business in the cannabis world is far more interesting than most reality series I see on TV currently :) If you would like to see the REAL people behind the scenes of this movement to be a part of the series instead of using actors, then please support us in our vision. Please share everywhere. Some supportive comments would be great also. Let's make sure we have a lot of positive support out there in the mainstream and take this viral :) Marijuana is safer than alcohol!!!! Spread the word! :) Please share, like, comment, G+, tweet etc :)

Would you like to get your products, name or business out to the media and be a part of our world? Hire us! www.CherylShuman.com

Please support "Marijuana Moms" Women Who Prefer Cannabis Over Alcohol (It takes courage to be on the front lines of the drug war :) I hope that you'll check out my most recent media appearances :) :

About Cheryl Shuman:

Tom Cruise, Steven Tyler, Julia Roberts, Madonna, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Myers, Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, Fergie, Will.i.am and Michael Jackson are just a few of the names you'll find scrolling through the client files during the 25 year career of Cheryl Shuman. Known as the "Martha Stewart of Marijuana," Cheryl Shuman announces the formation of Green Asset International Inc.. Shuman brings decades of experience working with media, celebrities, marketing and health care in Beverly Hills. Shuman found her passion in the cannabis movement since 1996 working as an activist and legal cannabis patient. Since using cannabis therapy, she has survived cancer and injuries from two car crashes.

Shuman was the founder of Beverly Hills NORML producing the largest cannabis convention on earth known as KUSHCon. As the face of KUSH Magazine, Cheryl Shuman was a founding member of the NCIA, National Cannabis Industry Association. Shuman transformed her non-profit career into a thriving profitable media enterprise.

Her private medical cannabis collective, "The Beverly Hills Cannabis Club" is unlisted and membership is by referral only. Through her personal relationships and connections within Hollywood and the media, Cheryl Shuman has been named as one of the most influential women in the cannabis reform movement by international media. Her position within the cannabis industry creates the first and only company of its kind and at the forefront of entertainment marketing, celebrity endorsements, product placement integration, sponsorships, production and technology.

Cheryl Shuman Inc., is a business development company and acquisition vehicle, made news with an historic funding facility dedicated to the cannabis industry with plans to go public by 2014. Cheryl Shuman currently has a hot new reality TV series in development and is represented by the prestigious William Morris Endeavor Agency in Beverly Hills, California.

Cheryl Shuman

President & C.E.O.

www.CherylShuman.com

Beverly Hills Cannabis Club - Join Free Using "Cheryl Shuman" invitation code on:

www.BeverlyHillsCannabisClub.com

Social Network Links:

LinkedIN: www.LinkedIn.com/in/CherylShuman

Facebook: www.FaceBook.com/CherylShumanInc

Twitter: www.Twitter.com/CherylShuman

Twitter: www.Twitter.com/BeverlyHillsCC

YouTube: www.YouTube.com/BeverlyHillsCannabis

YouTube: www.YouTube.com/CherylShumanTheOnly

Vimeo: www.Vimeo.com/cherylshuman

Instagram: www.Instagram.com/cherylshuman

Thanks everyone! Let's make history together!!!

Much love and Respect, Thanks all!

Cheryl Shuman

Casa Dos Palmas

This ocean front, luxury home is a very short walk to central Akumal. Four bedrooms with 4.5 baths, swimming pool, staff housing and great rental income make this one of our best properties. The bricked domed ceiling is one of the many features the home offers.

Fully furnished, air conditioning, fans, dining for 8 and ocean views from every room make for comfortable vacations with the entire family. The pool has built in stools and a large decking area for outdoor parties and BBQ’s. The roof top living area is perfect for watching cruise ships, star gazing and sunsets!

The staff housing is at the front of the property, keeping the house very private, but close enough to enjoy the benefits of residential staffing.

This property runs like a clock! Staff, property manager and rental agency have been working with the current owners for years. Walk right into a profitable vacation rental investment without missing a beat.

Contact your Akumal Realtor at Akumal Investments toll free 888-769-3861 or email: info@MARMX.com

These boats do not suggest a profitable industry.

Nearly all businesses can be quite profitable in a perfect world but the problem is that the perfect world doesn’t exist. There are many factors due to which the profitability of a business can go down drastically. Among several factors, fraud or employee theft is the most common one. Things can be pretty worse if the person embezzling your funds manages your accounts or even provides little help in that area.

Will Yakowizc described a study in which he told how badly the embezzlement by employees has been hurting the businesses. The results are shown as:

“Smaller businesses are more at risk to employee theft. The report finds that 55 percent of embezzlement cases occurred at businesses with 100 employees or less, with an average loss of $1.3 million.”

So, it is worth mentioning here that accounting holds critical value if you have stepped into a business and you want to make a good start. Sadly, it is overlooked most of the times.

Now, there are three things that have to be taken into consideration if you want to assess the likelihood of frauds by employees. These are basically the major reasons one could commit fraud.

•Pressure: Pressure refers to the financial status of the person in question, i.e. if he/she is committing due to financial difficulty.

•Rationalization: Sometimes, a person may rationalize a crime before doing it. For instance, an employee may make his/her mind by thinking about the bad behavior of the boss.

•Opportunity: Sometimes, committing a crime may be too much of an easy task for the employee.

It simply means that you will have to focus on these three factors if you want to reduce the chances of fraud by your employee.

A few steps that you can do to reduce the likelihood of fraud are worth mentioning here.

Separation of duties

Do you have the same person dealing with the accounts receivable and accounts payable? Asking a person to multitask can increase the likelihood of embezzlement. Apart from the fact that he/she would find it difficult to perform two tasks simultaneously, there is a mighty chance for the person to find workload as a justification for fraud.

Access control

You have to make sure that it’s only you who has the full access to everything related to accounts. While you can share the authority of some portions to the people who are going to need that authority, you have to make sure that you have the capability to run check at any time. You need to have every password and your important paperwork needs to be locked in a safe.

Physical audits

Physical audit is quite necessary to make sure that everything in your system is actually at the place where it belongs. Moreover, you will have to make sure that you do not have much of the loose cash hanging around. This is where physical audit can be quite helpful.

Conclusion

There are several other things that you can do to restrict the likelihood of fraud but you might not be able to implement each of those while your business is in the initial phase. Still, you can work on pretty basic things to ensure that everything goes smooth. Remember, you will need to think about the wellbeing of your employees as well as you will have to keep a good check on things.

After the profitable Asiad route with buses every 30 minutes, MSRTC announced their legendary Shivneri Volvo services on the Aurnagabad-Pune sector. The services got a huge response. Catering to this route, MSRTC now operates Shivneri buses every hour from 5:00 hrs to 1:00 hrs. This frequency is only next to the Dadar-Pune route.

I made profitable use of my time in Bunnings Warehouse this morning; whilst Catherine looked for some fencing to keep her chickens out of her vegetable patch, I took pictures.

Probably a cliche of some kind for Cliche Saturday.

Also, scroll it up and down rapidly ...

"Доходното здание" днес е своеобразна емблема на Русе - сградата е построена на границата на ХІХ и ХХ век като доходоносно за общината съоръжение, разполагащо с театрален салон, библиотека, магазини. Дело е на виенския архитект Паул Бранк. Богатата орнаментика на фасадата превръща сградата като едно от многото архитектурни паментици, изтъквани като доказателство за силното културно влияние на Австро-Унгария върху Русе... Сградата подслонява постановките на градския драматичен театър. През 80-те и 90-те години зданието е затворено и оградено във връзка с основна реконструкция, предвиждаща изграждането на по-голяма зала и нови фоайета. На практика от старата сграда се запазва само фасадата, а вътрешността е изцяло новопостроена. След няколко десетилетия ремонтни дейности, сградата се връща към живот едва през 2006 г.

"The profitable house" as known in Ruse is a kind of emblem of the city. It was built between 1898 and 1902 as an enterprise to accomodate theatre spectacles, a library, shops and cafes and gain money for the municipality. It was designed by the architect from Austrian architect Paul Brank. The rich ornamentated facade makes the building one of the many architectural landmarks in the city, used as a proof for the Austrian cultural influence on Ruse... The building was being and is still used by the drama theatre. In 1980 it was closed for a great reconstruction - a new bigger hall and new foyers were planed to be built. In fact the facade is the single element to survive from the original building. Due to financial problems the reconstruction lasted more than 20 years and the finished building was reopened in 2006.

Once you taste open comb shaving, there’s no going back.

Actually, once you try razor blade shaving there’s no going back to a cartridge system. Then, when you try open comb (which refers to the teeth on the razor’s head), you are even more addicted.

Here you can see a Gillette Old Type (foreground) and a NEW.

It’s complicated, because there’s the Old Type, the New Improved and the NEW (which came out after the New Improved). As far as I understand it, Gillette introduced the New Improved in 1921 as its original patents were running out. But it continued selling the former model, which became known as the Old Type, at a knockdown price to give them both ends of the market, and a continuing stream of customers for their profitable blades. I believe the NEW line was manufactured between 1929 and 1940.

The Old Type seen here was made in the 1920s, and the NEW in the ‘30s.

I have to say the NEW is probably my favourite, as it’s a little milder than the Old Type (that is, relatively; the NEW is the perfect balance between aggressive and smooth). The difference between Old and NEW is best explained with the observation that the former was designed for men used to straight razors, while what came later was for men that with DE razor experience.

If you want to use my photography, or talk about my communications work, reach me at Wild West Communications.

Заброшенный дом на ул. Ивана Мезапы (возле ст. м. Арсенальная). Ранее был доходным домом при Николаевском военном монастыре, позже стал собственностью завода "Арсенал". 1913-1914 г.

Abandoned house on the Ivana Mezepy st. (near the subway station Arsenalnaya). It was formerly a tenement at Nicholas military monastery, and later became the property of the factory "Arsenal". 1913-1914.

@ work-set

www.ExperienceLastingWealth.com

Greg Neslen - 440-942-2522

www.GlobalResortsNetwork.com/MyWealthSecrets

MyWealthSecrets.TruthToWealth.com/go8

How Not To Be Deceived with an Online Business – Part 1 of 2 - Global Resorts Network

Internet Marketing and Global Resorts Network Leader, Greg Neslen, welcomes you to Part 1 of 2 on How Not To Be Deceived With An Online Business.

I want you to be successful because I know what it’s like to have not been a success and to know that out there, there are people who are cashing in on the Internet like crazy. But don’t worry, you can be one of these highly successful internet marketers. I know the tension and the desire to be there.

I want to save you from a couple of things that trap people. There are trap doors and you have to learn to walk a very narrow and straight path or you’re going to get sucked in, you’re going to lose a lot of money in this industry. I want to save you from that.

1) To not be deceived about growing your business…..here it is…. Just Buy Leads.

There's a start and there’s a point to buying leads. If you're brand new, you might be best served by buying leads because you have to learn how to prospect. But just buying leads, you will be on the phone constantly. You will go crazy spending outrageous hours talking with people who know nothing about your business or about you. It's just not worth the huge amount of time or money it will require to work purchased leads. It’s a daunting task because the human effort required is so high.

If you join my team and you are brand new, I may recommend some leads because its guaranteed lifeblood in your business, but if this is your protocol of just buying leads, you're going to be on the phone 10-12 hours a day. You may make a $100,000 dollars, but you need a life..more than money, you need a life. And a truly happy life is what’s driving you!!

2) You start figuring out that working purchased leads is a real pain and does not get you very far, very fast, or very profitable for that matter. You figure out that all you need to do is take your self-replicating site and just do some Google Adwords. If you can get to the top of Google, so the thinking goes, people will buy your product and sign up and you'll make a bunch of money. Well, your spouse will go crazy in addition to you….because you both will not have any money left because Google can be very expensive if you don't know what you're doing.

If you attempt Google Adwords without any coaching from those who have already been hit by its land mines, it will cost you dearly. Here’s an example of what will happen if you do not do it right: You will spend at least $100 with 0 leads coming from it. You will bid too high on the wrong key words….not knowing what you are doing….and driving people to a very ineffective website. It will cost you another $100 and then you may end up back in the mix costing you another hundred and another hundred, and you will probably end up spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars learning how to ……really learning how to mess up Google Adwords.

But when you join my team, I will show you how to not mess up Google Adwords. I will show you how to make it very effective.

Deception #3.this is the big one. In Global Resorts Network and some of these other high ticket items, there’s a lot of this going on. Deception #3….don’t buy into or get roped into this. “We have a system that does 90-100% of your work.” Ok, this is common sense do not believe this because it’s just not smart. Common sense is going to tell you. If that were true, just anybody can succeed, but we know that not just anybody succeeds. The only people that succeed are action-driven, motivated, students of marketing masters, students of entrepreneurial masters. Those are the only ones that succeed.

The people who created this system, and what they're doing is they're really praying on the lack of common sense among some people. I trust that you’re smarter than that. I trust you’re better than that. But, all of us fall for things, but don't fall, just don't fall for this….when someone says that “we have a system that does 90-100% of your work.” A good system is going to teach you.....what I will teach you.

We have a system too. This is a system you’re experiencing right now. I do work one time and this works over and over and over for me. So there are things about automation and systems, but Here's The Answer.....

Check out Part 2 to get the answer that will change your business forever and change your life!!!

Greg Neslen is a leading internet marketer with Global Resorts Network. See his Entrepreneurial and Mentoring Techniques at

www.ExperienceLastingWealth.com

or Call Greg at 440-942-2522

For other business tours, see also

www.GlobalResortsNetwork.com/MyWealthSecrets

MyWealthSecrets.TruthToWealth.com/go8

"Доходното здание" днес е своеобразна емблема на Русе - сградата е построена на границата на ХІХ и ХХ век като доходоносно за общината съоръжение, разполагащо с театрален салон, библиотека, магазини. Дело е на виенския архитект Паул Бранк. Богатата орнаментика на фасадата превръща сградата като едно от многото архитектурни паментици, изтъквани като доказателство за силното културно влияние на Австро-Унгария върху Русе... Сградата подслонява постановките на градския драматичен театър. През 80-те и 90-те години зданието е затворено и оградено във връзка с основна реконструкция, предвиждаща изграждането на по-голяма зала и нови фоайета. На практика от старата сграда се запазва само фасадата, а вътрешността е изцяло новопостроена. След няколко десетилетия ремонтни дейности, сградата се връща към живот едва през 2006 г.

"The profitable house" as known in Ruse is a kind of emblem of the city. It was built between 1898 and 1902 as an enterprise to accomodate theatre spectacles, a library, shops and cafes and gain money for the municipality. It was designed by the architect from Austrian architect Paul Brank. The rich ornamentated facade makes the building one of the many architectural landmarks in the city, used as a proof for the Austrian cultural influence on Ruse... The building was being and is still used by the drama theatre. In 1980 it was closed for a great reconstruction - a new bigger hall and new foyers were planed to be built. In fact the facade is the single element to survive from the original building. Due to financial problems the reconstruction lasted more than 20 years and the finished building was reopened in 2006.

Jeremy Bloom, Co-Founder of Integrate.com discusses the new product platform that consolidates and simplifies all lead generation activity into one online location. Advertisers can create customized campaigns that are automatically matched with qualified publishers.

Enterprise Technologies key component is efficiency. Companies seek to exploit cloud based infrastructure and related technologies to lower costs. With that, CIO's are looking to bring simple ways for employees to work from anywhere at anytime.

Join DEMO to reveal some of the hottest companies capitalizing on these trends. The following companies that are pitching their products are:

Connect from Vonata

eM Client 2.7 from eM Client Inc.

FN Connect Secure from Federated Networks

Integrate from Integrate.com LLC

Profitably from Profitably

PublicStuff from PublicStuff LLC

Zingaya from Zingaya

Capture ID Mobile Scanner from Rocky Mountain Ventures Company

Double Dutch from Double Dutch

meeting-eXpert from Meeting Sciences, Inc.

For more information:

DEMO Fall 2010 Website

Follow DEMO on twitter:

@DEMO

@DEMOtweets

Watch the live DEMO dashboard!

Social Media presented by New Media Synergy

Photos by Stephen Brashear

Stephen Brashear Photography

"Доходното здание" днес е своеобразна емблема на Русе - сградата е построена на границата на ХІХ и ХХ век като доходоносно за общината съоръжение, разполагащо с театрален салон, библиотека, магазини. Дело е на виенския архитект Паул Бранк. Богатата орнаментика на фасадата превръща сградата като едно от многото архитектурни паментици, изтъквани като доказателство за силното културно влияние на Австро-Унгария върху Русе... Сградата подслонява постановките на градския драматичен театър. През 80-те и 90-те години зданието е затворено и оградено във връзка с основна реконструкция, предвиждаща изграждането на по-голяма зала и нови фоайета. На практика от старата сграда се запазва само фасадата, а вътрешността е изцяло новопостроена. След няколко десетилетия ремонтни дейности, сградата се връща към живот едва през 2006 г.

"The profitable house" as known in Ruse is a kind of emblem of the city. It was built between 1898 and 1902 as an enterprise to accomodate theatre spectacles, a library, shops and cafes and gain money for the municipality. It was designed by the architect from Austrian architect Paul Brank. The rich ornamentated facade makes the building one of the many architectural landmarks in the city, used as a proof for the Austrian cultural influence on Ruse... The building was being and is still used by the drama theatre. In 1980 it was closed for a great reconstruction - a new bigger hall and new foyers were planed to be built. In fact the facade is the single element to survive from the original building. Due to financial problems the reconstruction lasted more than 20 years and the finished building was reopened in 2006.

© Copyright 2012 CorbisCorporation

"Asuka" (飛鳥) was a purpose-built, one-off modified Kawasaki C-1 for the research of new STOL technologies. It adopted USB high lift devices with 4 FJR710 high-bypass turbofan engines mounted on its wings. A new computer-controlled flight system, partially composed of fly-by-wire, was also tested to resolve difficulties controlling in powered take-off and landing. Asuka didn't breed any direct successor, but the outcomes and know-how were profitable for developing later Japanese aircrafts including US-2, P-1.

Taken at Kakamigahara Aerospace Science Museum (かかみがはら航空宇宙科学博物館).

At this time of year Princes Street is full of people spending money in celebration of the financial services industry which has made it so easy and so profitable to spend money you don't have. This photograph is part of an ongoing experimental project to remove people from Princes Street by means of photographic technology, in other words by exposures sufficiently that anyone moving will disappear. My guess is that will need at least twenty minutes.

This photograph was taken with an exposure of five seconds. The clikable link below is the comparative reference shot with normal exposure.

www.flickr.com/photos/chris_malcolm/16067156175/

To get such a long exposure in daylight -- in fact in the rather dim approximation that passes for sunlight at this time of year -- requires either some ancient photographic technology, or some pretty serious reduction in the light coming into the lens of a modern camera. That's what a 'big stopper' is for, a neutral density filter of around ten stops reduction. Since one stop reduction halves the amount of light, ten stops reduces it by about a thousand. The camera's auto-exposure thought this needed five seconds, as compared to 1/80th without the big stopper on. 1/80 x 1000 = 8 secs. So maybe this big stopper is more like nine rather than ten stops reduction. Not unusual in the world of big stoppers. Or maybe the light changed a stop in the few minutes it took me to put on the stopper while wearing winter gloves.

The shell and the Star flyers are nicely blurred out. The colour is pretty much preserved, a little cool shift which the camera's auto white balance takes in its stride. There's a very slight loss of detail compared the unstopped shot, and quite a noticeable loss of contrast, especially microcontrast. I lifted the shadows a lot in both images to see detail in the shaded valley of the gardens which has made them both low in general contrast anyway.

This was a draft experiment to firm up my ideas about a good comparative experiment. Next time I must remember to turn off the image stabilisation. That mistake could have caused micro contrast loss. I made the same mistake when doing my indoors comparative trial of this stopper. And while five seconds is enough to blur whirly fairground things in daylight, it's much too short to clear people and traffic from Princes Street.

Looks like I need another big stopper to get into the dozens of minutes in daylight range. It also looks like this one is good enough and cheap enough (less than ten quid if the cheapest current supplier hasn't run out of stock) that's it's worth buying another to stack onto this one.

Original:DSC03385RW_ptX

The early 1960's was a time of great change for Detroit. The economic recession that had set in in 1958, had cut great swathes from the profitability of the 'Big 3' auto makers - General Motors, Ford and Chrysler Corporation. It had also meant the end for many of the smaller independents, and critically wounded the others.

The other great change it had wrought was the introduction of the 'compact' US models, Corvair, Falcon and Valiant. These models gained share at the expense of the mid-scale, Big-3 brands, and also the offerings in the full-size classes.

These larger model were not forgotten about though. many of them gained space-age names, and used their extra size and market position to become more glamorous. Perhaps, also playing a part, was the rejection of such excessive styling. Though the fins had shrunk from the ultimate excess of the 1959 Cadillac, other stylistic features were still unrestrained. Chrysler had continued to evolve their 'forward look', first shown in 1957. For the 1961 Polara though, the cars reversed the rake of the fins, scalloping them out and framing the tail light, like a rocket-pod. At the front, a wide, concave grille with dual headlamps smoothed out and modernised the 'face'. Most of the central body still exhibited the form launched in 1960.

The companion 'Matador' model was discontinued, whilst the shorter-wheelbase 'Junior Dodge', the Dart, received the front end change, but with a more modest sweep of chrome on the rear flanks, joined by low-mounted tail lamps.

The pattern was set though, and volumes of full-size Dodges fell precipitously. Only 14,032 Polara were sold in the US for the 1961 model year.

As unappreciated as they were at the time, they now mark the end of an era in full-size US stylistic excess, and cut a fine line in a historic car show today.

This Lego miniland-scale 1961 Dodge Polara Hardtop and Convertible have been modelled for Flickr LUGNuts 69th Build Challenge, - 'The Summer of '69', celebrating vehicle of all makes and from any country made through the 1960's.

DREAM OF SHOOTING LIKE A PRO AND HAVING YOUR OWN PHOTO BUSINESS?

Let award winning photographer, author, mentor Elizabeth Etienne show you how.

Elizabeth Etienne is an award-winning photographer and author of 3 books - "Profitable Wedding Photography", "The Art of Engagement Photography," and "How To Create A Successful Photography Business". She divides her time between California and France and is endorsed by Kodak, Nikon, Colin Cowie, Rangefinder magazine, Professional Photographer magazine, PPA, Photobiz, Random House Publishing group, and many others. Her work has been published in dozens of magazines and websites around the world. She has been shooting and teaching workshops and private photo coaching sessions for over 2 decades.

In a shame-free, fun-loving atmosphere Elizabeth will help you define what makes you unique and how to apply creative skills & effective business practices to lead you out there in the world to start making money at what you love to do RIGHT NOW!

Sessions can cover a number of topics such as:

CREATIVE COACHING:

* Portfolio Reviews

* Website Reviews

* Marketing Materials Reviews

* Branding Materials Reviews

* Shoot Assignments

* Motivation, inspiration and positive energy boosters: Shooting from your heart (not your head) and creating your trademark style

PHOTO EQUIPMENT DEMOS & COACHING:

* Camera, lenses f/stops, shutter speeds and shoot modes and settings

* Lighting: Flashes, reflectors, natural & artificial lighting* Prepping For The Shoot: creating ideas, location, hair, make-up, wardrobe, props and directing. * Image Processing: editing, retouching and special affects manipulation using Photoshop.

BUSINESS COACHING:

* Funding your business: start-up materials & costs.

* Creating expense budgets, establish credit w/lenders and money management during challenging times.

* Self Promotion: Make yourself remembered! Company name, logo, business cards, website, letterhead, voice mail, promo materials.

* Business documents: Contracts, estimates, invoices, deposits, model releases.

* Dress for Success! Fake it 'til You Make it!! Overcome “Struggling Artist” syndrome

* Appearance, attitude, sales, deposits, The 11 Rules of client negotiations!

* Guerrilla Marketing: low-cost, effective advertising methods.

* Turn a $200 headshot into a $2000 job and repeat client!

* Working from home vs. office space: pros and cons.

DEFINE YOUR LEVEL AND YOUR MARKET:

Level 1: Your first paid photo shoot: Head-shots, model portfolios, pregnancy, babies, pets, family portraits and other low stress, quick cash-making jobs.

Level 2: Low-budget weddings & events, product catalogue, interiors, small products.

Level 3: Big budget weddings & events, ad campaigns, fine art & décor art.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HER BOOKS, WORKSHOPS AND PRIVATE PHOTO COACHING SESSIONS GO TO: www.destinationphotoworkshops.com

Elizabeth Etienne Photography

www.eephoto.com

www.elizabethetienne.com

By: Henry Van Dyke. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918.

Binding Description: 8vo. Bound in navy blue cloth, with gilt lettering and design to the spine. Gilt lettering and blue, gilt, and green decoration to the front board.

Binding Decoration Description: Elaborate gilt, green, and light blue design on front cover depicting dragonflies, flowers, and leaves. Gilt floral design on spine. Binding design by Margaret Armstrong.

"Доходното здание" днес е своеобразна емблема на Русе - сградата е построена на границата на ХІХ и ХХ век като доходоносно за общината съоръжение, разполагащо с театрален салон, библиотека, магазини. Дело е на виенския архитект Паул Бранк. Богатата орнаментика на фасадата превръща сградата като едно от многото архитектурни паментици, изтъквани като доказателство за силното културно влияние на Австро-Унгария върху Русе... Сградата подслонява постановките на градския драматичен театър. През 80-те и 90-те години зданието е затворено и оградено във връзка с основна реконструкция, предвиждаща изграждането на по-голяма зала и нови фоайета. На практика от старата сграда се запазва само фасадата, а вътрешността е изцяло новопостроена. След няколко десетилетия ремонтни дейности, сградата се връща към живот едва през 2006 г.

"The profitable house" as known in Ruse is a kind of emblem of the city. It was built between 1898 and 1902 as an enterprise to accomodate theatre spectacles, a library, shops and cafes and gain money for the municipality. It was designed by the architect from Austrian architect Paul Brank. The rich ornamentated facade makes the building one of the many architectural landmarks in the city, used as a proof for the Austrian cultural influence on Ruse... The building was being and is still used by the drama theatre. In 1980 it was closed for a great reconstruction - a new bigger hall and new foyers were planed to be built. In fact the facade is the single element to survive from the original building. Due to financial problems the reconstruction lasted more than 20 years and the finished building was reopened in 2006.

Take advantage of the profitable offer from Outdoorsbay Company! Buy ATN products on Outdoorsbay.com.

OutdoorsBay Company displays the collection of thermal scopes and other equipments. The equipment of ATN (American Technologies Network) is by right one of the best equipments in the world. Use the advantageous offer and purchase ATN products on Outdoorsbay.com. More on

goo.gl/FVik7Z

>- Profitable Place to Sell Your Photos Online -<

Follow me on:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | 500px

AndreyFilippov.com

Free Creative Commons

Bjørnøya, Hundvåg

Used@

1 Penny Stocks A Profitable Roller Coaster

www.phonienews.com/13539/penny-stocks-a-profitable-roller...

2 www.phonienews.com/22008/what-sort-of-stock-one-should-buy/

3 currencytradingexchangeguide.com/153642/cool-stock-images...

4 www.privatestockhobby.com/sky-stock/

Commercial ostrich farming is a profitable business. But it is not as popular as duck, chicken, pigeon, quail or other poultry birds. It is comparatively a new agribusiness, but it is highly profitable.

Ostrich is the world's largest living bird. The males on average stand about 2.4 meter tall and can weight well over 100 kg. But the females/hens are slightly smaller than the males.

Ostriches can't fly. Their great body size but reduced wind size rendering them incapable of flying. Generally, ostriches have a long neck, long bare legs and two toes. Neck and thigh muscles are well developed and unfeathered.

Ostriches have long and strong legs, and they are the fastest bird. They are able to run up to 70 kilometer per hour when necessary, with strides of up to 8 meter.

Currently, many countries around the world have started commercial ostrich production. The first commercial ostrich farm was established in South Africa in about 1860, mainly for harvesting the feathers.

And commercial ostrich farms began to spread gradually to other countries around the world. Especially Australia, Egypt, New Zealand, Argentina and United States started commercial ostrich production.

Total number of ostriches raised commercially reached over 1 million by 1913. But the ostrich feather market crashed and the number of total commercial ostrich farms dropped significantly after the First and Second World Wars.

Then the industry managed to survive on a much smaller scale in South Africa.

www.roysfarm.com/ostrich-farming/

. . . 3. 3. 2007 - this is the second day of a funeral ceremony in Bori for a High Class Woman. She died on 18. 1. 2007 at the age of 85 years. The ceremony will last for one week.

If you wonder why the quality of the pictures is a little less: these are no photographs - it all are snapshots of my videos! So sorry for the less resolution, but I think, they are worth to be shown.

_____________________________________

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colorful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model - in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo - to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonization and Christianization, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders - such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi - than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups - the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognized in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to

CHRISTIANITY

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognized religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognized, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalized as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin) - except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women - a crime punishable by death.

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolize fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. The image to the left shows an example of Torajan wood carving, consisting of 15 square panels. The center bottom panel represents buffalo or wealth, a wish for many buffaloes for the family. The center panel represents a knot and a box, a hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony, like goods kept safe in a box. The top left and top right squares represent an aquatic animal, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water. It also represents the need for a certain skill to produce good results.

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae' , Talondo' , Toala' , and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages. A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterized their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market .

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies - to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s - including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi - tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure - an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialized. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

WIKIPEDIA

MetaTrader expert advisors, indicators and scripts that can assist traders take the right decision when trading forex, futures or stocks

www.robotfx.org/

>- Profitable Place to Sell Your Photos Online -<

Follow me on:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | 500px

AndreyFilippov.com

Naturally, Clement Royds was the canal's banker. His grandson was the chairman of the canal company, which was incidentally profitable until after the opening of the Manchester to Leeds railway in 1841. As is usual with provincial bankers, Clement Royds was a prominent citizen in many ways, as the Chairman of the local magistrates and in 1850, High Sheriff of Lancashire. He was honourary treasurer of the local savings bank when its actuary decamped with over £71,000 of its funds. His rivalry with the Fentons, the other local bank, reached a peak in 1837 when Royds as the Conservative candidate stood against the liberal Fenton and lost by 383 votes to 339. This in a town with a population of just over twenty thousand and which had been enfranchised by the 1832 Reform Acts.

Clement died in 1854 and was succeeded by his sons Albert and William, both of whom had been with the bank since its inception. The firm's style remained as Clement Royds & Co throughout its existence. The next generation included another Clement C M Royds. He also became a magistrate and High Sheriff of Lancashire - and this Clement outdid his grandfather in achieving his ambition of becoming a Member of Parliament. He became a partner in about 1867, in which year the firm abandoned banknote issue and he was the senior partner by 1875.

In 1878 Fenton's collapsed and although Royds handled the resultant run without too much difficulty, it may well have suggested to its partners that the day of the local bank was over. They approached the Manchester and Salford Bank and amalgamated in 1881. That the Royds chose this bank so firmly based in the Manchester area was clear evidence of the decline of the woollen industry. By amalgamation and name change the Manchester and Salford Bank became William Deacon's later William and Glyns and now the Royal Bank of Scotland. It is easy to dismiss Royds as an obscure provincial single office bank, but in fact Sir Clement Royds (as he became in 1906) was the Chairman of William Deacon's - by then a London clearing bank - from 1891 to 1911, a period of much activity.

Geoffrey L Grant

Many thanks to www.banking-history.co.uk/royds.html

Okeechobee 94, 12 Baillie St, Rochdale OL16 1JG

Bitcoin can still be profitable, even for beginners. There are creative ways for you to make money with Bitcoin without falling for hyped up methods that are ineffective. This is not a means to get rich quick. There’s real work involved in making money with Bitcoin, but the returns are worth all ...

www.cryptocoinempire.net/the-top-10-ways-to-make-money-wi...

Our custom implementation of a Analytics Tool for a CEO of a company that is turning this into a SAAS app. Here we are showing the Profitability and Growth section.

So respected as a vigilante in the lawless settlement of Fort Griffin, Texas, John M. Larn was elected sheriff, a mistake the town’s population would not soon forget.

Born in Mobile, Alabama on March 1, 1849, Larn traveled to Colorado as a teenager where he found work as a ranch hand. However, after an argument with his boss over a horse around 1869, he shot and killed him. Soon he fled to New Mexico, where he killed a local sheriff who he thought was trailing him. Continuing on into to Texas, he settled in Fort Griffin, where in 1871 he worked as a trail boss for a local rancher named Bill Hays. While on a cattle drive to Trinidad, Colorado, he allegedly killed two Mexicans and a sheep herder. Somewhere along the line, Larn married Mary Jane Matthews from the noted Matthews family and became a well known citizen of Shackelford County.

However, by 1873, allegations began to surface that Larn was involved in cattle rustling. Ironically, that same year, he got a warrant for the arrest of every member of Bill Hays’ cattle outfit for rustling.

As he accompanied a posse of thirteen soldiers from Fort Griffin, the men ambushed and killed every member of the outfit near Bush Knob, Texas. In 1874 he joined the Tin Hat Brigade in Fort Griffin, a vigilante group that worked swiftly bringing “justice” to many a horse thief who was left hanging from a tree near the river. As a member of the Tin Hat Brigade, he gained so much respect, he was elected sheriff of Fort Griffin in April, 1876. That same month, the Tin Hat Brigade caught a man in the act of stealing a horse and promptly hanged him to a pecan tree. Leaving his body hanging there for all to see, they also left a pick and shovel below his gruesome remains for anyone who might have wished to remove the thief and bury him. In the next three months the Fort Griffin vigilantes shot two more horse thieves and hanged six others.

Shortly after taking the sheriff’s position, Larn entered into a private contract with the local territorial garrison to deliver three steers of cattle per day. However, Larn had different ideas and began to plan with longtime friend and recently deputized John Selman, to simply rustle the cattle from neighboring ranchers rather than having to provide his own. Before long, he and Selman, instead of controlling the area crime, were controlling the vigilantes, rustling even more cattle and otherwise terrorizing the county. However, suspicions were soon raised as a number of ranchers noticed that while their herds were slowly shrinking, Larn’s remained unaffected. Obviously profitable, Larn soon built a house at Camp Cooper Ranch on the Cedar Fork in Lambshead, Texas.

After serving less than a year, Larn resigned as sheriff on March 7, 1877 and was replaced by his deputy, William Cruger, a month later. Moving on to outright cattle rustling, he and Selman continued to profit and in March, 1877 were appointed as deputy hide inspectors for Shackelford County. Opportune positions for the cattle thieves, they were to inspect all cattle herds entering and leaving the county, as well as supervising the butchers. Larn also continued to supply Fort Griffin with its beef and as more and more cattle went missing, the complaints grew louder and louder. A number of violent acts were also being reported as a band of men, allegedly led by Larn and Selman, were bushwhacking area ranchers, driving off their cattle, shooting horses, and firing potshots at the homes of terrified citizens.

Finally, in February, 1878, a group of civilians secured a warrant to search the river behind Larn’s house. Looking for hides that didn’t belong to him, six were recovered from the river with brands other than Larn’s own. Though Larn was arrested, he was later released and violence continued.

However, in June, 1878 a local rancher named Treadwell, who had reportedly uncovered the cattle rustling, was wounded by Larn and the Albany court issued a warrant for his arrest. Sheriff William Cruger was then tasked with arresting his former boss, which he did on June 22, 1878. After placing him in the jail, Cruger had the local blacksmith shackle Larn to the floor of the cell to prevent a breakout by Larn’s supporters.

Instead, the next night, the Tin Hat Brigade, stormed the jail intending to hang Larn. When they found they couldn’t lynch the shackled man, they shot him in his cell. Afterwards, his body was returned to Camp Cooper Ranch where he was buried beside his infant son.

www.legendsofamerica.com/tx-johnlarn/

With more than 19,500 attendees from 60+ countries and 1,000 exhibitors, the Fresh Summit exposition is where contacts are formed, trends are revealed, ideas are exchanged and careers are made. You could feel the electricity on the show floor and experience the energy, the flavors and the conversations that will fuel new and profitable opportunities for your business.

While profitable, the e-waste industry also creates health and environmental problems. Photo by Sharon Benzoni, Informal City Dialogues blogger in Accra, Ghana. Read her story: nextcity.org/informalcity/entry/electronic-waste-in-accra...

This photo is part of the Informal City Dialogues, featuring stories and insights from six rapidly urbanizing cities around the world: nextcity.org/informalcity

Research Achievement: Development of innovative approaches to enable small-holder farmers of South Asia to achieve gains in productivity and profitability through use of cutting edge Information & Communication Technologies to guide application of site-specific nutrient and crop management options

Outline of Research Achievements

In South Asia, traditional blanket recommendations for soil fertility management do not consider the huge variability among fields of smallholder farmers in terms of soil type, farm management, and other aspects. Future gains in productivity and input use efficiency will therefore require soil and crop management technologies that are more knowledge-intensive and tailored to the specific characteristics of individual farms and fields. Sheetal Sharma and her team worked to translate and transfer the science of site-specific nutrient management and tools developed at IRRI HQ to developing countries through innovative approaches to reap the benefits at a large scale. She played a central role in conceptualizing and designing the Crop Manager for India, an ICT tool that provides nutrient recommendations to farmers. She also collected the desired data through strategic and adapted research, and the tools were further developed and evaluated by establishing strategic partnerships.

These concentrated efforts resulted in the development of two versions of Crop Manager for India. Documented evidence demonstrates that Crop Manager for Odisha improved rice productivity by 0.5-0.8 t/ha and increased net added benefit by USD104-155/ha per season over farmers' practice. Likewise, Crop Manager for Bihar improved rice and wheat yield by 0.7 and 0.3 t/ha, respectively, and resulted to a net added benefit of USD 147/ha per season in rice and USD 63/ha per season in wheat over farmers’ practice. Crop Manager for India is the result of a joint effort between IRRI and national partners under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture by the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. Forging partnerships and enhancing the capacity of various stakeholders have provided more than 30,000 farmers with Crop Manager recommendations. Furthermore, Sharma and her team aim to bring the benefits of Crop Manager to about 1 million small-scale farmers by the end of 2020.

Sixty years after Juan Cabrillo became the first European to discover California, in 1601 soldier and merchant Sebastián Vizcaíno was given the task by the Conde de Monterrey, the Spanish Viceroy in Mexico City, to survey Alta California and find safe harbors for Spain's profitable Manila galleons that were now swinging across the Westward Trade Winds from the Philippines to Mexico by a route discovered by Andrés de Urdaneta.

On May 5, 1602, Vizcaíno departed Acapulco with three ships, his flagship the San Diego and the San Tomás and the Tres Reyes. On November 10, Vizcaíno sailed into Cabrillo's old San Miguel Bay and renamed it San Diego, after his flagship. Moving up the California Coast, he rediscovered (and renamed) some of Cabrillo's discoveries and then some, including the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, Point Conception, the Santa Lucia Mountains, Point Lobos, Carmel River and Monterey Bay, which he came upon and landed on this spot on December 16, 1602. He named the bay, which he described in glowing terms as being sheltered on all sides, after his patron: El Puerto de Monterey. As with most expeditions of this period, supplies and crew health were poor. The San Tomás was sent back to Acapulco with sick crew while the remaining ships continued North. At Cape Mendocino, the remaining two ships were scattered by a storm; the Tres Reyes ended as far North as Cape Blanco, the first European discovery of Oregon. After the storm, Vizcaíno turned his ships back. Most of his crew had succumbed to starvation and scurvy by the time they returned to Acapulco. Like Cabrillo before him, Vizcaíno had helped Europeans discover a large part of California, and many of his names remained. More importantly, his mostly accurate surveys provided groundwork for future Spanish settlement of California.

While Spanish Mexico quickly became interested in settling Alta California, local politics prevented further exploration of the region until 1768, when, facing Russian encroachment from Alaska, Visitador of New Spain José de Gálvez decided to settle Alta California, sending Gaspar de Portolá and Junípero Serra to settle San Diego and Monterey. After a difficult founding of Mission San Diego de Acala, Serra boarded the San Antonio to reach Monterey by sea. On May 31, 1770, after a difficult month, the San Antonio reached the spot described by Vizcaíno 168 years earlier. On Pentecost Sunday, June 3, 1770, Junípero Serra held a large ceremony here under a large oak tree: "The men of the land and sea expeditions coming from different directions met here at the same time, we singing the divine praises in our launch, while the gentlemen on land sang in their hearts."

A large cross was erected "the standards of our Catholic monarch were also set up, the one ceremony…accompanied by shouts of 'Long live the Faith!' and the other by 'Long live the King!' Added to this was the clangor of the bells, the volleys of the muskets, and the cannonading from the ship."

The Celtic cross seen here was erected by James A. Murray in 1905 to commemorate Vizcaíno and Serra's landing spot. In the middle is an image of Serra, and at the bottom an image of Mission Carmel. This cross is located at the front of Monterey's Presidio.

Interestingly, someone has been vandalizing old monuments related to Serra recently, including cutting down another cross and decapitating some statues.

Monterey State Historic Park, Monterey, California

>- Profitable Place to Sell Your Photos Online -<

Follow me on:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | 500px

AndreyFilippov.com

Do you think that the media business has become permanently less profitable due to new technology? WB: People will always want to be entertained and informed. But people just have two eyeballs, and there are only 24 hours in a day. Fifty or 60 years ago, media for most people consisted of the local movie theater, radio, and the local newspaper. Now people have a variety of ways of being informed faster (if not necessarily better), and have more entertainment options, too. But no one has figured out a way to increase the time available to watch entertainment. Whenever more competitors enter a business, the economics of that business tends to deteriorate. Newspapers are still highly profitable, but returns are falling. The size of the audience for network TV is declining. For years, cable TV was thought to operate in its own world, but that’s changing. Few businesses get better with more competitors. The outlook for newspapers is not great. In the TV business, a license from the government was essentially the right to a royalty stream. There were basically three highways to people’s eyeballs, and companies like P&G, Ford, Gillette, and GM would pay a significant amount of money to be get on those highways and advertise their products to a mass audience. But as the ways to get in front of people’s eyeballs increases, the value of those highways goes down. World Book used to sell 300,000 sets per year in the mid-1980s, each for $600. Then the Internet cam along; it didn’t require printing or shipping, and people became less willing to pay for World Book sets. It doesn’t mean that it’s not worth $600. But competition has eroded returns. CM: It’s a rare business that doesn’t have a way worse future than it has a past. WB: The thing to do was to buy the NFL when it was first organized. There are now more ways than ever to transit events; value can be extracted from them in different ways.If you were looking at newspaper publishers as possible investments, what would you use as a margin of safety? WB: What multiple should you for a company that earns $100 million per year whose earnings are falling by 5% per year rather than rising by 5% per year? Newspapers face the prospect of seeing their earnings erode indefinitely. It’s unlikely that at most papers, circulation or ad pages will be larger in five years than they are now. That’s even true in cities that are growing. But most owners don’t yet see this protracted decline for what it is. The multiples on newspaper stocks are unattractively high. They are not cheap enough to compensate for the companies’ earnings power. Sometimes there’s a perception lag between the actual erosion of a business and how that erosion is seen by investors. Certain newspaper executives are going out and investing on other newspapers. I don’t see it. It’s hard to make money buying a business that’s in permanent decline. If anything, the decline is accelerating. Newspaper readers are heading into the cemetery, while newspaper non-readers are just getting out of college. The old virtuous circle, where big readership draws a lot of ads, which in turn draw more readers, has broken down. Charlie and I think newspapers are indispensable. I read four a day. He reads five. We couldn’t live without them. But a lot of people can now. This used to be the ultimate bulletproof franchise. It’s not anymore. CM: I used to think that GM was a bulletproof franchise. Now I’d put GM and newspapers in the “Too Hard” pile. If something is too hard to do, we look for something that isn’t too hard. What could be more obvious? WB: It may be that no one has followed the newspaper business as closely as we have for as long as we have—50 years or more. It’s been interesting to watch newspaper owners and investors resist seeing what’s going on right in front of them. It used to be you couldn’t make a mistake managing a newspaper. It took no management skill—like TV stations. Your nephew could run one.

>- Profitable Place to Sell Your Photos Online -<

Follow me on:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | 500px

AndreyFilippov.com

Kyiv, Ukraine.

Profitable house on the corner of Pushkinska Street No. 45 and Karavaevska Street (1899–1901); built for the merchant Adam Snizhko - the family of Snizhko and Olena Khlebnykova. During the German occupation of 1941-1943, the building burned down, then it was restored in a somewhat simplified form.

Midtown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The Hearst Magazine Building was designed in 1926-27 by Joseph Urban in association with George B. Pest & Sons . Stretching a full block along the west side of Eighth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, the building remains the expectant six-story base of an office tower that was never constructed. It is a stylistic synthesis of Art Deco ornament, Secessionist influence and Baroque theatricality. Further enriched by classical allusions which are both imposing and dramatic, the building survives as a relic of unrealized plans to transform greater Columbus Circle into New York's new cultural and commercial center as well as the corporate headquarters of Hearst's vast publishing empire. The unique product of a uniquely skilled designer, the Hearst Magazine Building is an important monument in the architectural heritage of New York.

William Randolph Hearst

Hearst was born in San Francisco on April 29, 1863, the son of a United States Senator who also owned several newspapers. In 1882 young "Willie" Hearst enrolled in Harvard University where, aside from American history, he showed little interest in his studies. Instead, he became involved in the Hasty Pudding Club and especially the Harvard lampoon which Hearst made profitable for the first time in years. After a rowdy career , Hearst was expelled from Harvard in his senior year. He returned to California and persuaded his father to let him take over the San Francisco Examiner. Within eight years he transformed this unprofitable four-page daily ó "easily the worst in San Francisco" ó into the largest newspaper on the West Coast. And while it remained the political mouthpiece of Senator Hearst, the Examiner also launched independent crusades against civic, corporate and governmental corruption. Thriving on sensational journalism, it previewed the trend of ''gee whiz emotion" that

would characterize Hearst's later publicationsand which lay at the core of his multi-million dollar fortune-

Eager to achieve national prominence, Hearst moved to New York with the purchase of the Morning Journal in 1895- He burst upon Printing House Square, quickly violating all the traditions of this previously sedate bastion of newspaper publishing. Hearst's major opponent was Joseph Pulitzer whose World he studied, copied, and ultimately conquered- He reduced the price of the Journal to a penny and through enormous salary increases manned his staff with the best managers, editors and reporters, most cf whan were lured away from Pulitzer. In time Hearst also took Pulitzer's publisher and when, in 1927-28, he built the International Magazine Building near Columbus Circle, he employed the successor firm of George B. Post, architect of Pulitzer's World Building in 1889-90 .

By 1900 Hearst was personally involved in national politics. He was twice elected New York State Congressman , but otherwise launched unsuccessful bids for the vice-presidency and presidency of the United States, mayoralty and governorship of New York. He was defeated in the latter after Secretary of State Elihu Root accused him of responsibility for the assassination of President McKinley.

In the coarse of his political career, Hearst continued to build his publishing empire. To the Morning Journal he added the Evening Journal which, within a year, had the largest circulation in the English speaking world. He also established or purchased the New York Morning Advertiser and Daily Mirror as well as other newspapers in virtually every major American city. By 1926 Hearst was receiving an annual income of $150 million from the 72 companies of which he was sole proprietor; he had no stockholders.

In addition to his 26 newspapers, Hearst owned over a dozen magazines, Cosmopolitan , Good Housekeeping , Harper's Bazaar and Hearst's Internationa1 among them. In 1923 he became a newsreel pioneer with the Hearst-Selig Weekly, subsequently increasing his film involvements with motion pictures, most of which were vehicles for actress Marion Davies. Hearst met Miss Da vies in 1917 when she appeared as a chorus girl in Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies. The production was especially memorable for its dreamy stage sets by Joseph Urban. In the following years, Hearst, Urban and Ziegfeld had various associations, the most important being the new Ziegf eld Theater on 56th Street and Sixth Avenue which Hearst subsidized and Urban designed . In the same year Hearst engaged his by then close friend Joseph Urban to design the International Magazine Building. It was to be located on West 57th Street, a rapidly developing section of New York already distinguished by imposing commercial buildings, Carnegie Hall , the Art Students' league and numerous art galleries ranch frequented by Hearst.

Columbus Circle Development and the Vision of "Hearst Plaza"

When Hearst came to New York in 1895, he leased two floors in the Tribune Building at Printing House Square- The concentration of newspapers in this part of town grew naturally frcm its proximity to Wall Street, City Hall and the Criminal Courts, all of which furnished the bulk of late nineteenth-century news. With the development of telephones and rapid transit, however, growing newspaper operations were free to seek larger quarters in more fashionable uptcwn districts. In 1895 the Herald moved to 34th Street and gave its name to the intersection at Sixth Avenue and Broadway. The New York Times likewise relocated in 1904, prompting the rechristening of longacre Square to Times Square. Hie Daily News continued the northern migration in 1929 when it commissioned Raymond Hood to design its new building several blocks east on 42nd Street. Hearst himself had moved into the area as early as 1912 with offices located at 119 West 40th Street.

Hearst was intent on making known his presence in New York. He envisioned a midtown headquarters as early as 1895, when he purchased the small block between Columbus Circle and 58th Street, Broadway and Eighth Avenue . Plans for the development of this site with a "lofty structure" were eclipsed, however, in 1903 when Hearst acquired the larger block immediately south . Reportedly the latter site was to told "a mamroouth structure to provide a" hone for . In this instance he commissioned from commercial architect James C. Green a design for a three- story Gothic structure. It was reinforced from the beginning for the later addition of a tower "30 or more stories in height." The Gothic building was erected in 1912, but never enlarged, allegedly because its irregular plot could "not meet the requirements of a large and satisfactory business structure.,

Instead, Hearst acquired in 1920 a large plot between 58th and 59th Streets where he intended to erect a "25-story building to house the headquarters of his eastern enterprises." Plans for the setback structure, again unexecuted, were drawn 15) by architect Charles E. Birge who worked en a number of commercial and residential commissions for Hearst. Four months later Hearst bought the Hotel Essex on Madison and 58th Street for "possible future occupancy [by the] International Magazine." In the following year he purchased "the largest available vacant lot in the Columbus Circle District." Located on Eighth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets and ultimately developed with the International Magazine Building, the site was originally intended to hold a two-story mixed-use structure with stores, offices and a 2,500 seat auditorium. By contrast, Hearst's publications were to be housed in a sprawling seven-story building located on the block he owned between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues, 44th and 45th Streets. In the end Hearst abandoned the latter scheme presumably because its far West Side location was too far removed frcm the center of town and because of the growing prestige of the Eighth Avenue site. After several false starts, he hired Joseph Urban and George B. Post & Sons to design for the Eighth Avenue site a low-rise building to be completed with a tower at a later date. In a pattern that was by now typical, the addition never materialized.

Hearst's real estate ventures in western midtown were daringly speculative and characteristically ó and in the end, ruinously ó extravagant. He was encouraged by expectations for Columbus Circle's future as the inevitable extension of New York's growing theater district. The construction of Carnegie Hall on 57th Street and Seventh Avenue had set the stage in 1891. Nearly a dozen theaters followed, most of them concurrent with the International Magazine Building.

Hearst's relationship with Miss Davies predisposed him to theater involvements. For the opening of her motion picture When Knighthood Was in Flower he hired Joseph Urban to refurbish the Criterion Theater, arri in the following year had him do the same for the Cosmopolitan Theater in Columbus Circle which Hearst had purchased for the debut of Miss Davies' film Little Old New York In 1926 Hearst entered the legitimate stage with construction of the Ziegf eld Theater on the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 54th Street. He simultaneously planned the Billy Burke Theater , to be located across the street. The feverish development of the new theater district was encouraged by the Metropolitan Cpera which had announced plans to build a new house on 57th Street in late 1923. Two months later Hearst purchased the adjacent lots that were ultimately developed with the International Magazine Building. The grand scheme for a cultural center at Columbus Circle faltered, however, when the Opera met strenuous boxholder opposition and consequently abandoned its 57th Street site.

Although disappointed by the Opera's withdrawal, tremendous potential remained for the commercial development of Columbus Circle, the nexus of six major traffic arteries. One of the .most important was Eighth Avenue which, in the 1920s, saw unprecedented midtown activity. Its growth was encouraged by new zoning for higher buildings and construction of the Eighth Avenue subway . Within a decade property values on Eighth Avenue between 42nd Street and Columbus Circle had increased more than 200%. The area was fast becoming New York's new business district, attracting such prominent tenants as the U.S. Rubber Company , the Fisk and Gotham banks, General Motors ó and William Randolph Hearst.

Hearst was advised in real estate by Arthur Brisbane . Hearst bought huge amounts of property in the area around 57th Street and Eighth Avenue, making purchases every one or two months. In addition to his theaters and the many sites for the International Magazine Building, he owned several large hotels and townhouses. His ultimate objective was the creation of "Hearst Plaza," an urban focus which by its central location and sheer expanse would eclipse the rival publishing centers at Park Row, Times and Herald Squares. Its location in Columbus Circle, site of the Maine Monument was particularly appropriate given Hearst's pivotal role in the Spanish-American War.

The Hearst Magazine Building is the sole survivor of this grand scheme, collapsed by the Depression and Hearst's own uncurtailed lavishness. He continued to buy Columbus Circle properties until 1930 but was forced to liquidate within the decade. In 1937 Hearst relinquished financial control of his publishing empire. Drained by too many unprofitable newspapers, financially disastrous films and scores of inflated mortgages, his total debts amounted to a whopping $126 million.

Architects of the Hearst Magazine Building

Joseph Urban was born in Vienna on May 26, 1872. His father, a leading Austrian educator, sent him to law school only to discover two years later that his son had spent the entire time studying painting and architecture at the Wiener Akademie as well as construction at the Polytechnicum. His deception discovered, Urban fled frcm hems.

He was given a scholarship to the Akademie by its president Baron Carl Kasenauer who, one year later, sent the 19-year old student to decorate the Abdin Palace at Cairo for the Khedive of Egypt. Urban returned to Vienna in 1892 where he completed his architectural training, but under the influence of Secessionist architect Otto Wagner soon repudiated academic formalism. He became an accomplished book illustrator and in 1896 won the Kaiser Prize, the Austrian Gold Medal for Fine Arts in 1898 and the Grand Prix two years later. In 1898 Urban prevailed over a hundred contestants with his first independent architectural design, a bridge for Vienna. In the same year he became associated with the Secessionists at the Art and Industry Exhibition out of which developed Urban's commission to design Count Carl Esterhazy's castle. In 1900 he was awarded the Grand Prix for his decoration at the Paris Exposition, only to return to a Vienna scandalized over the paintings he had selected for the exhibition. As a result, Urban alienated himself from the Secessionists and formed the alternative Hagenbund.

The Hagenbund's varied membership led Urban almost inevitably to theater design. After a trip to St. Louis where he designed the interior of the Austrian Pavilion at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition , he returned to Vienna to design stage sets for the legitimate stage and Royal Opera. He came to America in 1911 as art director for the Boston Opera. Commissions for stage sets followed in Paris, London and ultimately New York where Urban made spectacular designs for "The Garden of Paradise." Unfortunately this artistically acclaimed production went bankrupt almost immediately, leaving Urban temporarily stranded. His fortune changed in 1914 when he met Florenz Ziegfeld and began designing stage sets for his 'Tollies."

Through Ziegfeld and his chorus girl Marion Davies, Urban was introduced to Hearst, initiating a lengthy professional association and close personal friendship between these two lovers of sensation. Xp 1916 Urban became art director of Hearst's new film-making studio, and subsequently remodeled the Criterion and Cosmopolitan theaters for him. Ten years later Urban designed the Hearst-financed Ziegfeld Theater while simultaneously continuing his long-term position as set designer for the Metropolitan Opera. In the following year , Urban collaborated with Benjamin Wistar Morris on the design of the Opera's new house on 57th

Street. He had filed plans for Hearst's adjacent International Magazine Building just three months prior. Urban's involvement in both projects assured unified architectural effect. Each of the proposals, however, included high-rise components, an aspect of building with which Urban had little experience. At the International Magazine Building, the expertise was supplied by George B. Post & Sons, noted commercial architects.

The firm of George B. Post & Sons was established in 1904 when George Browne Post took on as equal partners his sons William Stone Post and James Otis Post . The father had studied civil engineering at New York University before training in Richard Morris Hunt's 10th Street Studio, after which he formed a brief partnership with Charles Gambrill . Following service in the Civil War, Post resumed practice in New York, first with various associations but independently after 1368. In that year his premiated design for the Equitable Life Assurance Building ó one of the first "elevator buildings" in New York ó launched his long and distinguished career in residential, hotel and commercial design. Among his many notable commissions in New York were the Western Union Building , Williamsburgh Savings Bank , Long Island Historical Society Building , the Cornelius Vanderbilt House , the Produce Exchange , New York Stock Exchange , north campus of City College and the Mills Building where Post established himself as "a good planner." In light of his firm's involvement in the Hearst Magazine Building it is significant to note that Pest was architect of the original New York Times Building as well as of Pulitzer's Wbrld Building .

A pioneer in the development of tall buildings, Post's reputation for sound commercial design was continued by his sons whose successor firm retained their father's name long after his death in 1913. William Post joined the office after graduation from Columbia University and a year of travel abroad. He collaborated with his father on the New York Stock Exchange and City College north campus. In 1901 William was joined in the office by his younger brother James who had likewise graduated from Columbia but who also studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. After their father's death the two Post brothers made a specialty of commercial and institutional architecture with offices in both New York and Cleveland. Among their most notable commissions are the Statler hotels in Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Boston and Buffalo, the Roosevelt Hotel in New York and the Hotel Olympic in Seattle, as well as the Wisconsin State Capitol and north building of the Prudential Insurance Company in Newark, New Jersey. After William Post's death in 1940, James continued the firm until his own death eleven years later before which time he had designed Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, St. Mary's Hospital for Children in Bayside, Samaritan Hospital in Troy and another in Stamford, Connecticut. James Post also designed the town of Cradock, Virginia for the United States Housing Bureau.

The Hearst Magazine Building and its Sculptural Program

Over the course of two decades Hearst had purchased no fewer than a half dozen midtown properties as potential sites for his new building. Meanwhile his publishing empire continued its meteoric growth. By 1926 Hearst was the unchallenged publishing giant in America and perhaps in the world. His decision to consolidate his magazine operations on Eighth

Avenue and 56-57th Street was directly related to the commercial and cultural development of Columbus Circle and to Hearst's intention to establish in the area a grand plaza befitting his publication prowess.

Initial plans for the site were relatively modest, calling for its development by the little known architect Michael Bernstein with three ccraroercial buildings, each three stories high, to contain a motion picture theater. This proposal was replaced one year later by a more ambitious scheme for a six-storv theater and office building by the aninent theater architect Thranas Iamb. This short-lived plan was likewise withdrawn in mid-August, 1926 and replaced by Joseph Urban's design for the present structure. Urban's ccmmission came just three months prior to the public announcement of his appointment as architect of the new Metropolitan Opera House to be built on neighboring 57th Street lots. The two designs are sympathetic in their scale and intent-

Like the Opera, Hearst's building was to convey its cultural importance, expressing the influence of his magazines "on the thought and education of the reading public." It was designed with an auditorium for "concerts, lectures and similar educational activities." Its role in the new art, music and theater district is suggested by "the six sculptural groups which 28-year old Henry Kreis executed for the building's chamfered corners, main entrance on Eighth Avenue and 57th Street entrance .

Born in Essen, Germany, on July 27, 1899, Kreis received a public school education before apprenticing at age 14 with Meister Goldkuhle, a local tombstone cutter. After four years' training Kreis spent three additional years in Munich where he studied with Joseph Wackerle. In 1923 he left war-ravaged Germany for America. Nearly destitute, Kreis relied on his early training, setting up tombstones and later, carving stone in Buffalo. He then attended the Beaux Arts School of Design 'in Manhattan. The building boon brought hint numerous jobs for architectural ornament, but its perfunctory execution prompted Kreis to seek more creative outlets for his talent. His opportunity came with a trip to Palm Beach c.1925 where Joseph Urban was executing the Hutton residence, a house "with lots of figures on it." Kreis got the job, became foreman of fifteen carvers, and in the following year was again engaged by Urban, this time on sulpture for the Hearst Magazine Building. Kreis' twelve dramatic figures brought him to public attention and led, after five years additional training with Paul Manship and Carl Paul* Jennewein, to important commissions for the United States Post Office in the Bronx and especially in Washington where he worked on the War Department Building, Social Security Building, and Department of Justice Building to name only a few. After a long and distinguished career Kreis died in his Essex, Connecticut heme at age 63 .

Kreis' work is characterized by strong composition, simplified and frequently angular forms, qualities particularly appropriate to an architectural setting. His subtle drama is evident at the Hearst Building where allegorical figures merge with their columnar supports in a theatrical play of light and brooding shadow. In each case the figures respond to the cultural development of Columbus Circle, much as their dorsal columns echo the column of the Columbus Monument two blocks to the north . The main entrance on Eighth Avenue is flanked by "Comedy and Tragedy" on the left amd "Music and Art" on the right, a pattern repeated at what was originally an entrance on 57th Street- "Sport and Industry" are installed above the chamfered corner at 56th Street. Appropriately/ "Printina and the Sciences" appear on the building's major corner at 57th Street.'

The figures are placed atop pylons which break theatrically through an otherwise continuous second-story balustrade, emphasized by the almost exclamatory verticality of the columns behind. The building's third story setback also tends to feature the sculpture, rendering the ground floor shops and second-story offices a great pedestal or stage. Spatial drama is especially forceful at the structure's,angled corners where building masses project, step up and simultaneously recede in an exciting Baroque display. The angled corners are themselves an urbane gesture to pedestrian traffic and contribute heavily to the scenographic effect of the building as a whole, connecting rather than terminating the three elevations for greater visibility. An unusually generous use of space in a commercial building, they break the standard rectilinear grid and create a space which was uniquely Hearst's.

Theatrical forces are likewise at work on the building's Eighth Avenue entrance. Pierced by a triumphal arch with overscaled keystone, it recalls the self-consciously grand world's fair architecture of which Urban was a veteran designer. The entrance also recalls Otto Wagner's unexecuted scheme for the Kriegsministerium of 1907/08.

Architectural historians have been irked in their attempts to stylistically classify the building which, while constructed in the early stages of Art Deco, shows only token elements of that style . Aged 54 in 1926, Joseph Urban was older than most Art Deco architects and less inclined toward its dynamic display. He drew instead from his Secessionist background and from his experience as an exposition, theater and stage set designer. With these he combined an abstracted classicism, the sobriety of which was appropriate to the Hearst Building's position next to the proposed Opera .

The six-story Hearst Building was sympathetic to the low-rise Opera house. Its cornices emphasize horizontality and add surface interest, especially belcw the third-story balustrade whose notched lower edge casts a bold dentillated shadew. The building's genteel scale was reccsnnended by a contemporary who found in it a theatrical contrast against its taller neighbors. But unknown to the critic, the six-story building was irerely the base of a tower to be erected at a later date. From the beginning it was structurally reinforced to receive the additionand given six elevator shafts . Construction in two stages was a familiar pattern in New York in general and to Hearst in particular.

No attempt to build the tower was made until almost a decade after Urban's death. But in 1945-47 George B. Post & Sons prepared a series of proposals for nine additional stories on the six story base.^ Although largely unremarkable as architectural designs, the new schemes for completion allow the current building to be seen as the base it was intended to be, removing its truncated aspect. The plans were filed in 1946, but never executed. The proposed addition was the greatest potential alteration to a building which has otherwise remained largely- intact. Its most significant change has occurred at ground level where shopfrorrts were uniformly altered with aluminum and glass replacements in 1970 after numerous piecemeal alterations in preceding years.

Significance of the Hearst Magazine Building

On May 29, 1927 , Hearst's newspapers ran an editorial .on American architecture which Hearst himself had written. In it he praised New York for developing:

the most magnificent architecture in the world ó an architecture that is not an imitation of some other period, a modification of some other type, but that is new and distinctly American in character. This architecture represents the energy, the imagination and the aspiration of the American spirit. It embodies the ambition of a great race to erect fitting monuments to its period and purposes....Those who are truly artistic, truly progressive and indeed truly patriotic, welcome this new and inspiring development....The old fogies, the back-numbers, the "has-beens," the live-in-the-past- dead-in-the-present contingent of obstructionists must not be allowed to control, or rather to prevent, the natural and national development of American architecture.

The unique character to which Hearst referred could well be applied to his International Magazine Building. Designed outside the Art Deco norm, it combined multiple influences to achieve what might be called an "avant- garde traditionalism." Its low scale, dramatic statuary and bristling columns anticipate the projected tower and impart to the six-story base its special character. But in the words of a leading authority on Urban, this unusual character derives from its execution in "an unusual style, by an unusual [and unusually talented] designer."' The building gains in importance as one of only two extant examples of Urban's work in New York

Aside from its considerable architectural significance, the building is a testament to the urge "to erect fitting monuments." It is a rare survivor of a grand development scheme for greater Columbus Circle which, if executed, would have had profound urban consequence. The product of distinguished artistic talent, stong personalities and vast personal wealth, it was designed in conjunction with the Opera as a major component of a new commercial and cultural center . Carefully considered were both surface and subway traffic, the building being directly connected with the Eighth Avenue Rapid Transit. The scheme collapsed when the Opera abandoned its 57th Street site in 1927, debilitated further by the onslaught of the Depression. It was simultaneously undermined by the rise five blocks south of Rockefeller Center whose formidable competition for large corporate tenants went so far as to lure the U.S. Rubber Company away-from its headquarters in Columbus

Circle. In the end, the same cultural-commercial-thematic art-traffic oriented-personal wealth scenario would be replayed at Rockefeller Center. And it was there that the promise of "Hearst Plaza" was realized in terms so successful that it remains unchallenged to this day.

Description of the Building

Wrapping around three sides of a western courtyard, the Hearst Magazine Building fronts on Eighth Avenue with its two side exposed elevations on West 56th and West 57th Streets. The six-story cast limestone structure has chamfered north- and southwest comers, each with paired sculptural figures and ornamental columns. Hie building rises in three stages: a two-story base with commercial ground floor and second story offices, surmounted by three additional stories of offices and terminating attic

The major Eighth Avenue facade is symmetrically arranged on either side of its entrance, a large arch with oversized, projecting and beveled keystone flanked on either side by smaller square-headed doors . The arch provides a recessed outer vestibule, its walls and barrel vault relieved by embossed octagonal coffers arranged in a projecting grid of half-round section above an unpolished gray granite base. At the far end of the vestibule a large cusped bronze arch frames the building's four bronze-framed glass doors. Narrow bronze jambs rise to the arch intrados, dividing the glazed lunette into four vertical sections. The lunette is further subdivided by a broad ridged bronze fascia. Above the fascia stationary clear glass panels have frosted borders. Belcw the fascia are four clear side pivot windows. The vestibule's right/northern wall is pierced by a subway entrance, the head of its open stairwell illuminated by a bronze-framed rectangular light flush with the ceiling. The left/southern wall holds a small shopfront with recessed entrance . The shop's bronze-framed windows rise above the vestibule's granite base. The vestibule's coffered barrel vault is pierced on the left and right by four recessed bronze-framed, single pane casement windows. From the center of the vault hangs an hexagonal bronze and glass chandelier.

On either side of the triumphal arch-like entrance pylons rise flush from the sidewalk, serving as third story pedestals for paired sculptural figures dorsally engaged to tall fluted columns. "Comedy and Tragedy are installed on the left; "Music and Art" on the right. The columns are engaged to the building by a vertical series of shallow, stepped and angled setbacks. The columns rise above the sixth story attic where, freestanding, they are crowned by quadrapod-supported urns relieved by a horizontal zigzag band. Between the pylon-colums is a three-window bay, each of its four stories glazed with three-over-three double hung steel sash. At third floor level, the keystone of the arched entrance overlaps a projecting and slightly bowed balcony, along the lower edge of which runs an extended chevron moulding. Below the third, fourth and fifth story windows are fluted stone spandrels which visually tie the central bay to the ornamental columns that flank it. A severe cornice separates the fifth

story from the attic, above which a recessed mechanical housing shed rises.

On either side of the central bay, the Eighth Avenue facade is symmetrical: a two-story base with modern ground floor shcpfronts/display windows and seven slightly recessed one-over-one double hung steel sash on the second floor. The base is separated from the upper stories by a balcony whose lower notched edge has recessed overlapping chevrons. In each case the continuous balcony extends from the central bay paylon to the building's chamfered north- and southeast corners. The third through fifth stories, set back behind the balcony, have seven one-over-three double-hung steel sash recessed behind prominent unornamented pilaster strips. A severe frieze and cornice separate the fifth story from the sixth story attic whose unrelieved surface is pierced by seven steel sash. The attic terminates in three simple, slightly stepped horizontal stone bands.

The building's two chamfered corners differ only in their sculpture: "Sport and Industry" are installed on 56th Street; "Printing and the Sciences" on 57th. In each case a modern shop entrance is surmounted by three one-over-one steel sash in a narrow-broad-narrow arrangement). Above, the building rises to form a pedestal for the paired sculptural figures and fluted column behind. On either side of the pedestal are seminal third story balconies which, however, have no balusters. Behind the column the building cuts back with stepped and angled verticals to an acute angle. The fifth story cornice breaks on either side of the column, emphasizing the corner's multiple planes in its own faceting.

The 57th Street facade repeats that on Eighth Avenue, differing only in two respects. Instead of an arched building entrance, the original doorway has been altered for use as a display window, flanked on the left by a service door, and on the right by a retail shop entrance. Above and on either side of the display window are two unrelieved square escutcheons which project slightly from the building plane. "Comedy and Tragedy" and "Music and Art" are installed on the third story pedestals , just as they are on Eighth Avenue. The 57th Street facade also differs in its inclusion of an .additional two-window bay which forms the building's western termination. 'This bay rises sheer from the sidewalk and does not set back at third story level. It does not include a full third story balcony, but only continues its lcwer notched and chevron lower edge as a decorative molding.

The 56th Street facade differs significantly from the building's two other exposed elevations. Like them, it rises on a. two-story base with modern ground floor shopfronts/display windows. The westernmost bay, however, is used as a freight entrance with a roll-down metal gate. The facade is divided into two unequal masses. At the east, it continues the standard building treatment with a third story balcony behind which the structure sets back. Unlike the similar seven-window bays on Eighth Avenue and 57th Street, this bay has eight double-hung steel sash windows in its second through sixth stories. The larger building mass to the west does not set back at third story level, but rises sheer from the sidewalk. It does not have a balcony but, like the far western bay on 57th Street, merely continues the balcony's notched and chevron lower edge as an ornamental molding at third story level. This portion of the building is divided into six bays. On the second through fifth stories each bay contains paired one-over-three double hung steel sash framed by pilaster strips which are more shallow than those elsewhere on the building. Above the cornice , the sixth story steel sash are likewise paired.

- From the 1988 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report