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The speculation ended when Pam found an article in a local paper that explained all.
The Council has been given 10,000 Euros to turn this plot of land into 20 urban gardens (allotments). Each one is 50 m2 in size. There will also be a area designated as a compost heap.
The wooden posts you can see are the start of fences between each plot so each is long and narrow in shape.
We have no choice but to wait and see how things develop. It does seem a bit strange though to have allotments in the middle of a private housing estate. I can't imagine that our neighbours who live next to the plot being chuffed about the idea.
With speculation that the IC&E SD40-2's may get returned upon their lease expiration, it leaves us to wonder what power will be used on trains that are still in the ICE Age, such as this 470 train of 6-30-13. Will it be a return to the Rainbow Era that include the other leasers in this consist? Or worse yet, a fleet of CP toasters?
ICE 6456, 6405, DME 6095, CEFX 2792, CITX 3063, and CEFX 2786 at Irene Road, Kirkland, IL.
Material Speculation is a digital fabrication and 3D printing project by Morehshin Allahyari that inspects Petropolitical and poetic relationships between 3D Printing, Plastic, Oil, Technocapitalism and Jihad.
Credit: Morehshin Allahyari, Material Speculation: ISIS, 3D Sculpture, Courtesy the artist and Upfor Gallery, 2016
In 1723, an incomplete slab of Purbeck marble bearing a Roman inscription was found below ground at Chichester in West Sussex where it is now displayed under glass outside the Assembly Rooms in North Street. The tablet was broken during recovery and poorly repaired, which has since hindered transcription, but it clearly records the dedication of a temple to Neptune and Minerva by a group of craftsmen, and by the authority of the hitherto unknown --- Claudius Cogidubnus.
There has since been much speculation as to the identity, status and life-span of this obviously important individual. For many years, historians accepted an early interpretation of the inscription which described Cogidubnus as 'King and Legate in Britain' but in 1979 a comprehensive account was compiled by J.E. Bogaers in 'King Cogidubnus in Chichester: Another Reading of RIB 91 (Britannia X) with the reinterpretation 'Great King in Britain'. No further evidence has emerged, and apart from the tablet there is only one allusion by Tacitus (Agricola 14) to Cogidumnus which is generally accepted by historians as an alternative spelling of Cogidubnus:-
"quaedam civitates Cogidumno regi donatae (is ad nostram usque memoriam fidissimus mansit), vetere ac iam pridem recepta populi Romani consuetudine, ut haberet instrumenta servitutis et reges".
--- " certain states were given to Cogidumnus King (who according to our own records remained thoroughly loyal) reflecting the long established Roman custom of having even kings as instruments of servitude".
However, this small passage yields important clues to the person behind the name. Firstly, he must be well-known since Tacitus offers no explanation relevant to an obscure British king. Secondly, he may be Roman for although he was given certain 'civitates' he remained 'thoroughly loyal', presumably to Rome and not to any Romano-British pact which would have been specified were he British. Thirdly, the word 'regi' following 'Cogidumno’ matches the arrangement on the tablet, implying that REX is part of his title. Lastly, there is a reason for the inconsistency of spelling between Cogidubnus and Cogidumnus which is key. There are also two clues on the tablet; firstly a reference to DOMUS
DIVINAE or 'Divine House' which represents the family of a deified emperor, dating the temple to either the Julio-Claudian dynasty ending with the death of Nero in AD 68 or to the later Flavian dynasty commencing with the death and deification of Vespasian in AD 79. Secondly, the word BRIT, assumed to denote BRITANNIA, may have another meaning. Thus the assembled clues to the identity of Cogidubnus are as follows: he is important, well-known, referred to as REX and associated with BRIT; he has remained loyal to Rome despite receiving the submission of various states, and his authority is linked to the 'Divine House' of a period before AD 68 or after AD 79, indicating that he is Roman.
The temple to Neptune and Minerva can therefore have been authorised by only one man: Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, known as the emperor Claudius I, for the words COGIDUBNUS and COGIDUMNUS are both contractions of Latin COGI-DUOMINUS followed by REX, meaning Combined Emperor-King, from the verb COGERE = to unite or combine, and DUOMINUS (later DOMINUS) = lord, master, emperor. However, Tacitus renders the written contraction of COGI-DUOMINUS as COGIDUMNUS whereas the author of the tablet inscribes the spoken contraction as COGIDUBNUS, where the letter M so closely followed by N is vocalised as a B. The relevant and still extant original lettering on the tablet has never been in dispute:-
The cognomen 'Britannicus' was awarded to Claudius by the Roman senate for his conquest of Britain in AD 43: it was one of their highest honours granted for some remarkable achievement. He would have been the first emperor to assume such a hereditary title, had he not elected to transfer it to his son Drusus (AD 41-55) who became the first and last of that name, being murdered following the assassination of his father. Claudius did not celebrate his triumph and associated honours until AD 44, so the temple to Neptune and Minerva would have been dedicated between then and his death in AD 54, with the earlier period more likely when ‘Britannicus’ still referred to Claudius. Its exact location is unknown, but the inscription implies that Chichester was one of the ‘civitates’ that embraced Roman rule, probably becoming the capital of an area recorded in the Antonine Itinerary as A REGNO but locally referred to as REGNUM. Corroboration that this is the kingdom of Claudius lies in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, reference to CISSECEASTER which derives from CAESAR-CASTRA, meaning Caesar’s fort.
The precise link between Claudius and Chichester is obscure: many historians have assumed that a local British king called Verica invited Roman intervention. However, according to the Greek historian Cassius Dio who wrote his 'History of the Romans' in the third century AD, it was Bericus (Berikos) from the Catuvellauni tribe of the Colchester region who petitioned Claudius for Roman aid. An account is given by Robert Graves in 'Claudius The God' 1934, that his elder brother had earlier failed in his attempt to seize the throne from their father Cunobelin and so fled to France to negotiate an invasion with Caligula, who had him killed; when Cunobelin died in AD 41, Bericus became king but was rejected by his two remaining brothers Togodumnus and Caractacus, ending in civil war, so he sought assistance from the new emperor Claudius in Rome: during the subsequent invasion, both Bericus and Togodumnus died on the battlefields of Kent. Yet Verica from the Chichester region may also have had good reason to seek Roman protection. His father Commius had been made king of the Atrebates in Gaul by Julius Caesar, but had led a revolt and decamped with his followers to southern Britain where he gradually carved out a kingdom extending across Berkshire, Surrey, The Isle of Wight and parts of Hampshire and Sussex. (see W.E.P. Done 'Looking Back in Sussex' 1953). When he died c.20BC, his domain was divided between his sons Verica, Tincommius and Eppillus, but at some stage, Verica became ruler of the Sussex region. We have no information as to the situation at the time of the invasion, but Verica would have been fairly old if still alive, since his father's promotion by Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BC) was at least 87 years earlier. However, many coins of father and sons have surfaced locally, and one in particular may be relevant, recorded by Alec Down in 'Roman Chichester'1988. It is a silver minim bearing the name Verica and (we are told) an ox-head, which more resembles a death’s-head: the reverse displays a tomb flanked by the letters C and F which may indicate that Verica, Commi Filius (son of Commius), is now dead and entombed. If so, the Atrebates may have welcomed the enforced peace of Roman rule, to which they were no strangers, having originated from Roman Gaul; other coin evidence also suggests that they were trading with the continent.
However, the Isle of Wight was not at that time receptive to Roman rule, since it was subjugated by the future emperor Vespasian when commanding the Second Legion (Legio II Augusta) in preparation for his conquest of the south-west, following the Roman victory at Colchester under Aulus Plautius. The Chichester area offered an advantage for this attack, supported by the local tradition that Vespasian had a base at Fishbourne, about a mile to the west of Chichester. Nearby are the famous remains of a large Roman edifice recorded by the excavator Professor Barry Cunliffe in 'Fishbourne, A Roman Palace and Its Garden' 1971. The evidence reveals that it began as a large timber construction dating to the first decade following the invasion, to be replaced by a fine masonry ‘proto-palace’ early in the 60s, which was eventually incorporated into a much greater structure between AD 75-80. These three phases of activity are contemporary with the reigns of Claudius, Nero and Vespasian, all of whom are associated with the area: Claudius is recorded on the Neptune and Minerva stone, Vespasian commanded the Second Legion nearby, and Nero was venerated on another Chichester slab of Purbeck marble found in 1740. Although it was lost soon after, the inscription had been recorded and the tablet dated to AD 58-60. It was a dedication to Nero, displaying his illustrious and divine lineage as 'son of the Divine Claudius' down to ‘great-great grandson of the Divine Augustus’ etc. But Nero had only become emperor through the machinations of his mother Agrippina, who had married her Uncle Claudius and then persuaded him to officially adopt her son Nero, later having both Claudius and Britannicus murdered to make way for her seventeen year old protégé. Yet Claudius had conquered Britain and was therefore part of the imperial thread which ran through the development of Fishbourne Roman Palace: he had needed to consolidate his new and unexpected position as emperor by some major achievement, and he succeeded incredibly well. Britain became the most northern province of Rome and remained so for over 350 years, but Claudius has left his hallmark on Chichester: from the myth of the tribal king Cogidubnus rises the victorious TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS COMBINED EMPEROR - GREAT KING BRITANNICUS !
Text from Wire
If you are interested in Julio Claudian Iconography and portrait study you may enjoy these two links:
Julio Claudian Iconographic Association- Joe Geranio- Administrator at groups.yahoo.com/group/julioclaudian/
The Portraiture of Caligula- Joe Geranio- Administrator- at
Both are non-profit sites and for educational use only.
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The Province’s new housing plan will speed up delivery of new homes, increase the supply of middle-income housing, fight speculation and help those who need it the most. Learn more: news.gov.bc.ca/28486
The Province’s new housing plan will speed up delivery of new homes, increase the supply of middle-income housing, fight speculation and help those who need it the most. Learn more: news.gov.bc.ca/28486
July 2,2007.
Caspian Terns have new, High Tide Roost Site
After a rather poor Spring and early Summer Collecting Re Sight leg Bands from Caspian Terns My speculation about a general movement of Caspian Terns from their former High Tide roost at Tsawwassen Terminal. Across to the newly constructed sea dam wall that surrounds an area to be filled to form the new Parking Lot/Container Berth at Wesrtshore Terminals. Tonight with the tide Aprox. 14.5 Feet and rising there were only 4 to 5 terns at the Compensation Lagoon Taswwassen Ferry Terminal.. Tonight's Total after several disturbances was 271 On the Gravel bream or sea dam. The following bands were Read
L/L Yellow Over Orange with Yellow at the foot. Red over Metal with Dark Blue at the foot. This info may be suspect as the Bands were faded see Pic.
L/L Yellow Over Red with Orange at the foot R/L Yellow Over Lt. Grn with Metal at the foot.
L/L Red over Red with Dark Green at the foot R/L Yellow Over Lt. Grn with metal at the foot.
L/L Orange over Orange with Yellow at the Foot R/L Lt. Grn over Metal with Lt. Grn at the foot.
L/L ONLY White over Orange with Lt. Grn at the foot. The RIGHT LEG was just a STUMP This could be as result of banding ??? See photo to come
An Alpha numerical Yellow Band with Black Codes was Obs see Photo to come First Code was an A over 1 Next Code ? followed by 1 at the foot.
the ? code was possibly 4 or 6 maybe 8 ???
The Problem with this fantastic location is that it is about 600 feet into the security zone. So after about 40 Minutes of Observation a security guard arrived to ask me to leave.
After making numerous trips to the OLD areas used by the Terns during High Tides and Low. They seem to be dispersed from there old territories. After about 5 to 6 Years of collecting information it would be nice to continue?
Richard Swanston
Delta, B.C. Canada
IMG_3500_3_1
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Eldorado, extending along the entire blockfront of Central Park West between 90th and 91st Streets, is the northernmost of the four twin-towered apartment houses that give Central Park West its distinctive skyline silhouette. The Eldorado was designed in 1929 by the architectural firm of Margon & Holder with the renowned early 20th-century New York City architect Emery Roth as consultant. These architects created one of the finest and most dramatically massed Art Deco style residential buildings in New York City.
The Eldorado is one of the most distinguished buildings erected as part of the early 20th-century redevelopment of Central Park West. Central Park West, a continuation of Eighth Avenue, runs along the western edge of Central Park. Development along this prime avenue occurred very slowly, lagging substantially behind the general development of the Upper West Side. When Frederick Law Olmsted laid out Central Park he saw that the presence of the park would raise the value of land immediately adjacent to it.
Olmsted expected these areas to develop as prime residential streets. Land speculation did indeed occur on Central Park West. However, the west side of the park never attracted the extremely wealthy people who could afford the inflated prices of land bordering on the park.
Thus, while the side streets of the Upper West Side were built up with rows of speculative houses, Central Park West remained largely undeveloped. A survey of Central Park West published in February 1893 shows that of the three blocks between 60th and 96th Streets nineteen were either totally vacant or contained old shanties and frame houses. Other blocks were partially vacant.
The earliest residential improvement on Central Park West, and one of its great architectural monuments, was the Dakota, a designated New York City Landmark, at 72nd Street. Built in 1880-84, this eight-story building established Central Park West's character as a street of multiple dwellings. In 1890, by which time the Dakota had been joined by two apartment hotels, the St. Remo on 75th Street and the Beresford on 81st Street, as well as several flat houses, real estate broker F.R. Houghton noted that:
Central Park West seems to have only one future— it is destined to become an avenue of grand apartment houses and hotels. Everything tends that way. It is too public a thoroughfare to become a private residential avenue.
However, it wasn't until several years later that Central Park West experienced the construction boom that Houghton had predicted.
The first concentrated building boom on Central Park West occurred at the turn of the century when a significant number of elegant residential and institutional buildings were erected south of 96th Street. These include some of the finest apartment houses in New York, such as the Prasada at 65th Street, the Langham at 73rd Street, the Kenilworth at 75th Street, and the St. Urban at 89th Street, as well as such institutional structures as the Ethical Culture Society School and Meeting House at 63rd and 64th Streets, Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church at 65th Street, the Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 68th Street, the Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue at 70th Street, the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity at 76th Street, and the Progress Club at 88th Street.
The presence of these fine apartment buildings and institutions on Central Park West reflects the coming of age of the Upper West Side. The Upper West Side had developed in the final decades of the 19th century as an enclave of upper middle-class life. Affluent middle-class families were attracted to the area by the quality of its housing, the presence of Riverside Park and Central Park, and by the accessibility of the neighborhood.
As the Upper West Side became more and more desirable, developers began to build on the more expensive sites bordering the parks, and Central Park West began to be transformed into an elegant avenue of tall buildings that contrasted dramatically in scale to low rise residential Fifth Avenue.
During World War I construction on Central Park West slowed, but between 1920 and 1931 the area was transformed as the vacant sites were filled and many of the early apartment hotels and flats were replaced by new apartment houses. This final phase of Central Park West's development culminated in 1929-31 with the construction of the four twin-towered buildings that give Central Park West its characteristic skyline.
The distinctive form of the Century at 62nd-63rd Streets, the Majestic at 71st-72nd Streets, the San Remo at 74th-75th Streets and the Eldorado at 90th-91st Streets has come to symbolize the high quality of residential design on New York's Upper West Side.
The Eldorado Apartments is not the first building of that name at this location. The present building replaces the Eldorado flats which consisted of two eight-story structures designed in 1901 by Neville & Bagge, "which for more than a generation have been among the best of the fine houses on Central Park West."
In addition to the old Eldorado, the new apartment building replaced five row houses on West 90th Street and three tenements and a row house on West 91st Street. This site was assembled in 1929 and sold to realtor Frederick Brown who retained ownership for several weeks before transferring the property to the Elkay Building Corporation, Louis Kloak, president. The architects commissioned to design the new Eldorado were the firm of Margon & Holder.
Irving Margon and Adolph M. Holder are architects about whom little is known. One of the few buildings known to have been designed by Margon is an Art Deco apartment house at 2805 Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
Although Margon & Holder were the chief architects for the new building, they do not appear to have had the experience to design such a large structure. Emery Roth, one of the most talented residential architects in New York during the early decades of this century was hired as a consultant.
Among Roth's finest apartment buildings are three important Upper West Side structures designed just prior to the Eldorado—the Oliver Cromwell at 12 West 72nd Street, the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, and the Beresford at 211 Central Park West. It was undoubtedly Roth's experience with designing these large-scale residential buildings that prompted the builders of the Eldorado to hire him as a consultant. It is believed that Roth was responsible for the massing and plan of the building and that Margon & Holder designed the facade.
The form of the Eldorado, with its massive base and twin towers set at the Central Park West corners, closely resembles the massing of the San Remo on which Roth was working at the time he received the Eldorado commission. In addition, the apartment layouts of the two buildings are similar. The twin towered form of the San Remo and Eldorado resulted from the multiple dwelling law passed by the New York State Legislature in 1929.
This law mandated an increase in yard and court area, but allowed residential buildings to rise higher than before, legalizing setbacks and towers in this building type for the first time. The bill limited the height of street walls to times the width of the street, but, on plots of over 25,000 square feet, allowed towers that could rise up to three times the width of the street. The San Remo and Eldorado were the first two buildings on Central Park West to be affected by this new law.
The few drawings that Roth produced for the Eldorado have classical details, creating a design that resembles the style of the San Remo. They do not exhibit the Art Deco forms of the building as constructed. Art Deco style ornament appeared on apartment buildings as early as 1928 on Raymond Hood's 3 East 84th Street and on Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine's Park Plaza in the Bronx.
Margon & Holder were probably aware of the Art Deco forms in use on those apartment houses and they adapted these forms for their Central Park West building. Among the finest Art Deco motifs on the Eldorado is the tripartite Central Park West entrance. The three entrance portals take on the faceted crystalline form that Rosemarie Bletter has traced to German Expressionist architecture.
Above these bronze entrance surrounds are bronze panels with the clashing angular geometric forms and soft curving foliate forms that give the finest Art Deco ornamentation its special tension. The best known Art Deco features of the Eldorado are the futuristic rocket-like pinnacles which crown each tower.
Other notable Art Deco motifs include an angular frieze that runs above the third floor, stylized brick spandrel panels below many of the windows, and angular balconies with zigzag panels.
Unfortunately, construction of the Eldorado coincided with the stock market crash of 1929. The crash led to the collapse of the real estate market; cooperatives failed, rental apartments remained vacant, and foreclosure actions were brought against many buildings.
Financial and labor troubles delayed the completion of the Eldorado, but on November 26, 1930, it was announced that the building was to be completed.
Although the Eldorado was finished, it experienced rental problems and the owners finally defaulted on loan payments.
On November 5, 1931, the building was auctioned. In more recent years, the Eldorado has attracted many people of note, particularly people associated with the arts. Among the Eldorado's residents have been Milton Avery, Martin Balsam, Richard Dreyfuss, Faye Dunaway, Carrie Fisher, Tuesday Weld, Pinchas Zuckerman, Richard Estes, Sybil Burton, Phil Donahue, Mario Thomas, Edie Adams, Ernie Kovaks, Groucho Marx, Roddy McDowell, and Marilyn Monroe.
Description
The Eldorado is a symmetrical building set on a three-story yellow cast stone base and faced with tan brick trimmed with light brown brick and yellow terra-cotta above. The building extends along the entire Central Park West frontage between West 90th Street and West 91st Street, 200 feet along West 90th Street, and 194 feet along West 91st Street. In the center of the ground floor of the Central Park West frontage is the main entrance consisting of three faceted portals with bronze frames. Above each entrance are a pair of highly ornamental plaques embossed with Art Deco style geometric and floral forms. In the spandrels between the faceted entry arches and the plaques are panels with birds. Separating each pair of panels, as well as the windows above, are stepped piers with geometric incising. Above these piers are projecting skeletal cast stone motifs. A frieze of Art Deco chevrons and arches crowns the cast stone base of the building.
On the ground floor, to each side of the entrance are windows and metal doors with Art Deco grilles and handrails, all of which belong to professional apartments.
On Central Park West, the windows of the main bulk of the building are massed in a symmetrical pattern of 2-3-2-3-2-6-2-3-2-3-2 All of the windows were originally metal-paned casements with thin metal mullions. Each original window is divided into two movable casements of eight panes, each with a single transom of six panes. The small window panes add a sense of texture to the facade and prevent the window openings from becoming voids in the design.
The first and third window groups from either end project slightly, while the other groups are separated by projecting piers. The second and fifth groups from either end are framed with light brown brick that gives a vertical thrust to the facade. This vertical thrust is strengthened by the use of raised brick bands below the windows and by the addition of tan brick piers between the windows of the second group from each corner.
The patterned brickwork, also appears in the central two bays at the thirteenth and fourteenth floors . Projecting from the two central thirteenth floor windows are three-sided stone balconies each supported by a single corbeled bracket and ornamented with a vertical chevron panel.
The five central window groups step back above the fourteenth and sixteenth floors to form balconies, while the three end groups on either side rise up two additional floors before setting back at the sixteenth floor and again at the seventeenth floor. All of the balconies have Art Deco railings. Patterned brickwork and pairs of terra-cotta balconies also appear on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of the end sections and on the sixteenth floor of the central section.
The brown brick bays are ornamented at their summits by terra-cotta panels adorned with chevron, diaper, and other geometric patterns.
The towers rise free of the base for twelve stories. Each tower is six bays wide on Central Park West and faced with tan brick highlighted by brown brick panels at the four central windows. Terra-cotta balconies appear at the twenty-sixth floor and terra-cotta panels at the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth floors.
The side elevations have similar detailing. There are corner penthouses at the twenty-ninth floor, as each tower steps back to the crowning pinnacle with its fin-like projections. It is these stepped pinnacles that give the Eldorado its distinctive silhouette and make the building immediately identifiable from as far away as Fifth Avenue.
On the side streets the Eldorado is seventeen stories tall with the three-story cast stone base continuing for the first seven bays before it drops down to a one-story base. Only near the Central Park West corners are there window bays articulated with the vertical brown brick bays used on the front elevation.
The side facades have penthouses with railings, the balconies and terra-cotta ornament described on the front, as well as professional office doors and secondary residential entrances with Art Deco carvings To the rear of the building are cast stone arches with Art Deco metal gates .
Alterations to the original design are limited to the replacement of some of the original multi-paned windows with plate glass windows. The most serious alteration has occurred on the eighteenth floor of the south tower where brickwork has been removed for the enlargement of several windows.
The Eldorado's futuristic crowning pinnacles, visible from up and down Central Park West and from as far east as Fifth Avenue, are true architectural landmarks. The Eldorado is the northernmost of the four twin-towered buildings that identify Central Park West as one of New York City's great residential boulevards and the building stands as one of the most important Art Deco apartment buildings in the city.
- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Eldorado, extending along the entire blockfront of Central Park West between 90th and 91st Streets, is the northernmost of the four twin-towered apartment houses that give Central Park West its distinctive skyline silhouette. The Eldorado was designed in 1929 by the architectural firm of Margon & Holder with the renowned early 20th-century New York City architect Emery Roth as consultant. These architects created one of the finest and most dramatically massed Art Deco style residential buildings in New York City.
The Eldorado is one of the most distinguished buildings erected as part of the early 20th-century redevelopment of Central Park West. Central Park West, a continuation of Eighth Avenue, runs along the western edge of Central Park. Development along this prime avenue occurred very slowly, lagging substantially behind the general development of the Upper West Side. When Frederick Law Olmsted laid out Central Park he saw that the presence of the park would raise the value of land immediately adjacent to it.
Olmsted expected these areas to develop as prime residential streets. Land speculation did indeed occur on Central Park West. However, the west side of the park never attracted the extremely wealthy people who could afford the inflated prices of land bordering on the park.
Thus, while the side streets of the Upper West Side were built up with rows of speculative houses, Central Park West remained largely undeveloped. A survey of Central Park West published in February 1893 shows that of the three blocks between 60th and 96th Streets nineteen were either totally vacant or contained old shanties and frame houses. Other blocks were partially vacant.
The earliest residential improvement on Central Park West, and one of its great architectural monuments, was the Dakota, a designated New York City Landmark, at 72nd Street. Built in 1880-84, this eight-story building established Central Park West's character as a street of multiple dwellings. In 1890, by which time the Dakota had been joined by two apartment hotels, the St. Remo on 75th Street and the Beresford on 81st Street, as well as several flat houses, real estate broker F.R. Houghton noted that:
Central Park West seems to have only one future— it is destined to become an avenue of grand apartment houses and hotels. Everything tends that way. It is too public a thoroughfare to become a private residential avenue.
However, it wasn't until several years later that Central Park West experienced the construction boom that Houghton had predicted.
The first concentrated building boom on Central Park West occurred at the turn of the century when a significant number of elegant residential and institutional buildings were erected south of 96th Street. These include some of the finest apartment houses in New York, such as the Prasada at 65th Street, the Langham at 73rd Street, the Kenilworth at 75th Street, and the St. Urban at 89th Street, as well as such institutional structures as the Ethical Culture Society School and Meeting House at 63rd and 64th Streets, Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church at 65th Street, the Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 68th Street, the Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue at 70th Street, the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity at 76th Street, and the Progress Club at 88th Street.
The presence of these fine apartment buildings and institutions on Central Park West reflects the coming of age of the Upper West Side. The Upper West Side had developed in the final decades of the 19th century as an enclave of upper middle-class life. Affluent middle-class families were attracted to the area by the quality of its housing, the presence of Riverside Park and Central Park, and by the accessibility of the neighborhood.
As the Upper West Side became more and more desirable, developers began to build on the more expensive sites bordering the parks, and Central Park West began to be transformed into an elegant avenue of tall buildings that contrasted dramatically in scale to low rise residential Fifth Avenue.
During World War I construction on Central Park West slowed, but between 1920 and 1931 the area was transformed as the vacant sites were filled and many of the early apartment hotels and flats were replaced by new apartment houses. This final phase of Central Park West's development culminated in 1929-31 with the construction of the four twin-towered buildings that give Central Park West its characteristic skyline.
The distinctive form of the Century at 62nd-63rd Streets, the Majestic at 71st-72nd Streets, the San Remo at 74th-75th Streets and the Eldorado at 90th-91st Streets has come to symbolize the high quality of residential design on New York's Upper West Side.
The Eldorado Apartments is not the first building of that name at this location. The present building replaces the Eldorado flats which consisted of two eight-story structures designed in 1901 by Neville & Bagge, "which for more than a generation have been among the best of the fine houses on Central Park West."
In addition to the old Eldorado, the new apartment building replaced five row houses on West 90th Street and three tenements and a row house on West 91st Street. This site was assembled in 1929 and sold to realtor Frederick Brown who retained ownership for several weeks before transferring the property to the Elkay Building Corporation, Louis Kloak, president. The architects commissioned to design the new Eldorado were the firm of Margon & Holder.
Irving Margon and Adolph M. Holder are architects about whom little is known. One of the few buildings known to have been designed by Margon is an Art Deco apartment house at 2805 Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
Although Margon & Holder were the chief architects for the new building, they do not appear to have had the experience to design such a large structure. Emery Roth, one of the most talented residential architects in New York during the early decades of this century was hired as a consultant.
Among Roth's finest apartment buildings are three important Upper West Side structures designed just prior to the Eldorado—the Oliver Cromwell at 12 West 72nd Street, the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, and the Beresford at 211 Central Park West. It was undoubtedly Roth's experience with designing these large-scale residential buildings that prompted the builders of the Eldorado to hire him as a consultant. It is believed that Roth was responsible for the massing and plan of the building and that Margon & Holder designed the facade.
The form of the Eldorado, with its massive base and twin towers set at the Central Park West corners, closely resembles the massing of the San Remo on which Roth was working at the time he received the Eldorado commission. In addition, the apartment layouts of the two buildings are similar. The twin towered form of the San Remo and Eldorado resulted from the multiple dwelling law passed by the New York State Legislature in 1929.
This law mandated an increase in yard and court area, but allowed residential buildings to rise higher than before, legalizing setbacks and towers in this building type for the first time. The bill limited the height of street walls to times the width of the street, but, on plots of over 25,000 square feet, allowed towers that could rise up to three times the width of the street. The San Remo and Eldorado were the first two buildings on Central Park West to be affected by this new law.
The few drawings that Roth produced for the Eldorado have classical details, creating a design that resembles the style of the San Remo. They do not exhibit the Art Deco forms of the building as constructed. Art Deco style ornament appeared on apartment buildings as early as 1928 on Raymond Hood's 3 East 84th Street and on Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine's Park Plaza in the Bronx.
Margon & Holder were probably aware of the Art Deco forms in use on those apartment houses and they adapted these forms for their Central Park West building. Among the finest Art Deco motifs on the Eldorado is the tripartite Central Park West entrance. The three entrance portals take on the faceted crystalline form that Rosemarie Bletter has traced to German Expressionist architecture.
Above these bronze entrance surrounds are bronze panels with the clashing angular geometric forms and soft curving foliate forms that give the finest Art Deco ornamentation its special tension. The best known Art Deco features of the Eldorado are the futuristic rocket-like pinnacles which crown each tower.
Other notable Art Deco motifs include an angular frieze that runs above the third floor, stylized brick spandrel panels below many of the windows, and angular balconies with zigzag panels.
Unfortunately, construction of the Eldorado coincided with the stock market crash of 1929. The crash led to the collapse of the real estate market; cooperatives failed, rental apartments remained vacant, and foreclosure actions were brought against many buildings.
Financial and labor troubles delayed the completion of the Eldorado, but on November 26, 1930, it was announced that the building was to be completed.
Although the Eldorado was finished, it experienced rental problems and the owners finally defaulted on loan payments.
On November 5, 1931, the building was auctioned. In more recent years, the Eldorado has attracted many people of note, particularly people associated with the arts. Among the Eldorado's residents have been Milton Avery, Martin Balsam, Richard Dreyfuss, Faye Dunaway, Carrie Fisher, Tuesday Weld, Pinchas Zuckerman, Richard Estes, Sybil Burton, Phil Donahue, Mario Thomas, Edie Adams, Ernie Kovaks, Groucho Marx, Roddy McDowell, and Marilyn Monroe.
Description
The Eldorado is a symmetrical building set on a three-story yellow cast stone base and faced with tan brick trimmed with light brown brick and yellow terra-cotta above. The building extends along the entire Central Park West frontage between West 90th Street and West 91st Street, 200 feet along West 90th Street, and 194 feet along West 91st Street. In the center of the ground floor of the Central Park West frontage is the main entrance consisting of three faceted portals with bronze frames. Above each entrance are a pair of highly ornamental plaques embossed with Art Deco style geometric and floral forms. In the spandrels between the faceted entry arches and the plaques are panels with birds. Separating each pair of panels, as well as the windows above, are stepped piers with geometric incising. Above these piers are projecting skeletal cast stone motifs. A frieze of Art Deco chevrons and arches crowns the cast stone base of the building.
On the ground floor, to each side of the entrance are windows and metal doors with Art Deco grilles and handrails, all of which belong to professional apartments.
On Central Park West, the windows of the main bulk of the building are massed in a symmetrical pattern of 2-3-2-3-2-6-2-3-2-3-2 All of the windows were originally metal-paned casements with thin metal mullions. Each original window is divided into two movable casements of eight panes, each with a single transom of six panes. The small window panes add a sense of texture to the facade and prevent the window openings from becoming voids in the design.
The first and third window groups from either end project slightly, while the other groups are separated by projecting piers. The second and fifth groups from either end are framed with light brown brick that gives a vertical thrust to the facade. This vertical thrust is strengthened by the use of raised brick bands below the windows and by the addition of tan brick piers between the windows of the second group from each corner.
The patterned brickwork, also appears in the central two bays at the thirteenth and fourteenth floors . Projecting from the two central thirteenth floor windows are three-sided stone balconies each supported by a single corbeled bracket and ornamented with a vertical chevron panel.
The five central window groups step back above the fourteenth and sixteenth floors to form balconies, while the three end groups on either side rise up two additional floors before setting back at the sixteenth floor and again at the seventeenth floor. All of the balconies have Art Deco railings. Patterned brickwork and pairs of terra-cotta balconies also appear on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of the end sections and on the sixteenth floor of the central section.
The brown brick bays are ornamented at their summits by terra-cotta panels adorned with chevron, diaper, and other geometric patterns.
The towers rise free of the base for twelve stories. Each tower is six bays wide on Central Park West and faced with tan brick highlighted by brown brick panels at the four central windows. Terra-cotta balconies appear at the twenty-sixth floor and terra-cotta panels at the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth floors.
The side elevations have similar detailing. There are corner penthouses at the twenty-ninth floor, as each tower steps back to the crowning pinnacle with its fin-like projections. It is these stepped pinnacles that give the Eldorado its distinctive silhouette and make the building immediately identifiable from as far away as Fifth Avenue.
On the side streets the Eldorado is seventeen stories tall with the three-story cast stone base continuing for the first seven bays before it drops down to a one-story base. Only near the Central Park West corners are there window bays articulated with the vertical brown brick bays used on the front elevation.
The side facades have penthouses with railings, the balconies and terra-cotta ornament described on the front, as well as professional office doors and secondary residential entrances with Art Deco carvings To the rear of the building are cast stone arches with Art Deco metal gates .
Alterations to the original design are limited to the replacement of some of the original multi-paned windows with plate glass windows. The most serious alteration has occurred on the eighteenth floor of the south tower where brickwork has been removed for the enlargement of several windows.
The Eldorado's futuristic crowning pinnacles, visible from up and down Central Park West and from as far east as Fifth Avenue, are true architectural landmarks. The Eldorado is the northernmost of the four twin-towered buildings that identify Central Park West as one of New York City's great residential boulevards and the building stands as one of the most important Art Deco apartment buildings in the city.
- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Bien sûr, à Santorin, on peut faire les belles photos traditionnelles des moulins et des clochers blancs et bleus. Je les ai faites. Mais ce qui frappe, c'est la construction débridée. On ne paraît protéger que la vue de loin, de la mer. Sur le chemin de Fira à Ia, les belles perspectives sont cassées par des constructions nouvelles particulièrement mal placées. A qui profite le crime ? J'aurais dû y aller il y a trente ans...
How Architecture Learned to Speculate
Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest
December 2009
For the first time, the speculative in architecture becomes a topic of critical research. It is investigated, not as idealistic but as strategic acting within endless modernity. This modernity implies that speculation, as strategic acting, is not only applied to economic, but also to political, and aesthetic values. The consequences? Values become mobile, valuations become a play with high and low, authors (architects) become winners or losers, and culture becomes fashion.
Including projects by Michael Najjar, Matthieu Laurette, NL Architects, PARA-Project, visiondivision, MVRDV, Aristide Antonas, David Schalliol, Kevin Bauman, FAT, David Trautrimas, JODI, Bernard Gigounon, Ralf Schreiber, Gitta Gschwendtner, Pascual Sisto, Darlene Charneco, Seyed Alavi, Helmut Smits, Ant Farm, 100101110101101.ORG, Caspar Stracke, and OMA.
ISBN: 978-3-00-029876-9
Number of pages: 246
Measurements: 19 x 12 x 1,1 cm
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Eldorado, extending along the entire blockfront of Central Park West between 90th and 91st Streets, is the northernmost of the four twin-towered apartment houses that give Central Park West its distinctive skyline silhouette. The Eldorado was designed in 1929 by the architectural firm of Margon & Holder with the renowned early 20th-century New York City architect Emery Roth as consultant. These architects created one of the finest and most dramatically massed Art Deco style residential buildings in New York City.
The Eldorado is one of the most distinguished buildings erected as part of the early 20th-century redevelopment of Central Park West. Central Park West, a continuation of Eighth Avenue, runs along the western edge of Central Park. Development along this prime avenue occurred very slowly, lagging substantially behind the general development of the Upper West Side. When Frederick Law Olmsted laid out Central Park he saw that the presence of the park would raise the value of land immediately adjacent to it.
Olmsted expected these areas to develop as prime residential streets. Land speculation did indeed occur on Central Park West. However, the west side of the park never attracted the extremely wealthy people who could afford the inflated prices of land bordering on the park.
Thus, while the side streets of the Upper West Side were built up with rows of speculative houses, Central Park West remained largely undeveloped. A survey of Central Park West published in February 1893 shows that of the three blocks between 60th and 96th Streets nineteen were either totally vacant or contained old shanties and frame houses. Other blocks were partially vacant.
The earliest residential improvement on Central Park West, and one of its great architectural monuments, was the Dakota, a designated New York City Landmark, at 72nd Street. Built in 1880-84, this eight-story building established Central Park West's character as a street of multiple dwellings. In 1890, by which time the Dakota had been joined by two apartment hotels, the St. Remo on 75th Street and the Beresford on 81st Street, as well as several flat houses, real estate broker F.R. Houghton noted that:
Central Park West seems to have only one future— it is destined to become an avenue of grand apartment houses and hotels. Everything tends that way. It is too public a thoroughfare to become a private residential avenue.
However, it wasn't until several years later that Central Park West experienced the construction boom that Houghton had predicted.
The first concentrated building boom on Central Park West occurred at the turn of the century when a significant number of elegant residential and institutional buildings were erected south of 96th Street. These include some of the finest apartment houses in New York, such as the Prasada at 65th Street, the Langham at 73rd Street, the Kenilworth at 75th Street, and the St. Urban at 89th Street, as well as such institutional structures as the Ethical Culture Society School and Meeting House at 63rd and 64th Streets, Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church at 65th Street, the Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 68th Street, the Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue at 70th Street, the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity at 76th Street, and the Progress Club at 88th Street.
The presence of these fine apartment buildings and institutions on Central Park West reflects the coming of age of the Upper West Side. The Upper West Side had developed in the final decades of the 19th century as an enclave of upper middle-class life. Affluent middle-class families were attracted to the area by the quality of its housing, the presence of Riverside Park and Central Park, and by the accessibility of the neighborhood.
As the Upper West Side became more and more desirable, developers began to build on the more expensive sites bordering the parks, and Central Park West began to be transformed into an elegant avenue of tall buildings that contrasted dramatically in scale to low rise residential Fifth Avenue.
During World War I construction on Central Park West slowed, but between 1920 and 1931 the area was transformed as the vacant sites were filled and many of the early apartment hotels and flats were replaced by new apartment houses. This final phase of Central Park West's development culminated in 1929-31 with the construction of the four twin-towered buildings that give Central Park West its characteristic skyline.
The distinctive form of the Century at 62nd-63rd Streets, the Majestic at 71st-72nd Streets, the San Remo at 74th-75th Streets and the Eldorado at 90th-91st Streets has come to symbolize the high quality of residential design on New York's Upper West Side.
The Eldorado Apartments is not the first building of that name at this location. The present building replaces the Eldorado flats which consisted of two eight-story structures designed in 1901 by Neville & Bagge, "which for more than a generation have been among the best of the fine houses on Central Park West."
In addition to the old Eldorado, the new apartment building replaced five row houses on West 90th Street and three tenements and a row house on West 91st Street. This site was assembled in 1929 and sold to realtor Frederick Brown who retained ownership for several weeks before transferring the property to the Elkay Building Corporation, Louis Kloak, president. The architects commissioned to design the new Eldorado were the firm of Margon & Holder.
Irving Margon and Adolph M. Holder are architects about whom little is known. One of the few buildings known to have been designed by Margon is an Art Deco apartment house at 2805 Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
Although Margon & Holder were the chief architects for the new building, they do not appear to have had the experience to design such a large structure. Emery Roth, one of the most talented residential architects in New York during the early decades of this century was hired as a consultant.
Among Roth's finest apartment buildings are three important Upper West Side structures designed just prior to the Eldorado—the Oliver Cromwell at 12 West 72nd Street, the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, and the Beresford at 211 Central Park West. It was undoubtedly Roth's experience with designing these large-scale residential buildings that prompted the builders of the Eldorado to hire him as a consultant. It is believed that Roth was responsible for the massing and plan of the building and that Margon & Holder designed the facade.
The form of the Eldorado, with its massive base and twin towers set at the Central Park West corners, closely resembles the massing of the San Remo on which Roth was working at the time he received the Eldorado commission. In addition, the apartment layouts of the two buildings are similar. The twin towered form of the San Remo and Eldorado resulted from the multiple dwelling law passed by the New York State Legislature in 1929.
This law mandated an increase in yard and court area, but allowed residential buildings to rise higher than before, legalizing setbacks and towers in this building type for the first time. The bill limited the height of street walls to times the width of the street, but, on plots of over 25,000 square feet, allowed towers that could rise up to three times the width of the street. The San Remo and Eldorado were the first two buildings on Central Park West to be affected by this new law.
The few drawings that Roth produced for the Eldorado have classical details, creating a design that resembles the style of the San Remo. They do not exhibit the Art Deco forms of the building as constructed. Art Deco style ornament appeared on apartment buildings as early as 1928 on Raymond Hood's 3 East 84th Street and on Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine's Park Plaza in the Bronx.
Margon & Holder were probably aware of the Art Deco forms in use on those apartment houses and they adapted these forms for their Central Park West building. Among the finest Art Deco motifs on the Eldorado is the tripartite Central Park West entrance. The three entrance portals take on the faceted crystalline form that Rosemarie Bletter has traced to German Expressionist architecture.
Above these bronze entrance surrounds are bronze panels with the clashing angular geometric forms and soft curving foliate forms that give the finest Art Deco ornamentation its special tension. The best known Art Deco features of the Eldorado are the futuristic rocket-like pinnacles which crown each tower.
Other notable Art Deco motifs include an angular frieze that runs above the third floor, stylized brick spandrel panels below many of the windows, and angular balconies with zigzag panels.
Unfortunately, construction of the Eldorado coincided with the stock market crash of 1929. The crash led to the collapse of the real estate market; cooperatives failed, rental apartments remained vacant, and foreclosure actions were brought against many buildings.
Financial and labor troubles delayed the completion of the Eldorado, but on November 26, 1930, it was announced that the building was to be completed.
Although the Eldorado was finished, it experienced rental problems and the owners finally defaulted on loan payments.
On November 5, 1931, the building was auctioned. In more recent years, the Eldorado has attracted many people of note, particularly people associated with the arts. Among the Eldorado's residents have been Milton Avery, Martin Balsam, Richard Dreyfuss, Faye Dunaway, Carrie Fisher, Tuesday Weld, Pinchas Zuckerman, Richard Estes, Sybil Burton, Phil Donahue, Mario Thomas, Edie Adams, Ernie Kovaks, Groucho Marx, Roddy McDowell, and Marilyn Monroe.
Description
The Eldorado is a symmetrical building set on a three-story yellow cast stone base and faced with tan brick trimmed with light brown brick and yellow terra-cotta above. The building extends along the entire Central Park West frontage between West 90th Street and West 91st Street, 200 feet along West 90th Street, and 194 feet along West 91st Street. In the center of the ground floor of the Central Park West frontage is the main entrance consisting of three faceted portals with bronze frames. Above each entrance are a pair of highly ornamental plaques embossed with Art Deco style geometric and floral forms. In the spandrels between the faceted entry arches and the plaques are panels with birds. Separating each pair of panels, as well as the windows above, are stepped piers with geometric incising. Above these piers are projecting skeletal cast stone motifs. A frieze of Art Deco chevrons and arches crowns the cast stone base of the building.
On the ground floor, to each side of the entrance are windows and metal doors with Art Deco grilles and handrails, all of which belong to professional apartments.
On Central Park West, the windows of the main bulk of the building are massed in a symmetrical pattern of 2-3-2-3-2-6-2-3-2-3-2 All of the windows were originally metal-paned casements with thin metal mullions. Each original window is divided into two movable casements of eight panes, each with a single transom of six panes. The small window panes add a sense of texture to the facade and prevent the window openings from becoming voids in the design.
The first and third window groups from either end project slightly, while the other groups are separated by projecting piers. The second and fifth groups from either end are framed with light brown brick that gives a vertical thrust to the facade. This vertical thrust is strengthened by the use of raised brick bands below the windows and by the addition of tan brick piers between the windows of the second group from each corner.
The patterned brickwork, also appears in the central two bays at the thirteenth and fourteenth floors . Projecting from the two central thirteenth floor windows are three-sided stone balconies each supported by a single corbeled bracket and ornamented with a vertical chevron panel.
The five central window groups step back above the fourteenth and sixteenth floors to form balconies, while the three end groups on either side rise up two additional floors before setting back at the sixteenth floor and again at the seventeenth floor. All of the balconies have Art Deco railings. Patterned brickwork and pairs of terra-cotta balconies also appear on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of the end sections and on the sixteenth floor of the central section.
The brown brick bays are ornamented at their summits by terra-cotta panels adorned with chevron, diaper, and other geometric patterns.
The towers rise free of the base for twelve stories. Each tower is six bays wide on Central Park West and faced with tan brick highlighted by brown brick panels at the four central windows. Terra-cotta balconies appear at the twenty-sixth floor and terra-cotta panels at the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth floors.
The side elevations have similar detailing. There are corner penthouses at the twenty-ninth floor, as each tower steps back to the crowning pinnacle with its fin-like projections. It is these stepped pinnacles that give the Eldorado its distinctive silhouette and make the building immediately identifiable from as far away as Fifth Avenue.
On the side streets the Eldorado is seventeen stories tall with the three-story cast stone base continuing for the first seven bays before it drops down to a one-story base. Only near the Central Park West corners are there window bays articulated with the vertical brown brick bays used on the front elevation.
The side facades have penthouses with railings, the balconies and terra-cotta ornament described on the front, as well as professional office doors and secondary residential entrances with Art Deco carvings To the rear of the building are cast stone arches with Art Deco metal gates .
Alterations to the original design are limited to the replacement of some of the original multi-paned windows with plate glass windows. The most serious alteration has occurred on the eighteenth floor of the south tower where brickwork has been removed for the enlargement of several windows.
The Eldorado's futuristic crowning pinnacles, visible from up and down Central Park West and from as far east as Fifth Avenue, are true architectural landmarks. The Eldorado is the northernmost of the four twin-towered buildings that identify Central Park West as one of New York City's great residential boulevards and the building stands as one of the most important Art Deco apartment buildings in the city.
- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Inspired by the global speculation of the 2012 phenomenon, REVELATION puts light on the Egyptian’s belief in the renewal of mankind during the catastrophic event. The belief in the new way of life influenced the collection’s vision to challenge and push the boundaries of menswear. Egyptian gods are personified by fashionably reincarnating them into modern day “street gods”. It resurrects the divinity and opulence of ancient Egypt through OTT (Over The Top) sensibility and striking DIY aesthetic in street art and fashion. The street gods are envisioned to be transported right into Japan, 2012, living and breathing the air in the streets of Harajuku where the very aspect of OTT flair is celebrated and desired. Exploring specially into the experimental spirit of the Japanese street style, the pieces were made in a mélange of opposing elements, unconventional silhouettes, clashing hues and materials which bears the iconic essence of the ancient Egypt. This collection aims to retain achaotic equilibrium while simultaneously fabricating a booming visual orgasm: A revelation exhilaration.
What was there before the Big Bang, what created it, how did it start, why did it happen are all great questions. Answers to these questions are absent or limited to poorly constrained speculation for now, but are worthy of scientific challenge in that there are, albeit very limited, methods to mount such. One would like to presume that fundamental physical laws understood for our universe also describe the "Big Bang" itself and what, if anything, preceded.For now, there is no verifiable "theory of everything" regarding the universe we know and no reason to assume that the physics of our universe would be specifically applicable to all volumes within a multiverse. It is suggested that answers involving infinities ( eg singularity) are probably an expression of " don't really understand as yet".
Some theory and questionable indirect evidence suggest our universe could be but one of many formed and perhaps within an extradimensional Bulk. Universes in variety may form commonly. There really is no known reason why if one universe formed, others could not also form, some theory suggests this must happen, our universe being just one " flavor " , importantly, the " flavor " with the physics that allows us to exist.
A major obstacle to a theory of everything is a description of gravity applicable on all scales. This is especially vexing when trying to understand very, very small and very, very massive/energetic objects like black holes and the universe at the very start. Gravity, why is it so weak a force; is dark matter/energy the expression of what we call gravity; is our experience with gravity like that of listening to music played in the room next door; is matter "afloat" in extra dimensional gravity?
So here we are, the juncture of the physical and the metaphysical, science and philosophy. "What controls the horizontal? What controls the verticle? We are truely at the outer limits of understanding".
For more see
www.youtube.com/watch? feature=player_detailpage&v=bJp...
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ez1...
More on String theory follows
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=S8s...
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=l5t...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nqr2fidQp8&feature=player_de...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBhw34EJafU
mipt.ru/dasr/upload/d45/f_3lyje9-arphh81ii9w.doc
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eaWHUMjgqk
A Holographic Universe
And even more Kool stuff
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNb3iM_268I&feature=player_de...
Speculations are afoot the leader of Nepal’s Marxist party, Pushpa Kamal Dahal is on course to visit Sri Lanka as the head of his country’s mission to the forthcoming the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation scheduled for August in Colombo. Popularly known as Prachanda, he is now on the verge of taking over as head of a new government following the emotional exit of the country’s Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala yesterday (June 26).
Founded in 1994, the Communist Party of Nepal had since 1996 waged a prolonged and often a bloody campaign called “The Peoples War” against the Nepalese monarchy. Launched February 13, 1996, the Peoples War accounted for the lives of thousands of Nepalese. Prachanda, from the beginning of this campaign led his party strictly on Leninist-Mao dictates as necessary for the development of this Himalayan Kingdom ruled by a Hindu monarchy.
In the recent elections held in Nepal, Prachanda’s party became the largest representative group in the Nepalese Constituent Assembly. Last April, addressing the media in Kathmandu, Prachanda clearly indicated that the deck was now clear for the election of a post-election government and the end of the government of Prime Minister Girija Koirala. He also said that the Fifth Amendment Bill to the country’s constitution will be passed paving the way for the election of a president as Head of State.
Born December 1954 and hailing from Nepal’s Chitwan District where he had his education, Prachanda came into limelight with his political philosophy of Prachanda Path and the launching of the Communist Party of Nepal in 1994. His precepts were fundamentally Maoist and has held firm on these for the last twelve years. Previously, the Communist Party of Nepal was not identified as Maoist and when it was founded in 1986, Prachanda was elected as the General Secretary.
In 1990 when the bloody campaign was brought under control, Prachanda went underground and took charge of the secret wing of the party. However his party’s interests were headed at that time in the Nepalese Parliament by Dr Baburam Bhattarai as a member of the United Peoples Front. Six years later, Prachanda was widely held as the overall leader.
(June 27, Kathmandu, Sri Lanka Guardian
Fiat just ain’t what it used to be, and that’s been a boon for investors, who have made the former Italian industrial conglomerate the most valuable automotive group on Wall Street amid speculation that more wheeling and dealing awaits.
“Old Fiat” now consists of three listed companies -- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, Ferrari NV and CNH Industrial NV -- and their combined value rose over 70 percent this year to $63.7 billion. That’s more than 10 times the group’s worth in 2004, when Sergio Marchionne started his overhaul, and it surpasses Tesla Inc., General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co.
With Marchionne seeking to step down as Fiat Chrysler’s chief executive officer in 2019, more moves are on the way. The 65 year-old has already flagged that component operations, such as Magneti Marelli, are in line to be spun off, following the successful strategy used for truck and tractor maker CNH and supercar brand Ferrari. Alfa Romeo and Maserati may eventually follow. His ultimate goal is to streamline Fiat’s mass-market auto business to make it an easy fit for a combination with another competitor.
“There seems to be an assumption that, just because Sergio has been God’s personal gift to auto sector investors in the last dozen years, he can deliver something spectacular on his way out,” Max Warburton, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said in a Sept. 26 report. “We’re nervous betting against this man too -- he does have a bit of form, to put it mildly.”
After Marchionne said in late July that the spin-off story for Fiat Chrysler was “not over,” Wall Street analysts increased the 12-month average target price on the stock by over 40 percent to $16.72.
“An acceleration in industry consolidation, coupled with Marchionne’s comments, refocused the market toward the sum of the parts, which underlines Fiat’s strong undervaluation,” said Massimo Vecchio, a Milan-based analyst with Mediobanca, who increased his target price to 20 euros a share from 14 euros on Sept. 25.
Fiat Chrysler fell as much as 0.6 percent in New York trading and was down 0.3 percent to $17.55 at 10:05 a.m., giving the company a market value of $26.95 billion. Shares have gained 92 percent since the beginning of the year.
Hanson House
"This house was built on speculation in the late 1890's by Nils Hanson who also built and ran the original Wasa Hotel at Wasa, just north of Fort Steele." (from park brochure)
Fort Steele, located in southeast British Columbia, Canada, was founded in the 1860's after gold was discovered on nearby Wild Horse Creek. The town grew quickly, and by the late 1890's it was the regional hub of the area. Fort Steele declined quickly after the town was bypassed by the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1961 the entire town was declared a historic park, and today it contains a mix of original and reconstructed buildings in a beautiful setting.
Queensland State Archives Item ID ITM294496 Dept No.44
The murder of siblings Michael, Norah and Ellen Murphy near Gatton on Boxing Day 1898 sparked intense interest and speculation. All three were killed between 10pm and the early hours of the following morning on their way home from a dance that had been cancelled and the case remains unsolved to this day.
Contained within the QSA archived police files are pages of handwritten letters from across Queensland sent from members of the community convinced they could help solve the case using their spiritual gifts. Some are simply a few words on a scrap of paper, others take up many pages and go into lengthy detail about possible conspiracies. The police called the correspondence files ‘Astrologers, Dreamers, Theorists, etc’.
July 2,2007.
Caspian Terns have new, High Tide Roost Site
After a rather poor Spring and early Summer Collecting Re Sight leg Bands from Caspian Terns My speculation about a general movement of Caspian Terns from their former High Tide roost at Tsawwassen Terminal. Across to the newly constructed sea dam wall that surrounds an area to be filled to form the new Parking Lot/Container Berth at Wesrtshore Terminals. Tonight with the tide Aprox. 14.5 Feet and rising there were only 4 to 5 terns at the Compensation Lagoon Taswwassen Ferry Terminal.. Tonight's Total after several disturbances was 271 On the Gravel bream or sea dam. The following bands were Read
L/L Yellow Over Orange with Yellow at the foot. Red over Metal with Dark Blue at the foot. This info may be suspect as the Bands were faded see Pic.
L/L Yellow Over Red with Orange at the foot R/L Yellow Over Lt. Grn with Metal at the foot.
L/L Red over Red with Dark Green at the foot R/L Yellow Over Lt. Grn with metal at the foot.
L/L Orange over Orange with Yellow at the Foot R/L Lt. Grn over Metal with Lt. Grn at the foot.
L/L ONLY White over Orange with Lt. Grn at the foot. The RIGHT LEG was just a STUMP This could be as result of banding ??? See photo to come
An Alpha numerical Yellow Band with Black Codes was Obs see Photo to come First Code was an A over 1 Next Code ? followed by 1 at the foot.
the ? code was possibly 4 or 6 maybe 8 ???
The Problem with this fantastic location is that it is about 600 feet into the security zone. So after about 40 Minutes of Observation a security guard arrived to ask me to leave.
After making numerous trips to the OLD areas used by the Terns during High Tides and Low. They seem to be dispersed from there old territories. After about 5 to 6 Years of collecting information it would be nice to continue?
Richard Swanston
Delta, B.C. Canada
IMG_3508_2
On the day of a key European parliamentary vote on food speculation, campaigners from Campact, Friends of the Earth Europe, SOS-Faim and the World Development Movement lay out 925 pots and pans outside the European parliament. 925 represents the number of people hungry in the world today. Campaigners also present a petition with 100k signatories to key Euro MPs.
Now the speculations regarding Ferrari 458 Italia price has finally ended with “Red Car” available at Rs. 2.56 crore (ex-showroom New Delhi). As per official reports, Ferrari is marking presence in India in alliance with Shreyans Group, which is official importer of Ferrari 458 Italia cars in India. Also, with large number of luxury car manufacturing giants like Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche, BMW and Mercedes Benz already gaining market share in counrty, Ferrari India is expected to receive excellent welcome. The latest inclusion the fleet of Ferrari cars in India is the mighty Ferrari 458 Italia. Other Ferrari 458 Italia specifications include 178.2inches of Length, 76.3 inches of Width, 47.8 inches Height, along with front track width of 65.8 inches and rear track width of 63.2 inches.
We bring you all details of Ferrari 458 Italia price and updates at CarDekho
Find more Ferrari 458 Italia Pictures and photos of all cars in india at Cardekho
Senator Cantwell and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA, second from right) demanded federal regulators use the authorities that Congress granted them in 2010 to crack down on excessive oil market speculation that may be contributing to artificially high gas and diesel prices in Seattle and around the country.
For more information: cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=332537
How Architecture Learned to Speculate
Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest
December 2009
For the first time, the speculative in architecture becomes a topic of critical research. It is investigated, not as idealistic but as strategic acting within endless modernity. This modernity implies that speculation, as strategic acting, is not only applied to economic, but also to political, and aesthetic values. The consequences? Values become mobile, valuations become a play with high and low, authors (architects) become winners or losers, and culture becomes fashion.
Including projects by Michael Najjar, Matthieu Laurette, NL Architects, PARA-Project, visiondivision, MVRDV, Aristide Antonas, David Schalliol, Kevin Bauman, FAT, David Trautrimas, JODI, Bernard Gigounon, Ralf Schreiber, Gitta Gschwendtner, Pascual Sisto, Darlene Charneco, Seyed Alavi, Helmut Smits, Ant Farm, 100101110101101.ORG, Caspar Stracke, and OMA.
ISBN: 978-3-00-029876-9
Number of pages: 246
Measurements: 19 x 12 x 1,1 cm
Central Park Lake, Majestic Apartments
Upper West Side, Manhattan
The Majestic is one of five towered skyscraper apartment buildings which define the impressive skyline of Central Park West. Erected in 1930-31 by the Chart in Construction Company, headed by architect and developer Irwin S. Chanin, it is an excellent example of the Art Deco style in its streamlined later phase. Chanin had attended the highly influential 1925 Paris exposition of decorative arts, and returned a convert to the "modernistic" style. The Majestic was the Chanin organization's first "experiment" ^ in applying the Art Deco style to residential building. The Majestic successfully adjusts the city's housing laws to the new style; its soaring twin towers are a response to new regulations enacted in 1929. Although built during the Depression, it belongs to the luxury apartment building genre of the 1920s. While the Majestic's sparing use of ornament and simple materials reflect its date of construction, the resulting austerity is an integral part of the building's stylistic imagery.
Central Park West, the northern continuation of Eight Avenue bordering on the park, is today one of New York's finest residential streets, but in the mid-nineteenth century it was a rural and inhospitable outpost, notable for its rocky terrain, browsing goats and ramshackle shanties. With the creation of Central Park in the 1860s, followed by Riverside Park (begun 1876), as well as a series of transportation improvements such as the Ninth Avenue Elevated Railroad (1879), the Upper West Side in general experienced a period of intense real estate speculation. The 1880s were the first decade of major development, and set the pattern for the Upper West Side, where rowhouses line the side streets, and multiple dwellings, commercial and institutional structures are sited on the avenues.
Not surprisingly, those avenues closest to the parks, Central Park West and Riverside Drive, were immediately considered the most desirable. The potential of the parkside avenues for development as prime locations led to an anticipatory increase in land values; prices rose to such extravagant heights that many speculative builders shied away from row house and tenement construction, from which they would realized relatively meager returns, while the very wealthy, who could afford to build mansions for the most part remained on the more fashionable East Side.
The Majestic is a thirty-one story apartment building with a massive nineteen-story base which conforms to the lot line, extending from 71st to 72nd streets along Central Park West, and 225 feet westward along 72nd Street, 187.6 feet along 71st Street, with an interior courtyard.
Setbacks begin at the fourteenth story and continue to the nineteenth, above which rise the large twin towers. The three main entrances appear on each facade and are enframed by rose and black polished granite which also forms the watertable. These enframements are simply detailed with grooves. Office doors also appear at the first story. The first three stories of the building are faced with light gray cast stone. Where the piers appear this stone has been ornamented with notches above the third story.
The building from the fourth story up is faced in yellow brick. At the corners of the building, including the towers, the brick has been laid in a striated pattern between the windows. Uninterrupted piers articulate the base of the building on all three facades directly beneath the towers, and also appear on the side elevations surrounding the entrance bays. These piers also continue in the towers, creating a strong vertical element in the elevations. Beneath the windows which are flanked by these brick piers are panels of simple rectangular tiles, which form a slight convex curve, animating the wall surface. At the setbacks terraces are surrounded by simple metal railings. The original windows contain metal casements with upper and lower transoms.
The windows are varied in size, but the majority are bi- and tripartite. Some tripartite windows have sidelights. Single-paned windows appear beneath and in the towers, emphasizing their verticality, while windows with three panes, appear elsewhere and provide a horizontal counterbalance. The comer wrap-around windows contain three sections, with three panes on the north and south sides and eight sections with three panes on the east. The square-headed tower terminations on the east elevation above the piers are ornamented with simple abstract sculpture, typical of the Art Deco style. The rounded terminations on the wings at the west sides of the towers are faced in stone and are again typically Art Deco.
- From the 1988 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Eldorado, extending along the entire blockfront of Central Park West between 90th and 91st Streets, is the northernmost of the four twin-towered apartment houses that give Central Park West its distinctive skyline silhouette. The Eldorado was designed in 1929 by the architectural firm of Margon & Holder with the renowned early 20th-century New York City architect Emery Roth as consultant. These architects created one of the finest and most dramatically massed Art Deco style residential buildings in New York City.
The Eldorado is one of the most distinguished buildings erected as part of the early 20th-century redevelopment of Central Park West. Central Park West, a continuation of Eighth Avenue, runs along the western edge of Central Park. Development along this prime avenue occurred very slowly, lagging substantially behind the general development of the Upper West Side. When Frederick Law Olmsted laid out Central Park he saw that the presence of the park would raise the value of land immediately adjacent to it.
Olmsted expected these areas to develop as prime residential streets. Land speculation did indeed occur on Central Park West. However, the west side of the park never attracted the extremely wealthy people who could afford the inflated prices of land bordering on the park.
Thus, while the side streets of the Upper West Side were built up with rows of speculative houses, Central Park West remained largely undeveloped. A survey of Central Park West published in February 1893 shows that of the three blocks between 60th and 96th Streets nineteen were either totally vacant or contained old shanties and frame houses. Other blocks were partially vacant.
The earliest residential improvement on Central Park West, and one of its great architectural monuments, was the Dakota, a designated New York City Landmark, at 72nd Street. Built in 1880-84, this eight-story building established Central Park West's character as a street of multiple dwellings. In 1890, by which time the Dakota had been joined by two apartment hotels, the St. Remo on 75th Street and the Beresford on 81st Street, as well as several flat houses, real estate broker F.R. Houghton noted that:
Central Park West seems to have only one future— it is destined to become an avenue of grand apartment houses and hotels. Everything tends that way. It is too public a thoroughfare to become a private residential avenue.
However, it wasn't until several years later that Central Park West experienced the construction boom that Houghton had predicted.
The first concentrated building boom on Central Park West occurred at the turn of the century when a significant number of elegant residential and institutional buildings were erected south of 96th Street. These include some of the finest apartment houses in New York, such as the Prasada at 65th Street, the Langham at 73rd Street, the Kenilworth at 75th Street, and the St. Urban at 89th Street, as well as such institutional structures as the Ethical Culture Society School and Meeting House at 63rd and 64th Streets, Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church at 65th Street, the Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 68th Street, the Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue at 70th Street, the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity at 76th Street, and the Progress Club at 88th Street.
The presence of these fine apartment buildings and institutions on Central Park West reflects the coming of age of the Upper West Side. The Upper West Side had developed in the final decades of the 19th century as an enclave of upper middle-class life. Affluent middle-class families were attracted to the area by the quality of its housing, the presence of Riverside Park and Central Park, and by the accessibility of the neighborhood.
As the Upper West Side became more and more desirable, developers began to build on the more expensive sites bordering the parks, and Central Park West began to be transformed into an elegant avenue of tall buildings that contrasted dramatically in scale to low rise residential Fifth Avenue.
During World War I construction on Central Park West slowed, but between 1920 and 1931 the area was transformed as the vacant sites were filled and many of the early apartment hotels and flats were replaced by new apartment houses. This final phase of Central Park West's development culminated in 1929-31 with the construction of the four twin-towered buildings that give Central Park West its characteristic skyline.
The distinctive form of the Century at 62nd-63rd Streets, the Majestic at 71st-72nd Streets, the San Remo at 74th-75th Streets and the Eldorado at 90th-91st Streets has come to symbolize the high quality of residential design on New York's Upper West Side.
The Eldorado Apartments is not the first building of that name at this location. The present building replaces the Eldorado flats which consisted of two eight-story structures designed in 1901 by Neville & Bagge, "which for more than a generation have been among the best of the fine houses on Central Park West."
In addition to the old Eldorado, the new apartment building replaced five row houses on West 90th Street and three tenements and a row house on West 91st Street. This site was assembled in 1929 and sold to realtor Frederick Brown who retained ownership for several weeks before transferring the property to the Elkay Building Corporation, Louis Kloak, president. The architects commissioned to design the new Eldorado were the firm of Margon & Holder.
Irving Margon and Adolph M. Holder are architects about whom little is known. One of the few buildings known to have been designed by Margon is an Art Deco apartment house at 2805 Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
Although Margon & Holder were the chief architects for the new building, they do not appear to have had the experience to design such a large structure. Emery Roth, one of the most talented residential architects in New York during the early decades of this century was hired as a consultant.
Among Roth's finest apartment buildings are three important Upper West Side structures designed just prior to the Eldorado—the Oliver Cromwell at 12 West 72nd Street, the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, and the Beresford at 211 Central Park West. It was undoubtedly Roth's experience with designing these large-scale residential buildings that prompted the builders of the Eldorado to hire him as a consultant. It is believed that Roth was responsible for the massing and plan of the building and that Margon & Holder designed the facade.
The form of the Eldorado, with its massive base and twin towers set at the Central Park West corners, closely resembles the massing of the San Remo on which Roth was working at the time he received the Eldorado commission. In addition, the apartment layouts of the two buildings are similar. The twin towered form of the San Remo and Eldorado resulted from the multiple dwelling law passed by the New York State Legislature in 1929.
This law mandated an increase in yard and court area, but allowed residential buildings to rise higher than before, legalizing setbacks and towers in this building type for the first time. The bill limited the height of street walls to times the width of the street, but, on plots of over 25,000 square feet, allowed towers that could rise up to three times the width of the street. The San Remo and Eldorado were the first two buildings on Central Park West to be affected by this new law.
The few drawings that Roth produced for the Eldorado have classical details, creating a design that resembles the style of the San Remo. They do not exhibit the Art Deco forms of the building as constructed. Art Deco style ornament appeared on apartment buildings as early as 1928 on Raymond Hood's 3 East 84th Street and on Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine's Park Plaza in the Bronx.
Margon & Holder were probably aware of the Art Deco forms in use on those apartment houses and they adapted these forms for their Central Park West building. Among the finest Art Deco motifs on the Eldorado is the tripartite Central Park West entrance. The three entrance portals take on the faceted crystalline form that Rosemarie Bletter has traced to German Expressionist architecture.
Above these bronze entrance surrounds are bronze panels with the clashing angular geometric forms and soft curving foliate forms that give the finest Art Deco ornamentation its special tension. The best known Art Deco features of the Eldorado are the futuristic rocket-like pinnacles which crown each tower.
Other notable Art Deco motifs include an angular frieze that runs above the third floor, stylized brick spandrel panels below many of the windows, and angular balconies with zigzag panels.
Unfortunately, construction of the Eldorado coincided with the stock market crash of 1929. The crash led to the collapse of the real estate market; cooperatives failed, rental apartments remained vacant, and foreclosure actions were brought against many buildings.
Financial and labor troubles delayed the completion of the Eldorado, but on November 26, 1930, it was announced that the building was to be completed.
Although the Eldorado was finished, it experienced rental problems and the owners finally defaulted on loan payments.
On November 5, 1931, the building was auctioned. In more recent years, the Eldorado has attracted many people of note, particularly people associated with the arts. Among the Eldorado's residents have been Milton Avery, Martin Balsam, Richard Dreyfuss, Faye Dunaway, Carrie Fisher, Tuesday Weld, Pinchas Zuckerman, Richard Estes, Sybil Burton, Phil Donahue, Mario Thomas, Edie Adams, Ernie Kovaks, Groucho Marx, Roddy McDowell, and Marilyn Monroe.
Description
The Eldorado is a symmetrical building set on a three-story yellow cast stone base and faced with tan brick trimmed with light brown brick and yellow terra-cotta above. The building extends along the entire Central Park West frontage between West 90th Street and West 91st Street, 200 feet along West 90th Street, and 194 feet along West 91st Street. In the center of the ground floor of the Central Park West frontage is the main entrance consisting of three faceted portals with bronze frames. Above each entrance are a pair of highly ornamental plaques embossed with Art Deco style geometric and floral forms. In the spandrels between the faceted entry arches and the plaques are panels with birds. Separating each pair of panels, as well as the windows above, are stepped piers with geometric incising. Above these piers are projecting skeletal cast stone motifs. A frieze of Art Deco chevrons and arches crowns the cast stone base of the building.
On the ground floor, to each side of the entrance are windows and metal doors with Art Deco grilles and handrails, all of which belong to professional apartments.
On Central Park West, the windows of the main bulk of the building are massed in a symmetrical pattern of 2-3-2-3-2-6-2-3-2-3-2 All of the windows were originally metal-paned casements with thin metal mullions. Each original window is divided into two movable casements of eight panes, each with a single transom of six panes. The small window panes add a sense of texture to the facade and prevent the window openings from becoming voids in the design.
The first and third window groups from either end project slightly, while the other groups are separated by projecting piers. The second and fifth groups from either end are framed with light brown brick that gives a vertical thrust to the facade. This vertical thrust is strengthened by the use of raised brick bands below the windows and by the addition of tan brick piers between the windows of the second group from each corner.
The patterned brickwork, also appears in the central two bays at the thirteenth and fourteenth floors . Projecting from the two central thirteenth floor windows are three-sided stone balconies each supported by a single corbeled bracket and ornamented with a vertical chevron panel.
The five central window groups step back above the fourteenth and sixteenth floors to form balconies, while the three end groups on either side rise up two additional floors before setting back at the sixteenth floor and again at the seventeenth floor. All of the balconies have Art Deco railings. Patterned brickwork and pairs of terra-cotta balconies also appear on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of the end sections and on the sixteenth floor of the central section.
The brown brick bays are ornamented at their summits by terra-cotta panels adorned with chevron, diaper, and other geometric patterns.
The towers rise free of the base for twelve stories. Each tower is six bays wide on Central Park West and faced with tan brick highlighted by brown brick panels at the four central windows. Terra-cotta balconies appear at the twenty-sixth floor and terra-cotta panels at the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth floors.
The side elevations have similar detailing. There are corner penthouses at the twenty-ninth floor, as each tower steps back to the crowning pinnacle with its fin-like projections. It is these stepped pinnacles that give the Eldorado its distinctive silhouette and make the building immediately identifiable from as far away as Fifth Avenue.
On the side streets the Eldorado is seventeen stories tall with the three-story cast stone base continuing for the first seven bays before it drops down to a one-story base. Only near the Central Park West corners are there window bays articulated with the vertical brown brick bays used on the front elevation.
The side facades have penthouses with railings, the balconies and terra-cotta ornament described on the front, as well as professional office doors and secondary residential entrances with Art Deco carvings To the rear of the building are cast stone arches with Art Deco metal gates .
Alterations to the original design are limited to the replacement of some of the original multi-paned windows with plate glass windows. The most serious alteration has occurred on the eighteenth floor of the south tower where brickwork has been removed for the enlargement of several windows.
The Eldorado's futuristic crowning pinnacles, visible from up and down Central Park West and from as far east as Fifth Avenue, are true architectural landmarks. The Eldorado is the northernmost of the four twin-towered buildings that identify Central Park West as one of New York City's great residential boulevards and the building stands as one of the most important Art Deco apartment buildings in the city.
- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Saint Ludger founded the Werden Abbey (100km west) in 799 and already in 886 Hellefeld is listed being a property of the abbey. Later it belonged to a monastery in nearby Meschede. The connection to the Werden Abbey may give a hint, that Hellefeld was an important place, when, with the strong support of Charlemagne, Saint Ludger and his collegues preached the gospel to the tribes in the mountainous Sauerland.
The romanesque basilica got demolished in the 1870s. Only the old tower survived - and the baptismal font was saved, as it seemed to be "valuable". It was believed to be produced within the 12th century.
It is very unusual, as it is made from plumb (99%) and tin (1%). This is unique, but plumb was mined in the area already since roman times (known as "plumbum germanicum").
This font has been compared with the baptismal font in Wuerzburg (St. Kilian), but that does not help, as that one (casted 1279) is different in style, technique, alloy. The only common feature is, that it is cylindrical.
The connection from Hellefeld to the Werden Abbey gave room to speculation. Meanwhile historians date this baptismal font into the first half of the 9th century - or even older.
Here is what may support the theory, that the vessel is even older than that. We have seen sofar the"rythm" of pillars, the arches, the small heads. Here (unfortunately in the shadow) is a kind of irregularity, as here is a third head. The three heads form a triangle. Above the head in the middle is a punched line, connecting the two capitals. This long line forms the base for two smaller triangels.
This has been interpreted in 2004 as a bind-rune, combining the two runes "Berkana" (standing for health, growth - but as well Freya) and "Kenaz" (standing for wisdom, enlightment - but as well Odin). So the vessel may have been casted, when paganism was still lively in early christian rites - or - as it is known, that large vessels have been status symbols of the pagan tribes, this may even be dated in very early, pre-christian times.
It is a complex theory, and actually there is not really much "hard evidence", but it is very interesting.
Here is a pdf of Ingrid Reissland´s article in GERMAN). Scroll down to page 10 to find the headline "Weihekreuze und Runen". Of course the article has better photos than this.
I added a third camera to the trial. The last time I did a side-by-side, there was a lot of speculation about what the shot "should" have looked like.
Well, I don't think an authoritative answer is possible. All the same, I also shot with a Nikon D200, which is a pro-class SLR. I can't tell you which one looks the best and I can't even tell you which one looks most like what the scene actually looked like. I know nothing about the color settings of your screen. As I write these comments, I've got Firefox running on an HP netbook and Safari open to the same page on a MacBook pro. I can tell you that the Nikon shot looks best relative to the others, but these two images are noticeably different.
(For what it's worth, the Mac screen seems a little warmer than the HP.)
So instead, you'll see what a "real" camera would have done with the same scene.
This is also a good time to explain the terms of the "challenge," so to speak. All three cameras were operated in full-auto mode. There might have been ways to correct faulty white balance, but therein madness lies.
Spot-on. The stonework looks warm without being yellow or green. The corner has plenty of detail without blowouts and the copper roofledge has a sharp color distinct from the sky.
How Architecture Learned to Speculate
Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest
December 2009
For the first time, the speculative in architecture becomes a topic of critical research. It is investigated, not as idealistic but as strategic acting within endless modernity. This modernity implies that speculation, as strategic acting, is not only applied to economic, but also to political, and aesthetic values. The consequences? Values become mobile, valuations become a play with high and low, authors (architects) become winners or losers, and culture becomes fashion.
Including projects by Michael Najjar, Matthieu Laurette, NL Architects, PARA-Project, visiondivision, MVRDV, Aristide Antonas, David Schalliol, Kevin Bauman, FAT, David Trautrimas, JODI, Bernard Gigounon, Ralf Schreiber, Gitta Gschwendtner, Pascual Sisto, Darlene Charneco, Seyed Alavi, Helmut Smits, Ant Farm, 100101110101101.ORG, Caspar Stracke, and OMA.
ISBN: 978-3-00-029876-9
Number of pages: 246
Measurements: 19 x 12 x 1,1 cm
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Eldorado, extending along the entire blockfront of Central Park West between 90th and 91st Streets, is the northernmost of the four twin-towered apartment houses that give Central Park West its distinctive skyline silhouette. The Eldorado was designed in 1929 by the architectural firm of Margon & Holder with the renowned early 20th-century New York City architect Emery Roth as consultant. These architects created one of the finest and most dramatically massed Art Deco style residential buildings in New York City.
The Eldorado is one of the most distinguished buildings erected as part of the early 20th-century redevelopment of Central Park West. Central Park West, a continuation of Eighth Avenue, runs along the western edge of Central Park. Development along this prime avenue occurred very slowly, lagging substantially behind the general development of the Upper West Side. When Frederick Law Olmsted laid out Central Park he saw that the presence of the park would raise the value of land immediately adjacent to it.
Olmsted expected these areas to develop as prime residential streets. Land speculation did indeed occur on Central Park West. However, the west side of the park never attracted the extremely wealthy people who could afford the inflated prices of land bordering on the park.
Thus, while the side streets of the Upper West Side were built up with rows of speculative houses, Central Park West remained largely undeveloped. A survey of Central Park West published in February 1893 shows that of the three blocks between 60th and 96th Streets nineteen were either totally vacant or contained old shanties and frame houses. Other blocks were partially vacant.
The earliest residential improvement on Central Park West, and one of its great architectural monuments, was the Dakota, a designated New York City Landmark, at 72nd Street. Built in 1880-84, this eight-story building established Central Park West's character as a street of multiple dwellings. In 1890, by which time the Dakota had been joined by two apartment hotels, the St. Remo on 75th Street and the Beresford on 81st Street, as well as several flat houses, real estate broker F.R. Houghton noted that:
Central Park West seems to have only one future— it is destined to become an avenue of grand apartment houses and hotels. Everything tends that way. It is too public a thoroughfare to become a private residential avenue.
However, it wasn't until several years later that Central Park West experienced the construction boom that Houghton had predicted.
The first concentrated building boom on Central Park West occurred at the turn of the century when a significant number of elegant residential and institutional buildings were erected south of 96th Street. These include some of the finest apartment houses in New York, such as the Prasada at 65th Street, the Langham at 73rd Street, the Kenilworth at 75th Street, and the St. Urban at 89th Street, as well as such institutional structures as the Ethical Culture Society School and Meeting House at 63rd and 64th Streets, Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church at 65th Street, the Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 68th Street, the Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue at 70th Street, the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity at 76th Street, and the Progress Club at 88th Street.
The presence of these fine apartment buildings and institutions on Central Park West reflects the coming of age of the Upper West Side. The Upper West Side had developed in the final decades of the 19th century as an enclave of upper middle-class life. Affluent middle-class families were attracted to the area by the quality of its housing, the presence of Riverside Park and Central Park, and by the accessibility of the neighborhood.
As the Upper West Side became more and more desirable, developers began to build on the more expensive sites bordering the parks, and Central Park West began to be transformed into an elegant avenue of tall buildings that contrasted dramatically in scale to low rise residential Fifth Avenue.
During World War I construction on Central Park West slowed, but between 1920 and 1931 the area was transformed as the vacant sites were filled and many of the early apartment hotels and flats were replaced by new apartment houses. This final phase of Central Park West's development culminated in 1929-31 with the construction of the four twin-towered buildings that give Central Park West its characteristic skyline.
The distinctive form of the Century at 62nd-63rd Streets, the Majestic at 71st-72nd Streets, the San Remo at 74th-75th Streets and the Eldorado at 90th-91st Streets has come to symbolize the high quality of residential design on New York's Upper West Side.
The Eldorado Apartments is not the first building of that name at this location. The present building replaces the Eldorado flats which consisted of two eight-story structures designed in 1901 by Neville & Bagge, "which for more than a generation have been among the best of the fine houses on Central Park West."
In addition to the old Eldorado, the new apartment building replaced five row houses on West 90th Street and three tenements and a row house on West 91st Street. This site was assembled in 1929 and sold to realtor Frederick Brown who retained ownership for several weeks before transferring the property to the Elkay Building Corporation, Louis Kloak, president. The architects commissioned to design the new Eldorado were the firm of Margon & Holder.
Irving Margon and Adolph M. Holder are architects about whom little is known. One of the few buildings known to have been designed by Margon is an Art Deco apartment house at 2805 Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
Although Margon & Holder were the chief architects for the new building, they do not appear to have had the experience to design such a large structure. Emery Roth, one of the most talented residential architects in New York during the early decades of this century was hired as a consultant.
Among Roth's finest apartment buildings are three important Upper West Side structures designed just prior to the Eldorado—the Oliver Cromwell at 12 West 72nd Street, the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, and the Beresford at 211 Central Park West. It was undoubtedly Roth's experience with designing these large-scale residential buildings that prompted the builders of the Eldorado to hire him as a consultant. It is believed that Roth was responsible for the massing and plan of the building and that Margon & Holder designed the facade.
The form of the Eldorado, with its massive base and twin towers set at the Central Park West corners, closely resembles the massing of the San Remo on which Roth was working at the time he received the Eldorado commission. In addition, the apartment layouts of the two buildings are similar. The twin towered form of the San Remo and Eldorado resulted from the multiple dwelling law passed by the New York State Legislature in 1929.
This law mandated an increase in yard and court area, but allowed residential buildings to rise higher than before, legalizing setbacks and towers in this building type for the first time. The bill limited the height of street walls to times the width of the street, but, on plots of over 25,000 square feet, allowed towers that could rise up to three times the width of the street. The San Remo and Eldorado were the first two buildings on Central Park West to be affected by this new law.
The few drawings that Roth produced for the Eldorado have classical details, creating a design that resembles the style of the San Remo. They do not exhibit the Art Deco forms of the building as constructed. Art Deco style ornament appeared on apartment buildings as early as 1928 on Raymond Hood's 3 East 84th Street and on Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine's Park Plaza in the Bronx.
Margon & Holder were probably aware of the Art Deco forms in use on those apartment houses and they adapted these forms for their Central Park West building. Among the finest Art Deco motifs on the Eldorado is the tripartite Central Park West entrance. The three entrance portals take on the faceted crystalline form that Rosemarie Bletter has traced to German Expressionist architecture.
Above these bronze entrance surrounds are bronze panels with the clashing angular geometric forms and soft curving foliate forms that give the finest Art Deco ornamentation its special tension. The best known Art Deco features of the Eldorado are the futuristic rocket-like pinnacles which crown each tower.
Other notable Art Deco motifs include an angular frieze that runs above the third floor, stylized brick spandrel panels below many of the windows, and angular balconies with zigzag panels.
Unfortunately, construction of the Eldorado coincided with the stock market crash of 1929. The crash led to the collapse of the real estate market; cooperatives failed, rental apartments remained vacant, and foreclosure actions were brought against many buildings.
Financial and labor troubles delayed the completion of the Eldorado, but on November 26, 1930, it was announced that the building was to be completed.
Although the Eldorado was finished, it experienced rental problems and the owners finally defaulted on loan payments.
On November 5, 1931, the building was auctioned. In more recent years, the Eldorado has attracted many people of note, particularly people associated with the arts. Among the Eldorado's residents have been Milton Avery, Martin Balsam, Richard Dreyfuss, Faye Dunaway, Carrie Fisher, Tuesday Weld, Pinchas Zuckerman, Richard Estes, Sybil Burton, Phil Donahue, Mario Thomas, Edie Adams, Ernie Kovaks, Groucho Marx, Roddy McDowell, and Marilyn Monroe.
Description
The Eldorado is a symmetrical building set on a three-story yellow cast stone base and faced with tan brick trimmed with light brown brick and yellow terra-cotta above. The building extends along the entire Central Park West frontage between West 90th Street and West 91st Street, 200 feet along West 90th Street, and 194 feet along West 91st Street. In the center of the ground floor of the Central Park West frontage is the main entrance consisting of three faceted portals with bronze frames. Above each entrance are a pair of highly ornamental plaques embossed with Art Deco style geometric and floral forms. In the spandrels between the faceted entry arches and the plaques are panels with birds. Separating each pair of panels, as well as the windows above, are stepped piers with geometric incising. Above these piers are projecting skeletal cast stone motifs. A frieze of Art Deco chevrons and arches crowns the cast stone base of the building.
On the ground floor, to each side of the entrance are windows and metal doors with Art Deco grilles and handrails, all of which belong to professional apartments.
On Central Park West, the windows of the main bulk of the building are massed in a symmetrical pattern of 2-3-2-3-2-6-2-3-2-3-2 All of the windows were originally metal-paned casements with thin metal mullions. Each original window is divided into two movable casements of eight panes, each with a single transom of six panes. The small window panes add a sense of texture to the facade and prevent the window openings from becoming voids in the design.
The first and third window groups from either end project slightly, while the other groups are separated by projecting piers. The second and fifth groups from either end are framed with light brown brick that gives a vertical thrust to the facade. This vertical thrust is strengthened by the use of raised brick bands below the windows and by the addition of tan brick piers between the windows of the second group from each corner.
The patterned brickwork, also appears in the central two bays at the thirteenth and fourteenth floors . Projecting from the two central thirteenth floor windows are three-sided stone balconies each supported by a single corbeled bracket and ornamented with a vertical chevron panel.
The five central window groups step back above the fourteenth and sixteenth floors to form balconies, while the three end groups on either side rise up two additional floors before setting back at the sixteenth floor and again at the seventeenth floor. All of the balconies have Art Deco railings. Patterned brickwork and pairs of terra-cotta balconies also appear on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of the end sections and on the sixteenth floor of the central section.
The brown brick bays are ornamented at their summits by terra-cotta panels adorned with chevron, diaper, and other geometric patterns.
The towers rise free of the base for twelve stories. Each tower is six bays wide on Central Park West and faced with tan brick highlighted by brown brick panels at the four central windows. Terra-cotta balconies appear at the twenty-sixth floor and terra-cotta panels at the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth floors.
The side elevations have similar detailing. There are corner penthouses at the twenty-ninth floor, as each tower steps back to the crowning pinnacle with its fin-like projections. It is these stepped pinnacles that give the Eldorado its distinctive silhouette and make the building immediately identifiable from as far away as Fifth Avenue.
On the side streets the Eldorado is seventeen stories tall with the three-story cast stone base continuing for the first seven bays before it drops down to a one-story base. Only near the Central Park West corners are there window bays articulated with the vertical brown brick bays used on the front elevation.
The side facades have penthouses with railings, the balconies and terra-cotta ornament described on the front, as well as professional office doors and secondary residential entrances with Art Deco carvings To the rear of the building are cast stone arches with Art Deco metal gates .
Alterations to the original design are limited to the replacement of some of the original multi-paned windows with plate glass windows. The most serious alteration has occurred on the eighteenth floor of the south tower where brickwork has been removed for the enlargement of several windows.
The Eldorado's futuristic crowning pinnacles, visible from up and down Central Park West and from as far east as Fifth Avenue, are true architectural landmarks. The Eldorado is the northernmost of the four twin-towered buildings that identify Central Park West as one of New York City's great residential boulevards and the building stands as one of the most important Art Deco apartment buildings in the city.
- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
On the day of a key European parliamentary vote on food speculation, campaigners from Campact, Friends of the Earth Europe, SOS-Faim and the World Development Movement lay out 925 pots and pans outside the European parliament. 925 represents the number of people hungry in the world today. Campaigners also present a petition with 100k signatories to key Euro MPs.
Chunnaic mi an shunter Ruston seo aig latha-fosgailte bliadhnail Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Siorrachd Dhun Phris.
I saw this little shunter at the Garden of Cosmic Speculation near Dumfries at its annual open day, 02/05/10.
How Architecture Learned to Speculate
Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest
December 2009
For the first time, the speculative in architecture becomes a topic of critical research. It is investigated, not as idealistic but as strategic acting within endless modernity. This modernity implies that speculation, as strategic acting, is not only applied to economic, but also to political, and aesthetic values. The consequences? Values become mobile, valuations become a play with high and low, authors (architects) become winners or losers, and culture becomes fashion.
Including projects by Michael Najjar, Matthieu Laurette, NL Architects, PARA-Project, visiondivision, MVRDV, Aristide Antonas, David Schalliol, Kevin Bauman, FAT, David Trautrimas, JODI, Bernard Gigounon, Ralf Schreiber, Gitta Gschwendtner, Pascual Sisto, Darlene Charneco, Seyed Alavi, Helmut Smits, Ant Farm, 100101110101101.ORG, Caspar Stracke, and OMA.
ISBN: 978-3-00-029876-9
Number of pages: 246
Measurements: 19 x 12 x 1,1 cm
With no surname, it is known to few, if any, the lineage of Andared. Due to his being a recluse, there is even speculation on the accuracy of his first name. Some of the more misinformed and imaginative Lenfels have even suggested that the man is not a man at all, but an Elf, possessing terrible and dark magic. So far no evidence has been procured to suggest this, but when someone is fixed on an idea, it takes a good bit more than logic to convince them otherwise. Others have suggested that "it" is not real at all. But nonetheless, the consistent string of bandits being found (dead or alive), caught in a trap of a decidedly man-made variety, are evidence that there is someone out there, though who it may be, and their origin, is entirely unknown.
Whoever it is, the Lenfel that do believe there is someone out there have taken to calling him "The Warden of the Forest". His victims mainly consist of bandits, but a few of the more barbaric, and less sane Garhim are also assumed to have met their demise at "it's" hands. The general area in which these victims are found has led to the probably accurate belief that "it" makes it's camp somewhere at the southernmost tip of the Dragonscale Mountains, but mysterious sightings have been reported as far as the western end of Wandering Woods.
Judging by the wounds which are found on the less fortunate victims, he seems to forsake the traditional Lenfel armament of sword and bow, in favor of javelins, or perhaps a spear.
All other knowledge on the "Warden of the Forest" is speculation at best. If any information on him is found, please visit 5 Long Street, Strongborough.
P.S. Although his victims have only consisted of foreigners thus far, his true allegiance is uncertain, and it is strongly advised that you do not seek him. That is all.
For great Lenfald!
The Bara Gumbad, or "big dome," is a large domed structure grouped together with the Friday mosque of Sikander Lodi and a mehman khana (guesthouse), located in New Delhi's Lodi Gardens. The buildings were constructed at different times during the Lodi era and occupy a common raised platform. Formerly an outlying area of Delhi, the Lodi Gardens are a British-planned landscaped garden which includes a number of monuments (primarily tombs) from the Sayyid and the Lodi dynasties. Originally called Willingdon Park, the gardens were located in the former village of Khairpur, now on the edge of Lutyen's Delhi, the colonial capital built by the British in the early 20th century. The gardens, which cover approx. 70 acres, have come to be surrounded by institutional buildings and some of contemporary Delhi's most expensive real estate.
Although they were built under the same dynasty, each of the three structures was undertaken separately. The Bara Gumbad, completed in 1490, is considered to have the first full dome constructed in Delhi. Its original purpose is contested; although it appears to be a freestanding tomb, it contains no tombstone. This causes the speculation that the building might have been intended as a gateway for the Friday mosque; however, their respective placements, stylistic differences, and construction dates do not support this theory. The Friday mosque, completed in 1494, is the first example of the new mosque type that developed during the Lodi era. Characterized by a relatively simple five bay prayer hall building adjacent to a simple open courtyard, this type was an important precedent for mosque architecture in the Lodi and Mughal eras.
The complex can be accessed from various points along the roads bordering the Lodi Gardens, with the access from the Lodi road towards the south most prominent. The buildings are situated at a distance of about 300 meters from Muhammad Shah's tomb towards the south and about 380 meters from Sikander Lodi's tomb towards the north. Another prominent structure, the Shish Gumbad, is located facing the Bara Gumbad at a distance of about seventy-five meters towards the north. The area surrounding the buildings is landscaped with manicured grass lawns. Few trees are planted in the immediate vicinity, leaving the view of the structures unobscured. The path winding through the Lodi Gardens approaches the buildings axially from the north, although the building plinth is accessible all from all sides.
The buildings are sited on a three-meter-high platform, measuring approximately 30 meters (east-west) by 25 meters (north-south). The Friday mosque is located along the western edge of the platform; the guesthouse is sited opposite it, occupying the eastern edge, while the Bara Gumbad is located along the southern edge. Stone masonry walls, about six meters high, connect the three structures along the southern edge. The northern edge is provided with staircases for accessing the platform. A centrally located straight flight comprising of eight steps, about ten meters wide, connects the ground to a generous mid landing. Another 'C' shaped flight of eight steps wraps around the landing, creating an amphitheatre-like space and reaching the top of the platform. The current arrangement of steps appears to be more recent, and the remains of walls adjoining the southern face of the guesthouse and the mosque indicate that the northern edge might have originally been walled. In the center of the raised court, with its southern edge along the staircase, are the remains of a square shaped platform, 8 meters wide, which appears to be a grave.
Friday mosque:
The Friday mosque is a single aisled, rectangular building, approx. 30 meters (north-south) by 8 meters (east-west). The mosque is organized in five unequal bays, which correspond to the five arched doorways on the eastern (entry) elevation. The width of the arched doorways decreases from the center towards the sides. The arches span across grey granite piers. The central arch is framed within a projecting rectangular portal, measuring about 8 meters in height by 6 meters wide. The piers of the rectangular frame are cased in dressed granite and have three shallow arched niches in red sandstone, occurring vertically above the springing point of the arch, on either side. The doorway itself is described by four receding planes of ogee arches, the outermost one being in line with the external face of the rectangular portal. The doorways immediately to the side of the central portal are about 5 meters wide, while those at the two ends are approx. 1.5 meters wide with two receding planes of ogee arches, adding to the prominence of the central doorway. The apex of each innermost arch is constant, measuring approx. 5 meters from the top of the platform. Each arch is finished in plaster and embellished with intricate carved Arabic inscriptions. The spandrels are also heavily carved with geometric motifs, and their the corners are adorned with round inscribed plaster medallions. Red sandstone eaves (chajjas) on stone brackets top the arches, interrupted only by the central projecting portal that extends above them. There is a blank plastered frieze above the eaves, followed by the projecting horizontal bands of the cornice that is topped by a blind masonry parapet adorned with petal shaped crenellations with inscribed plaster medallions.
The interior of the prayer hall reflects the five bay division of the eastern elevation. It is a rectangular space, measuring about 27 meters (north-south) by about 7 meters (east-west). Additional arches spanning between the piers on the eastern elevation and the engaged piers of the western wall emphasize the demarcation of the interior space into bays. These internal ogee arches reach a height of about five meters. They are finished in plaster and profusely decorated with carvings of Arabic inscriptions. The piers are unornamented, dressed gray granite.
The qibla (western) wall of the prayer hall is a blind wall divided into five unequal bays expressed as recessed ogee arched niches, reflecting the arched openings on the eastern wall. The two bays adjacent to the central bay have three equal niches carved out from the portion below the springing line of the main arch. These niches are separated by granite piers, which have smaller arched niches in the top third of their elevation. The three niches are made of two layers of ogee arches framed by the piers. The external layer is in gray-yellow granite, while the interior arch is made of red sandstone. The central niche is mildly distinguishable from the others because its arched portion is curved and the imposts are engraved, while those of the adjacent arches are plain. The innermost rectangular portion of the central niche is blank, while that of the adjoining niches has the carving of a vase and flora inscribed in it. The tympanum of the main outer arch is finished in plaster and has an additional niche directly above the central niche which is embellished heavily with plaster carvings of Arabic inscriptions. A band of similar inscriptions runs along the interior perimeter of the arch and around the upper niche in a closed loop. The voussoirs of the outer arch are plastered and embellished with another layer of carvings. The central bay of the western wall also has three niches, each made of four recessed planes of alternating rectangular and arched profiles. The central mihrab niche is taller and wider. It is also shallower and the innermost plane is blank, while the other two niches are deeper set with relief work. A stone minbar with three steps has been provided abutting the northern pier of the central niche.
Hemispherical domes cover the three central bays, while the terminal bays are covered by low flat vaulted ceilings. The square plan of the three central bays transitions into an octagonal drum through the application of corbelled pendentives at the corners. The corbelling occurs in four layers, which increases in width from the bottom up. The layers are further embellished with curved niches set into rectangular frames, which also increase in number, the lowest corbel having one and the last corbel having five such niches. The last layers of the pendentives form alternate edges of the octagonal drum; the remaining edges being formed by the extension of the walls and are also provided with similar curved niches. The octagonal drum transitions into a hexadecagon, followed by a thirty-two-sided polygon by the provisions of small struts. Each face of the hexadecagon is provided with shallow niches, while the thirty-two-sided polygon is described by a projecting band of red sandstone, followed by a band of inscriptions finally topped by the hemispherical dome. The dome is finished in plain plaster. The voussoirs of the arches, the pendentives and the tympanum are all covered by intricate stucco Arabic inscriptions. The central dome is relatively higher that the other two domes.
The northern and southern walls of the mosque are punctured by ogee arch doorways below the springline of the main arch. Each opening leads to a projecting balcony, comprising of red sandstone posts supporting a tiered roof. The balconies protrude out from the faade and are supported on red sandstone brackets, whose profiles and carvings are characteristic of Hindu architecture. An elaborately carved arched niche is provided above each opening on the interior wall. It is set into a rectangular frame embossed with Arabic text.
The plasterwork on the external northern and southern walls of the mosque has fallen off, exposing the stone masonry, while that on the western wall has survived. The central bay of the western wall projects out and is marked by two solid towers at the corners. These towers are divided vertically into four layers; the first two layers from the bottom are orthogonal, while the third layer has alternating curved and angular fluting; the top layer, extending over the parapet of the mosque, has a circular section. The corners of the mosque are marked by similar tapering towers, which are divided into four layers. Each layer is circular in plan except the third layer, which is described by alternating curved and angular fluting. All the towers have the remains of finials at their apex. The central projecting wall has four red sandstone brackets in its upper third portion, which may have supported a projecting balcony similar to those on the north and south elevations.
The plasterwork on the walls of the plinth is now gone, exposing the rubble masonry construction below. The western face of the plinth is punctured by five ogee arch openings set into rectangular frames, one in the center and two each on the sides. These openings provide access to the basement within the plinth.
The roof has three domes corresponding to the three central bays of the prayer hall and the three central arches on the eastern elevation. The extrados of the domes are finished in plaster. The octagonal drums supporting the domes protrude out over the roof level, above which the circular bases of the domes are decorated with blind crestings having floral motifs. The central dome is marginally larger than the adjacent domes and all three have the remains of lotus finials at their apex.
Bara Gumbad:
Square in plan, the Bara Gumbad measures approx. 20 meters per side. Set on a plinth 3 meters high, it joins the common plinth on the north and projects beyond it to the south. Its plinth is decorated on the east, south, and west with ogee arch openings set into rectangular frames. These provide access to a basement.The walls of the Bara Gumbad are approx. 12 meters tall, above which a hemispherical dome on a hexadecagonal drum extends another 14 meters from the roof level, for a total building height of 29 meters above ground level.
Each of its elevations is nearly identical and divided into 2 horizontal sections. A projecting portal composed of an ogee arch set in a rectangular frame (approx. 8 meters wide), is centered in each elevation and rises approximately 75 cm above the parapet line of the building. The 1.5 meter wide frame is made of dressed gray granite. Each vertical pier of the frame has six shallow red sandstone niches arranged atop one another at varying heights; nine niches continue in a line along the horizontal portion of the frame. The portal is described by two receding planes of grey granite ogee arches; the spandrels are cased with black granite with a thin projecting edge of red sandstone. Two round plaster medallions adorn the spandrels. The lower layer of the portal has a central doorway, spanned by two red sandstone brackets that form a trabeated arch supporting a black granite lintel. These brackets are supported on grey granite posts. An intricately carved red sandstone frame adorns the brackets and the lintel; it starts at the springing point of the arch and frames the lintel of the doorway. The entire composition is set in a rectangular yellow sandstone frame. An ogee arch window has been provided above the trabeated entrance. The portal is crowned by the arched crenellations of the blind parapet. Solid turrets mark the projecting corners of the portal.
The remainder of the elevation, that flanking the central portal on either side and recessed behind it, is divided vertically into two equivalent parts by projecting horizontal bands of stone. Each part is described by two equal arched panels set into rectangular frames. Both the panels of the upper part on either side of the portal are blind and filled with granite masonry. The lower panels located adjacent to the portal are windows, while the lower panels at the edges are filled in. The parapet, like the portal, is decorated with arched crenellations, and the roof has solid turrets at each corner.
A single hemispherical dome surmounted on a sixteen-sided drum crowns the building. Each face of the drum is described by an ogee arched niche set in a rectangular frame. The voussoirs of the arches are gray granite, while the spandrels are clad with red sandstone. The top edge of the drum is decorated with a band of arched crenellations, similar to those on the roof parapets, running above a projecting band of stone that surrounds the drum. Below this projection is band of leaves carved in relief. The extrados of the dome are finished in smooth plaster. The lotus base, possibly for a vanished calyx finial, is still extant.
The structure can be entered either from the raised courtyard via the north elevation or from a double flight of steps located on the western elevation. Inside, the square building measures about seven meters per side. An 80 cm high, 45 cm wide solid seat runs continuously along the interior perimeter of the building. Light streams in from all four walls, which are punctured by the openings of the doorway at the ground level and the ogee arch window above. The interior surfaces of the Gumbad are unornamented and finished in dressed granite. The square plan of the room transitions into an octagon via squinches, which then support the thirty-two-sided drum and the dome. The apex of the dome has two bands of floral inscriptions; otherwise, the dome is finished in plaster. The absence of historical inscriptions has contributed to the confusion over the original purpose of the Bara Gumbad.
Mehman Khana:
The third structure in the group is rectangular in plan, measuring about 27 meters (north-south) by 7 seven meters (east-west). Located along the eastern edge of the common plinth, it faces the mosque and is connected to the Bara Gumbad by a masonry wall along its northern face. The structure is believed to have either been a mehman khana, (guesthouse) or a majlis khana (assembly hall).
The building is accessed from the common plinth through its western wall, which is divided into five bays, mirroring the eastern elevation of the mosque opposite it. The three central bays are considerably larger and have ogee arch doorways, giving access to the interior, while windows puncture the smaller end bays. The arches are set in rectangular frames, which are recessed from the face of the elevation. Each opening is composed of two recessed planes of arches. The spandrels are clad in red sandstone, contrasting with the gray granite of the elevation, and are decorated with round plaster medallions with lotus motifs. The window openings have an additional tie beam or lintel at the springline. The tympanum of the window towards the south has been filled with stone, while that of the window towards the north has been left open. A continuous chajja, supported on equidistant stone brackets, projects from the western wall above the rectangular frame. The cornice is unornamented and is topped by the projecting horizontal band of the parapet, which reaches a height of approximately five meters from the top of the raised plinth. The roof of the structure is flat. The exterior of the building lacks decoration and is finished in dressed granite.
The interior is divided into seven chambers occurring from north to south; the central chamber is the largest, measuring about 5 meters (north-south) long. It is abutted by relatively narrow chambers (approx. 2.5 meters long). The outside chambers which flank the 2.5 meter wide chambers on either side are approximately the size of the central chamber, and correspond to the arched openings in the western wall. The chambers are separated from each other by gray granite walls, punctured by simple ogee arched doorways set in rectangular frames. Square in plan, the outer rooms are separated from the adjacent chambers by stone walls with rectangular door openings with blind ogee arches and rectangular frames. Each doorway has shallow rectangular recesses on either side, as well as a small arched window set into a rectangular recess and a stone jali screen set above the doorway within the tympanum of the main arch. The eastern wall of the building has blind ogee arches, occurring as two successive planes, reflecting the arched openings of the western elevation.
The roof of the central chamber is flat and supported on arches located on four sides; flat stone brackets appear at the corners. The two adjacent rooms are covered by shallow domes supported on squinches. The interior domes are finished in plaster with carved concave fluting. The exterior of the domes has been filled to blend with the flat roof of the central room.
Certain stylistic continuities are recognizable in the three buildings; each was constructed with (local) gray granite and lime mortar. However, the degree and type of embellishment, both interior and exterior, on the mosque differs substantially from that found on the other two, relatively unadorned, buildings.
Apart from the grouping of the three structures and their stylistic similarities, the buildings do not appear to have been planned as a complex. The Friday mosque is the first example of the panchmukhi building type, where "panch" (five) and "mukhi " (facade) characterize a five-bay prayer hall. This approach was influential in both the Lodi and the Mughal periods. The Bara Gumbad is significant for having the first complete hemispherical dome in Delhi.
The differences in the surface ornament of the buildings suggest that the buildings were constructed at different times, with the Bara Gumbad and the guesthouse being similar in style and decoration, without the multilayered arches of the Friday mosque. The function of the Bara Gumbad is still unknown; its geometry and form aligns with the predominant tomb architecture of the period (like the neighboring Shish Gumbad). However, there is no grave or cenotaph in the building, and rather than being blank, its qibla wall (like its other walls) is punctured by an entrance. While the continuous stone bench in the interior is also found in gateway architecture, (as in the Alai Darwaza at the Quwat-ul-Islam Mosque in Mehrauli), the size of the Bara Gumbad vis-a-vis the Friday mosque does not support this conjecture. Some scholars surmise that the structure might have been a gateway to the larger complex of tombs within the Lodi Gardens.
Lodi Dynasty
-----------------
The Lodi dynasty in India arose around 1451 after the Sayyid dynasty. The Lodhi Empire was established by the Ghizlai tribe of the Afghans. They formed the last phase of the Delhi Sultanate. There were three main rulers in the history of Lodi dynasty. All three of them have been discussed in detail in the following lines. So read on about the Lodi dynasty history.
Buhlul Khan Lodi
Buhlul Khan Lodi (1451-1489) was the founder of the Lodi dynasty in India and the first Afghan ruler of Delhi. He was an Afghan noble who was a very brave soldier. Buhlul Khan seized the throne without much resistance from the then ruler, Alam Shah. His territory was spread across Jaunpur, Gwalior and northern Uttar Pradesh. During his reign in 1486, he appointed his eldest son Barbak Shah as the Viceroy of Jaunpur. Though he was an able ruler, he really couldn't decide as to which son of his should succeed him as the heir to the throne.
Sikandar Lodi
After the death of Buhlul Khan, his second son succeeded him as the king. He was given the title of Sultan Sikander Shah. He was a dedicated ruler and made all efforts to expand his territories and strengthen his empire. His empire extended from Punjab to Bihar and he also signed a treaty with the ruler of Bengal, Alauddin Hussain Shah. He was the one who founded a new town where the modern day Agra stands. He was known to be a kind and generous ruler who cared for his subjects.
Ibrahim Lodhi
Ibrahim Lodhi was the son of Sikander who succeeded him after his death. Due to the demands of the nobles, his younger brother Jalal Khan was given a small share of the kingdom and was crowned the ruler of Jaunpur. However, Ibrahim's men assassinated him soon and the kingdom came back to Ibrahim Lodhi. Ibrahim was known to be a very stern ruler and was not liked much by his subjects. In order to take revenge of the insults done by Ibrahim, the governor of Lahore Daulat Khan Lodhi asked the ruler of Kabul, Babur to invade his kingdom. Ibrahim Lodhi was thus killed in a battle with Babur who was the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. With the death of Ibrahim Lodhi, the Lodhi dynasty also came to an end.
2005-2007
Colored pencil, modeling paste on wood panel
Collection:
Crocker Art Museum
Hereafter is a transcription of the handwritten text above:
"The confessional panel of Myself was an attempt to eradicate puerile speculation, to simply state the who of me in terms of the what of me, my skin, my song. An acknowledgement of personal Isness. The facts of the maker, the failure, he who produced and produces the skin, the song, the myth. He who is disposable and deposed by history. The face and format encapsulated within the parentheses of linear time. The who of me. He who dies. My body, this solidity which is subject to all natural controls, carries within itself the inventor of all that is defined human—god, war, art, law, alphabets, religions, history, time, science, aesthetics, mathematics, Art—all identifying characteristics of specie umano. No laws control him, not gravity, not death, nothing linear what-so-ever. His being requires no boundaries for definition, no parameters of moral rectitude. He is chaos, an infinity of possibilities. He creates himself and the reality of contradiction in which he lives. The body which encloses him, that which conforms to natural laws, exists in a constant state of compromise and approximation, a bridge between the actual and the real, that which can be seen enclosing a sphere that cannot be seen or touched or entered. This duality must invent dimension upon dimension, layer upon layer of illusion to support a balance which cannot be supported solely by one entity. It must enter into alliances with other entities to confer a shared agreement on that which is real and that which is not. A compliance of conformity, an illusion of necessity. It is within this zone of safety called community that actuality performs its catalogue of repetition, ever watchful, ever fearful of contradiction. The inventor within is a constant threat to the community without, his body a purgatory of suspension. This I believe. Every body is a duality struggling to free Itself from itself. (As I have confessed my bipolarity and homosexuality, do I now profess my shizophrenia?) This to me is the myth of Marsyas. The liberation of the skin, the song, the inner anarchist from the entrapping body of linearity, community, dogma, and death. I see no horror in the myth of Marsyas, only the exhilaration of Art. Invention of inventions, transparency of the species, epiphany of epiphanies, destroyer of illusion, invention and inventor of truth. It has become ever more fascinating to me how the most primitive of human characteristics are the most actual, actualized to the point of immutability. Resistance to an evolving humanity is fierce and uncompromising. Tribal and religious prejudice and dogma cripple the flight of the inventor...and so it has always been. The insistence for projecting out that which is internal into an existence of actuality is the struggle of reality. To make actual that which is real. To externalize that which is internal. To fuse the duality. This process of destruction and creation is our identity. This humanity. This is our Isness. This is our evolution. The body of the artist, that mortal inconsequence struggles to create and shed his skin in a process worthy of the ordeal of Marsyas. The process of destroying answers and creating questions is his fulfillment, his pain and his ecstasy. An artist deserves neither praise nor pity. Both are insults to his process of becoming. To evolve as iconoclast without the arrogance of nihility is the song of Marsyas. To challenge the gods. To contest the incontestable. To embrace failure with the joy of inevitability. This is the consequence of mortality. This is the artist’s song and his fate. The death of the body and the liberation of its song, the history and the myth—"