Badian is a 3rd class municipality in the province of Cebu, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 37,699 people. The Municipality of Badian is located 97.6 km southwest of Cebu City. It is bounded on the north by the municipality of Moalboal; on the south by the municipality of Alegria; on the east by the municipalities of Dalaguete and Argao; and on the west by Tanon Strait.

Badian is administratively subdivided into 29 barangays.

Alawijao Balhaan Banhigan Basak Basiao Bato Bugas Calangcang Candiis Dagatan Dobdob

Ginablan Lambug Malbago Malhiao Manduyong Matutinao Patong Poblacion Sanlagan

Santicon Sohoton Sulsugan Talayong Taytay Tigbao Tiguib Tubod Zaragosa

The Kawasan Falls is a three-layered waterfall series located in the Municipality of Badian, Cebu, which has become a huge attraction with foreign and local tourists throughout the years. The first waterfall is the largest and highest of the three falls, while the two falls uphill are smaller.

Kawasan Falls is located in Barangay Matutinao in Badian, Cebu. To get to Badian from Cebu City you can take a bus at the South Bus Terminal for a three hour ride that will directly take you to Badian. From there, you can take a tricycle that will take you to Barangay Matutinao.

If you are taking a private vehicle, drive past the Municipality of Carcar, and upon reaching the Municipality of Badian through the picturesque mountain road, then drive to Matutinao village. You can always ask for directions from people along the way if it is your first time to go to Kawasan Falls, so you won’t get lost.

When you reach the main road leading to Kawasan Falls, there is a main entrance to the waterfalls area and an entrance fee of 10 peso’s per person. From there, you start on a 20 to 30 minute walk on a trail that will lead you to the first waterfall.

You will then have to trek a further 10 to 15 minutes uphill to get to the second waterfall, and another 15 minute trek to the third waterfalls. There is a resort with restaurant at the area of the first waterfalls. There are small cottages and tables for rent at 300 peso’s each table as at September 2012 ( on top of the menu prices ) and several rooms for rent for those who want to stay overnight. A popular attraction is a bamboo raft ride leading to a shower under the cool falling waters of the first and second waterfall.

The Mactan International Airport is located in Mactan, Cebu; it is served by major airlines like Cebu Pacific Air and Philippine Airlines. You can also fly from Metro Manila to Cebu. There are many domestic flights and sometimes it is economical because many airlines offer a cheaper airfare. Check also for any available promo. If you arrived earlier in Cebu, you can leave straight to Badian providing you already arranged your accommodation there before your arrival or you can stay for a night in Cebu City and have your trip to Badian the next day.

Your choices to come from Cebu City to Badian are: from the airport you can take a taxi to South Bus Terminal look for Ceres Bus Liner via Barili, you can also take Librando Trans. There are buses leaving Cebu City to Badian every 30 minutes or one hour. It will take 2-3 hours or more bus travel to reach Badian from Cebu City depending on the number of stops. You can also hire a taxi at the airport or at the city to Badian, it is more comfortable and faster. Make sure the driver knows where Badian is. The fare is about Php 1500.00 - Php 3000.00 and be prepare for some bartering and some hidden costs

The capital barangay of Badian town is Poblacion. It is located in the centre of the town. This is where the local high school is located called Badian National High School ( BNHS ) is one of the two high schools in the town of Badian. This is also the largest of the two and many students from the neighbouring town just like Moalboal, Alcantara and Ronda come to study in this high school. The lower educational facility in Badian is the Badian Central Elementary School where all the younger children go to school for the simple fact that it is completely free and the only elementary school and the biggest one in town. One more very important institution that is located in Poblacion is the Town Hospital where everyone from every other barangay goes to in the time of sickness.

The facility has been better than the past management they have more improvements to the hospitals than anything else which is the best thing they could have done because this is where most Badianganons run to in the time of need. This is also the location where the town church is located ~ the church of Santiago Apostol, which celebrates its Festival on the 25th of July every year. Together with the Feast of Santiago Apostle is the Banig Festival which was started about three years ago. Poblacion is also where the Municipal Hall is located in sitio sawang. Thus, I believe that the municipality should ought to have more funding's in the Hospital Facility more so that the roads that they are trying to fix every single year Poblacion has many sitios which is the little corners of Poblacion which is residential or commercial properties. Some of these sitios are; Syma, Walog, Sawang, Highway, and many more. This is the only urban place in Badian compared to any other barangays that surround the town. Poblacion is also the most populated barangay in all Badian. Which has 3854 population as of 2007 Census. Poblacion is where the marketplace is located. Thus, most of the trading is here. Many vendors from all over town will show up mostly on Saturdays and Sundays for the trading.

Turpan (simplified Chinese: 吐鲁番; traditional Chinese: 吐魯番; pinyin: Tǔlǔfān; Uyghur: تۇرپان‎, ULY: Turpan, UYY: Turpan?), also known as Turfan or Tulufan, is a prefecture-level city located in the east of Xinjiang, People's Republic of China. It has an area of 69,324 square kilometres and a population of 570,000 (2003).

 

HISTORY

Turpan has long been the centre of a fertile oasis (with water provided by the karez canal system) and an important trade centre. It was historically located along the Silk Road, at which time it was adjacent to the kingdoms of Kroran and Yanqi. The name Turfan itself however was not used until the end of the Middle Ages - its use became widespread only in the post-Mongol period. The center of the region has shifted a number of times, from Yar-Khoto (Jiaohe, 10 km to the west of modern Turpan) to Qocho (Gaochang, 30 km to the southeast of Turpan), and to Turpan itself. Historically, many settlements in the region have been given a number of different names, some of which refer to more than one place – Turpan/Turfan/Tulufan is one such example. (Others include Loulan/Kroran/Korla, Jushi/Gushi, Gaochang/Qocho/Karakhoja, Hezhou, and Jiaohe/Yarkhoto.)

 

The peoples of the Kingdoms of Nearer and Further Jushi (the Turpan Oasis and the region to the north of the mountains near modern Jimasa), were closely related. It was originally one kingdom called Gushi, which the Chinese conquered in 107 BC. It was subdivided into two kingdoms by the Chinese in 60 BC. During the Han era the city changed hands several times between the Xiongnu and the Han, interspersed with short periods of independence.

 

After the fall of the Han dynasty in 220, the region was virtually independent but tributary to various dynasties. Until the 5th century AD, the capital of this kingdom was Jiaohe (modern Yarghul 16 kilometres west of Turpan).

 

From 487 to 541 AD, Turpan was an independent Kingdom ruled by a Turkic tribe known to the Chinese as the Tiele. The Rouran Khaganate defeated the Tiele and subjugated Turpan, but soon afterwards the Rouran were destroyed by the Göktürks.

 

TANG CONQUEST

The Tang dynasty had reconquered the Tarim Basin by the 7th century AD. During the 7th, 8th, and early 9th centuries the Tibetan Empire, the Tang Chinese, and Turks fought to conquer the Tarim Basin. Sogdians and Chinese engaged in extensive commercial activities with each other under Tang rule. The Sogdians were mostly Mazdaist at this time. Turpan, renamed Xizhou by the Tang after their armies conquered it in 640 AD, had a history of commerce and trade along the Silk Road already centuries old; it had many inns catering to merchants and other travelers, while numerous brothels are recorded in Kucha and Khotan. As a result of the Tang conquest, policies forcing minority group relocation and encouraging Han settlement led to Turpan's name in the Sogdian language becoming known as “Chinatown” or "Town of the Chinese".

 

In Astana, a contract written in Sogdian detailing the sale of a Sogdian girl to a Chinese man was discovered dated to 639 AD. Individual slaves were common among silk route houses; early documents recorded an increase in the selling of slaves in Turpan. Twenty-one 7th-century marriage contracts were found that showed, where one Sogdian spouse was present, for 18 of them their partner was a Sogdian. The only Sogdian men who married Chinese women were highly eminent officials. Several commercial interactions were recorded, for example a camel was sold priced at 14 silk bolts in 673, and a Chang'an native bought a girl age 11 for 40 silk bolts in 731 from a Sogdian merchant. Five men swore that the girl was never free before enslavement, since the Tang Code forbade commoners to be sold as slaves.

 

The Tang dynasty became weakened considerably due to the An Lushan Rebellion, and the Tibetans took the opportunity to expand into Gansu and the Western Regions. The Tibetans took control of Turfan in 792.

7th or 8th century old dumplings and wontons were found in Turfan.

 

UYGHUR RULE

In 803, the Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khaganate seized Turfan from the Tibetans. The Uyghur Khaganate however was destroyed by the Kirghiz and its capital Ordu-Baliq in Mongolia sacked in 840. The defeat resulted in the mass movement of the Uyghurs out of Mongolia and their dispersal into Gansu and Central Asia, and many joined other Uyghurs already present in Turfan. In the early twentieth century, a collection of some 900 Christian manuscripts dating to the ninth to the twelfth centuries was found at a monastery site at Turfan.

 

The Uyghurs established a Kingdom in the Turpan region with its capital in Gaochang or Kara-Khoja. The kingdom was known as the Uyghuria Idikut state or Kara-Khoja Kingdom that lasted from 856 to 1389 AD. The Uyghurs were Manichaean but later converted to Buddhism and funded the construction the cave temples in the Bezeklik Caves. The Uyghurs formed an alliance with the rulers of Dunhuang. The Uyghur state later became a vassal state of the Kara-Khitans, and then as a vassal of the Mongol Empire. This Kingdom was led by the Idikuts, or Saint Spiritual Rulers. The last Idikut left Turpan area in 1284 for Kumul, then Gansu to seek protection of Yuan Dynasty, but local Uyghur Buddhist rulers still held power until the invasion by the Moghul Hizir Khoja in 1389. The conversion of the local Buddhist population to Islam was completed nevertheless only in the second half of the 15th century.

 

After being converted to Islam, the descendants of the previously Buddhist Uyghurs in Turfan failed to retain memory of their ancestral legacy and falsely believed that the "infidel Kalmuks" (Dzungars) were the ones who built Buddhist monuments in their area.

 

15TH AND 16TH CENTURIES

As late as 1420, the Timurid envoy Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh, who passed through Turpan on the way from Herat to Beijing, reported that many of the city's residents were "infidels". He visited a "very large and beautiful" temple with a statue of Shakyamuni; in one of the versions of his account it was also claimed that many Turpanians "worshipped the cross".The Moghul ruler of Turpan Yunus Khan, also known as Ḥājjī `Ali, (ruled 1462–1478) unified Moghulistan (roughly corresponding to today's Eastern Xinjiang) under his authority in 1472. Around that time, a conflict with the Ming China started over the issues of tribute trade: Turpanians benefited from sending "tribute missions" to China, which allowed them to receive valuable gifts from the Ming emperors and to do plenty of trading on the side; the Chinese, however, felt that receiving and entertaining these missions was just too expensive. (Muslim envoys to the early Ming China were impressed by the lavish reception offered to them along their route through China, from Suzhou to Beijing, such as described by Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh in 1420–1421.

 

Yunus Khan was irritated by the restrictions on the frequency and size of Turpanian missions (no more than one mission in 5 years, with no more than 10 members) imposed by the Ming government in 1465, and by the Ming's refusal to bestow sufficiently luxurious gifts on his envoys (1469). Accordingly, in 1473 he went to war against China, and succeeded in capturing Hami in 1473 from the Oirat Mongol Henshen and holding it for a while, until Ali was repulsed by the Ming Dynasty into Turfan. He reoccupied Hami after Ming left. Henshen's Mongols recaptured Hami twice in 1482 and 1483, but the son of Ali, Ahmad Alaq, reconquered it in 1493 and captured the Hami leader and the resident of China in Hami (Hami was a vassal state to Ming). In response, the Ming Dynasty imposed an economic blockade on Turfan and kicked out all the Uyghurs from Gansu. It became so harsh for Turfan that Ahmed left. Ahmed's son Mansur succeeded him and took over Hami in 1517. These conflicts were called the Ming Turpan Border Wars.

 

Several times, after occupying Hami, Mansur tried to attack China in 1524 with 20,000 men, but was beaten by Chinese forces. The Turpan kingdom under Mansur, in alliance with Oirat Mongols, tried to raid Suzhou in Gansu in 1528, but were severely defeated by Ming Chinese forces and suffered heavy casualties. The Chinese refused to lift the economic blockade and restrictions that had led to the battles, and continued restricting Turpan's tribute and trade with China. Turfan also annexed Hami.

 

19TH CENTURY

Francis Younghusband visited Turpan in 1887 on his overland journey from Beijing to India. He said it consisted of two walled towns, a Chinese one with a population of no more than 5,000 and, about 1.6 km to the west, a Turk town of "probably" 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. The town (presumably the "Turk town") had four gateways, one for each of the cardinal directions, of solid brickwork and massive wooden doors plated with iron and covered by a semicircular bastion. The well-kept walls were of mud and about 10.7 m tall and 6 to 9 m thick, with loopholes at the top. There was a level space about 14 m wide outside the main walls surrounded by a musketry wall about 2.4 m high, with a ditch around it some 3.7 m deep and 6 m wide. There were drumtowers over the gateways, small square towers at the corners and two small square bastions between the corners and the gateways, "two to each front." Wheat, cotton, poppies, melons and grapes were grown in the surrounding fields.

 

Turpan grapes impressed other travelers to the region as well. The 19th-century Russian explorer Grigory Grumm-Grzhimaylo, thought the local raisins may be "the best in the world", and noted the buildings of a "perfectly peculiar design" used for drying them called chunche.

 

SUBDEVISIONS

Turpan directly controls 1 district and 2 counties.

 

GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE

Turpan is located about 150 km southeast of Ürümqi, Xinjiang's capital, in a mountain basin, on the northern side of the Turpan Depression, at an elevation of 30 m above sea level. Outside of Turpan is a small volcanic cone, the Turfan volcano, that is said to have erupted in 1120 as described in the Song Dynasty.

 

Turpan has a harsh, drastic, cold desert climate (Köppen BWk), with very hot and long summers, and very cold but short winters, and brief spring and autumn in between. Annual precipitation is very low, amounting to only 15.7 millimetres. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −7.6 °C in January to 32.2 °C in July; the annual mean is 14.4 °C. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 48% in December to 75% in September, sunshine is abundant and the city receives 2,912 hours of bright sunshine annually. Temperature differences between summer and winter are oppressively large (over 50 °C). The warmest months often approach the stifling intensity of cities such as Phoenix or Las Vegas, while winters produce average lows that more closely resemble frigid Minneapolis.

 

Extremes have ranged from −28.9 °C to 48.1 °C, although a reading of 49.6 °C in July 1975 is regarded as dubious.

 

However, the very heat and dryness of the summer, when combined with the area's ancient system of irrigation, allows the countryside around Turpan to produce great quantities of high-quality fruit.

 

DEMOGRAPHY

According to the 2000 census, the city of Turpan had a population of 251,652 (population density 15.99 inh./km²).

 

TRANSPORT

Turpan is served by China National Highway 312. It is the junction for the Lanzhou-Xinjiang and the Southern Xinjiang Railways.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Colne, Shackleton Hall. Grade 2 listed former Co-operative store, hall and offices, built in 1888, and renamed Shackleton Hall in 1949 in honour of J W Shackleton JP. No longer a Co-op, it is subdivided into several businesses.

 

Colne, Lancashire, North West England - Shackleton Hall, Church Street

July 2024

Badian is a 3rd class municipality in the province of Cebu, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 37,699 people. The Municipality of Badian is located 97.6 km southwest of Cebu City. It is bounded on the north by the municipality of Moalboal; on the south by the municipality of Alegria; on the east by the municipalities of Dalaguete and Argao; and on the west by Tanon Strait.

Badian is administratively subdivided into 29 barangays.

Alawijao Balhaan Banhigan Basak Basiao Bato Bugas Calangcang Candiis Dagatan Dobdob

Ginablan Lambug Malbago Malhiao Manduyong Matutinao Patong Poblacion Sanlagan

Santicon Sohoton Sulsugan Talayong Taytay Tigbao Tiguib Tubod Zaragosa

The Kawasan Falls is a three-layered waterfall series located in the Municipality of Badian, Cebu, which has become a huge attraction with foreign and local tourists throughout the years. The first waterfall is the largest and highest of the three falls, while the two falls uphill are smaller.

Kawasan Falls is located in Barangay Matutinao in Badian, Cebu. To get to Badian from Cebu City you can take a bus at the South Bus Terminal for a three hour ride that will directly take you to Badian. From there, you can take a tricycle that will take you to Barangay Matutinao.

If you are taking a private vehicle, drive past the Municipality of Carcar, and upon reaching the Municipality of Badian through the picturesque mountain road, then drive to Matutinao village. You can always ask for directions from people along the way if it is your first time to go to Kawasan Falls, so you won’t get lost.

When you reach the main road leading to Kawasan Falls, there is a main entrance to the waterfalls area and an entrance fee of 10 peso’s per person. From there, you start on a 20 to 30 minute walk on a trail that will lead you to the first waterfall.

You will then have to trek a further 10 to 15 minutes uphill to get to the second waterfall, and another 15 minute trek to the third waterfalls. There is a resort with restaurant at the area of the first waterfalls. There are small cottages and tables for rent at 300 peso’s each table as at September 2012 ( on top of the menu prices ) and several rooms for rent for those who want to stay overnight. A popular attraction is a bamboo raft ride leading to a shower under the cool falling waters of the first and second waterfall.

The Mactan International Airport is located in Mactan, Cebu; it is served by major airlines like Cebu Pacific Air and Philippine Airlines. You can also fly from Metro Manila to Cebu. There are many domestic flights and sometimes it is economical because many airlines offer a cheaper airfare. Check also for any available promo. If you arrived earlier in Cebu, you can leave straight to Badian providing you already arranged your accommodation there before your arrival or you can stay for a night in Cebu City and have your trip to Badian the next day.

Your choices to come from Cebu City to Badian are: from the airport you can take a taxi to South Bus Terminal look for Ceres Bus Liner via Barili, you can also take Librando Trans. There are buses leaving Cebu City to Badian every 30 minutes or one hour. It will take 2-3 hours or more bus travel to reach Badian from Cebu City depending on the number of stops. You can also hire a taxi at the airport or at the city to Badian, it is more comfortable and faster. Make sure the driver knows where Badian is. The fare is about Php 1500.00 - Php 3000.00 and be prepare for some bartering and some hidden costs

The capital barangay of Badian town is Poblacion. It is located in the centre of the town. This is where the local high school is located called Badian National High School ( BNHS ) is one of the two high schools in the town of Badian. This is also the largest of the two and many students from the neighbouring town just like Moalboal, Alcantara and Ronda come to study in this high school. The lower educational facility in Badian is the Badian Central Elementary School where all the younger children go to school for the simple fact that it is completely free and the only elementary school and the biggest one in town. One more very important institution that is located in Poblacion is the Town Hospital where everyone from every other barangay goes to in the time of sickness.

The facility has been better than the past management they have more improvements to the hospitals than anything else which is the best thing they could have done because this is where most Badianganons run to in the time of need. This is also the location where the town church is located ~ the church of Santiago Apostol, which celebrates its Festival on the 25th of July every year. Together with the Feast of Santiago Apostle is the Banig Festival which was started about three years ago. Poblacion is also where the Municipal Hall is located in sitio sawang. Thus, I believe that the municipality should ought to have more funding's in the Hospital Facility more so that the roads that they are trying to fix every single year Poblacion has many sitios which is the little corners of Poblacion which is residential or commercial properties. Some of these sitios are; Syma, Walog, Sawang, Highway, and many more. This is the only urban place in Badian compared to any other barangays that surround the town. Poblacion is also the most populated barangay in all Badian. Which has 3854 population as of 2007 Census. Poblacion is where the marketplace is located. Thus, most of the trading is here. Many vendors from all over town will show up mostly on Saturdays and Sundays for the trading.

Highbridge, The Bronx

 

Summary

 

The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge in the South Bronx was constructed in 1887-88 to the design of Alfred E. Barlow, a little-known architect who began his career in suburban residences. Highbridgeville (later known as Highbridge) developed along the high ridge of land along the Harlem River located to the south and east of High Bridge (1838-48, John B. Jervis, engineer), part of the Croton Aqueduct system that brought New York City its first adequate water supply. The village was initially populated with the workers (mostly Irish) who built the aqueduct, bridge, and also the railroad along the river. A Protestant “Union Sunday-School of Highbridgeville” was established in 1860, and a chapel was built in 1866 on Highbridge (later Ogden) Avenue.

 

After 1874, the church became affiliated with the Reformed Church of America, and became known as the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. As the congregation grew, a larger building was needed. The significant firm of D.C. Weeks & Son was the builder. Built of random-coursed, rockfaced gneiss ashlar with red sandstone trim, the church is one story with a taller square bell tower at the southwest corner. The Ogden Avenue facade has a steeply-pitched gable and three round-arched windows with voussoirs, connected to the tower by a tourelle, and both side elevations have buttresses and round-arched windows with leaded stained glass.

 

The eastern (altar) end contains a leaded stained-glass rose window (1889) manufactured by the Tiffany Glass Co., with a geometric design composed of seven circular motifs. The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge (now Highbridge Community Church), one of the Bronx’s significant 19th-century religious structures, is also one of the finest surviving churches in New York City in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, named after one of the greatest American architects, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886). It is particularly unusual within New York as a more informal, suburban example of the style.

 

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

 

Union Reformed Church of Highbridge

 

Highbridgeville (later known as Highbridge) in the South Bronx developed on the high ridge of land along the Harlem River located to the east of High Bridge (1838-48, John B. Jervis, engineer), which was constructed as part of the Croton Aqueduct system that brought New York City its first adequate fresh water supply. The village was initially settled by the workers who built the Croton Aqueduct and High Bridge, as well as the railroad along the river. Almost entirely Irish originally, these workers were followed later by other European and Jewish immigrants. The Bronx shore of the Harlem River began to be subdivided in the later 19th century for building lots along the main thoroughfare, Highbridge Avenue. It was re-named Ogden Avenue in 1876, in honor of William B. Ogden (1805-1877), the first mayor of Chicago and first president of the Union Pacific Railroad, who after his retirement owned a Highbridge estate called “Villa Boscobel.” Initially, there were few neighborhood amenities and but one small district school; this was replaced by Public School 91 (1889, George W. Debevoise), 1257 Ogden Avenue.

 

As no church was located within several miles of Highbridgeville, the area’s Protestants organized a religious congregation in October 1860, which was led by William Newton Clark and incorporated in 1864. The “Union Sunday-School of Highbridgeville” held classes in various neighborhood buildings until funds were donated to purchase property and to construct a chapel on Highbridge Avenue. After its completion in 1866, it became the religious center of the community with regular Sunday School meetings. In order to establish a formal church, the congregation called a meeting in June 1874 to vote on a specific Protestant denomination. The Reformed Church of America was chosen and, after official recognition, the church became known as the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. From 1870 to 1884, the church was served by the pastor of the Mott Haven Reformed Church, Rev. Hasbroek DuBois. After 1884, with the installation of its own minister, Daniel Hoffman Martin, the membership of the church grew rapidly and a larger building was needed. Additional property was purchased, the old chapel was moved to the east, and a new church edifice constructed between December 1887 and its dedication in December 1888, at a contracted cost of $18,000. The rockfaced gneiss church, measuring 43 by 70 feet, was designed by Alfred E. Barlow in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, then at the height of its popularity. The New York Times called it a “new and picturesque home.” D.C. Weeks & Son was the builder. This significant firm, established in 1840 by DeWitt Clinton Weeks and including his son, Francis

 

M. Weeks, as a partner in the 1860s, was responsible for the construction of numerous mansions, churches, institutions, and office buildings in New York and elsewhere, including St. Thomas Church (1865, Richard M. Upjohn; demolished), Fifth Avenue and West 53rd Street; the first American Museum of Natural History (1874-77, Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould; demolished); World (Pulitzer) Building (1888-90, George B. Post; demolished), Park Row and Frankfort Street; Biltmore, the George W. Vanderbilt Estate (1888-95, Richard Morris Hunt), Asheville, North Carolina; and Morton F. Plant Residence (1903-05, Robert W. Gibson), 651 Fifth Avenue.

 

The Richardsonian Romanesque style was named after one of America’s greatest architects, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), who created an American interpretation of the Romanesque based on French and Italian prototypes. His Trinity Church (1873-77), Boston, as well as his many libraries and other buildings, firmly established Richardson’s professional reputation and launched the popularity and influence of the style. Following Richardson’s precedent, many architects employed it in the 1880s and 90s for a wide variety of building types, ranging from mansions to courthouses, university structures, and railroad stations, and including many notable churches. The style was characterized by its appearance of massiveness and such features as rockfaced masonry, round-arched fenestration, and steeply pitched roofs with towers and dormers. The noted architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler expressed the opinion in 1903 that “the Romanesque, in the Richardsonian version of it, gave a more rational promise in church building than in almost any other of the phases... there is very much to be said in favor of Romanesque as the most suitable style for church architecture.”

 

The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge is one of the finest remaining examples of the style in New York City. The major features of the church, including the asymmetrical massing of the forms, the bell tower, the arched openings, and the rockfaced gneiss stonework accented by red sandstone, combine to create a masterful, skillfully articulated, and characteristic example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It is particularly unusual within New York City as a more informal, suburban example of the style. A contemporary example outside of New York is St. Mary’s-in-Tuxedo (1887-88, William A. Potter), Tuxedo Park. Only a few major, fully-urban examples of the style survive in Manhattan, including Holy Trinity (later St. Martin’s) Episcopal Church, Rectory, and Parish House (1887-89, Potter), 230 Lenox Avenue in Harlem; and St. Agnes Parish House (now part of Trinity School)(c. 1890-92, Potter), 121 West 71st Street.

 

In 1889, a leaded stained-glass rose window manufactured by the Tiffany Glass Co., with a geometric design composed of seven circular motifs, was installed in the rear (altar end) of the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), originally a painter and later a decorator, started working in stained-glass windows in the mid-1870s and established the Tiffany Glass Co. in 1885. The firm’s early work was largely in the development of ornamental stained glass for windows, which were notable for their brilliant colors and the varied textures within the glass. Robert Koch, in his study Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass (1982), noted that “the best Tiffany windows made prior to 1890 are generally those of purely decorative and geometric design. Examples of such ornamental use of glass may be seen in... the windows of the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge.” Koch further noted the increasing rarity of in situ Tiffany windows in New York, based on an 1893 listing of churches and public buildings in the U.S. containing Tiffany work – “since that time more than half of the churches in New York in which Tiffany had a hand in the decoration have been demolished.”

 

Alfred E. Barlow, Architect

 

Little is known of the background of architect Alfred E. Barlow (1855-1926), who was apparently born in Brooklyn, the son of English-born machinist John Barlow. His career, however, strongly parallels that of fellow architect William Augustus Bates. Barlow was first listed in New York and Brooklyn directories as an architect in 1877, thereafter with an office in Manhattan and residence in Brooklyn. Bates and Barlow were two of the founders (along with Thomas Hastings and Cass Gilbert, etc.) in 1879 of the Architectural Sketch Club, which became the Architectural League of New York the following year. A League publication in 1906 stated that “most of [the founders] were at that time in the employ of Herter Brothers,” one of the nation’s leading interior decoration firms. Bates (1853-1922), the son of a New Jersey lumber merchant, was born in Michigan, educated in Cleveland, and entered Herter Brothers as a draftsman in 1872, where he remained until around 1881, working on one of the most noteworthy commissions of the day -- the decoration of William H. Vanderbilt’s twin mansions (1879-82, Trench & Snook; demolished), Fifth Avenue and West 51st Street. Bates established his own architectural practice in 1882, which specialized in country estates, resort buildings, and suburban houses. He was one of the leading (if lesser known) East Coast proponents of the Queen Anne style (closely influenced by English architect Richard Norman Shaw), as well as the Shingle style. Both Bates and Barlow contributed designs to William T. Comstock’s publication American Cottages (1883), and numerous of Bates’s designs around the country were published in contemporary architectural periodicals, as were some of Barlow’s, including “Astonfield” (1882), a Queen Anne style country estate for Samuel Rhodes. Bates designed Wentworth Hall and Cottages (1881-89), a large resort complex in the White Mountains at Jackson, New Hampshire, as well as the Wentworth residence (1891-92); and at least five houses (1888-99) in the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York. The wealthy pharmaceutical businessman and real estate developer William Van Duzer Lawrence (who founded Sarah Lawrence College in 1926), a friend of Bates from Michigan, hired him in 1890 as lead architect for the planned suburban community of Lawrence Park in Bronxville, New York. Bates moved here by 1893, and worked in the community until his death in 1922, including as a partner in the firm of Bates & [Kenneth G.] How after 1910. Bates’s houses (at least 35 of which are extant) were mostly in variants of the Shingle style.

 

The exact nature of the collaboration between Barlow and Bates is unknown, although they shared the same office address from 1885 until 1910, and an architectural directory listed them as “Barlow & Bates” in 1892. It is probable that Barlow performed work for Bates. They were also associated architects for the Mission Revival style Hotel Gramatan (1905; demolished) in Lawrence Park (which became Bates’s residence). New York’s Great Industries in 1884 had described Barlow as a partner in the firm of Charles W. Romeyn & Co., along with Arthur Jay Stever, working on projects such as Alfred Corning Clark’s enormous Dakota Stables building (1883; demolished) at Broadway and West 75th Street. There are not many known independent commissions of Alfred E. Barlow, though a few of them were prominent. He designed five rowhouses (1887) at 15-23 West 120th Street; the Ivy Club remodeling (1887; demolished), Princeton University; the Berkeley Lyceum (1887-88; demolished), 21 West 44th Street, a theater for amateur players; the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge (1887-88); the medieval chateau-inspired Samuel R. Smith Infirmary (1888-90), 101 Stanley Avenue, Staten Island; a stable/loft building (1891) at 19 Vestry Street; a neo-Federal style town house (1904) at 868 Lexington Avenue; and a store-and-loft building (1907) at 49 West 45th Street. In 1910, Barlow was living in Red Bank, New Jersey, he declared bankruptcy in 1916, he had moved by 1920 to Long Island City, and died in St. Petersburg, Florida.

 

Later History of the Church A large stone parsonage was constructed nearby in 1890, which remained in use until 1925

 

– it was sold and moved down the block, extant today at No. 49 West 167th Street. Due to the growth of the congregation, utilitarian additions were made to the rear of the church (apparently in 1901 and 1913). Rev. Daniel G. Verway served as the pastor for thirty years, until 1946. The old chapel building was demolished for an ambitious educational building (Walter J. Campbell, architect) planned with quarters for the pastor and sexton and administrative offices – it was never completed and only a utilitarian two-story, brick-clad Sunday School building was constructed in 1924 at the eastern end of the church property (this structure and the easternmost 50 feet of the lot are excluded from this designation).

 

The 19th-century character of Highbridge, composed mostly of small homes, changed greatly with the construction of large apartment buildings in the 20th century, spurred in part by the Jerome Avenue elevated railroad in 1918 and the subway (with a stop at the Grand Concourse and 161st Street) in 1933. The Art Deco style Noonan Plaza Apartments (1931, Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine), bordering the church’s property to the south, is one of the premiere complexes in the neighborhood. After World War II, the southwest Bronx, including Highbridge and the area of the Grand Concourse, began to suffer a severe decline. The rapid de-industrialization of the city, increasing suburbanization, heavy-handed urban renewal policies, disinvestment by area landlords, and the redlining of much of the Bronx by local banks all contributed to the economic downturn of the area. The owners of Noonan Plaza defaulted in 1976, and during the 1970s, many apartment buildings were abandoned by their owners and were set on fire, and the neighborhood suffered a catalogue of ills until it began to stabilize in the 1980s. The demographic composition of the Highbridge neighborhood also underwent substantial changes. The area’s residents, largely of European Jewish extraction, began to move to suburban areas, and the west Bronx became a diverse urban community as African-Americans and Latin Americans settled here. By the 1980s, the neighborhood began to experience renewal, as seen by the rehabilitation of Noonan Plaza in 1980-82 for federally subsidized apartments. The former Union Reformed Church of Highbridge, now Highbridge Community Church (sharing its building with Emmanuel Presbyterian Church) stands as a poignant reminder of the earlier history of the Highbridge neighborhood, and is one of the most distinctive churches in the Bronx and New York City.

 

Description

 

Built of random-coursed, rockfaced gneiss ashlar with red sandstone trim, the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge is a one-story structure with a taller square bell tower at the southwest corner. The wide, steeply-pitched roof (originally covered by slate shingles, now asphalt shingles) terminates at the eastern end in a polygonal louvered cupola with a tall conical roof. West (Ogden Avenue) Facade: The west facade, rising from a stone foundation/retaining wall with a stone watertable, consists of the main body of the church with a steeply-pitched gable and three round-arched windows with voussoirs, connected to the bell tower by a tourelle with a conical roof (capped by roofing tiles) and a pierced parapet wall. The base of the tourelle was originally columnar, but was re-built battered. The three windows have geometric-patterned leaded stained glass (covered by plexiglass panels). The gable, tourelle, and tower are pierced by slit windows. A utility meter is attached to the base of the church.

 

The peak of the gable bears an historic ornamental wrought-iron cross. Tower: A cornerstone at the base of the tower bears the date “1888.” Each face of the top section of the tower (which contains an 1866 bell, from the earlier chapel) has large corner columns above a stone molding, two round sandstone arches (originally with louvers, many of which survive) supported by sandstone colonnettes, surmounted by a checkerboard-patterned spandrel and a corbelled stone cornice. The eaves are bracketed. The pyramidal roof of the tower was originally covered with slate shingles (now asphalt shingles); the base of the original ornamental weathervane is extant. South Facade: The main entrance is in the base of the tower, approached by three bluestone steps. The round-arched surround consists of a compound-molded sandstone arch, surmounted by rockfaced sandstone voussoirs, and supported by triple rockfaced sandstone columns with molded capitals, edged by quoins. There are non-historic wooden double doors.

 

The wooden tympanum is ornamented by carved foliation surrounding a circle. A small Gothic lantern hangs above the entrance. The main body of the church has stone buttresses alternating with round-arched windows with leaded stained glass (covered by metal-mesh grilles) and voussoirs. The east end flares out into a polygonal wing capped by a peaked polygonal roof that joins the main gable roof; a stone chimney rises from the juncture with this wing. There is a non-historic metal door in the basement at this end. North Facade: The north entrance, at the western end, is located in a pedimented portico, supported by bracketed stone piers, with grey slate shingle facing and a peaked roof. The round-arched entrance surround consists of a sandstone tympanum surmounted by double rows of rockfaced sandstone voussoirs, supported by triple rockfaced sandstone columns with molded capitals. The spandrel has stone corbels supporting a molded cornice. There are three bluestone steps and non-historic wooden double doors.

 

The main body of the church has stone buttresses alternating with round-arched windows with leaded stained glass (covered by metal-mesh grilles) and voussoirs. Two non-historic lanterns are placed next to the buttresses. The east end flares out into a polygonal wing capped by a peaked polygonal roof that joins the main gable roof. East Facade: The original east facade, clad in red brick, consists of the main central body of the church (now partly obscured) having a taller central pavilion with a hipped roof that rises to the polygonal louvered cupola, flanked by the polygonal wings. The central pavilion contains a Tiffany Glass Co. leaded stained-glass rose window (1889), composed of a geometric design with seven circular motifs (covered by a square metal-mesh grille). The southern polygonal wing has a paneled wooden door and a window (both covered with metal-mesh grilles). There are two utilitarian one-story additions (apparently 1901 and 1913), clad in brick (the northernmost is parged with concrete) and pierced by windows and a door.

 

Property Features: Along Ogden Avenue there is a stone post with non-historic wrought-iron gates, and an historic wrought-iron fence (with signage) atop the stone retaining wall to the north of church; and bluestone steps, stone posts, historic wrought-iron gates, and an historic wrought-iron fence atop the stone retaining wall to the south. On the south side are bluestone stairs (with iron railings) leading to the basement at the east end; bluestone stairs with cheek walls and wrought-iron railings leading to the entrance; a low rubble stone retaining wall bordering the lawn; and a flagstone and concrete walkway. On the north side are an asphalt driveway; a flagstone walkway by the church; and a yard. On the east side are an asphalt parking lot, yard, and a walkway.

 

- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

 

Edmund Bowman senior arrived in SA from Van Diemens Land in 1838 with his brothers. They soon had leasehold runs along the Wakefield River from near its source in the Tothill Ranges beyond Manoora to its estuary at Port Wakefield. Edmund died young in 1866 whilst trying to cross the Wakefield River at one of his stations called Two Mile near Werocata station on the lower Wakefield River. His upper stations were Martindale, Wirrilla,and Holm Hill. He converted these leasehold runs into freehold in the 1850s and 1860s. After Edmund's death the properties were run by trustees until his eldest son Edmund Junior reached the age of majority in 1878.

 

Apart from the Wakefield River runs Edmund Bowman also purchased the southern half of Willogoleeche Run near Hallett in the 1850s. Bowmans run was called Wandilla and it was near Burra. With his brothers Edmund Bowman Senior also ran the Crystal Brook run until it was resumed by the government for closer settlement in 1874.

 

After 1878 young Edmund the son indulged his passions and built a grand mansion Martindale Hall at great cost. When interest rates changed and droughts came Edmund Junior sold off Martindale Hall and some lands and he moved onto Wandilla station. In 1878 the young Bowman inherited 18,000 acres at Wandilla, 25,000 acres at Mt Bryan, 9,000 acres at Martindale, 5,500 acres at Wirrilla, 1,600 acres at Holm Hill and 25,000 acres at Werocata which included 10,000 acres at Pareora or Two Mile station. Edmund Junior ran his properties with his brother Charles William.

 

In the mid 1880s Martindale was sold to the Tennant family. In 1886 Werocata was sold to Stephen Ralli . Pareora was sold in 1895 to Gustav Gebhardt of Mackerode station.

 

Edmund stayed on Wandilla station until around 1918. But he also had a town house at Kensington Park. He retired to this stone house constructed around an earlier dwelling at Kensington Park in Wandilla Street which was changed to Yeronga Avenue. Edmund Bowman junior died at Wandilla house in 1921. His wife and daughters lived on in the house until it was sold in 1940 to wind up his estate. At that time nearly 3 acres of land was sold to make 19 suburban blocks of land with a new street to link Wandilla Street with Beulah Road extension. Wandilla House is a large freestone house built around 1890 by its appearance. Its sale ended the Edmund Senior and Junior Bowman links with the pastoral industry in South Australia. .

Badian is a 3rd class municipality in the province of Cebu, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 37,699 people. The Municipality of Badian is located 97.6 km southwest of Cebu City. It is bounded on the north by the municipality of Moalboal; on the south by the municipality of Alegria; on the east by the municipalities of Dalaguete and Argao; and on the west by Tanon Strait.

Badian is administratively subdivided into 29 barangays.

Alawijao Balhaan Banhigan Basak Basiao Bato Bugas Calangcang Candiis Dagatan Dobdob

Ginablan Lambug Malbago Malhiao Manduyong Matutinao Patong Poblacion Sanlagan

Santicon Sohoton Sulsugan Talayong Taytay Tigbao Tiguib Tubod Zaragosa

The Kawasan Falls is a three-layered waterfall series located in the Municipality of Badian, Cebu, which has become a huge attraction with foreign and local tourists throughout the years. The first waterfall is the largest and highest of the three falls, while the two falls uphill are smaller.

Kawasan Falls is located in Barangay Matutinao in Badian, Cebu. To get to Badian from Cebu City you can take a bus at the South Bus Terminal for a three hour ride that will directly take you to Badian. From there, you can take a tricycle that will take you to Barangay Matutinao.

If you are taking a private vehicle, drive past the Municipality of Carcar, and upon reaching the Municipality of Badian through the picturesque mountain road, then drive to Matutinao village. You can always ask for directions from people along the way if it is your first time to go to Kawasan Falls, so you won’t get lost.

When you reach the main road leading to Kawasan Falls, there is a main entrance to the waterfalls area and an entrance fee of 10 peso’s per person. From there, you start on a 20 to 30 minute walk on a trail that will lead you to the first waterfall.

You will then have to trek a further 10 to 15 minutes uphill to get to the second waterfall, and another 15 minute trek to the third waterfalls. There is a resort with restaurant at the area of the first waterfalls. There are small cottages and tables for rent at 300 peso’s each table as at September 2012 ( on top of the menu prices ) and several rooms for rent for those who want to stay overnight. A popular attraction is a bamboo raft ride leading to a shower under the cool falling waters of the first and second waterfall.

The Mactan International Airport is located in Mactan, Cebu; it is served by major airlines like Cebu Pacific Air and Philippine Airlines. You can also fly from Metro Manila to Cebu. There are many domestic flights and sometimes it is economical because many airlines offer a cheaper airfare. Check also for any available promo. If you arrived earlier in Cebu, you can leave straight to Badian providing you already arranged your accommodation there before your arrival or you can stay for a night in Cebu City and have your trip to Badian the next day.

Your choices to come from Cebu City to Badian are: from the airport you can take a taxi to South Bus Terminal look for Ceres Bus Liner via Barili, you can also take Librando Trans. There are buses leaving Cebu City to Badian every 30 minutes or one hour. It will take 2-3 hours or more bus travel to reach Badian from Cebu City depending on the number of stops. You can also hire a taxi at the airport or at the city to Badian, it is more comfortable and faster. Make sure the driver knows where Badian is. The fare is about Php 1500.00 - Php 3000.00 and be prepare for some bartering and some hidden costs

The capital barangay of Badian town is Poblacion. It is located in the centre of the town. This is where the local high school is located called Badian National High School ( BNHS ) is one of the two high schools in the town of Badian. This is also the largest of the two and many students from the neighbouring town just like Moalboal, Alcantara and Ronda come to study in this high school. The lower educational facility in Badian is the Badian Central Elementary School where all the younger children go to school for the simple fact that it is completely free and the only elementary school and the biggest one in town. One more very important institution that is located in Poblacion is the Town Hospital where everyone from every other barangay goes to in the time of sickness.

The facility has been better than the past management they have more improvements to the hospitals than anything else which is the best thing they could have done because this is where most Badianganons run to in the time of need. This is also the location where the town church is located ~ the church of Santiago Apostol, which celebrates its Festival on the 25th of July every year. Together with the Feast of Santiago Apostle is the Banig Festival which was started about three years ago. Poblacion is also where the Municipal Hall is located in sitio sawang. Thus, I believe that the municipality should ought to have more funding's in the Hospital Facility more so that the roads that they are trying to fix every single year Poblacion has many sitios which is the little corners of Poblacion which is residential or commercial properties. Some of these sitios are; Syma, Walog, Sawang, Highway, and many more. This is the only urban place in Badian compared to any other barangays that surround the town. Poblacion is also the most populated barangay in all Badian. Which has 3854 population as of 2007 Census. Poblacion is where the marketplace is located. Thus, most of the trading is here. Many vendors from all over town will show up mostly on Saturdays and Sundays for the trading.

House built for William Martin Letchford, later enlarged by George Wilcox. [Photo from State Library of SA: B 71051 (c1878).]

 

Original house built c1856 on land owned by William Martin Letchford, leased 1877 to Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson. Purchased, enlarged & named Eynesbury by George Wilcox 1881, property subdivided 1919, house purchased 1919 by Henry Maxwell Bradford, later converted to flats, leased 1980s by religious group, leased as a school 1990-2001, now private.

 

“District Councils. . . Mitcham. . . [Letter] from W. M. Letchford, for culvert to his entrance on Unley-road, offering to pay half cost of same — to be attended to.” [Register 28 Aug 1872]

 

R Hickson, Lower Mitcham [Adelaide Directories 1878, 1879]

 

“Mr Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson. . . From 1874 to 1881 he was engineer-in-chief of harbours and jetties In South Australia.” [Sydney Morning Herald 29 Jun 1923]

 

“A garden party, followed by a banquet, was given to the Stow Church Choir and their friends on Saturday, October 19, by Mr. and Mrs. George Wilcox, at their residence, ‘Eynesbury’, Lower Mitcham. During the afternoon outdoor games were participated in, and in the evening about forty guests sat down to the spread.” [Evening Journal 21 Oct 1889]

 

“the beautiful grounds of Eynesbury, the residence of Mr. George Wilcox at Mitcham, presented a busy scene when a strawberry fete in aid of the building fond for a new Anglican church at Hawthorn was held.” [Advertiser 15 Nov 1897]

 

“the fine wisteria climbing over Mr. George Wilcox's residence, Eynesbury, Mitcham, shows the enormous growth to advantage. The wisteria is 30 ft. high, and covers a space of over 1,200 ft., and now that it is in full bloom makes a beautiful exhibit.” [Critic, Adelaide 13 Oct 1900]

 

“The late Mr. George Wilcox purchased the property from Mr. Letchford, of the firm of Messrs. Shuttleworth & Letehford in March, 1881, but the owner was not living there at the time, as Capt Hickson, the Engineer for Harbours, was then renting the place. When Mr. Wilcox took possession the whole of the back portion of the land was under vines, but these were subsequently rooted out. The late Mr. Wilcox also imported all the ornate ironwork for the front gates, fence, and balconies. These were purchased by his son, Mr. John Wilcox, while he was in England. The first consignment of .this material went to the bottom of the sea on a sailing ship off the coast of Ireland in 1884, and the duplicate set ordered is that now standing at Eynesbury House.” [Register 8 May 1919]

 

“'Eynesbury House', Unley Road, formerly the residence of the late Sir. George Wilcox. This imposing mansion, which is massively built of stone, is famed throughout Australia for its wonderful wistaria [sic] creeper. The estate, which comprises some 20 odd acres, has just been subdivided, leaving 3 acres of garden surrounding the house, and the balance of the land (together with the beautiful tree-studded paddock adjoining Mr. Alfred Wilkinson's residence) has been surveyed into 66 residential sites, and named 'Kingswood Park'. 'Eynesbury House' contains 12 rooms, also magnificent ballroom (52 x 25 ft.), and extensive domestic offices. For a family residence, a high-class guest home, for residential flats, or for a rest home it would be hard indeed to find its equal. The trustees of the estate (Elder's Trustee & Executor Co.. Ltd., and Mr. Sydney Wilcox) have instructed Messrs. Wilkinson, Panda, & Wyles to dispose of the property by public auction. . . To ensure its sale, the nominal upset price of £1,700 has been placed on ‘Eynesbury House' (with 3 acres).” [The Mail 10 May 1919, p 11]

 

“Eynesbury House. . . The residence of the late Mr. George Wilcox, containing 12 rooms, &c. realised £1,825, the purchaser being Mr. J. Milburn. The iron fencing on the Unley road frontage of the estate was sold separately, and realized the sum of £120.” [Register 29 May 1919]

 

“the following sales by public auction and private contract. . . Account Messrs. Milburn and Jeffery — the well-known two-story residence of 14 rooms, &c., known as Eynesbury House, Kingswood Park, to Mr. H. M. Bradford.” [Register 4 Dec 1919]

 

“Mr. W. M. Bradford, 'Eynesbury', Unley, referring to the 380 ft. of iron palisading, presented to the Town Council by Mr, Willcox [sic]; as he had purchased 'Eynesbury’, he would be pleased to make the Council an offer for 120 ft. of same, as he desired to replace the home as Mr. Willcox left it.” [Bunyip, Gawler 5 Mar 1920]

 

“Mitcham Study Circle. At the invitation of the Misses Humphris, the opening meeting of the Study Circle will be held at Eynesbury House, 69 Victoria terrace, Mitcham.” [Advertiser 23 Feb 1934]

 

“Super U. furn. flats, s.c. 5 or 6 rooms, adults, garage, Eynesbury House, 69 Victoria terrace. L. Mitcham.” [Advertiser 18 Nov 1936 advert]

 

WILLIAM MARTIN LETCHFORD

“At a meeting of the ratepayers, held at the Brownhill Creek Inn, Mitcham. . . Mr. William Letchford was duly elected to serve as a Councillor for the year 1858.” [Register 2 Jul 1858]

 

“LETCHFORD. — On the 16th July, at Lower Mitcham, after 12 hours' illness, Anne, the beloved wife of W. M. Letchford, aged 36 years.” [Register 17 Jul 1872]

 

“the death of Mrs. W. M. Letchford. . . at Mitcham. . . Mrs. Letchford leaves seven young children behind her.” [Register 17 Jul 1872]

 

“LETCHFORD — CHAMBERS.— On the 4th June, at the residence of the bride's father, Mr. Wm. Walker, Parade, Norwood, by the Rev. W. L. Binks, W. M. Letchford, of Lower Mitcham, to Anne, widow of the late Thomas Waterhouse Chambers.” [Advertiser 18 Jun 1874]

 

“For Sale.— The Valuable Freehold Property, known as the Residence of Mr. W. M. Letchford, comprising 18 Acres of Land, on the Unley and Mitcham Road, together with the Excellent Family Residence erected thereon, and Stabling, Storerooms, Wine Cellars, Tanks, and every requisite required.” [Register 1 Jul 1876 advert]

 

“For Sale, or To be Let on Lease, with or without Right of Purchase, the Residence of the undersigned, Grove Villa, Lower Mitcham. . . W. M. Letchford.” [Evening Journal 26 Dec 1876 advert].

 

“At Glenelg fronting the sea wall, a handsome villa residence in the Italian style is being erected for Mr. W. M. Letchford.” Advertiser 10 Jan 1877]

 

“LETCHFORD. — On the 13th December, at Albert-terrace [now South Esplanade], Glenelg, William Martin Letchford, aged 56 years.” [Advertiser 14 Dec 1880]

 

“Mr. W. M. Letchford. . . many years ago established the soap and candle factory in South Adelaide which is now known as Tidmarsh & Co.'s. Since then, for a number of years, he has carried on business as a land and estate agent, and was confidential manager for Mr. T. G. Waterhouse. . . South Australian Carrying Company. . . Equitable Insurance Company, and also of the Equitable Building and Investment Society.” [Register 14 Dec 1880]

 

ROBERT ROWAN PURDON HICKSON

“On Wednesday morning, June 30, the professional and clerical staff of the Department of Harbours and Jetties waited upon the Engineer, Mr. Hickson, in his office, for the purpose of bidding him farewell prior to the dissolution of the department, which was to take effect on the following day.” [Register 3 Jul 1880]

 

“Mr. Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson, I.S.O. . . born in .1842, in County Kerry, Ireland, and served articles as an engineer to James Burton, engineer-in-chief of the principal works in the North of Ireland, He was appointed to take charge of the Carlingford Harbor works in 1864, and was Engineer-in-Chief of Harbors and Jetties in South Australia from 1876 to 1881. In 1881 Mr. Hickson became Resident Engineer at Newcastle. . . President of the Sydney Harbor Trust, 1901-1912. . . He is survived by a widow, 7 children. . . Mrs. W. F. Everett (London), Mrs. E. A. M. Merewether (Newcastle), Messrs. G. F. Hickson (Mildura), R. P. Hickson (Gunnedah), W. L. Hickson (Singleton), C. H. Hickson (Western Australia),. R. M. Hickson (Armidale).” [The Sun, Sydney 28 Jun 1923]

 

GEORGE WILCOX

“WILCOX.— On the 13th April, at Eynesbury House, Lower Mitcham, Annie, beloved wife of George Wilcox (suddenly), aged 57 years.” [Register 14 Apr 1897]

 

“wife of Mr. George Wilcox, of Mitcham. . . was a native of Huntingdonshire, England, and a colonist of over thirty-five years. . . There are two daughters — Mrs McRostie and Miss Wilcox — and three sons, who are in business in Sydney.” [Advertiser 15 Apr 1897]

 

“WILCOX.—On the 5th September, at Eynesbury, Lower Mitcham, George Wilcox, aged 78 years. No flowers by request.” [Express & Telegraph 6 Sep 1917]

 

“Mr. George Wilcox. . . took keen interest in his garden at Mitcham, and was particularly proud of the magnificent wistaria [sic] — one of the finest and largest in Australia — growing against the house.” [Register 6 Sep 1917]

 

“Mr. George Wilcox. . . was a native of St. Neots, Huntingdonshire. He was born in 1838. . . Mr. Wilcox became apprenticed to the grocery trade in England, and in 1858, he came to South Australia and started as a storekeeper at Gawler, where he remained until 1872, when he relinquished business and returned to England for two years. In 1874 he returned to South Australia. . . a business as an export merchant until 1903, when he retired. Subsequently he interested himself only in the Koonamore sheep station in the north-east, which he held in partnership with the late Mr. William Hamilton. . . Two sons (Messrs. Sydney Wilcox, of Adelaide; and Murray Wilcox, of Sydney), and two daughters (Mesdames H. E. McRostie, of Glencoe East, and Miss Wilcox, of Mitcham) survive. Mrs. Wilcox died about 20 years ago.” [Critic, Adelaide 12 Sep 1917]

 

Turpan (simplified Chinese: 吐鲁番; traditional Chinese: 吐魯番; pinyin: Tǔlǔfān; Uyghur: تۇرپان‎‎, ULY: Turpan, UYY: Turpan?), also known as Turfan or Tulufan, is a prefecture-level city located in the east of Xinjiang, People's Republic of China. It has an area of 69,324 square kilometres and a population of 570,000 (2003).

 

HISTORY

Turpan has long been the centre of a fertile oasis (with water provided by the karez canal system) and an important trade centre. It was historically located along the Silk Road, at which time it was adjacent to the kingdoms of Korla and Karashahr. The name Turfan itself however was not used until the end of the Middle Ages - its use became widespread only in the post-Mongol period. Historically, settlements in the region have been given a number of different names, such as Tulufan, Jushi, Qocho, Karakhoja, Hezhou, Gaochang, and Jiaohe, many of which refer to the same place. The center of the region has shifted a number of times, from Yar-Khoto (Jiaohe, 10 km to the west of modern Turpan) to Qocho (Gaochang, 30 km to the southeast of Turpan), and to Turpan itself.

 

The peoples of the Kingdoms of Nearer and Further Jushi (the Turpan Oasis and the region to the north of the mountains near modern Jimasa), were closely related. It was originally one kingdom called Gushi, which the Chinese conquered in 107 BC. It was subdivided into two kingdoms by the Chinese in 60 BC. During the Han era the city changed hands several times between the Xiongnu and the Han, interspersed with short periods of independence.

 

After the fall of the Han dynasty in 220, the region was virtually independent but tributary to various dynasties. Until the 5th century AD, the capital of this kingdom was Jiaohe (modern Yarghul 16 kilometres west of Turpan).

 

From 487 to 541 AD, Turpan was an independent Kingdom ruled by a Turkic tribe known to the Chinese as the Tiele. The Rouran Khaganate defeated the Tiele and subjugated Turpan, but soon afterwards the Rouran were destroyed by the Göktürks.

  

TANG CONQUEST

The Tang dynasty had reconquered the Tarim Basin by the 7th century AD. During the 7th, 8th, and early 9th centuries the Tibetan Empire, the Tang Chinese, and Turks fought to conquer the Tarim Basin. Sogdians and Chinese engaged in extensive commercial activities with each other under Tang rule. The Sogdians were mostly Mazdaist at this time. Turpan, renamed Xizhou by the Tang after their armies conquered it in 640 AD, had a history of commerce and trade along the Silk Road already centuries old; it had many inns catering to merchants and other travelers, while numerous brothels are recorded in Kucha and Khotan. As a result of the Tang conquest, policies forcing minority group relocation and encouraging Han settlement lead to Turpan's name in Sogdian language becoming known as “Chinatown” or "Town of the Chinese".

 

In Astana, a contract written in Sogdian detailing the sale of a Sogdian girl to a Chinese man was discovered dated to 639 AD. Individual slaves were common among silk route houses; early documents recorded an increase in the selling of slaves in Turpan. Twenty-one 7th-century marriage contracts were found that showed, where one Sogdian spouse was present, for 18 of them their partner was a Sogdian. The only Sogdian men who married Chinese women were highly eminent officials. Several commercial interactions were recorded, for example a camel was sold priced at 14 silk bolts in 673, and a Chang'an native bought a girl age 11 for 40 silk bolts in 731 from a Sogdian merchant. Five men swore that the girl was never free before enslavement, since the Tang Code forbade commoners to be sold as slaves.

 

The Tang dynasty became weakened considerably due to the An Lushan Rebellion, and the Tibetans took the opportunity to expand into Gansu and the Western Regions. The Tibetans took control of Turfan in 792.

 

UYGHUR RULE

In 803, the Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khaganate seized Turfan from the Tibetans. The Uyghur Khaganate however was destroyed by the Kirghiz and its capital Ordu-Baliq in Mongolia sacked in 840. The defeat resulted in the mass movement of the Uyghurs out of Mongolia and their dispersal into Gansu and Central Asia, and many joined other Uyghurs already present in Turfan. In the early twentieth century, a collection of some 900 Christian manuscripts dating to the ninth to the twelfth centuries was found at a monastery site at Turfan.

 

The Uyghurs established a Kingdom in the Turpan region with its capital in Gaochang or Kara-Khoja. The kingdom was known as the Uyghuria Idikut state or Kara-Khoja Kingdom that lasted from 856 to 1389 AD. The Uyghurs were Manichaean but later converted to Buddhism and funded the construction the cave temples in the Bezeklik Caves. The Uyghurs formed an alliance with the rulers of Dunhuang. The Uyghur state later became a vassal state of the Kara-Khitans, and then as a vassal of the Mongol Empire. This Kingdom was led by the Idikuts, or Saint Spiritual Rulers. The last Idikut left Turpan area in 1284 for Kumul, then Gansu to seek protection of Yuan Dynasty, but local Uyghur Buddhist rulers still held power until Invasion of Moghul Hizir Khoja in 1389. The conversion of the local Buddhist population to Islam was completed nevertheless only in the second half of the 15th century.

 

After being converted to Islam, the descendants of the previously Buddhist Uyghurs in Turfan failed to retain memory of their ancestral legacy and falsely believed that the "infidel Kalmuks" (Dzungars) were the ones who built Buddhist monuments in their area.

 

15th & 16th CENTURIES

As late as 1420, the Timurid envoy Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh, who passed through Turpan on the way from Herat to Beijing, reported that many of the city's residents were "infidels". He visited a "very large and beautiful" temple with a statue of Shakyamuni; in one of the versions of his account it was also claimed that many Turpanians "worshipped the cross". The Moghul ruler of Turpan Yunus Khan, also known as Ḥājjī `Ali, (ruled 1462–1478) unified Moghulistan (roughly corresponding to today's Eastern Xinjiang) under his authority in 1472. Around that time, a conflict with the Ming China started over the issues of tribute trade: Turpanians benefited from sending "tribute missions" to China, which allowed them to receive valuable gifts from the Ming emperors and to do plenty of trading on the side; the Chinese, however, felt that receiving and entertaining these missions was just too expensive. (Muslim envoys to the early Ming China were impressed by the lavish reception offered to them along their route through China, from Suzhou to Beijing, such as described by Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh in 1420–1421.

 

Yunus Khan was irritated by the restrictions on the frequency and size of Turpanian missions (no more than one mission in 5 years, with no more than 10 members) imposed by the Ming government in 1465, and by the Ming's refusal to bestow sufficiently luxurious gifts on his envoys (1469). Accordingly, in 1473 he went to war against China, and succeeded in capturing Hami in 1473 from the Oirat Mongol Henshen and holding it for a while, until Ali was repulsed by the Ming Dynasty into Turfan. He reoccupied Hami after Ming left. Henshen's Mongols recaptured Hami twice in 1482 and 1483, but the son of Ali, Ahmad Alaq, reconquered it in 1493 and captured the Hami leader and the resident of China in Hami (Hami was a vassal state to Ming). In response, the Ming Dynasty imposed an economic blockade on Turfan and kicked out all the Uyghurs from Gansu. It became so harsh for Turfan that Ahmed left. Ahmed's son Mansur succeeded him and took over Hami in 1517. These conflicts were called the Ming Turpan Border Wars.

 

Several times, after occupying Hami, Mansur tried to attack China in 1524 with 20,000 men, but was beaten by Chinese forces. The Turpan kingdom under Mansur, in alliance with Oirat Mongols, tried to raid Suzhou in Gansu in 1528, but were severely defeated by Ming Chinese forces and suffered heavy casualties. The Chinese refused to lift the economic blockade and restrictions that had led to the battles, and continued restricting Turpan's tribute and trade with China. Turfan also annexed Hami.

 

19th CENTURY

Francis Younghusband visited Turpan in 1887 on his overland journey from Beijing to India. He said it consisted of two walled towns, a Chinese one with a population of no more than 5,000 and, about 1.6 km to the west, a Turk town of "probably" 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. The town (presumably the "Turk town") had four gateways, one for each of the cardinal directions, of solid brickwork and massive wooden doors plated with iron and covered by a semicircular bastion. The well-kept walls were of mud and about 10.7 m tall and 6 to 9 m thick, with loopholes at the top. There was a level space about 14 m wide outside the main walls surrounded by a musketry wall about 2.4 m high, with a ditch around it some 3.7 m deep and 6 m wide). There were drumtowers over the gateways, small square towers at the corners and two small square bastions between the corners and the gateways, "two to each front." Wheat, cotton, poppies, melons and grapes were grown in the surrounding fields.

 

Turpan grapes impressed other travelers to the region as well. The 19th-century Russian explorer Grigory Grumm-Grzhimaylo, thought the local raisins may be "the best in the world", and noted the buildings of a "perfectly peculiar design" used for drying them.

 

GEOGRAPHY & CLIMATE

Turpan is located about 150 km southeast of Ürümqi, Xinjiang's capital, in a mountain basin, on the northern side of the Turpan Depression, at an elevation of 30 m above sea level. Outside of Turpan is a small volcanic cone, the Turfan volcano, that is said to have erupted in 1120 as described in the Song Dynasty.

 

Turpan has a harsh, drastic, cold desert climate (Köppen BWk), with very hot and long summers, and very cold but short winters, and brief spring and autumn in between. Annual precipitation is very low, amounting to only 15.7 millimetres. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −7.6 °C in January to 32.2 °C in July; the annual mean is 14.4 °C. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 48% in December to 75% in September, sunshine is abundant and the city receives 2,912 hours of bright sunshine annually. Temperature differences between summer and winter are oppressively large (over 50°C). The warmest months often approach the stifling intensity of cities such as Phoenix or Las Vegas, while winters produce average lows that more closely resemble frigid Minneapolis.

 

Extremes have ranged from −28.9 °C to 48.1 °C, although a reading of 49.6 °C in July 1975 is regarded as dubious.

 

However, the very heat and dryness of the summer, when combined with the area's ancient system of irrigation, allows the countryside around Turpan to produce great quantities of high-quality fruit.

 

DEMOGRAPHY

According to the 2000 census, the city of Turpan had a population of 251,652 (population density 15.99 inh./km²). The breakdown by nationality was as follows:

 

TRANSPORT

Turpan is served by China National Highway 312. It is the junction for the Lanzhou-Xinjiang and the Southern Xinjiang Railways.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Double arches of the triforium, each subdivided into two openings with geometrical tracery above. Lichfield Cathedral HDR

The intersection of Derry Road and Airport Road (6th line) was known as the Four Corners.

 

“In the 1840s, members of the Blanchard family cleared land northwest of the Four Corners and that area became the Village of Malton...In 1855, the village was subdivided into sharply angled streets named after English villages from which many residents had come.” - Passport to the Past Heritage Tours Book (1996), Anne-Marie Raftery, editor

 

“The village was surveyed and subdivided into lots in 1855 by John Staughton Dennis, with street named by local residents for their English villages back in their homeland. Dennis owned 90 percent of the 100 acre (40 ha) Malton site.” - Malton:Farms to Flying book by Kathleen A. Hicks www.mississauga.ca/file/COM/9634_MaltonBook.pdf

 

Studley is a large village and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England.

Hull is in Yorkshire, England.

Beverley is in Yorkshire, England.

 

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

 

Although its history can be traced as far back as the late seventeenth century, the West Side, including the land within the boundaries of the West End-Collegiate Historic District, was still largely farmland until 1880. Prior to its urbanization at the end of the nineteenth century, the West Side, stretching roughly from 23rd Street to 125th Street, was known as Blooming-dale. This appellation came from the early Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam who called the region "Bloemendael" in fond recollection of a flower-growing area of the same name near Haarlem, in Holland,

 

In the 1660s, Governor Nicholls, the first English governor of New York, granted a large parcel of land in the Bloomingdale district to a syndicate of five patentees. Known as the "thousand acre tract," it was bounded roughly by the Hudson River and what are today 42nd Street, a point midway between 89th and 90th Streets, and Central Park West. The tract was surveyed and subdivided among the patentees. The territory which compromises the historic district fell within lots seven and eight, with the bulk of it being within lot seven. Both lots became the property of Egbert Wouterse, one of the five patentees.

 

In the early eighteenth century Bloomingdale Road was opened through the region following the course of an old Indian trail. The road provided the main link with the city at the tip of Manhattan. Gradually, wealthy New Yorkers began to establish country seats in the hinterland flanking Bloomingdale Road.

 

A number of country seats were established in the vicinity of the historic district. One of them, the homestead of Stephen De-Lancey, which was built before 1729, probably occupied the site of the later Vandenheuvel mansion on the west side of Bloomingdale Road at the present location of the Apthorp Apartments, a designated New York City Landmark. In 1792, John Cornelius Vandenheuvel, former governor of Demerara, built his mansion on this site."

 

By the 1830s, the mansion had been converted into a hotel called Burnham's. The Astor family acquired the site in 1879 and had the mansion demolished in 1905 to make way for the Apthorp Apartments

 

Another country seat in the vicinity was established by Teunis Somarindyck when all of lot seven of the thousand acre tract fell to him. After 1745 Somarindyck's house stood at the northwest

 

corner of 75th Street and Broadway. The house was demolished in 1868 to make way for the Boulevard, now Broadway. A second house belonging to the Somarindyck family was located at roughly the southeastern corner of the present West End Avenue and West 77th Street.

 

In the late 1840s, Fernando Wood purchased this house and the adjoining one, added a structure on its south side and used the house as his country seat. Wood lived here while he was mayor of New York City (1855-1858, 1860-1862). In 1860 Wood entertained the Prince of Wales in the home when the Prince of Wales made his famous trip to the United States as Baron Renfrew.

 

By the early nineteenth century four small villages had sprung up in Bloomingdale. According to historian Hopper Striker Mott, each of these villages was a distinct locality which maintained a semblance of village life at least up to the Civil War.

 

The general vicinity of the historic district was known as Har-senville, a hamlet centered around the present West 70th Street and Broadway. It was named for John Harsen whose house stood between 70th and 71st Streets.

 

Although Bloomingdale itself remained largely rural until the late nineteenth century, its eventual development as an integral part of New York City had been foreseen much earlier in the century. The state legislature appointed a commission of three in 1807 to prepare a plan for the orderly expansion of the city, and John Randel, Jr., an engineer, assumed the task of formulating such a scheme.

 

In 1811 he produced a plan, known as the Randel Survey or Commissioners' Map, which imposed a uniform grid of broad avenues and narrow cross streets upon the rolling hills of Manhattan as far north as 155th Street. The austerity of the rigid grid was relieved only by Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) which cut across the plan diagonally.

 

To be sure, some fifty years elapsed before streets in the vicinity of the historic district were actually laid out. In the interim, the bucolic character of the area began to undergo changes. The large Somarindyck farm was subdivided during the early nineteenth century and much of the land within or near the historic district became part of six separate parcels.

 

Though ownership of these parcels varied throughout the first half of the century, they continued in use as either country seats or farms until being conveyed during the 1850s and 1860s in small parcels and lots. The Wood estate, centered on the present block bounded by West 76th and West 77th Streets, West End Avenue and Broadway, was not broken into lots until the 1880s.

 

The ready availability of land in Bloomingdale encouraged the establishment of a number of institutions there in the early nineteenth century.

 

One, the Orphan Asylum Society of New York, decided to move from its existing home in the increasingly congested and urbanized Greenwich Village area of the city to a new home in Harsenville so that the children in its charge could "enjoy purer air and more ample accommodations.

 

In the 1830s the Society purchased nine and one half acres of land, some of which is presently incorporated into the southern boundary of the historic district, and, on the site presently bounded by Riverside Drive, West End Avenue, West 73rd and West 74th Streets, erected its imposing new asylum. Completed in 1840, the asylum building survived until 1902.

 

During the period, the increase in the permanent population of Harsenville and Bloomingdale was sufficient to warrant opening a local public school. Established in the late 1820s at West 82nd Street and Eleventh Avenue (-West End Avenue), Public School 9 served the families who lived on the farms and in frame houses scattered throughout the area.

 

In spite of these various developments, Bloomingdale retained its countrylike atmosphere to the time of the Civil War. New York City, on the other hand, found itself in the throes of expansion and transformation into a rapidly growing metropolis.

 

Both the impact of the Industrial Revolution and massive immigration from Europe provided the impetus to northerly residential expansion which was channeled primarily to the East Side and roughly followed the uptown march of New York's wealthy citizens.

 

The predilection for development on the East Side was also heavily influenced by transit facilities which were provided there earlier than on the West Side. With the inauguration of the horsecar era in 1852, the city was pushed ever further north until it reached 59th Street.

 

As the city continually expanded to the north, it was increasingly apparent that Bloomingdale would eventually be engulfed by the tide of urban growth. However, residential development proceeded slowly in Bloomingdale. Its pace was influenced by a complex interrelationship of factors which included the opening of rapid transit lines, the construction of various civic improvements, and successive waves of real estate speculation .

 

Rapid growth and expansion only exacerbated the problems confronting New York City and led to closer scrutiny of the deficiencies of the Commissioners Map of 1811. Its rigid grid system for laying streets made meager provision for new squares ,

 

promenades or parks as a means of relieving congestion which resulted from the high densities of urban building. Moreover, the city's breathing spaces were confined to a few small squares, mostly damp and unwholesome "reservations" on the site of old water courses.

 

As early as 1840 a serious campaign was launched to create a park to benefit all the people of New York. By the late 1850s, Central Park, with a southern boundary coinciding with the northern boundary of the city, was under construction in a predominantly rural area of the island.

 

The decision to build Central Park in a rural, undeveloped part of the city spurred development during the 1850s in what is now midtown, particularly in the West 40s and 50s, close to Fifth Avenue, where brownstone rowhouses began to appear.

 

The determination of the park's boundaries also boosted property values to its east, west and north and sparked a wave of real estate speculation in all three areas. This first wave of speculation to affect the Upper West Side was confined to vacant lots along Eighth Avenue, just west of the park, which sold for nearly as much as those just to the east along Fifth Avenue. Since neither the population of the city at the time nor its transit facilities, which on the Upper West Side were limited to a stage line on Bloomingdale Road, warranted the prices at which property was being traded, the speculation was restricted to paper.

 

The period after the Civil War triggered the greatest speculative craze seen to that point in New York City. Land in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue was particularly susceptible even though most of it was unimproved, overvalued, and sold for very high prices. Generally speaking, the postwar speculation undoubtedly was one of the consequences of the inflation which followed the war. On the Upper West Side, it received an additional stimulus from contemplated rapid transportation facilities and from promised civic improvements.

 

The craze, however, was almost entirely restricted to vacant land. In 1868, for example, there were not more than half a dozen "modern" houses on the Upper West Side. In 1873, four lots on 81st Street and Riverside Drive, an avenue which then existed only on paper, were conveyed for $75,000. It was estimated that, between 1868 and 1873, the value of land north of 59th Street increased by 200 percent and in many cases 300 or 400 percent.

 

One of the earliest improvements to fuel post-war speculation on the Upper West Side was the extension of the Eighth Avenue horse car line to 84th Street in 1864. However more ambitious projects exerted far greater influence in this regard. By

 

the late 1860s a new rapid transit system connecting both the Upper East and Upper West Sides with downtown Manhattan seemed virtually assured.

 

The demand for other city improvements was also particularly insistent. Chief among the demands was a proposal to convert the Riverside precipice on the West Side of Manhattan into a park. The idea received additional support when Andrew H. Green, President of the Board of Commissioners of Central Park, submitted a plan to convert the precipice into a landscaped park for the West Side from 55th to 155th Streets.

 

The plan, approved by the Board of Commissioners of Central Park in 1867, called for not only the development of a Riverside Park but also the creation of Riverside Drive, Fort Washington Park and Morningside Park, as well as new streets and avenues that conformed to the natural contours of the land. One of the results was the replacement in 1868-71 of Bloomingdale Road by a wide avenue with grass malls from 59th Street to 155th Street.

 

The new avenue was named the "Boulevard" in the area of the historic district and the "Public Drive" further north. In 1899, the Boulevard and Public Drive were renamed "Broadway." At the same time city improvements, such as the opening, grading and flagging of streets in the area was proceeding slowly. By the 1870s most of the streets and avenues in or near the historic district had been laid out.

 

The Panic of 1873, caused by the failure of Jay Cooke & Co. and the suspension of the Union Trust Co., burst this speculative bubble. Not only did the bottom fall out of the real estate market, but the real estate industry entered into a period of stagnation which lasted until recovery at the end of the decade. During this period little building occurred on the Upper West Side and, more significantly, the value of building lots fell dramatically, often to their pre-Civil War levels.

 

Although this period of stagnation did not completely end until 1879, a large amount of capital had already been invested by then in the region of the historic district. The Boulevard had been opened, Riverside Drive and Park were under construction and the Ninth Avenue Elevated Railroad was nearing completion and in operation by the end of 1879.

 

The erection of the American Museum of Natural History in 1874 - 1877 in Manhattan Square between 77th and 81st Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues, indicated the emerging role of this area of the Upper West Side as a setting for cultural activities. Despite these improvements, the Upper West Side at this time "was barren, open land marked with occasional shanties, vegetable gardens, menacing rock out-

 

growths, lowly taverns and decrepit eighteenth and early nineteenth century mansions."

 

With the gradual return to prosperity by the end of the decade building activity once again resumed in the city, but much of it was confined to the Upper East Side. By contrast, the Upper West Side was distant from the city's historic thrust northward along Fifth Avenue. Rather than shift a mile to the west to proceed up Eighth Avenue or Broadway, development marched logically northward on the East Side into the Sixties and Seventies.

 

Furthermore, when real estate began to recover, owners of property on the Upper West Side who had suffered great losses during the Panic deliberately kept prices high in anticipation of development. ^ As a result, East Side property was more attractive to builders and, hence, nearly all of them were busy on the Upper East Side and even in Harlem.

 

After having lagged some twenty years behind the Upper East Side, development on the Upper West Side was finally stimulated by the completion of the Ninth Avenue El in 1879. However, despite the completion of the El, developers were reluctant, at first, to build on the Upper West Side. Builders hesitated to enter a nearly empty area whose social composition had not yet been determined.

 

Although everyone agreed that Central Park West and Riverside Drive were destined to supplant Fifth Avenue as the future home of New York's wealthy citizens, with West End Avenue being envisioned as the location of small shops catering to the needs of local households, no one seemed to agree about the future constitution of the rest of the Upper West Side. To be sure, the elevated stations at 72nd, 8 1st, 93rd and 104th Streets did attract builders like magnetic points, but there were few other fixed points to guide investors in determining the nature of buildings most profitable to erect.

 

The Upper West Side was a wilderness of confusing possibilities. In addition, high real estate prices, the unreliability of city improvements, delays in opening streets, and difficulties in evicting occupants of the numerous shanties spread throughout the region further confounded attempts at development.

 

Development that occurred on the Upper West Side during the first years of the 1880s was restricted largely to individual entrepreneurs. Construct ion first began in the vicinity of 125th Street at the north and in the area of 72nd Street at the south. Edward Clark, President of the Singer Sewing Machine Co., was the first to make major investments on the Upper West Side. In the late 1870s he invested heavily in property bounded by 72nd and 74th Streets, Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

 

Early in 1880, a row of his dwellings was put on the rental market and later in the same year he filed plans for his long heralded Dakota Apartments, a designated New York City Landmark. Standing at Central Park West between 72nd and 73rd Streets, it was mockingly dubbed "Clark's Folly" because of its unfashionable location.

 

The Dakota, however, soon became the nucleus of a residential community built up on nearby streets. Clark's real estate ventures proved to be superb investments and attracted much public attention and comment

 

Despite the publicity generated by such ventures as Clark's, the "Great West Side Movement" continued to lag behind development on the East Side, but by 1885 the Upper West Side had emerged as the recognized speculative area of the city. The developers already at work there undertook new and larger projects and were joined by nearly all of the larger builders in the city to the degree that the city's whole building force seemed to have been transferred to the West Side.

 

Buildings erected on the Upper West Side now sold readily and builders were inclined and financially able to continue launching even more projects throughout the area. In 1886, the Times wrote:

 

The west side of the city presents just now a scene of building activity such as was never before witnessed in that section, and which gives promise of the speedy disappearance of all the shanties in the neighborhood and the rapid population of this long neglected part of New York.

 

The huge masses of rock which formerly met the eye, usually crowned by a rickety shanty and a browsing goat, are being blasted out of existence. Streets are being graded, and thousands of carpenters and masons are engaged in rearing substantial buildings where a year ago nothing was to be seen but market gardens or barren rocky fields.

 

Construction began on the first houses, as they stand today in the historic district, in 1885. Designed by F. B. White, a very young architect, these houses are located on West End Avenue at 78th Street. Roughly one quarter of the row houses which survive in the historic district were built by the end of the decade. They were concentrated on West 76th and West 77th Streets and Eleventh Avenue, which had been named West End Avenue in 1880.

 

Contrary to earlier expectations, West End Avenue evolved into a street of fashionable houses rather than a commercial thoroughfare.

 

By the early 1890s, the Upper West Side had become more densely built up. The West 70s and 80s, in particular, had acquired row houses and began to establish itself as the Upper West Side's most fashionable neighborhood. Development occurred more rapidly on the streets between the Boulevard and Central Park than on the streets to the west of the Boulevard.

 

This was due, undoubtedly, to two factors. First, the land "vest of the Boulevard was relatively less accessible to street cars and to the Ninth Avenue El. Second, land flanking Riverside Drive, Central Park West, and, to some degree, West End Avenue, was considered to be prime property.

 

Speculation thrived on the notion that New York's socially elite and wealthy citizens would abandon Fifth Avenue, move en masse to the West Side and erect palatial mansions along these avenues. Consequently, the value of land adjacent to these streets remained consistently higher than elsewhere on the Upper West Side. High property values discouraged development there.

 

Promotional brochures and publicity in the press, which began to focus on the territory surrounding the historic district, heightened the interest of buyers and sellers alike in the territory west of the Boulevard. In 1888, for example, the West End Association published a pamphlet entitled "West End Avenue: Riverside Park in the City of New York" in which they lauded the virtues of West End Avenue and environs as an ideal residential area.

 

They pointed out the avenue's proximity to Riverside Park, its high elevation and its scientific sewerage system as its chief amenities.

 

In August 1890, the New York Herald ran a series of editorials and articles extolling the advantages of the Upper West Side but especially the Riverside Drive area. The paper focused attention on the proposals of Peter B. Sweeney, Chairman of the Department of Parks, for the creation of a "splendid public pleasure ground for lovers of the horse and the horse himself" on an embankment of the Hudson River between 72nd Street and 98th Street.

 

The newspaper also portrayed the Upper West Side as an extremely desirable residential area.

 

The district to the east of Riverside Park as far as Central Park is likely, or rather, sure to become within the next twenty years, perhaps the location of the most beautiful residences in the world.

 

The advantages of pure air and beautiful surroundings, glimpses of the New Jersey Hills at the end of each street, with the glitter of the Hudson between; the nearness of parks and the accessibility of the district will be insurmountable factors in popularity.

 

As the time of square brick and brown stone houses has gone by, so alas has the time when New York can afford to neglect her approach and her outward appearances.

 

In spite of the Panic of 1893, the entire area within the historic district had been developed with large row houses for the well-to-do by the late 1890s, a time span of less than 15 years since the first houses were constructed, Especially along Riverside Drive, numerous rows of large, ornate houses were built on speculation.

 

The architect Clarence True was instrumental in developing these houses which, with their broad widths, hardly qualified as ordinary row houses but rather as "mansions" with party walls.

 

By the turn of the century the region of the historic district had evolved into, in the minds of many, the most fashionable residential district in the city. In 1899, one observer noted that West End Avenue above 68th Street was one of the finest residential streets in New York City, while Riverside Drive, known as Riverside Avenue, was "universally acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful and picturesque streets in the world."

 

The early years of the twentieth century witnessed the increasing popularity and acceptance by the upper middle class of the residential hotel and apartment house, particularly in Manhattan.

 

As they appeared throughout the city, the value of available vacant land, which previously had been reserved for row house development, escalated sharply and ultimately the cost of the average row house jumped to a point where not even the prosperous upper middle class could afford to buy one.

 

Legislation of the early twentieth century, which permitted the construction of taller apartment buildings, as well as a "universal demand for comfort, with less care and expense then entailed in private house maintenance," further encouraged the construction of apartment houses and residential hotels and caused the virtual disappearance of rowhouse construction in Manhattan.

 

The completion of the Broadway subway (IRT) in 1904 undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of the apartment house on the West Side. During the first decade of the twentieth century, residential hotel and apartment house construction boomed.

 

Apartment house construction on the Upper West Side continued up until the time of the Depression. However, as vacant lots became ever more scarce, particularly after World War I, developers took to demolishing existing rowhouses, many of which were less than twenty years old, in order to assemble sites for more lucrative apartment house construction.

 

Riverside Drive and West End Avenue were particularly vulnerable to this development trend. Most of the rowhouses which had once lined West End Avenue and Riverside Drive succumbed to the apartment house. Numerous apartment buildings standing along both avenues in the historic district date from this period and are the fruit of this development practice.

 

With the onset of the Depression, the Upper West Side entered a period of stagnation and decline. Little new construction occurred there. Many rowhouses, which had become financial burdens to maintain, were converted into multiple dwellings. Although urban renewal activity in the 1950s and 1960s left its mark on the Upper West Side, it did not affect the historic district. Moreover, the district has seen no major building activity since World War II. In recent years, however, the historic district has become one of the most desirable residential areas in the city.

This was originally a Builder's Square home improvement store. It is now subdivided into Best Buy and Dick's sporting goods stores.

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The 858 West End Avenue House is one of an intact group of four residences designed by the architectural firm of Schneider & Herter and built by the firm of Schneider & Company as a speculative venture. 1 The rowhouse group is the sole surviving example of a type of site planning used on several comer plots along West End Avenue in the early 1890s where a group of houses facing the Avenue featured a prominent comer house and an additional house was built facing the side street behind the Avenue-facing houses. Treated as the centerpiece of the rehouse group, the comer house at No. 858 West End Avenue is representative of the many larger comer houses with side entrances and comer towers which once stood on West End Avenue. The group of residences was built in 1892-93 during the first period of intense residential development for the comfortable professional class along the northern portion of West End Avenue where the suburban qualities of landscaped streets, the views of the Hudson River, and the amenities of nearby Riverside Park created a desirable residential area. The 858 West End Avenue House is distinguished by ornament characteristic of the mannerist aesthetic of the firm of Schneider & Herter, the juxtaposition of contrasting textures of rough, smooth-faced, and carved brownstone, and the emphasis on a lively roof line punctuated by a bell-shaped tower and chimneys. The quality and distinctiveness of the Queen Anne/Romanesque Revival style design of the 858 West End Avenue House reflects the desire for individuality in the appearance of houses within rowhouse groups and is representative of the eclectically-styled residential architecture of West End Avenue dating from the 1890s.

  

Development of the Upper West Side

 

Despite its long history beginning soon after the colonial Dutch settlement, the Upper West Side, known as Bloomingdale prior to its urbanization, remained largely undeveloped until the 1880s. In the early eighteenth century, Bloomingdale Road (later renamed the Boulevard and finally Broadway in 1898) was opened through rural Bloomingdale and provided the northern route out of the city which was then concentrated in the southern tip of Manhattan. The Upper West Side was included in the Randel Survey of 1811 (known as the Commissioners' Map) which established a uniform grid of avenues and cross streets in Manhattan as far north as 155th Street, although years elapsed before streets on the Upper West Side were actually laid out, some as late as the 1870s and 1880s, and the land was subdivided into building lots.

 

The city grew rapidly northward during the nineteenth century, but it was not until after Central Park (a designated New York City Scenic landmark) was laid out in 1857 that development began around the perimeter of the Park, setting off the first wave of real estate speculation on the Upper West Side.

 

Improved public transportation to the area contributed to the growth and sustained development of the Upper West Side. By 1880 the horse car line on Eighth Avenue had been replaced by street rail service up to 125th Street and the Elevated Railway on Ninth Avenue (renamed Columbus Avenue in 1890) had been completed. However, the biggest boost to the development of the West End (the area west of Broadway) was the creation, between 1876 and 1900, of Riverside Drive and Park (a designated New York City Scenic Landmark) located north of 72nd Street along the Hudson River. The presence of the park and drive, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, was an important factor in making this area desirable for high-quality residential development.

 

Development of the Wast End began slowly, due, to a large degree, to the hesitation of would-be residents, but by 1885 it had emerged as the area in the city experiencing the most intense real estate speculation. The expectation that the blocks along Riverside Drive and West End Avenue would be lined with mansions kept the value of these lots, as well as adjacent land, consistently higher and developers were willing to wait to realize profits from the potentially valuable sites. The real estate developers, including the West End Association, founded in 1884 by the prominent developer, W.E.D. Stokes, ultimately stimulated the demand for houses in the West End. Real estate brochures and the local press drew attention to the area, emphasizing the scenic quality of the setting, the nearness of parks, and the availability of public transportation.

 

West End Avenue (formerly Eleventh Avenue) was opened in 1880 from 72nd Street to 106th street and was paved with asphalt by 1893. West End Association members set twenty-year restrictive covenants governing West End Avenue which closed the avenue to commercial traffic and initially limited development to single-family houses, thus enhancing the desirability of the residential area. By 1890 the character of the avenue had emerged as completely residential and was promoted as a suburban-like setting with such amenities as grass plots and trees along the sidewalks. The absence of flats and apartment houses on the avenue provided the opportunity for various treatments of the comers with rowhouses and larger attached residences.

 

In the mid-1880s the most attractive areas for development along West End Avenue were located near the El stations and along the higher elevations of the hilly avenue. Construction of mid-size rowhouses, rather than the more grand type of mansions originally projected for West End Avenue, began in 1885 near 104th Street which was convenient to a Ninth Avenue El station and by 1895 the high plateau between West 99th and 104th Streets had been built up with three- and four-story rowhouses. The architectural tone of these private residences was set by the presence of costly mansions such as the W.F. Foster residence at 102th Street and Riverside Drive and the Bacon residence at 104th Street and Riverside Drive.

 

The Schneider & Company's Houses

 

The site at the northeast corner of West 102nd Street and West End Avenue appears to have been first sold for development purposes in 1881 and at that time an open-ended restrictive covenant was initiated which prevented the construction of a variety of commercial and industrial buildings. The property changed hands several times before Hannah O'Brien filed plans in 1890 to build five three-story limestone-fronted houses designed by Andrew Spence; within a year O'Brien lost control of the property and this project was abandoned.

 

Two New York architects, Ernest W. Schneider and Henry Herter, along with two partners — John Fish, a previous client, and Eugene Schultz— acquired the property and soon after filed plans for the construction of a group of four three-story residences with raised basements. Beside the comer house, facing West End Avenue, are two narrow houses, nearly identical in design. Situated across the rear of the three West End Avenue houses, facing West 102nd Street and enclosing the yard area, the fourth house has a freestanding side facade. The houses, built between May, 1892, and April, 1893, were appropriately finished on the interior with decorative mantels, hardwood trim, and horseshoe openings ornamented with fretwork dividing the music rooms from the parlors, as well as up-to-date plumbing and utility areas. The placement of the stairhall in the center of each house permitted large full-width front rooms on the upper floors.

 

The first house to be sold in the rowhouse group was No. 856 West End Avenue. In 1895 the remaining houses were divided among the investors and Schneider & Herter acquired title to No. 858 West End Avenue. The house was sold in 1897 but title reverted to Schneider & Herter in 1898; they soon resold the house. No. 854 West End Avenue had been sold in 1895 and the West 102nd Street House was sold in 1896.

 

The Schneider & Company development venture is the sole surviving example of a site development pattern that emerged on West End Avenue in which large comer parcels were purchased for the construction of rowhouse groups. By decreasing the depth of the avenue-facing houses, an additional house could be built on the plot facing the side street; the plan worked to the advantage of the developer who sought a maximum return on the expensive West End Avenue lots. Slightly larger and more prestigious comer houses, with highly visible design features such as comer towers, were characteristic of this site development plan. This scheme was particularly favored in the early 1890s when the area between 99th and 104th streets was developed. Rowhouse groups facing West End Avenue, with a side street-facing house (or houses) across the rear of these lots, were built at the southeast comers of West End Avenue and 99th, 100th, 102nd, and 103rd Streets; all of the groups except the Schneider & Company group have been demolished.

 

The rowhouse group at the southeast comer of 103rd Street and West End Avenue, designed by M.V.B. Ferdon in 1891, included five houses facing West End Avenue and one facing 103rd Street; only the house facing West 103rd Street remains standing. Another group of houses designed by M.V.B. Ferdon and built by Increase Grenell in 1892 at the northwest comer of West End Avenue and 104th Street (demolished) included a comer house very similar to the Schneider & Company house, featuring the entrance near the center of the 104th Street facade.

 

Picturesque Architecture on West End Avenue

 

Curing the intense period of rowhouse development on the Upper West Side, from 1885 to 1900, residential design was dominated by a reaction to the conformity and homogeneity of older Italianate style brownstone rowhouses found elsewhere in the city. The first wave of development along West End Avenue in the period between 1885 and 1895 produced a number of individually-designed houses and speculatively-built, yet distinctive, rowhouse groups which, along with houses in the West End as a whole, represent the culmination of single-family house construction in Manhattan. Many of the most prominent architects working in New York City designed these residences, often for speculative developers who invested in the area. The residences designed for West End Avenue were characteristic of the picturesque eclecticism of late-nineteenth-century architecture, drawing from a wide variety of stylistic sources and expressing the desire of architects and clients for originality, variety, and novelty in residential architecture.

 

There was a movement away from smooth brownstone as a facing material and a new emphasis on the sculptural and textural qualities of surfaces, as well as on the mixture of colors and materials.

 

Unusual, picturesque house design on West End Avenue had been initiated by the construction of two groups of houses with a "Dutch" flavor in 1885-86, designed by Frederick B. White and McKim, Mead & White. Clarence True and other architects continued to design residences for West End Avenue in unusual and picturesque revival styles which were executed with a high-degree of artistic experimentation. Strong rhythmic patterns, asymmetrical massing, and a lively streetscape were created by the profusion of bowfronts, bay and oriel windows, gables, turrets, chimneys, dormers, cornices, stoops, and ornamentation associated with the popular Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles as well as more exotic revival styles. These later rowhouses on West End Avenue, and throughout the Upper West Side, unlike their Italianate brownstone predecessors from earlier in the nineteenth century, were purposely designed to be distinguished from one another, while together forming visually coherent ensembles.

 

The houses designed by Schneider & Herter are representative of this picturesque design movement, and although based on the common hybrid of the Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles they are enlivened by unusual carved ornament. The treatment of each of the four houses individually within the easily recognizable group provided the architects with the opportunity to create variations on a theme. The high degree of modulation in the plane of the facades, through the use of recessed entrances as well as projecting bay windows and balconies (which afforded views of the river and park) adds depth and grandeur to the rowhouse designs. Schneider & Herter explored the range of surface effects achievable from smooth-faced and rough-cut brownstone, and incorporated both geometric and figural carving of the material.

 

The repetition of several ornamental elements unites the houses, including paired stringcourses, gridded panels of rough-faced stone, chamfered window surrounds in the smooth-faced facades, sheet-metal panels at the roofline, and elements of the carved stone program. The two smaller West End Avenue houses are identical except for the shape and detailing of the window openings. No. 858 West End Avenue has recessed balconies at the parlor and second stories that relate the comer house to the West End Avenue houses, while the longer West 102nd Street frontage is visually linked to the house at 254 West 102nd Street through the repetition of unusual columns flanking the entrances and the carved panels at the roofline. The round comer tower with a bell-shaped roof serves as the centerpiece of the group.

 

The design of picturesque rowhouses in New York was influenced by trends in the design of architectural ornament in the later nineteenth century, a time when ornament was treated by many architects as an opportunity for creative experimentation. European theorists such as Owen Jones, James K. Collings, and Christopher Dresser encouraged an abstract interpretation of vegetation executed with an emphasis on geometricized form and their publications influenced designers in the United States. At the same time, technological change also influenced the design of ornament. The availability of steam-powered tools encouraged the use of bold, machine-cut ornament while the growing use of terra cotta prompted the design of intricate ornament that could be easily reproduced.

 

The popularity of several revival styles, and the inventive blending of these styles, encouraged the architect/designer to adopt an individualized aesthetic in the design of architectural ornament. This trend can be seen in the abstracted naturalistic ornament developed by such recognized American innovators as Frank Fumess and Louis H. Sullivan, as well as in the pioneering work of architects like Henry Hobson Richardson, who developed a highly personal style drawing on Romanesque sources. Many architects working in New York City also developed identifiable personal styles, such as clarence True with his interpretation of the "Elizabethan Renaissance Revival" style.

 

Schneider & Herter developed a somewhat idiosyncratic and mannerist aesthetic characterized by a lack of reverence for the traditional placement of ornament, an unexpected combining of architectural styles, and asymmetry in the composition of facades and their detailing; these characteristics appear in the firm's early designs for tenements, rowhouses and synagogues. In the ornamental programs of several buildings, including the 858 West End Avenue House, Schneider & Herter combined incised, machine-cut ornament— recalling the earlier Neo-Grec style of incised ornament — with both abstracted naturalistic designs and romantic figurative carving. An uncommon approach to the composition and placement of ornament appears in the design of the entrance where the architects combined pilasters with the projecting balcony above to suggest an entrance portico.

 

Two flattened engaged baluster forms, with incised horizontal bands and necks at the bottom, are topped by capitals with carved shell forms above inscribed circles; animal masks extend from the upper portion of plain blocks above the capitals that support the projecting balcony. Framing the door to the east is a variation on this form, a cylindrical baluster with a capital, different from the flanking ones, of stalky acanthus leaves above which an elongated console bracket supports the balcony. A more subtle example of Schneider & Herter's unusual ornamental treatment appears in the placement of carved stones in the upper courses of the rusticated basement to cap undefined piers.

 

The Corner House on West End Avenue

 

The corner house type evolved on West End Avenue in response to the restrictive covenants that limited construction on this avenue to single-family dwellings, a departure from the development pattern found throughout much of the Upper West Side where flats or tenements were built on Avenue frontage and rowhouses were reserved for the side streets. Architects took advantage of the comer sites to punctuate the West End Avenue streetscape with slightly larger and often taller residences at the ends of blocks, which were often designed with comer towers or curved comer bays, whether built as "centerpieces" of rowhouse groups or as individual buildings. While a tower enhanced the presence of the comer residence, the house was often designed with an entrance near the center of the side street facade rather than a grand Avenue-facing entrance.

 

This was done for interior planning considerations, facilitating the placement of the stairhall near the center of the house which permitted full-width rooms at the front of the house.

 

Most of the comer houses built on West End Avenue were demolished during the redevelopment of the Avenue with apartment houses. Surviving examples of comer houses with side street entrances include the individually-designed and -built 520 West End Avenue (Leech) Residence (1892, a designated New York City landmark), the 858 West End Avenue House, the 560 West End Avenue House (1889-90, in the Riverside-West End Historic District), and several houses in the West End-Collegiate Historic District near the southern end of West End Avenue.

 

The 858 West End Avenue House has characteristics similar to many of these comer houses. The curved comer bay, topped with a bell-shaped roof and originally, a tall finial, extends a story above the other houses in the rowhouse group and serves as a focal point for the group. The roofline, highly visible in the avenue streetscape, features several tall chimneys, pinnacles, and a carved panel. The house is slightly longer than the adjacent houses, although the rear portion of the house is only two stories in height and forms a terrace at the rear, replicating the characteristic form of a rowhouse with a rear extension; a recessed porch with a service entrance at the end bay serves as an extension of the adjacent yard area. The presence of the entrance bay in the long street facade is enhanced by pilasters which frame the entrance, the recessed balcony at the second story, and the window group. A decorative panel extending above the roofline further provides a vertical counterpoint to the long facade.

 

Schneider & Herter

 

Ernest W. Schneider and Henry Herter began an architectural partnership in New York City around 1887; within a very short time they had a thriving business designing tenements, flats, and industrial buildings, primarily on the Lower East Side. Schneider & Herter worked repeatedly for a group of German-Jewish clients with ethnic backgrounds similar to theirs, the most prominent of whom were the real estate developers Jonas Weil and Bernard Mayer for whom the architects designed a number of multiple dwellings. This association led to the firm's commission for the Park East Synagogue, 163 East 67th Street (1889-90, a designated New York City Landmark), which Weil financed and led as president of the congregation. Schneider & Herter also designed Congregation Kol Israel Arshi at 20-22 Forsyth Street (1892, now owned by the Hellenic Orthodox Community).

 

The firm of Schneider & Herter had acted as architect-developers prior to its venture on the Upper West Side as Schneider & Co., designing and building a pair of French flats at 731-735 East 5th Street in 1890-91 and a French flat at 233-35 Delancey Street in 1891-92; the firm began a warehouse project at 141 West Broadway in 1893. Schneider & Herter later erected a five-story apartment building at 79-81 Perry Street in 1895 (in addition to designing several other buildings now within the Greenwich Village Historic District) and a pair of flats buildings at 309 and 317 West 93rd Street in 1901-02 (within the Riverside-West End Historic District).

 

The West End Avenue-102nd Street project was a departure from Schneider & Herter's usual work designing multiple dwellings, and was among the firm's first projects on the Upper West Side. Many of the firm's more than 100 multiple dwellings in Manhattan no longer stand, but those remaining exhibit the firm's individualistic approach to the use of ornament and facade compositions often featuring round-arched windows characteristic of the Romanesque Revival style.

 

Description

 

The comer house of the group of the four houses built by Schneider & Company, with the address of 858 West End Avenue, has a narrow seventeen-foot vide West End Avenue facade and a seventy-two-foot long 102nd Street facade. The house has three stories above a basement and is of brick construction with a brownstone veneer, rusticated at the basement and smooth-faced on the stories above. Dominating the design is an engaged cylindrical comer tower, which rises an additional story and is capped by a bell-shaped roof. The entrance bay, located in the center of the West 102nd Street facade, is emphasized by the use of a box stoop leading to the parlor-story entrance which is recessed behind engaged pilasters and surmounted by a shallow bow-fronted balcony.

 

A recessed balcony at the second story, an arched window group at the third story, and a carved panel with a lion head, which rises above the cornice and conceals the termination of the mansard portion of the roof, make this bay an important vertical counterpoint to the horizontal composition of the house that is accentuated by paired stringcourses. Rock-faced gridded panels in the upper portion of the third story, just below the classically-detailed cornice, add to the picturesque quality of the roof line; the mansard portion of the roof is covered with patterned sheet metal and the sheet-metal cornice is ornamented with sunflower motifs. The carved detailing of the house repeats forms used on other houses in the group, furthering the ensemble quality.

 

The first and second stories are extended in an additional curved bay at the eastern end of the 102nd Street facade, creating an open balcony at the third story. A short column and an implied pier with a carved impost block support the segmental arch (with a wrought iron gate) of the recessed service porch under this bay. A similar gate under an arch spans the entry to the rear yards between the comer house and No. 254 West 102nd Street. Beyond the curved return of the extension, the eastern elevation of the house is faced with brick, as is the eastern wall of the third story.

 

Alterations include the replacement of the original double-hung wood sash with aluminum sash and the panning of the original frames; the circular window next to the main entrance and the elliptical windows flanking the door in the bay above the main entrance remain unchanged. Two tall chimneys, pinnacles, and an elongated finial from the tower roof have been removed. The basement-level window grilles and the cast-iron fence on the areaway wall appear to have been added at an early date.

 

- From the 1990 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Badian is a 3rd class municipality in the province of Cebu, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 37,699 people. The Municipality of Badian is located 97.6 km southwest of Cebu City. It is bounded on the north by the municipality of Moalboal; on the south by the municipality of Alegria; on the east by the municipalities of Dalaguete and Argao; and on the west by Tanon Strait.

Badian is administratively subdivided into 29 barangays.

Alawijao Balhaan Banhigan Basak Basiao Bato Bugas Calangcang Candiis Dagatan Dobdob

Ginablan Lambug Malbago Malhiao Manduyong Matutinao Patong Poblacion Sanlagan

Santicon Sohoton Sulsugan Talayong Taytay Tigbao Tiguib Tubod Zaragosa

The Kawasan Falls is a three-layered waterfall series located in the Municipality of Badian, Cebu, which has become a huge attraction with foreign and local tourists throughout the years. The first waterfall is the largest and highest of the three falls, while the two falls uphill are smaller.

Kawasan Falls is located in Barangay Matutinao in Badian, Cebu. To get to Badian from Cebu City you can take a bus at the South Bus Terminal for a three hour ride that will directly take you to Badian. From there, you can take a tricycle that will take you to Barangay Matutinao.

If you are taking a private vehicle, drive past the Municipality of Carcar, and upon reaching the Municipality of Badian through the picturesque mountain road, then drive to Matutinao village. You can always ask for directions from people along the way if it is your first time to go to Kawasan Falls, so you won’t get lost.

When you reach the main road leading to Kawasan Falls, there is a main entrance to the waterfalls area and an entrance fee of 10 peso’s per person. From there, you start on a 20 to 30 minute walk on a trail that will lead you to the first waterfall.

You will then have to trek a further 10 to 15 minutes uphill to get to the second waterfall, and another 15 minute trek to the third waterfalls. There is a resort with restaurant at the area of the first waterfalls. There are small cottages and tables for rent at 300 peso’s each table as at September 2012 ( on top of the menu prices ) and several rooms for rent for those who want to stay overnight. A popular attraction is a bamboo raft ride leading to a shower under the cool falling waters of the first and second waterfall.

The Mactan International Airport is located in Mactan, Cebu; it is served by major airlines like Cebu Pacific Air and Philippine Airlines. You can also fly from Metro Manila to Cebu. There are many domestic flights and sometimes it is economical because many airlines offer a cheaper airfare. Check also for any available promo. If you arrived earlier in Cebu, you can leave straight to Badian providing you already arranged your accommodation there before your arrival or you can stay for a night in Cebu City and have your trip to Badian the next day.

Your choices to come from Cebu City to Badian are: from the airport you can take a taxi to South Bus Terminal look for Ceres Bus Liner via Barili, you can also take Librando Trans. There are buses leaving Cebu City to Badian every 30 minutes or one hour. It will take 2-3 hours or more bus travel to reach Badian from Cebu City depending on the number of stops. You can also hire a taxi at the airport or at the city to Badian, it is more comfortable and faster. Make sure the driver knows where Badian is. The fare is about Php 1500.00 - Php 3000.00 and be prepare for some bartering and some hidden costs

The capital barangay of Badian town is Poblacion. It is located in the centre of the town. This is where the local high school is located called Badian National High School ( BNHS ) is one of the two high schools in the town of Badian. This is also the largest of the two and many students from the neighbouring town just like Moalboal, Alcantara and Ronda come to study in this high school. The lower educational facility in Badian is the Badian Central Elementary School where all the younger children go to school for the simple fact that it is completely free and the only elementary school and the biggest one in town. One more very important institution that is located in Poblacion is the Town Hospital where everyone from every other barangay goes to in the time of sickness.

The facility has been better than the past management they have more improvements to the hospitals than anything else which is the best thing they could have done because this is where most Badianganons run to in the time of need. This is also the location where the town church is located ~ the church of Santiago Apostol, which celebrates its Festival on the 25th of July every year. Together with the Feast of Santiago Apostle is the Banig Festival which was started about three years ago. Poblacion is also where the Municipal Hall is located in sitio sawang. Thus, I believe that the municipality should ought to have more funding's in the Hospital Facility more so that the roads that they are trying to fix every single year Poblacion has many sitios which is the little corners of Poblacion which is residential or commercial properties. Some of these sitios are; Syma, Walog, Sawang, Highway, and many more. This is the only urban place in Badian compared to any other barangays that surround the town. Poblacion is also the most populated barangay in all Badian. Which has 3854 population as of 2007 Census. Poblacion is where the marketplace is located. Thus, most of the trading is here. Many vendors from all over town will show up mostly on Saturdays and Sundays for the trading.

Highbridge, The Bronx

 

Summary

 

The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge in the South Bronx was constructed in 1887-88 to the design of Alfred E. Barlow, a little-known architect who began his career in suburban residences. Highbridgeville (later known as Highbridge) developed along the high ridge of land along the Harlem River located to the south and east of High Bridge (1838-48, John B. Jervis, engineer), part of the Croton Aqueduct system that brought New York City its first adequate water supply. The village was initially populated with the workers (mostly Irish) who built the aqueduct, bridge, and also the railroad along the river. A Protestant “Union Sunday-School of Highbridgeville” was established in 1860, and a chapel was built in 1866 on Highbridge (later Ogden) Avenue.

 

After 1874, the church became affiliated with the Reformed Church of America, and became known as the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. As the congregation grew, a larger building was needed. The significant firm of D.C. Weeks & Son was the builder. Built of random-coursed, rockfaced gneiss ashlar with red sandstone trim, the church is one story with a taller square bell tower at the southwest corner. The Ogden Avenue facade has a steeply-pitched gable and three round-arched windows with voussoirs, connected to the tower by a tourelle, and both side elevations have buttresses and round-arched windows with leaded stained glass.

 

The eastern (altar) end contains a leaded stained-glass rose window (1889) manufactured by the Tiffany Glass Co., with a geometric design composed of seven circular motifs. The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge (now Highbridge Community Church), one of the Bronx’s significant 19th-century religious structures, is also one of the finest surviving churches in New York City in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, named after one of the greatest American architects, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886). It is particularly unusual within New York as a more informal, suburban example of the style.

 

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

 

Union Reformed Church of Highbridge

 

Highbridgeville (later known as Highbridge) in the South Bronx developed on the high ridge of land along the Harlem River located to the east of High Bridge (1838-48, John B. Jervis, engineer), which was constructed as part of the Croton Aqueduct system that brought New York City its first adequate fresh water supply. The village was initially settled by the workers who built the Croton Aqueduct and High Bridge, as well as the railroad along the river. Almost entirely Irish originally, these workers were followed later by other European and Jewish immigrants. The Bronx shore of the Harlem River began to be subdivided in the later 19th century for building lots along the main thoroughfare, Highbridge Avenue. It was re-named Ogden Avenue in 1876, in honor of William B. Ogden (1805-1877), the first mayor of Chicago and first president of the Union Pacific Railroad, who after his retirement owned a Highbridge estate called “Villa Boscobel.” Initially, there were few neighborhood amenities and but one small district school; this was replaced by Public School 91 (1889, George W. Debevoise), 1257 Ogden Avenue.

 

As no church was located within several miles of Highbridgeville, the area’s Protestants organized a religious congregation in October 1860, which was led by William Newton Clark and incorporated in 1864. The “Union Sunday-School of Highbridgeville” held classes in various neighborhood buildings until funds were donated to purchase property and to construct a chapel on Highbridge Avenue. After its completion in 1866, it became the religious center of the community with regular Sunday School meetings. In order to establish a formal church, the congregation called a meeting in June 1874 to vote on a specific Protestant denomination. The Reformed Church of America was chosen and, after official recognition, the church became known as the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. From 1870 to 1884, the church was served by the pastor of the Mott Haven Reformed Church, Rev. Hasbroek DuBois. After 1884, with the installation of its own minister, Daniel Hoffman Martin, the membership of the church grew rapidly and a larger building was needed. Additional property was purchased, the old chapel was moved to the east, and a new church edifice constructed between December 1887 and its dedication in December 1888, at a contracted cost of $18,000. The rockfaced gneiss church, measuring 43 by 70 feet, was designed by Alfred E. Barlow in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, then at the height of its popularity. The New York Times called it a “new and picturesque home.” D.C. Weeks & Son was the builder. This significant firm, established in 1840 by DeWitt Clinton Weeks and including his son, Francis

 

M. Weeks, as a partner in the 1860s, was responsible for the construction of numerous mansions, churches, institutions, and office buildings in New York and elsewhere, including St. Thomas Church (1865, Richard M. Upjohn; demolished), Fifth Avenue and West 53rd Street; the first American Museum of Natural History (1874-77, Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould; demolished); World (Pulitzer) Building (1888-90, George B. Post; demolished), Park Row and Frankfort Street; Biltmore, the George W. Vanderbilt Estate (1888-95, Richard Morris Hunt), Asheville, North Carolina; and Morton F. Plant Residence (1903-05, Robert W. Gibson), 651 Fifth Avenue.

 

The Richardsonian Romanesque style was named after one of America’s greatest architects, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), who created an American interpretation of the Romanesque based on French and Italian prototypes. His Trinity Church (1873-77), Boston, as well as his many libraries and other buildings, firmly established Richardson’s professional reputation and launched the popularity and influence of the style. Following Richardson’s precedent, many architects employed it in the 1880s and 90s for a wide variety of building types, ranging from mansions to courthouses, university structures, and railroad stations, and including many notable churches. The style was characterized by its appearance of massiveness and such features as rockfaced masonry, round-arched fenestration, and steeply pitched roofs with towers and dormers. The noted architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler expressed the opinion in 1903 that “the Romanesque, in the Richardsonian version of it, gave a more rational promise in church building than in almost any other of the phases... there is very much to be said in favor of Romanesque as the most suitable style for church architecture.”

 

The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge is one of the finest remaining examples of the style in New York City. The major features of the church, including the asymmetrical massing of the forms, the bell tower, the arched openings, and the rockfaced gneiss stonework accented by red sandstone, combine to create a masterful, skillfully articulated, and characteristic example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It is particularly unusual within New York City as a more informal, suburban example of the style. A contemporary example outside of New York is St. Mary’s-in-Tuxedo (1887-88, William A. Potter), Tuxedo Park. Only a few major, fully-urban examples of the style survive in Manhattan, including Holy Trinity (later St. Martin’s) Episcopal Church, Rectory, and Parish House (1887-89, Potter), 230 Lenox Avenue in Harlem; and St. Agnes Parish House (now part of Trinity School)(c. 1890-92, Potter), 121 West 71st Street.

 

In 1889, a leaded stained-glass rose window manufactured by the Tiffany Glass Co., with a geometric design composed of seven circular motifs, was installed in the rear (altar end) of the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), originally a painter and later a decorator, started working in stained-glass windows in the mid-1870s and established the Tiffany Glass Co. in 1885. The firm’s early work was largely in the development of ornamental stained glass for windows, which were notable for their brilliant colors and the varied textures within the glass. Robert Koch, in his study Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass (1982), noted that “the best Tiffany windows made prior to 1890 are generally those of purely decorative and geometric design. Examples of such ornamental use of glass may be seen in... the windows of the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge.” Koch further noted the increasing rarity of in situ Tiffany windows in New York, based on an 1893 listing of churches and public buildings in the U.S. containing Tiffany work – “since that time more than half of the churches in New York in which Tiffany had a hand in the decoration have been demolished.”

 

Alfred E. Barlow, Architect

 

Little is known of the background of architect Alfred E. Barlow (1855-1926), who was apparently born in Brooklyn, the son of English-born machinist John Barlow. His career, however, strongly parallels that of fellow architect William Augustus Bates. Barlow was first listed in New York and Brooklyn directories as an architect in 1877, thereafter with an office in Manhattan and residence in Brooklyn. Bates and Barlow were two of the founders (along with Thomas Hastings and Cass Gilbert, etc.) in 1879 of the Architectural Sketch Club, which became the Architectural League of New York the following year. A League publication in 1906 stated that “most of [the founders] were at that time in the employ of Herter Brothers,” one of the nation’s leading interior decoration firms. Bates (1853-1922), the son of a New Jersey lumber merchant, was born in Michigan, educated in Cleveland, and entered Herter Brothers as a draftsman in 1872, where he remained until around 1881, working on one of the most noteworthy commissions of the day -- the decoration of William H. Vanderbilt’s twin mansions (1879-82, Trench & Snook; demolished), Fifth Avenue and West 51st Street. Bates established his own architectural practice in 1882, which specialized in country estates, resort buildings, and suburban houses. He was one of the leading (if lesser known) East Coast proponents of the Queen Anne style (closely influenced by English architect Richard Norman Shaw), as well as the Shingle style. Both Bates and Barlow contributed designs to William T. Comstock’s publication American Cottages (1883), and numerous of Bates’s designs around the country were published in contemporary architectural periodicals, as were some of Barlow’s, including “Astonfield” (1882), a Queen Anne style country estate for Samuel Rhodes. Bates designed Wentworth Hall and Cottages (1881-89), a large resort complex in the White Mountains at Jackson, New Hampshire, as well as the Wentworth residence (1891-92); and at least five houses (1888-99) in the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York. The wealthy pharmaceutical businessman and real estate developer William Van Duzer Lawrence (who founded Sarah Lawrence College in 1926), a friend of Bates from Michigan, hired him in 1890 as lead architect for the planned suburban community of Lawrence Park in Bronxville, New York. Bates moved here by 1893, and worked in the community until his death in 1922, including as a partner in the firm of Bates & [Kenneth G.] How after 1910. Bates’s houses (at least 35 of which are extant) were mostly in variants of the Shingle style.

 

The exact nature of the collaboration between Barlow and Bates is unknown, although they shared the same office address from 1885 until 1910, and an architectural directory listed them as “Barlow & Bates” in 1892. It is probable that Barlow performed work for Bates. They were also associated architects for the Mission Revival style Hotel Gramatan (1905; demolished) in Lawrence Park (which became Bates’s residence). New York’s Great Industries in 1884 had described Barlow as a partner in the firm of Charles W. Romeyn & Co., along with Arthur Jay Stever, working on projects such as Alfred Corning Clark’s enormous Dakota Stables building (1883; demolished) at Broadway and West 75th Street. There are not many known independent commissions of Alfred E. Barlow, though a few of them were prominent. He designed five rowhouses (1887) at 15-23 West 120th Street; the Ivy Club remodeling (1887; demolished), Princeton University; the Berkeley Lyceum (1887-88; demolished), 21 West 44th Street, a theater for amateur players; the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge (1887-88); the medieval chateau-inspired Samuel R. Smith Infirmary (1888-90), 101 Stanley Avenue, Staten Island; a stable/loft building (1891) at 19 Vestry Street; a neo-Federal style town house (1904) at 868 Lexington Avenue; and a store-and-loft building (1907) at 49 West 45th Street. In 1910, Barlow was living in Red Bank, New Jersey, he declared bankruptcy in 1916, he had moved by 1920 to Long Island City, and died in St. Petersburg, Florida.

 

Later History of the Church A large stone parsonage was constructed nearby in 1890, which remained in use until 1925

 

– it was sold and moved down the block, extant today at No. 49 West 167th Street. Due to the growth of the congregation, utilitarian additions were made to the rear of the church (apparently in 1901 and 1913). Rev. Daniel G. Verway served as the pastor for thirty years, until 1946. The old chapel building was demolished for an ambitious educational building (Walter J. Campbell, architect) planned with quarters for the pastor and sexton and administrative offices – it was never completed and only a utilitarian two-story, brick-clad Sunday School building was constructed in 1924 at the eastern end of the church property (this structure and the easternmost 50 feet of the lot are excluded from this designation).

 

The 19th-century character of Highbridge, composed mostly of small homes, changed greatly with the construction of large apartment buildings in the 20th century, spurred in part by the Jerome Avenue elevated railroad in 1918 and the subway (with a stop at the Grand Concourse and 161st Street) in 1933. The Art Deco style Noonan Plaza Apartments (1931, Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine), bordering the church’s property to the south, is one of the premiere complexes in the neighborhood. After World War II, the southwest Bronx, including Highbridge and the area of the Grand Concourse, began to suffer a severe decline. The rapid de-industrialization of the city, increasing suburbanization, heavy-handed urban renewal policies, disinvestment by area landlords, and the redlining of much of the Bronx by local banks all contributed to the economic downturn of the area. The owners of Noonan Plaza defaulted in 1976, and during the 1970s, many apartment buildings were abandoned by their owners and were set on fire, and the neighborhood suffered a catalogue of ills until it began to stabilize in the 1980s. The demographic composition of the Highbridge neighborhood also underwent substantial changes. The area’s residents, largely of European Jewish extraction, began to move to suburban areas, and the west Bronx became a diverse urban community as African-Americans and Latin Americans settled here. By the 1980s, the neighborhood began to experience renewal, as seen by the rehabilitation of Noonan Plaza in 1980-82 for federally subsidized apartments. The former Union Reformed Church of Highbridge, now Highbridge Community Church (sharing its building with Emmanuel Presbyterian Church) stands as a poignant reminder of the earlier history of the Highbridge neighborhood, and is one of the most distinctive churches in the Bronx and New York City.

 

Description

 

Built of random-coursed, rockfaced gneiss ashlar with red sandstone trim, the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge is a one-story structure with a taller square bell tower at the southwest corner. The wide, steeply-pitched roof (originally covered by slate shingles, now asphalt shingles) terminates at the eastern end in a polygonal louvered cupola with a tall conical roof. West (Ogden Avenue) Facade: The west facade, rising from a stone foundation/retaining wall with a stone watertable, consists of the main body of the church with a steeply-pitched gable and three round-arched windows with voussoirs, connected to the bell tower by a tourelle with a conical roof (capped by roofing tiles) and a pierced parapet wall. The base of the tourelle was originally columnar, but was re-built battered. The three windows have geometric-patterned leaded stained glass (covered by plexiglass panels). The gable, tourelle, and tower are pierced by slit windows. A utility meter is attached to the base of the church.

 

The peak of the gable bears an historic ornamental wrought-iron cross. Tower: A cornerstone at the base of the tower bears the date “1888.” Each face of the top section of the tower (which contains an 1866 bell, from the earlier chapel) has large corner columns above a stone molding, two round sandstone arches (originally with louvers, many of which survive) supported by sandstone colonnettes, surmounted by a checkerboard-patterned spandrel and a corbelled stone cornice. The eaves are bracketed. The pyramidal roof of the tower was originally covered with slate shingles (now asphalt shingles); the base of the original ornamental weathervane is extant. South Facade: The main entrance is in the base of the tower, approached by three bluestone steps. The round-arched surround consists of a compound-molded sandstone arch, surmounted by rockfaced sandstone voussoirs, and supported by triple rockfaced sandstone columns with molded capitals, edged by quoins. There are non-historic wooden double doors.

 

The wooden tympanum is ornamented by carved foliation surrounding a circle. A small Gothic lantern hangs above the entrance. The main body of the church has stone buttresses alternating with round-arched windows with leaded stained glass (covered by metal-mesh grilles) and voussoirs. The east end flares out into a polygonal wing capped by a peaked polygonal roof that joins the main gable roof; a stone chimney rises from the juncture with this wing. There is a non-historic metal door in the basement at this end. North Facade: The north entrance, at the western end, is located in a pedimented portico, supported by bracketed stone piers, with grey slate shingle facing and a peaked roof. The round-arched entrance surround consists of a sandstone tympanum surmounted by double rows of rockfaced sandstone voussoirs, supported by triple rockfaced sandstone columns with molded capitals. The spandrel has stone corbels supporting a molded cornice. There are three bluestone steps and non-historic wooden double doors.

 

The main body of the church has stone buttresses alternating with round-arched windows with leaded stained glass (covered by metal-mesh grilles) and voussoirs. Two non-historic lanterns are placed next to the buttresses. The east end flares out into a polygonal wing capped by a peaked polygonal roof that joins the main gable roof. East Facade: The original east facade, clad in red brick, consists of the main central body of the church (now partly obscured) having a taller central pavilion with a hipped roof that rises to the polygonal louvered cupola, flanked by the polygonal wings. The central pavilion contains a Tiffany Glass Co. leaded stained-glass rose window (1889), composed of a geometric design with seven circular motifs (covered by a square metal-mesh grille). The southern polygonal wing has a paneled wooden door and a window (both covered with metal-mesh grilles). There are two utilitarian one-story additions (apparently 1901 and 1913), clad in brick (the northernmost is parged with concrete) and pierced by windows and a door.

 

Property Features: Along Ogden Avenue there is a stone post with non-historic wrought-iron gates, and an historic wrought-iron fence (with signage) atop the stone retaining wall to the north of church; and bluestone steps, stone posts, historic wrought-iron gates, and an historic wrought-iron fence atop the stone retaining wall to the south. On the south side are bluestone stairs (with iron railings) leading to the basement at the east end; bluestone stairs with cheek walls and wrought-iron railings leading to the entrance; a low rubble stone retaining wall bordering the lawn; and a flagstone and concrete walkway. On the north side are an asphalt driveway; a flagstone walkway by the church; and a yard. On the east side are an asphalt parking lot, yard, and a walkway.

 

- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

 

William Coulthard took up land here in 1841 and built a timber slab cottage that year. He then built a two roomed stone house in 1844. He subdivided some of his land to create the village of Nuriootpa. He began building this grand two storey residence in 1855.

 

Coulthard arrived in SA in 1836. He created Nuriootpa in 1850 but died early in 1858. He was the licensee of the Red Lion Inn in Nuriootpa.

 

Coulthard ancestors donated land in the Main Street Murray Street for the Coulthard Memorial Methodist Church which opened in 1936. An earlier tin and timber Methodist church opened in Nuriootpa in 1901.

 

Some early buildings that were important in Nuriootpa were: the Lutheran Church 1867; the first town school 1865; the Institute 1877; the stone Post Office 1880; the Anglican Church 1904; the railway statoin 1911 when the railway line opened from Gawler. Major industry in the town from 1890 was Krieg saddlery and brick works. Outside the town Penfolds Winery was a major employer in the early years. Nuriootpa has always had a strong community movement with the community owned hotel, the Vine Inn and the Co-op Store.

Vinovia or Vinovium was a Roman fort and settlement situated just over 1 mile (1.6 km) to the north of the town of Bishop Auckland on the banks of the River Wear in County Durham, England. The fort was the site of a hamlet until the late Middle Ages, but the modern-day village of Binchester is about 2 miles (3 km) to the east, near Spennymoor. The ruins are now known as the Binchester Roman Fort.

 

Not much is yet known about pre-Roman settlement in the immediate area. The fort was probably established around AD 79 to guard the crossing of the River Wear by Dere Street, the main Roman road between York, Hadrian's Wall and Scotland, and also the fort's via principalis. Sitting atop a hill 15 metres (49 ft) above the Wear, Binchester was the largest Roman fort in County Durham. The land was cleared of trees and brush and a huge levelling fill laid down on the plateau before construction of the fort began. Archaeologists found four coins of Vespasian that seem to corroborate that initial building was related to Agricola's march northward into the territory of the Brigantes. Two phases of timber structures, most likely barrack blocks, were constructed atop the levelling deposit. Much later, perhaps centuries later, buildings inside the fort were levelled and reconstructed in stone. These included a commandant's house at the heart of the fort and a well-appointed baths building, both of which went through several phases of development.

 

It is not entirely clear which garrison units would have called Binchester home. The cuneus Frisorum Vinoviensium and the equites catafractariorum have been mentioned in inscriptions from the site. The cavalry units of the ala Vettonum, a cohort of Frisian soldiers, and part of the Sixth Legion might also have stayed here at some point in its history. In fact, it may have been men from the Legio VI Victrix who built the original fort.

 

An extensive civilian settlement (vicus) existed to the north and west of the fort, the remains of which are buried under the pastures of Binchester Hall Farm. The southern part of the fort is now beneath Binchester Hall, while some of the defences were destroyed in a landslip in the 19th century. Part of the stone bridge used by Dere Street to cross the River Wear can still be seen when the river is low. In 2007, several mausolea were found to the north of the vicus.

 

Although the Roman occupation of Britain ended officially around 410, the area around Binchester seems to have remained occupied by the local population. By the early 6th century, a small Anglo-Saxon cemetery had been founded, and the demolition of the fort's buildings for reclamation of the materials had started, some of which were eventually used in the construction of the nearby 7th-century Escomb Church. A hamlet and manor house survived at Binchester until the late Middle Ages. The site of the manor house is now occupied by the 17th-century Binchester Hall.

 

The remains of the fort have been known to antiquarians and historians since the 16th century. In 1552, John Leland wrote that Roman coins had been uncovered in nearby ploughed fields, while William Camden, in 1586, mentioned the remains of some walls could still then be seen. A bath-house was found in 1815 when a farm cart accidentally fell into part of a hypocaust. The ruins did not fare well under the early 19th-century occupants of Binchester Hall. In 1828, "altars, urns, and other relics" were robbed out and taken away to be used as props inside coal pits in the area. The fort and surrounding land passed from private ownership to that of the Anglican Church in 1836.

 

The first archaeological excavations took place between 1878 and 1880, under the auspices of John Proud of Bishop Auckland and the Reverend Robert Eli Hooppell of Byers Green, investigating the bath-house, some of the fort's defences, and parts of the surrounding settlement. However, Hooppell claimed that "(virtually) everything of note found at Binchester before 1879 has perished, or been scattered beyond hope of recovery." Hooppell had workmen excavate the eastern rampart of the fort where they uncovered a portion of Dere Street which functioned as the fort's Via Principalis. They also explored the vicus, uncovering several plain buildings. In 1891, the installation of modern water pipes in the area caused destruction to the northeast corner of the fort, particularly the rampart, Dere Street, and a few vicus houses, but did uncover a large Roman altar dedicated by Pomponius Donatus "beneficiarius of the governor" to Jupiter and the Matres Ollototae (three Celtic mother goddesses originally from the continent).

 

In 1937, Kenneth Steer undertook some excavations around the fort's defences as part of his archaeology degree at Durham University. There he found evidence for post-Roman buildings overlying these ditches, suggesting that the vicus continued as a small settlement after the fort was actively occupied. He was also able to identify an early Agricolan fort under a later one dating to about the 3rd century. Further work continued in 1955 and between 1964 and 1972 when the bath suite was re-excavated and mostly cleared. The 1960s were also the period that the archaeological site came under the guardianship of Durham County Council. In 1971, rescue excavation at the northwestern end of Binchester Hall found around six successive layers of timber barracks.

 

A long-term program of excavation begun by the Bowes Museum for Durham County Council ran from 1976–1980, and then again from 1986–1988. It focused primarily upon the baths suite and the attached commandant's house, uncovering several phases of activity. The first was the construction of the original courtyard house presumably used by the commandant of the fort, built sometime after the middle of the 4th century atop two previous smaller stone buildings, also presumably praetoria. It had attractive decor and was meant for a single occupant. Later, but also perhaps in the 4th century, a detached bath suite was built adjoining the house, necessitating the demolition of part of the earlier building. It had three rooms: a warm room, a hot room, and a hot room with two plunge baths. The excavators understood this bath building to be for the use of the commandant only. Still later, the house seems to have lost its singular occupant. Rooms were subdivided and several self-contained units were created in what was originally a large house. The baths received a flagstone court, a triple-arched gateway, and a small anteroom, and it is suggested that the reorganisation of both structures meant the baths were opened to the entire regiment at the fort. A coin of the usurper Magnentius, minted between 350 and 360, may provide a terminus post quem for these renovations. The baths and house then fell on rough times. Lack of maintenance of the baths can be seen archaeologically in the next period, and in the house, the rooms come to be used for industry, including blacksmithing, lime slaking, and animal butchery. A midden dug in a channel around most of the building held a great deal of animal bones and debris. Finally, the collapse of a few walls and part of the roof of the baths seems to have heralded the end for the complex some time in the post-Roman period. However, the entire fort seems to have been used as a cemetery from the mid-6th to the 11th centuries. A Saxon woman was found buried in the rubble caused by the roof collapse.

 

Around 4.7 hectares (12 acres) of the vicus were mapped with a geophysical survey in 2004. Along with previous surveys, a picture began to emerge of a quite extensive civilian settlement lying under the fields to the east of the fort, where Hooppell had done his early test trenches. This led to David Mason, the County Archaeologist, suggesting to the Channel 4 archaeological television programme Time Team that Binchester could provide a fertile ground for investigation. In April 2007, the production company came and spent three days excavating and extending the area surveyed by geophysical means. Apart from discovering more remains of the larger, earlier fort, the programme also found a row of three military mausolea, "the first to have been found in Britain for 150 years." Time Team also identified that the vicus also extended to the north of the fort. The Binchester programme was broadcast on Channel 4 on 13 January 2008, ending Time Team's involvement with the site.

 

In 2009, a test season was conducted in July where the team opened a trench at the north-east corner of the fort. The first full season of these new excavations was in 2010, with the team opening trenches both inside the fort and outside in the vicus. At Durham University, the principal investigators of the project were Richard Hingley and David Petts. At Stanford University, the principal investigators were Michael Shanks, Gary Devore, Melissa Chatfield, and David Platt.

 

In 2018, a six-week dig involving 60 archaeologists and volunteers unearthed a road, carved images and several industrial buildings from the Roman era

 

Dating aspects of the fort and vicus of Binchester is quite difficult given the limited modern archaeological exploration that has occurred on the site. Most of the floors investigated inside the fort have been of opus signinum, and kept relatively clean during their life. A few coins have been found under floor deposits, but these often only give a terminus post quem, and coins stop becoming reliable diagnostic items in the 5th century, although settlement in and around Binchester surely lasted into the early Medieval period. Modern investigation of the vicus has been non-existent or fruitless in the search for datable finds. It is hoped that the current excavations might inform more about the chronology of the site.

 

Roman Britain was the territory that became the Roman province of Britannia after the Roman conquest of Britain, consisting of a large part of the island of Great Britain. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410.

 

Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 and 54 BC as part of his Gallic Wars. According to Caesar, the Britons had been overrun or culturally assimilated by the Belgae during the British Iron Age and had been aiding Caesar's enemies. The Belgae were the only Celtic tribe to cross the sea into Britain, for to all other Celtic tribes this land was unknown. He received tribute, installed the friendly king Mandubracius over the Trinovantes, and returned to Gaul. Planned invasions under Augustus were called off in 34, 27, and 25 BC. In 40 AD, Caligula assembled 200,000 men at the Channel on the continent, only to have them gather seashells (musculi) according to Suetonius, perhaps as a symbolic gesture to proclaim Caligula's victory over the sea. Three years later, Claudius directed four legions to invade Britain and restore the exiled king Verica over the Atrebates. The Romans defeated the Catuvellauni, and then organized their conquests as the province of Britain. By 47 AD, the Romans held the lands southeast of the Fosse Way. Control over Wales was delayed by reverses and the effects of Boudica's uprising, but the Romans expanded steadily northward.

 

The conquest of Britain continued under command of Gnaeus Julius Agricola (77–84), who expanded the Roman Empire as far as Caledonia. In mid-84 AD, Agricola faced the armies of the Caledonians, led by Calgacus, at the Battle of Mons Graupius. Battle casualties were estimated by Tacitus to be upwards of 10,000 on the Caledonian side and about 360 on the Roman side. The bloodbath at Mons Graupius concluded the forty-year conquest of Britain, a period that possibly saw between 100,000 and 250,000 Britons killed. In the context of pre-industrial warfare and of a total population of Britain of c. 2 million, these are very high figures.

 

Under the 2nd-century emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, two walls were built to defend the Roman province from the Caledonians, whose realms in the Scottish Highlands were never controlled. Around 197 AD, the Severan Reforms divided Britain into two provinces: Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. During the Diocletian Reforms, at the end of the 3rd century, Britannia was divided into four provinces under the direction of a vicarius, who administered the Diocese of the Britains. A fifth province, Valentia, is attested in the later 4th century. For much of the later period of the Roman occupation, Britannia was subject to barbarian invasions and often came under the control of imperial usurpers and imperial pretenders. The final Roman withdrawal from Britain occurred around 410; the native kingdoms are considered to have formed Sub-Roman Britain after that.

 

Following the conquest of the Britons, a distinctive Romano-British culture emerged as the Romans introduced improved agriculture, urban planning, industrial production, and architecture. The Roman goddess Britannia became the female personification of Britain. After the initial invasions, Roman historians generally only mention Britain in passing. Thus, most present knowledge derives from archaeological investigations and occasional epigraphic evidence lauding the Britannic achievements of an emperor. Roman citizens settled in Britain from many parts of the Empire.

 

History

Britain was known to the Classical world. The Greeks, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin in the 4th century BC. The Greeks referred to the Cassiterides, or "tin islands", and placed them near the west coast of Europe. The Carthaginian sailor Himilco is said to have visited the island in the 6th or 5th century BC and the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th. It was regarded as a place of mystery, with some writers refusing to believe it existed.

 

The first direct Roman contact was when Julius Caesar undertook two expeditions in 55 and 54 BC, as part of his conquest of Gaul, believing the Britons were helping the Gallic resistance. The first expedition was more a reconnaissance than a full invasion and gained a foothold on the coast of Kent but was unable to advance further because of storm damage to the ships and a lack of cavalry. Despite the military failure, it was a political success, with the Roman Senate declaring a 20-day public holiday in Rome to honour the unprecedented achievement of obtaining hostages from Britain and defeating Belgic tribes on returning to the continent.

 

The second invasion involved a substantially larger force and Caesar coerced or invited many of the native Celtic tribes to pay tribute and give hostages in return for peace. A friendly local king, Mandubracius, was installed, and his rival, Cassivellaunus, was brought to terms. Hostages were taken, but historians disagree over whether any tribute was paid after Caesar returned to Gaul.

 

Caesar conquered no territory and left no troops behind, but he established clients and brought Britain into Rome's sphere of influence. Augustus planned invasions in 34, 27 and 25 BC, but circumstances were never favourable, and the relationship between Britain and Rome settled into one of diplomacy and trade. Strabo, writing late in Augustus's reign, claimed that taxes on trade brought in more annual revenue than any conquest could. Archaeology shows that there was an increase in imported luxury goods in southeastern Britain. Strabo also mentions British kings who sent embassies to Augustus, and Augustus's own Res Gestae refers to two British kings he received as refugees. When some of Tiberius's ships were carried to Britain in a storm during his campaigns in Germany in 16 AD, they came back with tales of monsters.

 

Rome appears to have encouraged a balance of power in southern Britain, supporting two powerful kingdoms: the Catuvellauni, ruled by the descendants of Tasciovanus, and the Atrebates, ruled by the descendants of Commius. This policy was followed until 39 or 40 AD, when Caligula received an exiled member of the Catuvellaunian dynasty and planned an invasion of Britain that collapsed in farcical circumstances before it left Gaul. When Claudius successfully invaded in 43 AD, it was in aid of another fugitive British ruler, Verica of the Atrebates.

 

Roman invasion

The invasion force in 43 AD was led by Aulus Plautius,[26] but it is unclear how many legions were sent. The Legio II Augusta, commanded by future emperor Vespasian, was the only one directly attested to have taken part. The Legio IX Hispana, the XIV Gemina (later styled Martia Victrix) and the XX (later styled Valeria Victrix) are known to have served during the Boudican Revolt of 60/61, and were probably there since the initial invasion. This is not certain because the Roman army was flexible, with units being moved around whenever necessary. The IX Hispana may have been permanently stationed, with records showing it at Eboracum (York) in 71 and on a building inscription there dated 108, before being destroyed in the east of the Empire, possibly during the Bar Kokhba revolt.

 

The invasion was delayed by a troop mutiny until an imperial freedman persuaded them to overcome their fear of crossing the Ocean and campaigning beyond the limits of the known world. They sailed in three divisions, and probably landed at Richborough in Kent; at least part of the force may have landed near Fishbourne, West Sussex.

 

The Catuvellauni and their allies were defeated in two battles: the first, assuming a Richborough landing, on the river Medway, the second on the river Thames. One of their leaders, Togodumnus, was killed, but his brother Caratacus survived to continue resistance elsewhere. Plautius halted at the Thames and sent for Claudius, who arrived with reinforcements, including artillery and elephants, for the final march to the Catuvellaunian capital, Camulodunum (Colchester). Vespasian subdued the southwest, Cogidubnus was set up as a friendly king of several territories, and treaties were made with tribes outside direct Roman control.

 

Establishment of Roman rule

After capturing the south of the island, the Romans turned their attention to what is now Wales. The Silures, Ordovices and Deceangli remained implacably opposed to the invaders and for the first few decades were the focus of Roman military attention, despite occasional minor revolts among Roman allies like the Brigantes and the Iceni. The Silures were led by Caratacus, and he carried out an effective guerrilla campaign against Governor Publius Ostorius Scapula. Finally, in 51, Ostorius lured Caratacus into a set-piece battle and defeated him. The British leader sought refuge among the Brigantes, but their queen, Cartimandua, proved her loyalty by surrendering him to the Romans. He was brought as a captive to Rome, where a dignified speech he made during Claudius's triumph persuaded the emperor to spare his life. The Silures were still not pacified, and Cartimandua's ex-husband Venutius replaced Caratacus as the most prominent leader of British resistance.

 

On Nero's accession, Roman Britain extended as far north as Lindum. Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the conqueror of Mauretania (modern day Algeria and Morocco), then became governor of Britain, and in 60 and 61 he moved against Mona (Anglesey) to settle accounts with Druidism once and for all. Paulinus led his army across the Menai Strait and massacred the Druids and burnt their sacred groves.

 

While Paulinus was campaigning in Mona, the southeast of Britain rose in revolt under the leadership of Boudica. She was the widow of the recently deceased king of the Iceni, Prasutagus. The Roman historian Tacitus reports that Prasutagus had left a will leaving half his kingdom to Nero in the hope that the remainder would be left untouched. He was wrong. When his will was enforced, Rome[clarification needed] responded by violently seizing the tribe's lands in full. Boudica protested. In consequence, Rome[clarification needed] punished her and her daughters by flogging and rape. In response, the Iceni, joined by the Trinovantes, destroyed the Roman colony at Camulodunum (Colchester) and routed the part of the IXth Legion that was sent to relieve it. Paulinus rode to London (then called Londinium), the rebels' next target, but concluded it could not be defended. Abandoned, it was destroyed, as was Verulamium (St. Albans). Between seventy and eighty thousand people are said to have been killed in the three cities. But Paulinus regrouped with two of the three legions still available to him, chose a battlefield, and, despite being outnumbered by more than twenty to one, defeated the rebels in the Battle of Watling Street. Boudica died not long afterwards, by self-administered poison or by illness. During this time, the Emperor Nero considered withdrawing Roman forces from Britain altogether.

 

There was further turmoil in 69, the "Year of the Four Emperors". As civil war raged in Rome, weak governors were unable to control the legions in Britain, and Venutius of the Brigantes seized his chance. The Romans had previously defended Cartimandua against him, but this time were unable to do so. Cartimandua was evacuated, and Venutius was left in control of the north of the country. After Vespasian secured the empire, his first two appointments as governor, Quintus Petillius Cerialis and Sextus Julius Frontinus, took on the task of subduing the Brigantes and Silures respectively.[38] Frontinus extended Roman rule to all of South Wales, and initiated exploitation of the mineral resources, such as the gold mines at Dolaucothi.

 

In the following years, the Romans conquered more of the island, increasing the size of Roman Britain. Governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, father-in-law to the historian Tacitus, conquered the Ordovices in 78. With the XX Valeria Victrix legion, Agricola defeated the Caledonians in 84 at the Battle of Mons Graupius, in north-east Scotland. This was the high-water mark of Roman territory in Britain: shortly after his victory, Agricola was recalled from Britain back to Rome, and the Romans initially retired to a more defensible line along the Forth–Clyde isthmus, freeing soldiers badly needed along other frontiers.

 

For much of the history of Roman Britain, a large number of soldiers were garrisoned on the island. This required that the emperor station a trusted senior man as governor of the province. As a result, many future emperors served as governors or legates in this province, including Vespasian, Pertinax, and Gordian I.

 

Roman military organisation in the north

In 84 AD

In 84 AD

 

In 155 AD

In 155 AD

 

Hadrian's Wall, and Antonine Wall

There is no historical source describing the decades that followed Agricola's recall. Even the name of his replacement is unknown. Archaeology has shown that some Roman forts south of the Forth–Clyde isthmus were rebuilt and enlarged; others appear to have been abandoned. By 87 the frontier had been consolidated on the Stanegate. Roman coins and pottery have been found circulating at native settlement sites in the Scottish Lowlands in the years before 100, indicating growing Romanisation. Some of the most important sources for this era are the writing tablets from the fort at Vindolanda in Northumberland, mostly dating to 90–110. These tablets provide evidence for the operation of a Roman fort at the edge of the Roman Empire, where officers' wives maintained polite society while merchants, hauliers and military personnel kept the fort operational and supplied.

 

Around 105 there appears to have been a serious setback at the hands of the tribes of the Picts: several Roman forts were destroyed by fire, with human remains and damaged armour at Trimontium (at modern Newstead, in SE Scotland) indicating hostilities at least at that site.[citation needed] There is also circumstantial evidence that auxiliary reinforcements were sent from Germany, and an unnamed British war of the period is mentioned on the gravestone of a tribune of Cyrene. Trajan's Dacian Wars may have led to troop reductions in the area or even total withdrawal followed by slighting of the forts by the Picts rather than an unrecorded military defeat. The Romans were also in the habit of destroying their own forts during an orderly withdrawal, in order to deny resources to an enemy. In either case, the frontier probably moved south to the line of the Stanegate at the Solway–Tyne isthmus around this time.

 

A new crisis occurred at the beginning of Hadrian's reign): a rising in the north which was suppressed by Quintus Pompeius Falco. When Hadrian reached Britannia on his famous tour of the Roman provinces around 120, he directed an extensive defensive wall, known to posterity as Hadrian's Wall, to be built close to the line of the Stanegate frontier. Hadrian appointed Aulus Platorius Nepos as governor to undertake this work who brought the Legio VI Victrix legion with him from Germania Inferior. This replaced the famous Legio IX Hispana, whose disappearance has been much discussed. Archaeology indicates considerable political instability in Scotland during the first half of the 2nd century, and the shifting frontier at this time should be seen in this context.

 

In the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161) the Hadrianic border was briefly extended north to the Forth–Clyde isthmus, where the Antonine Wall was built around 142 following the military reoccupation of the Scottish lowlands by a new governor, Quintus Lollius Urbicus.

 

The first Antonine occupation of Scotland ended as a result of a further crisis in 155–157, when the Brigantes revolted. With limited options to despatch reinforcements, the Romans moved their troops south, and this rising was suppressed by Governor Gnaeus Julius Verus. Within a year the Antonine Wall was recaptured, but by 163 or 164 it was abandoned. The second occupation was probably connected with Antoninus's undertakings to protect the Votadini or his pride in enlarging the empire, since the retreat to the Hadrianic frontier occurred not long after his death when a more objective strategic assessment of the benefits of the Antonine Wall could be made. The Romans did not entirely withdraw from Scotland at this time: the large fort at Newstead was maintained along with seven smaller outposts until at least 180.

 

During the twenty-year period following the reversion of the frontier to Hadrian's Wall in 163/4, Rome was concerned with continental issues, primarily problems in the Danubian provinces. Increasing numbers of hoards of buried coins in Britain at this time indicate that peace was not entirely achieved. Sufficient Roman silver has been found in Scotland to suggest more than ordinary trade, and it is likely that the Romans were reinforcing treaty agreements by paying tribute to their implacable enemies, the Picts.

 

In 175, a large force of Sarmatian cavalry, consisting of 5,500 men, arrived in Britannia, probably to reinforce troops fighting unrecorded uprisings. In 180, Hadrian's Wall was breached by the Picts and the commanding officer or governor was killed there in what Cassius Dio described as the most serious war of the reign of Commodus. Ulpius Marcellus was sent as replacement governor and by 184 he had won a new peace, only to be faced with a mutiny from his own troops. Unhappy with Marcellus's strictness, they tried to elect a legate named Priscus as usurper governor; he refused, but Marcellus was lucky to leave the province alive. The Roman army in Britannia continued its insubordination: they sent a delegation of 1,500 to Rome to demand the execution of Tigidius Perennis, a Praetorian prefect who they felt had earlier wronged them by posting lowly equites to legate ranks in Britannia. Commodus met the party outside Rome and agreed to have Perennis killed, but this only made them feel more secure in their mutiny.

 

The future emperor Pertinax (lived 126–193) was sent to Britannia to quell the mutiny and was initially successful in regaining control, but a riot broke out among the troops. Pertinax was attacked and left for dead, and asked to be recalled to Rome, where he briefly succeeded Commodus as emperor in 192.

 

3rd century

The death of Commodus put into motion a series of events which eventually led to civil war. Following the short reign of Pertinax, several rivals for the emperorship emerged, including Septimius Severus and Clodius Albinus. The latter was the new governor of Britannia, and had seemingly won the natives over after their earlier rebellions; he also controlled three legions, making him a potentially significant claimant. His sometime rival Severus promised him the title of Caesar in return for Albinus's support against Pescennius Niger in the east. Once Niger was neutralised, Severus turned on his ally in Britannia; it is likely that Albinus saw he would be the next target and was already preparing for war.

 

Albinus crossed to Gaul in 195, where the provinces were also sympathetic to him, and set up at Lugdunum. Severus arrived in February 196, and the ensuing battle was decisive. Albinus came close to victory, but Severus's reinforcements won the day, and the British governor committed suicide. Severus soon purged Albinus's sympathisers and perhaps confiscated large tracts of land in Britain as punishment. Albinus had demonstrated the major problem posed by Roman Britain. In order to maintain security, the province required the presence of three legions, but command of these forces provided an ideal power base for ambitious rivals. Deploying those legions elsewhere would strip the island of its garrison, leaving the province defenceless against uprisings by the native Celtic tribes and against invasion by the Picts and Scots.

 

The traditional view is that northern Britain descended into anarchy during Albinus's absence. Cassius Dio records that the new Governor, Virius Lupus, was obliged to buy peace from a fractious northern tribe known as the Maeatae. The succession of militarily distinguished governors who were subsequently appointed suggests that enemies of Rome were posing a difficult challenge, and Lucius Alfenus Senecio's report to Rome in 207 describes barbarians "rebelling, over-running the land, taking loot and creating destruction". In order to rebel, of course, one must be a subject – the Maeatae clearly did not consider themselves such. Senecio requested either reinforcements or an Imperial expedition, and Severus chose the latter, despite being 62 years old. Archaeological evidence shows that Senecio had been rebuilding the defences of Hadrian's Wall and the forts beyond it, and Severus's arrival in Britain prompted the enemy tribes to sue for peace immediately. The emperor had not come all that way to leave without a victory, and it is likely that he wished to provide his teenage sons Caracalla and Geta with first-hand experience of controlling a hostile barbarian land.

 

Northern campaigns, 208–211

An invasion of Caledonia led by Severus and probably numbering around 20,000 troops moved north in 208 or 209, crossing the Wall and passing through eastern Scotland on a route similar to that used by Agricola. Harried by punishing guerrilla raids by the northern tribes and slowed by an unforgiving terrain, Severus was unable to meet the Caledonians on a battlefield. The emperor's forces pushed north as far as the River Tay, but little appears to have been achieved by the invasion, as peace treaties were signed with the Caledonians. By 210 Severus had returned to York, and the frontier had once again become Hadrian's Wall. He assumed the title Britannicus but the title meant little with regard to the unconquered north, which clearly remained outside the authority of the Empire. Almost immediately, another northern tribe, the Maeatae, went to war. Caracalla left with a punitive expedition, but by the following year his ailing father had died and he and his brother left the province to press their claim to the throne.

 

As one of his last acts, Severus tried to solve the problem of powerful and rebellious governors in Britain by dividing the province into Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. This kept the potential for rebellion in check for almost a century. Historical sources provide little information on the following decades, a period known as the Long Peace. Even so, the number of buried hoards found from this period rises, suggesting continuing unrest. A string of forts were built along the coast of southern Britain to control piracy; and over the following hundred years they increased in number, becoming the Saxon Shore Forts.

 

During the middle of the 3rd century, the Roman Empire was convulsed by barbarian invasions, rebellions and new imperial pretenders. Britannia apparently avoided these troubles, but increasing inflation had its economic effect. In 259 a so-called Gallic Empire was established when Postumus rebelled against Gallienus. Britannia was part of this until 274 when Aurelian reunited the empire.

 

Around the year 280, a half-British officer named Bonosus was in command of the Roman's Rhenish fleet when the Germans managed to burn it at anchor. To avoid punishment, he proclaimed himself emperor at Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) but was crushed by Marcus Aurelius Probus. Soon afterwards, an unnamed governor of one of the British provinces also attempted an uprising. Probus put it down by sending irregular troops of Vandals and Burgundians across the Channel.

 

The Carausian Revolt led to a short-lived Britannic Empire from 286 to 296. Carausius was a Menapian naval commander of the Britannic fleet; he revolted upon learning of a death sentence ordered by the emperor Maximian on charges of having abetted Frankish and Saxon pirates and having embezzled recovered treasure. He consolidated control over all the provinces of Britain and some of northern Gaul while Maximian dealt with other uprisings. An invasion in 288 failed to unseat him and an uneasy peace ensued, with Carausius issuing coins and inviting official recognition. In 293, the junior emperor Constantius Chlorus launched a second offensive, besieging the rebel port of Gesoriacum (Boulogne-sur-Mer) by land and sea. After it fell, Constantius attacked Carausius's other Gallic holdings and Frankish allies and Carausius was usurped by his treasurer, Allectus. Julius Asclepiodotus landed an invasion fleet near Southampton and defeated Allectus in a land battle.

 

Diocletian's reforms

As part of Diocletian's reforms, the provinces of Roman Britain were organized as a diocese governed by a vicarius under a praetorian prefect who, from 318 to 331, was Junius Bassus who was based at Augusta Treverorum (Trier).

 

The vicarius was based at Londinium as the principal city of the diocese. Londinium and Eboracum continued as provincial capitals and the territory was divided up into smaller provinces for administrative efficiency.

 

Civilian and military authority of a province was no longer exercised by one official and the governor was stripped of military command which was handed over to the Dux Britanniarum by 314. The governor of a province assumed more financial duties (the procurators of the Treasury ministry were slowly phased out in the first three decades of the 4th century). The Dux was commander of the troops of the Northern Region, primarily along Hadrian's Wall and his responsibilities included protection of the frontier. He had significant autonomy due in part to the distance from his superiors.

 

The tasks of the vicarius were to control and coordinate the activities of governors; monitor but not interfere with the daily functioning of the Treasury and Crown Estates, which had their own administrative infrastructure; and act as the regional quartermaster-general of the armed forces. In short, as the sole civilian official with superior authority, he had general oversight of the administration, as well as direct control, while not absolute, over governors who were part of the prefecture; the other two fiscal departments were not.

 

The early-4th-century Verona List, the late-4th-century work of Sextus Rufus, and the early-5th-century List of Offices and work of Polemius Silvius all list four provinces by some variation of the names Britannia I, Britannia II, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia Caesariensis; all of these seem to have initially been directed by a governor (praeses) of equestrian rank. The 5th-century sources list a fifth province named Valentia and give its governor and Maxima's a consular rank. Ammianus mentions Valentia as well, describing its creation by Count Theodosius in 369 after the quelling of the Great Conspiracy. Ammianus considered it a re-creation of a formerly lost province, leading some to think there had been an earlier fifth province under another name (may be the enigmatic "Vespasiana"), and leading others to place Valentia beyond Hadrian's Wall, in the territory abandoned south of the Antonine Wall.

 

Reconstructions of the provinces and provincial capitals during this period partially rely on ecclesiastical records. On the assumption that the early bishoprics mimicked the imperial hierarchy, scholars use the list of bishops for the 314 Council of Arles. The list is patently corrupt: the British delegation is given as including a Bishop "Eborius" of Eboracum and two bishops "from Londinium" (one de civitate Londinensi and the other de civitate colonia Londinensium). The error is variously emended: Bishop Ussher proposed Colonia, Selden Col. or Colon. Camalodun., and Spelman Colonia Cameloduni (all various names of Colchester); Gale and Bingham offered colonia Lindi and Henry Colonia Lindum (both Lincoln); and Bishop Stillingfleet and Francis Thackeray read it as a scribal error of Civ. Col. Londin. for an original Civ. Col. Leg. II (Caerleon). On the basis of the Verona List, the priest and deacon who accompanied the bishops in some manuscripts are ascribed to the fourth province.

 

In the 12th century, Gerald of Wales described the supposedly metropolitan sees of the early British church established by the legendary SS Fagan and "Duvian". He placed Britannia Prima in Wales and western England with its capital at "Urbs Legionum" (Caerleon); Britannia Secunda in Kent and southern England with its capital at "Dorobernia" (Canterbury); Flavia in Mercia and central England with its capital at "Lundonia" (London); "Maximia" in northern England with its capital at Eboracum (York); and Valentia in "Albania which is now Scotland" with its capital at St Andrews. Modern scholars generally dispute the last: some place Valentia at or beyond Hadrian's Wall but St Andrews is beyond even the Antonine Wall and Gerald seems to have simply been supporting the antiquity of its church for political reasons.

 

A common modern reconstruction places the consular province of Maxima at Londinium, on the basis of its status as the seat of the diocesan vicarius; places Prima in the west according to Gerald's traditional account but moves its capital to Corinium of the Dobunni (Cirencester) on the basis of an artifact recovered there referring to Lucius Septimius, a provincial rector; places Flavia north of Maxima, with its capital placed at Lindum Colonia (Lincoln) to match one emendation of the bishops list from Arles;[d] and places Secunda in the north with its capital at Eboracum (York). Valentia is placed variously in northern Wales around Deva (Chester); beside Hadrian's Wall around Luguvalium (Carlisle); and between the walls along Dere Street.

 

4th century

Emperor Constantius returned to Britain in 306, despite his poor health, with an army aiming to invade northern Britain, the provincial defences having been rebuilt in the preceding years. Little is known of his campaigns with scant archaeological evidence, but fragmentary historical sources suggest he reached the far north of Britain and won a major battle in early summer before returning south. His son Constantine (later Constantine the Great) spent a year in northern Britain at his father's side, campaigning against the Picts beyond Hadrian's Wall in the summer and autumn. Constantius died in York in July 306 with his son at his side. Constantine then successfully used Britain as the starting point of his march to the imperial throne, unlike the earlier usurper, Albinus.

 

In the middle of the century, the province was loyal for a few years to the usurper Magnentius, who succeeded Constans following the latter's death. After the defeat and death of Magnentius in the Battle of Mons Seleucus in 353, Constantius II dispatched his chief imperial notary Paulus Catena to Britain to hunt down Magnentius's supporters. The investigation deteriorated into a witch-hunt, which forced the vicarius Flavius Martinus to intervene. When Paulus retaliated by accusing Martinus of treason, the vicarius attacked Paulus with a sword, with the aim of assassinating him, but in the end he committed suicide.

 

As the 4th century progressed, there were increasing attacks from the Saxons in the east and the Scoti (Irish) in the west. A series of forts had been built, starting around 280, to defend the coasts, but these preparations were not enough when, in 367, a general assault of Saxons, Picts, Scoti and Attacotti, combined with apparent dissension in the garrison on Hadrian's Wall, left Roman Britain prostrate. The invaders overwhelmed the entire western and northern regions of Britannia and the cities were sacked. This crisis, sometimes called the Barbarian Conspiracy or the Great Conspiracy, was settled by Count Theodosius from 368 with a string of military and civil reforms. Theodosius crossed from Bononia (Boulogne-sur-Mer) and marched on Londinium where he began to deal with the invaders and made his base.[ An amnesty was promised to deserters which enabled Theodosius to regarrison abandoned forts. By the end of the year Hadrian's Wall was retaken and order returned. Considerable reorganization was undertaken in Britain, including the creation of a new province named Valentia, probably to better address the state of the far north. A new Dux Britanniarum was appointed, Dulcitius, with Civilis to head a new civilian administration.

 

Another imperial usurper, Magnus Maximus, raised the standard of revolt at Segontium (Caernarfon) in north Wales in 383, and crossed the English Channel. Maximus held much of the western empire, and fought a successful campaign against the Picts and Scots around 384. His continental exploits required troops from Britain, and it appears that forts at Chester and elsewhere were abandoned in this period, triggering raids and settlement in north Wales by the Irish. His rule was ended in 388, but not all the British troops may have returned: the Empire's military resources were stretched to the limit along the Rhine and Danube. Around 396 there were more barbarian incursions into Britain. Stilicho led a punitive expedition. It seems peace was restored by 399, and it is likely that no further garrisoning was ordered; by 401 more troops were withdrawn, to assist in the war against Alaric I.

 

End of Roman rule

The traditional view of historians, informed by the work of Michael Rostovtzeff, was of a widespread economic decline at the beginning of the 5th century. Consistent archaeological evidence has told another story, and the accepted view is undergoing re-evaluation. Some features are agreed: more opulent but fewer urban houses, an end to new public building and some abandonment of existing ones, with the exception of defensive structures, and the widespread formation of "dark earth" deposits indicating increased horticulture within urban precincts. Turning over the basilica at Silchester to industrial uses in the late 3rd century, doubtless officially condoned, marks an early stage in the de-urbanisation of Roman Britain.

 

The abandonment of some sites is now believed to be later than had been thought. Many buildings changed use but were not destroyed. There was a growing number of barbarian attacks, but these targeted vulnerable rural settlements rather than towns. Some villas such as Chedworth, Great Casterton in Rutland and Hucclecote in Gloucestershire had new mosaic floors laid around this time, suggesting that economic problems may have been limited and patchy. Many suffered some decay before being abandoned in the 5th century; the story of Saint Patrick indicates that villas were still occupied until at least 430. Exceptionally, new buildings were still going up in this period in Verulamium and Cirencester. Some urban centres, for example Canterbury, Cirencester, Wroxeter, Winchester and Gloucester, remained active during the 5th and 6th centuries, surrounded by large farming estates.

 

Urban life had generally grown less intense by the fourth quarter of the 4th century, and coins minted between 378 and 388 are very rare, indicating a likely combination of economic decline, diminishing numbers of troops, problems with the payment of soldiers and officials or with unstable conditions during the usurpation of Magnus Maximus 383–87. Coinage circulation increased during the 390s, but never attained the levels of earlier decades. Copper coins are very rare after 402, though minted silver and gold coins from hoards indicate they were still present in the province even if they were not being spent. By 407 there were very few new Roman coins going into circulation, and by 430 it is likely that coinage as a medium of exchange had been abandoned. Mass-produced wheel thrown pottery ended at approximately the same time; the rich continued to use metal and glass vessels, while the poor made do with humble "grey ware" or resorted to leather or wooden containers.

 

Sub-Roman Britain

Towards the end of the 4th century Roman rule in Britain came under increasing pressure from barbarian attacks. Apparently, there were not enough troops to mount an effective defence. After elevating two disappointing usurpers, the army chose a soldier, Constantine III, to become emperor in 407. He crossed to Gaul but was defeated by Honorius; it is unclear how many troops remained or ever returned, or whether a commander-in-chief in Britain was ever reappointed. A Saxon incursion in 408 was apparently repelled by the Britons, and in 409 Zosimus records that the natives expelled the Roman civilian administration. Zosimus may be referring to the Bacaudic rebellion of the Breton inhabitants of Armorica since he describes how, in the aftermath of the revolt, all of Armorica and the rest of Gaul followed the example of the Brettaniai. A letter from Emperor Honorius in 410 has traditionally been seen as rejecting a British appeal for help, but it may have been addressed to Bruttium or Bologna. With the imperial layers of the military and civil government gone, administration and justice fell to municipal authorities, and local warlords gradually emerged all over Britain, still utilizing Romano-British ideals and conventions. Historian Stuart Laycock has investigated this process and emphasised elements of continuity from the British tribes in the pre-Roman and Roman periods, through to the native post-Roman kingdoms.

 

In British tradition, pagan Saxons were invited by Vortigern to assist in fighting the Picts, Scoti, and Déisi. (Germanic migration into Roman Britannia may have begun much earlier. There is recorded evidence, for example, of Germanic auxiliaries supporting the legions in Britain in the 1st and 2nd centuries.) The new arrivals rebelled, plunging the country into a series of wars that eventually led to the Saxon occupation of Lowland Britain by 600. Around this time, many Britons fled to Brittany (hence its name), Galicia and probably Ireland. A significant date in sub-Roman Britain is the Groans of the Britons, an unanswered appeal to Aetius, leading general of the western Empire, for assistance against Saxon invasion in 446. Another is the Battle of Deorham in 577, after which the significant cities of Bath, Cirencester and Gloucester fell and the Saxons reached the western sea.

 

Historians generally reject the historicity of King Arthur, who is supposed to have resisted the Anglo-Saxon conquest according to later medieval legends.

 

Trade

During the Roman period Britain's continental trade was principally directed across the Southern North Sea and Eastern Channel, focusing on the narrow Strait of Dover, with more limited links via the Atlantic seaways. The most important British ports were London and Richborough, whilst the continental ports most heavily engaged in trade with Britain were Boulogne and the sites of Domburg and Colijnsplaat at the mouth of the river Scheldt. During the Late Roman period it is likely that the shore forts played some role in continental trade alongside their defensive functions.

 

Exports to Britain included: coin; pottery, particularly red-gloss terra sigillata (samian ware) from southern, central and eastern Gaul, as well as various other wares from Gaul and the Rhine provinces; olive oil from southern Spain in amphorae; wine from Gaul in amphorae and barrels; salted fish products from the western Mediterranean and Brittany in barrels and amphorae; preserved olives from southern Spain in amphorae; lava quern-stones from Mayen on the middle Rhine; glass; and some agricultural products. Britain's exports are harder to detect archaeologically, but will have included metals, such as silver and gold and some lead, iron and copper. Other exports probably included agricultural products, oysters and salt, whilst large quantities of coin would have been re-exported back to the continent as well.

 

These products moved as a result of private trade and also through payments and contracts established by the Roman state to support its military forces and officials on the island, as well as through state taxation and extraction of resources. Up until the mid-3rd century, the Roman state's payments appear to have been unbalanced, with far more products sent to Britain, to support its large military force (which had reached c. 53,000 by the mid-2nd century), than were extracted from the island.

 

It has been argued that Roman Britain's continental trade peaked in the late 1st century AD and thereafter declined as a result of an increasing reliance on local products by the population of Britain, caused by economic development on the island and by the Roman state's desire to save money by shifting away from expensive long-distance imports. Evidence has been outlined that suggests that the principal decline in Roman Britain's continental trade may have occurred in the late 2nd century AD, from c. 165 AD onwards. This has been linked to the economic impact of contemporary Empire-wide crises: the Antonine Plague and the Marcomannic Wars.

 

From the mid-3rd century onwards, Britain no longer received such a wide range and extensive quantity of foreign imports as it did during the earlier part of the Roman period; vast quantities of coin from continental mints reached the island, whilst there is historical evidence for the export of large amounts of British grain to the continent during the mid-4th century. During the latter part of the Roman period British agricultural products, paid for by both the Roman state and by private consumers, clearly played an important role in supporting the military garrisons and urban centres of the northwestern continental Empire. This came about as a result of the rapid decline in the size of the British garrison from the mid-3rd century onwards (thus freeing up more goods for export), and because of 'Germanic' incursions across the Rhine, which appear to have reduced rural settlement and agricultural output in northern Gaul.

 

Economy

Mineral extraction sites such as the Dolaucothi gold mine were probably first worked by the Roman army from c. 75, and at some later stage passed to civilian operators. The mine developed as a series of opencast workings, mainly by the use of hydraulic mining methods. They are described by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History in great detail. Essentially, water supplied by aqueducts was used to prospect for ore veins by stripping away soil to reveal the bedrock. If veins were present, they were attacked using fire-setting and the ore removed for comminution. The dust was washed in a small stream of water and the heavy gold dust and gold nuggets collected in riffles. The diagram at right shows how Dolaucothi developed from c. 75 through to the 1st century. When opencast work was no longer feasible, tunnels were driven to follow the veins. The evidence from the site shows advanced technology probably under the control of army engineers.

 

The Wealden ironworking zone, the lead and silver mines of the Mendip Hills and the tin mines of Cornwall seem to have been private enterprises leased from the government for a fee. Mining had long been practised in Britain (see Grimes Graves), but the Romans introduced new technical knowledge and large-scale industrial production to revolutionise the industry. It included hydraulic mining to prospect for ore by removing overburden as well as work alluvial deposits. The water needed for such large-scale operations was supplied by one or more aqueducts, those surviving at Dolaucothi being especially impressive. Many prospecting areas were in dangerous, upland country, and, although mineral exploitation was presumably one of the main reasons for the Roman invasion, it had to wait until these areas were subdued.

 

By the 3rd and 4th centuries, small towns could often be found near villas. In these towns, villa owners and small-scale farmers could obtain specialist tools. Lowland Britain in the 4th century was agriculturally prosperous enough to export grain to the continent. This prosperity lay behind the blossoming of villa building and decoration that occurred between AD 300 and 350.

 

Britain's cities also consumed Roman-style pottery and other goods, and were centres through which goods could be distributed elsewhere. At Wroxeter in Shropshire, stock smashed into a gutter during a 2nd-century fire reveals that Gaulish samian ware was being sold alongside mixing bowls from the Mancetter-Hartshill industry of the West Midlands. Roman designs were most popular, but rural craftsmen still produced items derived from the Iron Age La Tène artistic traditions. Britain was home to much gold, which attracted Roman invaders. By the 3rd century, Britain's economy was diverse and well established, with commerce extending into the non-Romanised north.

 

Government

Further information: Governors of Roman Britain, Roman client kingdoms in Britain, and Roman auxiliaries in Britain

Under the Roman Empire, administration of peaceful provinces was ultimately the remit of the Senate, but those, like Britain, that required permanent garrisons, were placed under the Emperor's control. In practice imperial provinces were run by resident governors who were members of the Senate and had held the consulship. These men were carefully selected, often having strong records of military success and administrative ability. In Britain, a governor's role was primarily military, but numerous other tasks were also his responsibility, such as maintaining diplomatic relations with local client kings, building roads, ensuring the public courier system functioned, supervising the civitates and acting as a judge in important legal cases. When not campaigning, he would travel the province hearing complaints and recruiting new troops.

 

To assist him in legal matters he had an adviser, the legatus juridicus, and those in Britain appear to have been distinguished lawyers perhaps because of the challenge of incorporating tribes into the imperial system and devising a workable method of taxing them. Financial administration was dealt with by a procurator with junior posts for each tax-raising power. Each legion in Britain had a commander who answered to the governor and, in time of war, probably directly ruled troublesome districts. Each of these commands carried a tour of duty of two to three years in different provinces. Below these posts was a network of administrative managers covering intelligence gathering, sending reports to Rome, organising military supplies and dealing with prisoners. A staff of seconded soldiers provided clerical services.

 

Colchester was probably the earliest capital of Roman Britain, but it was soon eclipsed by London with its strong mercantile connections. The different forms of municipal organisation in Britannia were known as civitas (which were subdivided, amongst other forms, into colonies such as York, Colchester, Gloucester and Lincoln and municipalities such as Verulamium), and were each governed by a senate of local landowners, whether Brythonic or Roman, who elected magistrates concerning judicial and civic affairs. The various civitates sent representatives to a yearly provincial council in order to profess loyalty to the Roman state, to send direct petitions to the Emperor in times of extraordinary need, and to worship the imperial cult.

 

Demographics

Roman Britain had an estimated population between 2.8 million and 3 million people at the end of the second century. At the end of the fourth century, it had an estimated population of 3.6 million people, of whom 125,000 consisted of the Roman army and their families and dependents.[80] The urban population of Roman Britain was about 240,000 people at the end of the fourth century. The capital city of Londinium is estimated to have had a population of about 60,000 people. Londinium was an ethnically diverse city with inhabitants from the Roman Empire, including natives of Britannia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. There was also cultural diversity in other Roman-British towns, which were sustained by considerable migration, from Britannia and other Roman territories, including continental Europe, Roman Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. In a study conducted in 2012, around 45 percent of sites investigated dating from the Roman period had at least one individual of North African origin.

 

Town and country

During their occupation of Britain the Romans founded a number of important settlements, many of which survive. The towns suffered attrition in the later 4th century, when public building ceased and some were abandoned to private uses. Place names survived the deurbanised Sub-Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods, and historiography has been at pains to signal the expected survivals, but archaeology shows that a bare handful of Roman towns were continuously occupied. According to S.T. Loseby, the very idea of a town as a centre of power and administration was reintroduced to England by the Roman Christianising mission to Canterbury, and its urban revival was delayed to the 10th century.

 

Roman towns can be broadly grouped in two categories. Civitates, "public towns" were formally laid out on a grid plan, and their role in imperial administration occasioned the construction of public buildings. The much more numerous category of vici, "small towns" grew on informal plans, often round a camp or at a ford or crossroads; some were not small, others were scarcely urban, some not even defended by a wall, the characteristic feature of a place of any importance.

 

Cities and towns which have Roman origins, or were extensively developed by them are listed with their Latin names in brackets; civitates are marked C

 

Alcester (Alauna)

Alchester

Aldborough, North Yorkshire (Isurium Brigantum) C

Bath (Aquae Sulis) C

Brough (Petuaria) C

Buxton (Aquae Arnemetiae)

Caerleon (Isca Augusta) C

Caernarfon (Segontium) C

Caerwent (Venta Silurum) C

Caister-on-Sea C

Canterbury (Durovernum Cantiacorum) C

Carlisle (Luguvalium) C

Carmarthen (Moridunum) C

Chelmsford (Caesaromagus)

Chester (Deva Victrix) C

Chester-le-Street (Concangis)

Chichester (Noviomagus Reginorum) C

Cirencester (Corinium) C

Colchester (Camulodunum) C

Corbridge (Coria) C

Dorchester (Durnovaria) C

Dover (Portus Dubris)

Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) C

Gloucester (Glevum) C

Great Chesterford (the name of this vicus is unknown)

Ilchester (Lindinis) C

Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum) C

Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) C

London (Londinium) C

Manchester (Mamucium) C

Newcastle upon Tyne (Pons Aelius)

Northwich (Condate)

St Albans (Verulamium) C

Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) C

Towcester (Lactodurum)

Whitchurch (Mediolanum) C

Winchester (Venta Belgarum) C

Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) C

York (Eboracum) C

 

Religion

The druids, the Celtic priestly caste who were believed to originate in Britain, were outlawed by Claudius, and in 61 they vainly defended their sacred groves from destruction by the Romans on the island of Mona (Anglesey). Under Roman rule the Britons continued to worship native Celtic deities, such as Ancasta, but often conflated with their Roman equivalents, like Mars Rigonemetos at Nettleham.

 

The degree to which earlier native beliefs survived is difficult to gauge precisely. Certain European ritual traits such as the significance of the number 3, the importance of the head and of water sources such as springs remain in the archaeological record, but the differences in the votive offerings made at the baths at Bath, Somerset, before and after the Roman conquest suggest that continuity was only partial. Worship of the Roman emperor is widely recorded, especially at military sites. The founding of a Roman temple to Claudius at Camulodunum was one of the impositions that led to the revolt of Boudica. By the 3rd century, Pagans Hill Roman Temple in Somerset was able to exist peaceably and it did so into the 5th century.

 

Pagan religious practices were supported by priests, represented in Britain by votive deposits of priestly regalia such as chain crowns from West Stow and Willingham Fen.

 

Eastern cults such as Mithraism also grew in popularity towards the end of the occupation. The London Mithraeum is one example of the popularity of mystery religions among the soldiery. Temples to Mithras also exist in military contexts at Vindobala on Hadrian's Wall (the Rudchester Mithraeum) and at Segontium in Roman Wales (the Caernarfon Mithraeum).

 

Christianity

It is not clear when or how Christianity came to Britain. A 2nd-century "word square" has been discovered in Mamucium, the Roman settlement of Manchester. It consists of an anagram of PATER NOSTER carved on a piece of amphora. There has been discussion by academics whether the "word square" is a Christian artefact, but if it is, it is one of the earliest examples of early Christianity in Britain. The earliest confirmed written evidence for Christianity in Britain is a statement by Tertullian, c. 200 AD, in which he described "all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ". Archaeological evidence for Christian communities begins to appear in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Small timber churches are suggested at Lincoln and Silchester and baptismal fonts have been found at Icklingham and the Saxon Shore Fort at Richborough. The Icklingham font is made of lead, and visible in the British Museum. A Roman Christian graveyard exists at the same site in Icklingham. A possible Roman 4th-century church and associated burial ground was also discovered at Butt Road on the south-west outskirts of Colchester during the construction of the new police station there, overlying an earlier pagan cemetery. The Water Newton Treasure is a hoard of Christian silver church plate from the early 4th century and the Roman villas at Lullingstone and Hinton St Mary contained Christian wall paintings and mosaics respectively. A large 4th-century cemetery at Poundbury with its east–west oriented burials and lack of grave goods has been interpreted as an early Christian burial ground, although such burial rites were also becoming increasingly common in pagan contexts during the period.

 

The Church in Britain seems to have developed the customary diocesan system, as evidenced from the records of the Council of Arles in Gaul in 314: represented at the council were bishops from thirty-five sees from Europe and North Africa, including three bishops from Britain, Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius, possibly a bishop of Lincoln. No other early sees are documented, and the material remains of early church structures are far to seek. The existence of a church in the forum courtyard of Lincoln and the martyrium of Saint Alban on the outskirts of Roman Verulamium are exceptional. Alban, the first British Christian martyr and by far the most prominent, is believed to have died in the early 4th century (some date him in the middle 3rd century), followed by Saints Julius and Aaron of Isca Augusta. Christianity was legalised in the Roman Empire by Constantine I in 313. Theodosius I made Christianity the state religion of the empire in 391, and by the 5th century it was well established. One belief labelled a heresy by the church authorities — Pelagianism — was originated by a British monk teaching in Rome: Pelagius lived c. 354 to c. 420/440.

 

A letter found on a lead tablet in Bath, Somerset, datable to c. 363, had been widely publicised as documentary evidence regarding the state of Christianity in Britai

Located in the original portion of the Westfield Topanga, GUESS operated into early 2023. The space was later subdivided in 2024, with men's retailer Psycho Bunny opening in a portion of its space.

There are 1.3 million people living in poverty in Hong Kong. Over 100,000 these live in subdivided flats in "cage dwellings" or cubicle homes. The residents are the single elderly, new immigrants, low income families and people with mental and physical disabilities - the most vulnerable and needy groups in society. In April 2010, the AWA (American Women's Association, together with HKIS delivered donations of food and toiletries to the residents of this type of accommodation.

 

If you are interested in finding out more, take a look at the website of the Society for Community Organization (SoCo)

www.soco.org.hk/rights/rights_main_e.htm

An image of some leaves processing with a Processing applet I wrote to subdivide the image into smaller rectangles until the variation of color in the rectangle was sufficiently small. Borders of the rectangles exaggerated to emphasize the mosaic feel.

Turpan (simplified Chinese: 吐鲁番; traditional Chinese: 吐魯番; pinyin: Tǔlǔfān; Uyghur: تۇرپان‎, ULY: Turpan, UYY: Turpan?), also known as Turfan or Tulufan, is a prefecture-level city located in the east of Xinjiang, People's Republic of China. It has an area of 69,324 square kilometres and a population of 570,000 (2003).

 

HISTORY

Turpan has long been the centre of a fertile oasis (with water provided by the karez canal system) and an important trade centre. It was historically located along the Silk Road, at which time it was adjacent to the kingdoms of Kroran and Yanqi. The name Turfan itself however was not used until the end of the Middle Ages - its use became widespread only in the post-Mongol period. The center of the region has shifted a number of times, from Yar-Khoto (Jiaohe, 10 km to the west of modern Turpan) to Qocho (Gaochang, 30 km to the southeast of Turpan), and to Turpan itself. Historically, many settlements in the region have been given a number of different names, some of which refer to more than one place – Turpan/Turfan/Tulufan is one such example. (Others include Loulan/Kroran/Korla, Jushi/Gushi, Gaochang/Qocho/Karakhoja, Hezhou, and Jiaohe/Yarkhoto.)

 

The peoples of the Kingdoms of Nearer and Further Jushi (the Turpan Oasis and the region to the north of the mountains near modern Jimasa), were closely related. It was originally one kingdom called Gushi, which the Chinese conquered in 107 BC. It was subdivided into two kingdoms by the Chinese in 60 BC. During the Han era the city changed hands several times between the Xiongnu and the Han, interspersed with short periods of independence.

 

After the fall of the Han dynasty in 220, the region was virtually independent but tributary to various dynasties. Until the 5th century AD, the capital of this kingdom was Jiaohe (modern Yarghul 16 kilometres west of Turpan).

 

From 487 to 541 AD, Turpan was an independent Kingdom ruled by a Turkic tribe known to the Chinese as the Tiele. The Rouran Khaganate defeated the Tiele and subjugated Turpan, but soon afterwards the Rouran were destroyed by the Göktürks.

 

TANG CONQUEST

The Tang dynasty had reconquered the Tarim Basin by the 7th century AD. During the 7th, 8th, and early 9th centuries the Tibetan Empire, the Tang Chinese, and Turks fought to conquer the Tarim Basin. Sogdians and Chinese engaged in extensive commercial activities with each other under Tang rule. The Sogdians were mostly Mazdaist at this time. Turpan, renamed Xizhou by the Tang after their armies conquered it in 640 AD, had a history of commerce and trade along the Silk Road already centuries old; it had many inns catering to merchants and other travelers, while numerous brothels are recorded in Kucha and Khotan. As a result of the Tang conquest, policies forcing minority group relocation and encouraging Han settlement led to Turpan's name in the Sogdian language becoming known as “Chinatown” or "Town of the Chinese".

 

In Astana, a contract written in Sogdian detailing the sale of a Sogdian girl to a Chinese man was discovered dated to 639 AD. Individual slaves were common among silk route houses; early documents recorded an increase in the selling of slaves in Turpan. Twenty-one 7th-century marriage contracts were found that showed, where one Sogdian spouse was present, for 18 of them their partner was a Sogdian. The only Sogdian men who married Chinese women were highly eminent officials. Several commercial interactions were recorded, for example a camel was sold priced at 14 silk bolts in 673, and a Chang'an native bought a girl age 11 for 40 silk bolts in 731 from a Sogdian merchant. Five men swore that the girl was never free before enslavement, since the Tang Code forbade commoners to be sold as slaves.

 

The Tang dynasty became weakened considerably due to the An Lushan Rebellion, and the Tibetans took the opportunity to expand into Gansu and the Western Regions. The Tibetans took control of Turfan in 792.

7th or 8th century old dumplings and wontons were found in Turfan.

 

UYGHUR RULE

In 803, the Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khaganate seized Turfan from the Tibetans. The Uyghur Khaganate however was destroyed by the Kirghiz and its capital Ordu-Baliq in Mongolia sacked in 840. The defeat resulted in the mass movement of the Uyghurs out of Mongolia and their dispersal into Gansu and Central Asia, and many joined other Uyghurs already present in Turfan. In the early twentieth century, a collection of some 900 Christian manuscripts dating to the ninth to the twelfth centuries was found at a monastery site at Turfan.

 

The Uyghurs established a Kingdom in the Turpan region with its capital in Gaochang or Kara-Khoja. The kingdom was known as the Uyghuria Idikut state or Kara-Khoja Kingdom that lasted from 856 to 1389 AD. The Uyghurs were Manichaean but later converted to Buddhism and funded the construction the cave temples in the Bezeklik Caves. The Uyghurs formed an alliance with the rulers of Dunhuang. The Uyghur state later became a vassal state of the Kara-Khitans, and then as a vassal of the Mongol Empire. This Kingdom was led by the Idikuts, or Saint Spiritual Rulers. The last Idikut left Turpan area in 1284 for Kumul, then Gansu to seek protection of Yuan Dynasty, but local Uyghur Buddhist rulers still held power until the invasion by the Moghul Hizir Khoja in 1389. The conversion of the local Buddhist population to Islam was completed nevertheless only in the second half of the 15th century.

 

After being converted to Islam, the descendants of the previously Buddhist Uyghurs in Turfan failed to retain memory of their ancestral legacy and falsely believed that the "infidel Kalmuks" (Dzungars) were the ones who built Buddhist monuments in their area.

 

15TH AND 16TH CENTURIES

As late as 1420, the Timurid envoy Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh, who passed through Turpan on the way from Herat to Beijing, reported that many of the city's residents were "infidels". He visited a "very large and beautiful" temple with a statue of Shakyamuni; in one of the versions of his account it was also claimed that many Turpanians "worshipped the cross".The Moghul ruler of Turpan Yunus Khan, also known as Ḥājjī `Ali, (ruled 1462–1478) unified Moghulistan (roughly corresponding to today's Eastern Xinjiang) under his authority in 1472. Around that time, a conflict with the Ming China started over the issues of tribute trade: Turpanians benefited from sending "tribute missions" to China, which allowed them to receive valuable gifts from the Ming emperors and to do plenty of trading on the side; the Chinese, however, felt that receiving and entertaining these missions was just too expensive. (Muslim envoys to the early Ming China were impressed by the lavish reception offered to them along their route through China, from Suzhou to Beijing, such as described by Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh in 1420–1421.

 

Yunus Khan was irritated by the restrictions on the frequency and size of Turpanian missions (no more than one mission in 5 years, with no more than 10 members) imposed by the Ming government in 1465, and by the Ming's refusal to bestow sufficiently luxurious gifts on his envoys (1469). Accordingly, in 1473 he went to war against China, and succeeded in capturing Hami in 1473 from the Oirat Mongol Henshen and holding it for a while, until Ali was repulsed by the Ming Dynasty into Turfan. He reoccupied Hami after Ming left. Henshen's Mongols recaptured Hami twice in 1482 and 1483, but the son of Ali, Ahmad Alaq, reconquered it in 1493 and captured the Hami leader and the resident of China in Hami (Hami was a vassal state to Ming). In response, the Ming Dynasty imposed an economic blockade on Turfan and kicked out all the Uyghurs from Gansu. It became so harsh for Turfan that Ahmed left. Ahmed's son Mansur succeeded him and took over Hami in 1517. These conflicts were called the Ming Turpan Border Wars.

 

Several times, after occupying Hami, Mansur tried to attack China in 1524 with 20,000 men, but was beaten by Chinese forces. The Turpan kingdom under Mansur, in alliance with Oirat Mongols, tried to raid Suzhou in Gansu in 1528, but were severely defeated by Ming Chinese forces and suffered heavy casualties. The Chinese refused to lift the economic blockade and restrictions that had led to the battles, and continued restricting Turpan's tribute and trade with China. Turfan also annexed Hami.

 

19TH CENTURY

Francis Younghusband visited Turpan in 1887 on his overland journey from Beijing to India. He said it consisted of two walled towns, a Chinese one with a population of no more than 5,000 and, about 1.6 km to the west, a Turk town of "probably" 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. The town (presumably the "Turk town") had four gateways, one for each of the cardinal directions, of solid brickwork and massive wooden doors plated with iron and covered by a semicircular bastion. The well-kept walls were of mud and about 10.7 m tall and 6 to 9 m thick, with loopholes at the top. There was a level space about 14 m wide outside the main walls surrounded by a musketry wall about 2.4 m high, with a ditch around it some 3.7 m deep and 6 m wide. There were drumtowers over the gateways, small square towers at the corners and two small square bastions between the corners and the gateways, "two to each front." Wheat, cotton, poppies, melons and grapes were grown in the surrounding fields.

 

Turpan grapes impressed other travelers to the region as well. The 19th-century Russian explorer Grigory Grumm-Grzhimaylo, thought the local raisins may be "the best in the world", and noted the buildings of a "perfectly peculiar design" used for drying them called chunche.

 

SUBDEVISIONS

Turpan directly controls 1 district and 2 counties.

 

GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE

Turpan is located about 150 km southeast of Ürümqi, Xinjiang's capital, in a mountain basin, on the northern side of the Turpan Depression, at an elevation of 30 m above sea level. Outside of Turpan is a small volcanic cone, the Turfan volcano, that is said to have erupted in 1120 as described in the Song Dynasty.

 

Turpan has a harsh, drastic, cold desert climate (Köppen BWk), with very hot and long summers, and very cold but short winters, and brief spring and autumn in between. Annual precipitation is very low, amounting to only 15.7 millimetres. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −7.6 °C in January to 32.2 °C in July; the annual mean is 14.4 °C. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 48% in December to 75% in September, sunshine is abundant and the city receives 2,912 hours of bright sunshine annually. Temperature differences between summer and winter are oppressively large (over 50 °C). The warmest months often approach the stifling intensity of cities such as Phoenix or Las Vegas, while winters produce average lows that more closely resemble frigid Minneapolis.

 

Extremes have ranged from −28.9 °C to 48.1 °C, although a reading of 49.6 °C in July 1975 is regarded as dubious.

 

However, the very heat and dryness of the summer, when combined with the area's ancient system of irrigation, allows the countryside around Turpan to produce great quantities of high-quality fruit.

 

DEMOGRAPHY

According to the 2000 census, the city of Turpan had a population of 251,652 (population density 15.99 inh./km²).

 

TRANSPORT

Turpan is served by China National Highway 312. It is the junction for the Lanzhou-Xinjiang and the Southern Xinjiang Railways.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Upper East Side Historic District epitomizes the architectural development of this section of the city in a variety of architectural styles and building types ranging from later 19th-century brownstone rowhouses to mid 20th-century apartment buildings.

 

A striking Victorian Gothic rowhouse, built as one of a group during the Civil War years, may be seen at 129 East 70th Street. When development began in the late 1860s and .early 1870s, rows of brownstone houses in the popular Italianatestyle were built on several of the side streets, as well as on Madison Avenue. During the second wave of development, in the period of recovery from the Panic of 1873, the construction of brownstone houses in the neo-Grec and Queen Anne styles continued on all of the side streets and on Madison Avenue. Often a group of houses on Madison Avenue and the adjacent side street would be developed together. Some houses were oriented to Madison Avenue, generally including the corner -property, while other houses of the group faced the side street.

 

Among the architects active in the area during the period were Breen & Mason, Charles Buek, Charles Graham & Sons, D. & J. Jardine, Edward Kilpatrick-, Anthony Mowbray, William P. Parsons, John G. Prague, Thorn & Wilson, and James E. Ware (see Architect's appendix). Genetally without formal training these architects began their careers as masons, carpenters, or builders. A number of them also acted as real estate developers, buying large parcels of property, subdividing them into 20-foot lots, erecting rows of houses on the property,and then selling them to middle class families. Virtually all of the blocks within the Historic District, with the exception of the Fifth Avenue blockfronts,'were initially developed in this speculative manner. Many of these brownstone houses survived only until the early 20th century when they were either replaced by new houses or were extensively altered with completely new facades.

 

Nonetheless excellent examples of rowhouses in the Italianate, neo-Grec, Queen Anne, and neo-RenaiSsance styles—all with brownstone or brick and brownstone fronts—remain almost intact.

 

By the end of the 1890s many large elegant mansions had been erected on Fifth Avenue. Among them were several residences in the picturesque Francois I style of the French Renaissance, which had been popularized in the late 1870s and early 1880s by architect Richard Morris Hunt in his residential designs for the Vanderbilts. Hunt again used the style in creating the mansion of Caroline Schermerhom Astor (1893-95) at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, as well as the Ogden Mills mansion (1885-87) at Fifth Avenue and 69th Street and the Josephine Schmid mansion (1894-95) at . Fifth Avenue and 62nd Street. Charles Coolidge Haight.was inspired by the style (as well as by the Romanesque Revival style) when designing the Henry 0. Havemeyer residence at Fifth Avenue and 66th Street. Charles Pierrepont H. Gilbert was a prominent practitioner of the style, and several examples of ^ his work in that mode survive on the side streets, despite the disappearance of five of his designs on Fifth Avenue.

 

Another distinquished example of the style is the Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo mansion at 867 Madison Avenue, designed by Francis H. Kimball. The Francois I style, sometimes called the "Fifth Avenue style," became associated with the stretch of the Avenue known as "Millionaires' Mile" and with the wealthy people who commissioned such residences.

 

By the turn of the century the earlier brownstone rows along the side streets began to be interrupted by large impressive mansions. Changes in taste, fostered in part by the romantic classical styles used at the Chicago World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893, brought the demise of the brownstone house in favor of the exuberant Beaux-Arts and the more restrained neo-Renaissance styles.

 

In the years before World War I a number of very distinguished mansions and town houses were built for prestigious individual clients in the Beaux-Arts, neo-Italian Renaissance, neo-French Renaissance, and neo-French Classic styles by some of the city's most important architects. The architects included John H. Duncan, Ernest Flagg, C. P. H. Gilbert, Carrere & Hastings, Charles Coolidge Haight, Richard Howland Hunt, Richard Morris Hunt, McKim, Mead & White, James Gamble Rogers, R. H. Robertson,, William Schickel, Horace Trumbauer, and Warren & Wetmore (see Architects Appendix). Ironically the works of some of these architects no longer survives within the district, as their efforts were concentrated on the design of Fifth Avenue mansions which were later replaced by apartment buildings.

 

Among the outstanding mansions which do survive are : the Edith and Ernesto Fabbri residence (1898-1900) by Haydel & Shepard, 11-13 East 62nd Street; the Orme Wilson residence (1901-03) by Carrere & Hastings, 3 East 64th Street; the William and Maria Schiefflin residence (1898-1900) by Richard Howland Hunt, 5 East 66th Street; the Harold L. Pratt residence (1919) by Delano & Aldrich, 58 East 68th Street; the Henry Clay Frick residence (1914) by Carrere & Hastings, 1 East 70th Street; the Oliver Gould Jennings residence (1897-99) by by Flagg & Chambers, 7 East 72nd Street; the Henry T. Sloane residence (1894-96) by Carrere & Hastings, 9 East 72nd Street; the Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo residence (1896-98) by Francis Kimball, 867 Madison Avenue; the Joseph Pulitzer residence (1903-05) by McKim, Mead & White, 11 East 73rd Street; and the Edward S. Harkness residence (1905) by Hale & Rogers, 1 East 75th Street.

 

These elegant residences and the prominence of the persons associated with them greatly enhance the architectural and historical significance of the district.

 

Many other fine town houses were built on speculation by real estate developers during this period. Among those active in this a area were Jeremiah C. Lyons, W. W. & T. M. Hall, McCafferty & Buckley (who had begun developing brownstone rowhouses in the 1880s), and Daniel Hennessy. While Lyons commissioned such better known architects as York & Sawyer, Ogden Codman, and Buchman & Fox to work for him, the other developers worked with architects who specialized in speculative building. The firm of Welch, Smith & Provot was one of the most prominent of these.

 

- The role of the speculat ive builder in the development of the area was noted by Montgomery Schuyler, writing under the pseudonym Franz K. Winkler,1 and in 1900 the Real Estate Record and Guide wrote:

 

Another important feature of the Fifth Avenue building movement is created by the part the speculative builder is taking in it. Originally begun and still for the most part sustained by architects building for private owners, the speculative builder has seen an opportunity to participate in [the movement}, and in a way reveals the growth of capital employed in commercial building. . . . Building in expectation of finding a new market among multi-millionaires is decidedly a new industry.2

 

It may seem strange that wealthy clients would buy houses that were not built specifically for them, but the speculative builder was able to provide houses that were both individual and ostentatious in design so that they would be representative of the wealth of his affluent clients. The designs of the interiors were, however, often completed in consultation with prospective buyers to meet their individual requirements. The Record and Guide noted: "The speculative builders make allowance for individuality of taste in such matters £and} are leaving the drawing-room, dining-room, and library undecorated, until a purchaser is found and his wife consulted.

 

Whether individually designed for a specific client or built on speculation, the majority of the houses within the district reflect the character and the influence of the Beaux-Arts movement in architecture. In its use of the elements of classical and Renaissance architecture, this movement created architectural examples which were harmonious with each other, yet individualistic and able to symbolically represent the importance and affluence of their residents. The extent of such architectural examples within the district is an important factor in establishing the elegant architectural character of the area and in giving it a sense of place.

 

Another phenomenon important in the architectural development of the area was the practice of altering earlier rowhouses. In 1903, the architectural critic Herbert Croly wrote of the transformation of the 19th-century brownstone residence:

 

In some few cases the reconstruction has gone no further than the destruction of the stoop, the placing of the entrance on the ground floor,. . . but for the most part people demand that the old houses shall be either utterly destroyed or subjected to such a drastic process of purging that every trace of the brownstone is removed. And the process of reconstruction is v covering ground with the utmost rapidity.^

 

This practice was widespread within the historic district in the early years of the 20th century when many brownstone facades were extensively altered from the Italianate, neo-Grec, and Queen Anne styles to the newly-popular Beaux-Arts and neo-Renaissance styles, executed in limestone.

 

A second wave of extensive alteration on the earlier brownstone houses took place between about 1910 and 1925. By this time the neo-Georgian and neo-Federal styles had become very popular, and many houses were altered accordingly. This practice was particularly evident in the blocks adjacent to newly-fashionable Park Avenue. A number of houses, such as the group on the Park Avenue blockfront between 68th and 69th Streets, and the Sara Delano Roosevelt house, 47-49 East 65th Street, were newly-built in these styles. The houses in these styles in the district are among the finest in the City. Among the prestigious architects who specialized in these styles were McKim, Mead & White, who had helped introduce this urban Colonial Revival mode in the 1880s; Charles Piatt; Delano & Aldrich; Walker & Gillette; Mott B. Schmidt; and Cross & Cross (see Architects appendix).

 

Another method of altering brownstone houses became popular in the 1920s and '30s. Architectural detail would be removed from the facade and the brownstone surface smooth-stuccoed and painted. The stoop would be removed and a new entrance created at ground level. Sometime the entrance enframement would have detail inspired by classical sources and a simple roof cornice would be added.

  

Certain types of buildings were constructed in the area of the historic district to serve the wealthy residents. Prominent among them were stables and carriage houses. Located primarily on the blocks adjacent to Park Avenue these utilitarian structures were often designed in styles that reflected the styles of their owners' houses. The Romanesque Revival and Beaux-Arts styles were especially popular for these buildings.

 

Club buildings, too, reflected in their styles those of contemporary residences. The neo-Italian Renaissance Metropolitan Club (1892-95) by McKim, Mead & White, the neo-Federal Knickerbocker Club (1913-15) and the Colony Club (1916), both by Delano & Aldrich, and the neo-Georgian Links Club (1916) by Cross & Cross, are club buildings which enhance the residential qualities of the area.

 

The religious structures in the area reflected changing architectural tastes as well. The Gothic Revival Church of the Resurrection (originally the Church of the Holy Sepulchre) designed by Renwick & Sands, at 115 East 74th Street, is the oldest surviving church in the area. St. James1 Episcopal Church and Phillips Presbyterian Church on Madison Avenue, both designed by R. H. Robertson, were built originally in the Gothic Revival style. St. James Lutheran Church on Madison' Avenue, designed by William A. Potter, was Romanesque Revival in style. Likewise the synagogues in the area—Temple Beth-El, Rodolph Sholom, and Congregation Zichron Ephraim— were designed in the Byzantine-Moorish Revival style. Not all of these buildings survived with changing residential and commercial patterns in the area. St. James Episcopal Church was rebuilt in the more fashionable neo-Gothic style in 1923-24 by Ralph Adams Cram.

 

When Phillips Presbyterian Church merged with the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1899, the church building at 74th Street was redesigned in an austere neo-Gothic style by James E. Ware. The two new churches of the 1920s on Park Avenue were built in then-fashionable styles—the Third Church of Christ Scientist in the neo-Georgian style and the Central Presbyterian Church (originally the Park Avenue Baptist Church) in the neo-Gothic style. When Temple Emanu-El was built in 1928-30, its stylized Byzantine design by Robert D. Kohn reflected the tastes of the period.

 

The most important factor in changing the architectural character of the district was the advent of the tall luxury apartment house. Several of these, such as the Verona and the apartment house at 45- East 66th Street, had been built prior to 1910. However, it was the neo-Italian Renaissance apartment house(1910-12) at 998 Fifth Avenue, somewhat to the north of the District, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead & White, which made apartment living fashionable for the wealthy. It also set a stylistic trend for those apartment houses which were to follow in the 1920s. Many of the mansions and town houses on Fifth Avenue, as well as rowhouses on Madison Avenue and Park Avenue and stables, carriage houses, and rowhouses on blocks just east of Park Avenue, were sold to realty and development corporations, and large luxury apartment houses were constructed on their sites. Two of the architects most active in the apartment house field were Rosario Candela and J. E. R. Carpenter.

 

Following the stylistic lead of McKim, Mead & White, their designs employed the forms and detail of Renaissance architecture as applied to the tall building. Forms of neo-Georgian and neo-Federal architecture were also popular for apartment houses. By the late 1920s, the Art Deco style was also favored for apartment houses. Examples of this style may be seen in the buildings at 19 East 72nd Street, 778 Park Avenue, and at the Hotel Carlyle. Emery Roth was one architect who actively promoted the style (see Architects' Appendix). Curious as it may seem to modern sensibilities, multiple-family dwellings, whether narrow four or five-story buildings or tall luxurious apartment houses such as these, we're classified as "tenements" in the records of the Department of Buildings through the 1920s.

 

Very few buildings within the district were constructed specifically for commercial purposes. Those that were are located on or adjacent to Madison Avenue. Some are of special architectural interest as the two neo-Georgian/neo-Federal bank buildings at Madison Avenue and 63rd Street and Madison Avenue and 64th Street. The Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company building of 1930 at 35 East 72nd Street, was designed by Cross & Cross in a neo-Palladian style. Not only were these three bank buildings designed in styles that reflect those of contemporary residential architecture, but also their scale is consciously related to that of residential architecture in the area.

 

While the rowhouses on Madison Avenue were not originally designed for commercial use, they have proved to be well suited to those purposes. Beginning as early as 1904, shopfronts began to be installed at the basement and first floor levels of these houses. The shops which conform to the 20-25 foot width of the rowhouses and extend upward two stories from the street, are an important factor in creating the special character of Madison Avenue.

 

The architectural character of the historic district was firmly established by the early 1930s. Picturesque, brownstone rowhouses of the 1860s-80s, Francois I mansions of the 1890s, exuberant Beaux-Arts town houses of the late 1890s and early 1900s, elegant neo-Italian Renaissance, neo-French Renaissance, and neo-French Classic mansions of the pre-World War I years, restrained neo-Georgian and neo-Federal designs of about 1910-25, and luxury apartment houses of the 1920s make this one of the most notable areas of the city. As reminders of an age of wealth and elegance, these buildings are vital elements in the fabric of New York City.

Jamaica, Queens, New York City, New York, United States

 

Constructed in 1929, the (Former) Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building maintains a commanding presence near the business center of Jamaica, Queens. Designed by the distinguished architectural firm of Dennison & Hirons which was known for its bank buildings, this eight-story structure was built at a time of tremendous business prosperity and building activity.

 

The architects used the Art Deco style enhanced with colorful terracotta ornament to create a modern and distinctive headquarters for the Long Island-based firm, which was organized in 1925 to insure real estate titles, guarantee mortgages, and make loans. Echoing the dominant shapes of the prominent Art Deco skyscrapers of the period in this smaller building, the architects emphasized the verticality of the structure with continuous masonry piers and a variety of setbacks near the top.

 

This arrangement, along with the brightly-colored, terra-cotta panels by noted sculptor Rene Chambellan that are strategically applied to the crown and the second story, make this a truly unique building in downtown Jamaica, and a rare example of the skyscraper style applied to small buildings outside of Manhattan.

 

Development of the Area

 

Jamaica, one of the oldest settlements within the current boundaries of New York City, developed into the leading commercial center of Queens County by 1900 and continues to be the largest and most densely-populated neighborhood in central Queens. The Dutch purchased the land in Jamaica from the Jameco Indians in 1655. The following year, Governor Peter Stuyvesant granted a charter to the town, originally known as Rusdorp.

 

Following the transfer of power from the Dutch to the English in 1664, Rusdorp was renamed Jamaica, after the original inhabitants of the region. Queens County (incorporating present-day Queens and Nassau Counties) was chartered in 1683 and Jamaica was one of the three original governing units established there (along with Newtown and Flushing). Outside the town center, Jamaica was largely an area of farms and pastures. The rural village was officially incorporated by New York State in 1814.

 

Jamaica's central location in Queens County, and the extensive transportation network that developed in the town during the nineteenth century, transformed the village into the major commercial center for Queens County and much of eastern Long Island. The arrival of the railroads in the 1830s began this evolution.

 

The rail lines connected Jamaica with other sections of Queens county, Brooklyn, eastern Long Island, and the ferries to New York City. Jamaica's farmland was soon being subdivided into streets and building lots, and many houses were erected.

 

By the turn of the century, Jamaica' s importance as a commercial area became evident in the impressive buildings constructed on Jamaica Avenue, most notably the Beaux-Arts Jamaica Savings Bank Building (161-02 Jamaica Avenue, 1897-98, Hough & Duell), and the neo-ltalian Renaissance Queens County Register Office (161-04 Jamaica Avenue, 1898, A.S. Macgregor, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

After Jamaica was incorporated into the Borough of Queens and became a part of New York City on January 1, 1898, additional transportation improvements brought increasing numbers of people. As a result, the population of Jamaica quadrupled between 1900 and 1920.

 

During the 1920s, when the major mass transit links were in place and private automobile ownership was growing at an extraordinary rate, Jamaica experienced its major expansion as a commercial center. By 1925, lots on Jamaica Avenue between 160111 Street and 168th Street had the highest assessed valuation in Queens County.

 

Many small-scale commercial buildings were erected in Jamaica at this time, as well as several major office and commercial structures, including the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Building on 161st Street (1928-29, George W. Conable) and the J. Kurtz & Sons Store on Jamaica Avenue (1931, AUmendiger & Schlendorf, a designated New York City Landmark). When the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company chose Jamaica for its new headquarters building in 1929, this was the most prosperous commercial section of the borough. It was also a center for banking and insurance in Queens, with several other banks and title guarantee companies located on the same block.

 

Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company was founded in 1925 for the purpose of insuring property titles, making loans on bonds and mortgages, and selling guaranteed mortgages. The company, with businessman Willard Baylis as president, was organized in Suffolk County, but had offices in Manhattan, Long Island City, Mineola, and Riverhead, as well as Jamaica, Queens.

 

Its slogan was "A Title Company that Knows Long Island." Established during the period of intense business activity of the nineteen-twenties, the company expanded rapidly, and by 1927 had acquired another well-known title company, Clarke & Frost. By 1928, the firm needed larger quarters to accommodate its increasing business and began acquisition of this site near the commercial center of Jamaica, Queens. They hired the architectural firm of Dennison & Hirons, known for its important bank buildings in the newly-popular Art Deco style, to create a distinctive headquarters and unique symbol for this growing business.

 

Dennison & Hirons

 

Ethan Allen Dennison (1881-1954) Frederic Charles Hirons (1883-1942)

 

Ethan Allen Dennison, born in New Jersey, studied architecture at the Godfrey Architectural Preparatory School and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He began his career in the office of Trowbridge & Livingston in New York in 1905, joining with Frederic Hirons to form the partnership of Dennison & Hirons in 1910. Their firm continued until 1929, including the one year (1913) during which they were joined by Percy W. Darbyshire, creating the firm of Dennison,

 

Hirons & Darbyshire. Dennison won the Medal of Honor of the Society of Diploma Architects of France and was a member of the Beaux Arts Society of New York, as well as the American Society of the French Legion of Honor. After the dissolution of the firm of Dennison & Hirons, Dennison continued to practice architecture in New York as the head of Ethan Allen Dennison & Associates. Much of his later work was in Connecticut, where he lived, and in 1940 he moved his firm to that state.

 

Frederic Charles Hirons was bom in England but moved as a child to Massachusetts with his family. He worked as a draftsman in the Boston office of Herbert Hale from 1898 until 1901 when he began to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1904, he won the Rotch traveling scholarship, and went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He won the Pans Prize in 1906, enabling him to continue his studies and travel in Europe through 1909.

 

Hirons was always interested in drawing and the education of young students. He led his own atelier for several years after his return from Europe, taught architecture at Columbia University, was a founder of the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, and served as president of the Beaux Arts Society of Architects. He was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his services for architectural education. In 1929 Hirons formed a partnership with F. W. Mellor from Philadelphia for two years, and then practiced under his own name until 1940.

 

Hirons won the competition for the design of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York (1928, a designated New York City Landmark) as well as several courthouses and war memorials. Early works of the firm of Dennison & Hirons include the whimsical Childs Restaurant in Coney Island, and such neoclassical style buildings as the Delaware Title & Insurance Company, Wilmington, Delaware, the Kanawha Banking and Trust Co., Charleston, West Virginia, the Purcellville National Bank, Purcellville, Virginia, the National State Bank, Elizabeth, New Jersey, and the Trenton Banking Company, Trenton, New Jersey. Later in their partnership, Dennison & Hirons designed numerous tall bank buildings in the Art Deco style, often collaborating with architectural sculptor Rene Chambellan for the terra-cotta panels.

 

The State Bank and Trust Company of New York at Eighth Avenue and 43rd Street, the Home Savings Bank, Albany, New York, and the Society for Savings, Hartford, Connecticut, as well as the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building were all Art Deco style office buildings designed by Dennison & Hirons and adorned with Chambellan's characteristic ornament.

 

The terra cotta used in these buildings was similar to that featured by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in a special issue of their magazine devoted to the work of this architectural firm.

 

This article included an explanation of Dennison & Hirons method for producing the colored terra-cotta panels used on their buildings. One-quarter scale models were created and painted according to their designs. These were then mounted on the building at their exact locations, so that the colors could be adjusted according to the differing light exposures. After these models were finalized, the Polychrome Department of the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company would create glazes to achieve the desired shades. In this way Dennison & Hirons were able to produce colorful ornament which has remained visually stunning for many years.

 

Rene Chambellan (1893-1955)

 

Rene Paul Chambellan became a noted architectural sculptor and model-maker whose sculpture, bas-reliefs, and panels were executed in a number of materials, including bronze, stone, and terra cotta. Bom in Union City, New Jersey, he was educated at New York University (1912-14), and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (1914-17), and Ecole Julian (1918-19) in Paris and was a student of the sculptor Solon Borglum. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army in France in 1917-19. After returning to the United States, Chambellan worked with Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells on the ornament of the Tribune Building (1924) in Chicago, and participated in the design and execution of the ornament of many important buildings of the 1920s and 30s in New York City.

 

Chambellan did many of the flat, highly stylized designs popular on Art Deco buildings and he worked on several projects with the architects Dennison & Hirons, creating models for the terra-cotta ornament based on Hirons' designs.

 

Art Deco Style

 

The Art Deco or Modern classical style of architecture, which primarily appeared in this country from the mid- 1920s through the 1930s, has been called an "avant-garde traditionalist" approach to creating a contemporary idiom for buildings of the period.

 

Much of the architecture known as Art Deco was based on accepted, standard forms and construction techniques and most of the architects active in this style had received traditional Beaux-Arts training in which the plan and the design of elevations were the first and most important phases in the design of a building. However, designers and critics of this time expressed the need for a new style which could be deemed appropriate for the period dubbed the "Jazz Age," with all its accompanying technological developments. Thus buildings were given a modern cast through the use of a characteristic ornament, and a variety of materials, some new and some simply used in a new way.

 

The popular design and ornamental ideas of the period evolved from numerous influences including: the Paris 1925 Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs (from which the Art Deco style took its name), the well-publicized designs of the Vienna Secessionists and the Wiener Werkstatte, and the German Expressionists, as well as American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, current theatrical set designs, and Mayan and other Native American forms.

 

The most well-known buildings of this period were skyscrapers and their overall shape came about as a result of the 1916 Building Zone Resolution of New York which decreed setbacks at various levels of tall buildings to allow light and air to reach the streets in an increasingly dense city. A series of dramatic renderings by architectural Tenderer Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published in Pencil Points (1923) and in Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929) significantly influenced architects of the period. The drawings and the laws from which they came directed the architects' attention to the building as a whole rather than to a single facade of the structure, thus altering the whole design process. By visualizing buildings "from every possible angle" the architect was transformed from a designer of facades into a "sculptor in building masses."

 

The zoning law provided architects with a rational basis for the form and appearance of the skyscraper as well as a new source of creativity; historical styles did not seem to express this modem sensibility and consequently, a new "skyscraper style" emerged in the 1920s. Major characteristics of the new style, as generated in part by the zoning restrictions, were sculpted massing, bold setbacks, and ornament subordinated to the overall mass. The dramatic rendering style of Ferriss and others articulated this new modernist aesthetic. In addition, an emphasis on the vertically of the tall building derived from the wide influence of Eliel Saarinen's second-prize winning competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Building in 1923. These same sensibilities and vertical emphasis were also often applied to the design of small buildings during this period, with owners and designers trying to demonstrate their modernity.

 

Additionally, architects of this period emphasized the decorative capacity of the building's surface. While designing in such a way as to make it obvious that the outer surfaces were not structural but only there to enclose the space, contemporary designers used a variety of materials. Newly-created metal alloys gave interesting effects, but brick and terra cotta were also favorites because of their wide range of color and textural possibilities. Ornament, usually in low relief and concentrated on specific areas such as the entrance, took the form of angular, geometric shapes such as ziggurats and zigzags, or simplified and stylized floral patterns, parts of circles, or faceted crystalline shapes.

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building

 

In 1928, two lots on the north end of the block bounded by Jamaica and 90th Avenues, and 160th and 161s1 Streets were purchased in the name of Jessica Baylis, wife of the president of the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company. One of these was obtained from the Jamaica Lodge of Free-Masons which had a clubhouse there.15 The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company erected its building on the site in 1928-29, but did not take title to the property until May, 1930, well after the building had been occupied. The company's offices filled the entire structure, including a large, double-height banking room with a mezzanine which occupied most of the street level space.

 

The architects Dennison & Hirons designed many bank buildings during their partnership, both skyscrapers and smaller structures, for the sole use of their owners. By erecting its own building, a company's structure became the symbol of the organization and a physical embodiment of the business in the greater community in which it did business. Banks in particular, wanted buildings which would draw customers but also create an image of stability and reliability. Art Deco style buildings were novel enough to attract attention, but not so unusual that they would be seen as eccentric.

 

Dennison & Hirons were able to satisfy the needs of their customers with buildings that were characterized by simple lines, a variety of setbacks near the roofline, and discrete panels of decoration, strategically placed on the building's facades. Frederic Hirons was a draftsman of exceptional ability and he often worked with modeler Rene Chambellan to create unique panels of terra cotta in flat, stylized designs of leaves, flowers, and fountains which added a distinctiveness to each building.

 

The architects employed all of these elements on the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building. Eight stories tall, this is one of the larger and more unusual structures in the area, with its irregular massing at the upper stories and its colorful ornament. As seen on the more typical Art Deco style skyscrapers, this building has a distinct base with stone cladding which stops in the piers above the second story and an irregularly shaped top created by several floors of setbacks. While this type of massing was originally a response to the 1916 Building Zone Resolution when it was applied to tall buildings in Manhattan, here the architects used the same idea for its aesthetic contribution, since the zoning laws would not have required setbacks on a building of this height.

 

Continuous brick piers with recessed windows also emphasize the height of the building, and stress the grid-like pattern of the facade. The spandrels, which feature inset brick panels, reflect the interest among Art Deco architects for textural patterns on the building's skin. The brightly-colored terra-cotta panels which are located on the spandrels between the second and third stories are unique to this building. The flat, stylized designs of leaves, flowers and fountains repeat across each facade, with the panels on the 90th Avenue side different from those on the two narrow ends.

 

Designed to draw attention to the upper floors of the building, brightly-colored and patterned terra-cotta lintels cap the windows of the eighth story and a large terra-cotta panel is located near the top of each of the narrow facades of the building. These sections display a highly stylized eagle holding a shield, a common symbol on bank buildings and similar to one used by Dennison & Hirons on their City National Bank and Trust Company Building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, of the same period.

 

Following the convention in many Art Deco style buildings of emphasis placed on the entranceway, in this building the two main doors are embellished with surrounds formed of painted ironwork using similar motifs to those found in the terra cotta. In addition a pair of winged griffins in full relief, holding a shield tops each doorway. While the long facade on 90th Avenue has no entrances, its large, ground-story windows have similar, decorative ironwork which has been painted.

 

Subsequent History

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company moved into their new building during the first half of 1929, but their good fortune and success was short-lived. By 1935, the business was bankrupt. Shortly thereafter it was taken over by the state insurance department and its assets, including this building, were liquidated, although the company continued to be listed at this address until 1940.

 

It took many years for the property to clear after the bankruptcy and liquidation. It was finally resold in 1945 to Frederick C. Trump, a large land-holder and developer in Queens and Brooklyn.18 Trump donated the building to the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation in the 1980s and the offices are currently used by this group and a number of other not-for-profit organizations.

 

Description

 

This eight-story office building has designed facades on 161st Street, 90th Avenue, and 161st Street. The fourth facade overlooks a parking lot and is faced with plain brick. Midway across the fourth facade, rising from the second story, is a narrow light court with a door and window on each story. Near the top of this facade, a neon-lit artwork entitled ''Let It Roll" by Cork Mareschi has recently been installed.

 

161st Street Facade

 

The main entrance is located on the eastern facade. The building is three bays wide with a double-height ground story. The main entrance to the building, which consists of a non-historic, revolving glass-and-metal doorway with a glass transom, is located in the southern bay, while an entrance to the ground story office space via double glass and bronze doors topped by a transom is located in the northern bay. Perched on the bronze lintel of each doorway is a pair of winged griffins with long fish tails holding a tablet.

 

A large plate glass window above a painted iron railing fills the central bay. Ornate painted-metal, three-dimensional surrounds ornament each of the three ground-story openings and include stylized fountain and flower designs. Above the first story letters denoting "The Title Guarantee Company" are applied to the stone facade, replacing the original sign identifying the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company.

 

Above a granite watertable, the two lowest stories are faced in ashlar limestone that changes to brick with a stepped design in the piers between the second and third stories. Multi-colored, terra cotta panels in a stylized fountain design decorate the spandrels between the second and third story windows. Between the third and sixth stories, the spandrel panels are composed of brick in a darker tone, with an inset of an embossed square pattern.

 

Continuous masonry piers run from the ground floor through the sixth story. Recessed, paired windows with one-over-one, double-hung sash are located within each of the three bays, with a narrow, continuous pier between the two windows in each pair. These piers project slightly above the plain brick cornice at the sixth story level. The building sets back from the street at the seventh story, which is topped by a continuous, plain brick cornice with a narrow stone cap. At the eighth story, the building steps back again and is also narrower, with a single window in each of the two side bays. The four windows at this level are segmentally-arched, with broad, decorative, terra-cotta lintels. The brick piers continue above this level with a central, stepped parapet ornamented by a terra-cotta eagle holding a shield, which covers mechanical equipment.

 

90th Avenue Facade

 

The building is nine bays wide on this elevation. At the ground story are single-pane, double-height windows over painted iron railings. Letters spelling "The Title Guarantee Company" are located between the first and second stories. The design on the second through the sixth stories is the same as on the 161st Street elevation, with terra-cotta and darker brick spandrels, and continuous piers between the bays. The three center bays rise with continuous piers through the eighth story. The three bays on each side step back slightly at the seventh story, and further at the eighth story. Above this are parapets with recessed bays between brick piers which screen elevator equipment and the water tower.

 

160th Street Facade

 

This facade is three bays wide and is almost the same as that on 161st Street. Here the entrance is in the southern bay and is identical to the entrance on 161st Street. The central bay is filled by a ventilating grill and the third bay has a large window opening over painted iron railings. The upper stories have the same arrangement, ornamentation, and setbacks as those on 161st Street.

 

- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Former Bullocks, converted to Macy*s at the Northridge Mall in Northridge on Tampa. Northridge California. Photos taken on December 28, 2007, Friday morning. Northridge Mall in Northridge on Tampa. This Mall includes: a Sears Department Store, a J.C.Penney Department Store, a Levitz Furniture Store, two Macy*s Department Stores, shops, restaurants and Movie Theaters. Originally this mall also contained a May Co Department Store, a Robinsons May Department Store and The Broadway Department Store. When Macy*s took over the Broadway it was ordered by the Courts to divest this site, it was closed down, and subdivided into shops. May Co Department Stores and Robinsons Department Stores were two different chains owned by May Co. In 1992, May Department Stores decided to merge the two chains into Robinsons May Departmetn Store. This Mall had two Robinsons May Department Stores for several years. One of the two was devoted exclusively to Men's and home. The other store had everything else. Eventually, Robinsons May combined the two stores by adding a new section to the main store. The original Men's and Home store was demolished. In 2006, Macy*s took over Robinsons May and closed the store in the fall of 2006. In the fall of 2007, Macy*s reopened the old Robinsons May buidling as a Macy*s Men's and Home Store. Across the street, was another shopping center that had several different types of stores. Some of the stores include: Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. Also in this center included several stores a Levitz Furniture Warehouse (which downsized and moved into Mall across the street), a Best Catalog Showroom Store (the chain closed down completely) and a Tower Records (the chain closed down completely in 2006). Over the years these stores have closed down, with no replacements. The complex has remained largely vacant over the years. It is In only the last few months that there has been activity on the site. The neighborhood fought off an attempt by Wal Mart to take over the site about a year ago. One of xx photos of this area.

Phetchabun is one of the northern provinces ( Changwat ) of Thailand. Neighbouring provinces are Loei, Khon Kaen, Chaiyaphum, Lopburi, Nakhon Sawan, Phichit and Phitsanulok. Phetchabun is located in the lower northern region of Thailand, in the area between the northern and the central region. The province lies in the broad fertile river valley of the Pa Sak River, with mountains of the Phetchabun mountain range to the east and west. It is surrounded by places of interest, many well known national parks, beautiful waterfalls and great lakes. The province is subdivided in 11 districts ( Amphoe ). These are further subdivided into 117 sub districts ( Tambon ) and 1261 villages ( Muban ).

1. Mueang Phetchabun 2. Chon Daen 3. Lom Sak 4. Lom Kao 5. Wichian Buri 6. Si Thep 7. Nong Phai 8. Bueng Sam Phan 9. Nam Nao 10. Wang Pong 11. Khao Kho

Phetchabun was established by two kingdoms: the Sukhothai Kingdom, and the Ayutthaya Period of the King Narai. In the thesaphiban administrative reforms at the beginning of the 20th century, the province together with Lom Sak Province to the north formed the monthon Phetchabun. As it was the smallest monthon, it was also the first monthon to be dissolved in 1915, after being temporarily administered from Monthon Phitsanulok between 1903 and 1907. Lom Sak Province was abolished and merged into Phetchabun in 1932. During the period between 1968-1982 communist insurgents established bases in the mountains in the province. From hidden locations they fought occasional skirmishes against the Thai Army.

It is the mountains that draw tourists. The rolling peaks of Khao Thor, known as Little Switzerland, were once a battlefield against communist insurgents. Today, its beautiful scenery and cool weather attracts many visitors, to see the mountain-top army base turned into a museum, and enjoy trekking in the open zoo and non-hunting areas. The national parks of Phu Hin Rong Kla, with its stunning rock formations, and Nam Nao, whose forests are home to many large animals and birds, are now starting to attract more and more trekkers and eco tourists. Khao Kho The most engaging national park of Phetchabun Province is Khao Kho National Park, about one hour northwest of Phetchabun town. It was designated to be Little Switzerland from many visitors, because of beautiful scenery and cool weather like Switzerland. It was once a battle field against communist insurgents conducted their struggles against the authorities. Its charming scenery and great weather allure tourists to see the mountain – top, army base turned into a museum, a Chedi containing a holy relic and enjoy trekking in the open zoo and non – hunting areas.

Phetchabun may be reach by Road No.21 ( Kochasenee Rd.) from Saraburi and 370 kilometres from Bangkok.

How to get there

By Train

There is no railway system to Phetchabun

By Car

Road No.1 from capital city ( Bangkok ) to Saraburi province and then Road No.21 to Phetchabun road No.12 from Khon kaen ( central province of the northeastern region ) to Lom Sak and then Road 21. southward to Phetchabun.

By Bus.

Quite a lot of buses stop at this town on the way to Lom Sak. Here are some services you can find from Mo chit Terminal: www.transport.co.th 0 2936 2852-66

Phet Tour 0 2936 3230

Thin Siam Tour 0 2936 0500Buses are very frequent, like 2 or 3 within an hour. First Class service from Phet Tour cost 263 Baht and takes 4 hour+.

Wat Mahathat Phetchabun, Thailand. on Nikon Bamrung Road in town, houses several ancient Chedi's of Sukhothai style. Situated in Muang Phetchabun municipality. It seemed strange seeing this Temple as there is another Wat Mahathat I visited in Ayutthaya last year in 2010. However this Temple is totally different to that at Ayutthaya as you will see. Within the grounds is a school for the training of Buddhist Monks and many where around the day I visited this fine Temple. This monastery is an ancient temple which HRH Prince Damrong presumed that this monastery might be constructed during Sukhothai period. Wat Mahathat has the important objects of worship such as, Phum Khao Binth styled pagoda has been presumed that it might be constructed about B.E. 1926 ( 1383 ). This pagoda is a place that comprises Buddha's relics, Orrahan's ( saint ) ashes, and small images of Buddha in several styles. Two Buddha images of the U-Thong period whose laps are 36 inches wide. One is housed in the main chapel and the other is housed in the vihara of Wat Mahathat.

2251 Lancaster Ave; opened as Two Guys in the 50s; closed by 1980. Building was subdivided into several different stores, with Pathmark taking the left (entrance on the side) and Rickel's taking the right (pictured here). After Rickel's closed the store was divided further into Ollie's and A.C. Moore. Pathmark was sold to Giant in 1997 and relocated in 2005; A.C. Moore relocated in 2004. Ollie's is now the only tenant.

Built 1911 for Alexander Macully who named it “Dunluce”, sold to Silas Robert Thomas Carman who subdivided property, became Dunluce Lodge Guest Home, later owned by T S Wilson, now named Dunluce Castle.

 

“The seatholders of St. Jude's Church, Brighton, have unanimously requested the trustees to nominate the Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A., LL.B., of the Semaphore, for the vacant incumbency of the parish.” [Express & Telegraph 23 Mar 1905]

 

“The Rev. A. Macully. M.A., LL.B., has resigned the office of priest-in-charge of St. Jude's, Brighton, to take effect on March 31.” [Evening Journal 19 Dec 1907]

 

“a recital of ‘Hamlet’ at, the Druids' Hall, Park-street, Hyde Park, on Friday, April 24, at 8 p.m. Professor Macully has already won the admiration of the press and the public by his elocutionary efforts.” [Critic, Adelaide 22 Apr 1908]

 

“Poetry Recital. Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A. LL.B., Trin. ColL. Dublin., Hon. Fellow Literature and Art, London, Late Professor Alexandra College, Dublin, About to Open Studio, |City. Cultivation oi Speaking Voice. Aesthetics in English Literature.” [Advertiser 9 May 1910 advert]

 

“Zante Currants, well rooted. £3 10s per thousand. Alexander Macully, Dunluce, Brighton.” [Advertiser 18 Jun 1910 advert]

 

“Garden, Pigs, Poultry. — Gentleman requires experienced, trustworthy Man, on shares; good quarters. ‘Dunluce’, Brighton.” [Advertiser 6 Jul 1910 advert]

 

“Brighton.— About 8 Acres Sandhills, level, with Buck Scrapers. Tenders received. . . Address Macully, Brighton.” [Advertiser 23 Jul 1910 advert]

 

“Mr. Gwynne has accepted an appointment to supervise a large garden for the Rev. A. Macully, at Brighton.” [Areas Express, Booyoolee 11 Nov 1910]

 

“An explosion of petrol gas occurred on Friday afternoon at the newly erected residence of the Rev. A. Macully, Brighton. An escape of gas had been noticeable in the house for some days, and a plumber, after trying without result various means to detect the leakage, lighted a candle, and the disaster followed. The plumber sustained a severe shock. . . Damage was caused to three of the rooms. . . portion of the ceiling fell down.” [Register 17 Jun 1911]

 

“An enjoyable house-warming dance was given. . . to the Misses Macully at their new home, 'Dunluce’, Brighton. About 70 guests were present. Dancing was indulged in the drawing-room and dining-room, a dainty super being served in the turret room.” [Chronicle 1 Jul 1911]

 

“The Outdoor Life. — Wanted, Partner, garden, poultry farm, bees; prospects good. — Macully, Dunluce, Brighton” [Advertiser 5 Jul 1911 advert]

 

“The Value of Literary Competitions. Professor Macully, M.A., has returned to Dunluce, Brighton, after adjudicating at Balaklava and Hamley Bridge.” [Advertiser 22 Sep 1911]

 

“Municipal Corporations. Brighton. . . Rev. A. Macully requested permission to fill up hollows on his property from the sandhills; referred to public works committee.” [Advertiser 4 Mar 1912]

 

“Rev. A. Macully waited on the council, and intimated that he intended levelling the sandhills on the sea frontage of his property to form an esplanade. He asked that the town surveyor be instructed to furnish him with the proper levels, and if road scrapings were placed at his disposal he would use them for covering the sand to prevent drift. Resolved that Mr. Macully’s requests be complied with.” [Register 26 May 1913]

 

“The Rev. A. Macully stated that he had been residing at Brighton for eight or nine years, and the site of the proposed hotel was the next block to his property. He considered a family hotel necessary for the accommodation of visitors, and the site selected was the best for such a building. An up-to-date hotel was necessary for the convenience of the people.” [Advertiser 10 Dec 1913]

 

“Miss Kitty Macully, of Dunluce, Brighton, will continue her instruction in swimming, diving, and life-saving this summer. Classes are being formed now, and will be held in the Glenelg Baths, off the beach, and from a raft at Brighton.” [Observer 30 Oct 1915]

 

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 31st October, in France, Arnold, dearly loved and only son of Rev. Alexander and Mrs. Macully, Dunluce, Brighton.” [Register 6 Nov 1918]

 

“'Dunluce’ Estate, Brighton. The above well-known seaside estate (formerly so well known as the property of the late Professor Macully) has been purchased this week by Mr. S. R. T. Carman. . . to proceed with its subdivision into, residential sites. . . The imposing 13-roomed modern residence, is offered for immediate private sale.” [The Mail 11 Feb 1922]

 

“Dunluce Lodge, Brighton— Furnished Rooms, linen, dining rooms, kitchens. . . Mrs. Salman.

Dunluce Lodge, Brighton—Vacant, 18th, large four Bedroom, private sleeping-out verandah.” [Advertiser 16 Jan 1923 advert]

 

“Dunluce Lodge. . . Brighton. . . Accommodation this week-end; holidays.— Mrs. Salman.” [Advertiser 26 Jan 1923 advert]

 

“Dunluce Lodge Guest Home for comfortable Board and Residence. . . Brighton.” [Register 18 Aug 1927 advert]

 

“Brighton. . . a garden party was held at Dunluce Lodge, attended by members of the Y.M.C.A.” [Register 10 Apr 1928]

 

“Brighton Mothers and Babies' Health Association. . . The annual gift tea to raise funds for the assocition [sic] will be held in the grounds of Mr. T. S. Wilson, Dunluce Estate. Brighton.” [Advertiser 26 Oct 1937]

 

“The twenty first annual meeting and election of officers of the Brighton branch of the Mothers and Babies' Health Association will be held at the home of the secretary, Mrs. T. S. Wilson. Dunluce Lodge. Brighton.” [Advertiser 20 Aug 1946]

 

“To raise funds for a community hall at Brighton and for Townsend House school for deaf and blind children, a fete will be held tomorrow in the grounds of 'Dunluce,' Yester avenue, Brighton.” [Advertiser 4 Dec 1953]

 

MACULLY

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 8th January, at Dnnluce, Brighton, Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A., LL.B., beloved husband of Minnie Macully, aged 74 years.” [Register 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Rev. Alexander Macully. . . was born in the cathedral city of Armagh, Ireland. When he was a child his parents emigrated to Melbourne, and there his father occupied an important position in the Civil Service for about 35 years, He was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, and distinguished himself in English literature, and obtained the first prize in elocution.” [Register 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Rev. Alexander Macully. . . was widely known as Professor Macully. . . His academic distinctions included B.A. and LL.B., degrees of Trinity College, Dnblin. . . In 1888 he graduated M.A. at the Melbourne University. He was ordained deacon in the Anglican Church at Meath in 1880 and priest two years later at Derry. After filling come appointments in Ireland he took the position of curate at Bendigo in 1883. . . rector of Nundah with Clayfield, in the diocese of Brisbane, in 1897. In 1901 he became curate at Hindmarsh, and four years later. . . at Semaphore. From 1903 to 1908 he was priest in charge at Brighton. . . He has left a widow and three daughters. His only son, Arnold Macully, was killed in France during the war.” [Advertiser 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Professor Macully. . . has left three daughters, the Misses Eileen and Norah Macully and Mrs,. E. P. Whyte.” [Register 11 Jan 1921]

 

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 21st October, at ‘Dunluce’, 24, Glenunga-avenue, Glenunga, Julia Maira, widow of Rev. A. Macully and beloved mother of Eileen and Norah.” [Advertiser 22 Oct 1930]

 

“Mrs. Julia Macully. . . was a daughter of the Hon. Alexander Campbell, M.L.C., founder and first chairman of the Australian Mutual Provident Society in Sydney. She was the widow of Rev. A. Macully, who died nine years ago. Born in Sydney and educated abroad, Mrs. Macully assisted her husband in his parish at Bowden, Hindmarsh, and Brighton. She was an active worker for the Red Cross. Mrs. G. Buchanan (Barmera) and Miss E. Macully (Glenunga) are daughters. Other members of the family were Mrs. P. Whyte, who was killed by a shark at Brighton, and Mr. A. Macully, who died in action at the war.” [News 22 Oct 1930]

 

(Former) Suffolk Title and Guarantee Corp. Building, Jamaica, Queens

 

Constructed in 1929, the (Former) Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building maintains a commanding presence near the business center of Jamaica, Queens. Designed by the distinguished architectural firm of Dennison & Hirons which was known for its bank buildings, this eight-story structure was built at a time of tremendous business prosperity and building activity.

 

The architects used the Art Deco style enhanced with colorful terracotta ornament to create a modern and distinctive headquarters for the Long Island-based firm, which was organized in 1925 to insure real estate titles, guarantee mortgages, and make loans. Echoing the dominant shapes of the prominent Art Deco skyscrapers of the period in this smaller building, the architects emphasized the verticality of the structure with continuous masonry piers and a variety of setbacks near the top.

 

This arrangement, along with the brightly-colored, terra-cotta panels by noted sculptor Rene Chambellan that are strategically applied to the crown and the second story, make this a truly unique building in downtown Jamaica, and a rare example of the skyscraper style applied to small buildings outside of Manhattan.

 

Development of the Area

 

Jamaica, one of the oldest settlements within the current boundaries of New York City, developed into the leading commercial center of Queens County by 1900 and continues to be the largest and most densely-populated neighborhood in central Queens. The Dutch purchased the land in Jamaica from the Jameco Indians in 1655. The following year, Governor Peter Stuyvesant granted a charter to the town, originally known as Rusdorp.

 

Following the transfer of power from the Dutch to the English in 1664, Rusdorp was renamed Jamaica, after the original inhabitants of the region. Queens County (incorporating present-day Queens and Nassau Counties) was chartered in 1683 and Jamaica was one of the three original governing units established there (along with Newtown and Flushing). Outside the town center, Jamaica was largely an area of farms and pastures. The rural village was officially incorporated by New York State in 1814.

 

Jamaica's central location in Queens County, and the extensive transportation network that developed in the town during the nineteenth century, transformed the village into the major commercial center for Queens County and much of eastern Long Island. The arrival of the railroads in the 1830s began this evolution.

 

The rail lines connected Jamaica with other sections of Queens county, Brooklyn, eastern Long Island, and the ferries to New York City. Jamaica's farmland was soon being subdivided into streets and building lots, and many houses were erected.

 

By the turn of the century, Jamaica' s importance as a commercial area became evident in the impressive buildings constructed on Jamaica Avenue, most notably the Beaux-Arts Jamaica Savings Bank Building (161-02 Jamaica Avenue, 1897-98, Hough & Duell), and the neo-ltalian Renaissance Queens County Register Office (161-04 Jamaica Avenue, 1898, A.S. Macgregor, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

After Jamaica was incorporated into the Borough of Queens and became a part of New York City on January 1, 1898, additional transportation improvements brought increasing numbers of people. As a result, the population of Jamaica quadrupled between 1900 and 1920.

 

During the 1920s, when the major mass transit links were in place and private automobile ownership was growing at an extraordinary rate, Jamaica experienced its major expansion as a commercial center. By 1925, lots on Jamaica Avenue between 160111 Street and 168th Street had the highest assessed valuation in Queens County.

 

Many small-scale commercial buildings were erected in Jamaica at this time, as well as several major office and commercial structures, including the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Building on 161st Street (1928-29, George W. Conable) and the J. Kurtz & Sons Store on Jamaica Avenue (1931, AUmendiger & Schlendorf, a designated New York City Landmark). When the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company chose Jamaica for its new headquarters building in 1929, this was the most prosperous commercial section of the borough. It was also a center for banking and insurance in Queens, with several other banks and title guarantee companies located on the same block.

 

Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company was founded in 1925 for the purpose of insuring property titles, making loans on bonds and mortgages, and selling guaranteed mortgages. The company, with businessman Willard Baylis as president, was organized in Suffolk County, but had offices in Manhattan, Long Island City, Mineola, and Riverhead, as well as Jamaica, Queens.

 

Its slogan was "A Title Company that Knows Long Island." Established during the period of intense business activity of the nineteen-twenties, the company expanded rapidly, and by 1927 had acquired another well-known title company, Clarke & Frost. By 1928, the firm needed larger quarters to accommodate its increasing business and began acquisition of this site near the commercial center of Jamaica, Queens. They hired the architectural firm of Dennison & Hirons, known for its important bank buildings in the newly-popular Art Deco style, to create a distinctive headquarters and unique symbol for this growing business.

 

Dennison & Hirons

 

Ethan Allen Dennison (1881-1954) Frederic Charles Hirons (1883-1942)

 

Ethan Allen Dennison, born in New Jersey, studied architecture at the Godfrey Architectural Preparatory School and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He began his career in the office of Trowbridge & Livingston in New York in 1905, joining with Frederic Hirons to form the partnership of Dennison & Hirons in 1910. Their firm continued until 1929, including the one year (1913) during which they were joined by Percy W. Darbyshire, creating the firm of Dennison,

 

Hirons & Darbyshire. Dennison won the Medal of Honor of the Society of Diploma Architects of France and was a member of the Beaux Arts Society of New York, as well as the American Society of the French Legion of Honor. After the dissolution of the firm of Dennison & Hirons, Dennison continued to practice architecture in New York as the head of Ethan Allen Dennison & Associates. Much of his later work was in Connecticut, where he lived, and in 1940 he moved his firm to that state.

 

Frederic Charles Hirons was bom in England but moved as a child to Massachusetts with his family. He worked as a draftsman in the Boston office of Herbert Hale from 1898 until 1901 when he began to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1904, he won the Rotch traveling scholarship, and went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He won the Pans Prize in 1906, enabling him to continue his studies and travel in Europe through 1909.

 

Hirons was always interested in drawing and the education of young students. He led his own atelier for several years after his return from Europe, taught architecture at Columbia University, was a founder of the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, and served as president of the Beaux Arts Society of Architects. He was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his services for architectural education. In 1929 Hirons formed a partnership with F. W. Mellor from Philadelphia for two years, and then practiced under his own name until 1940.

 

Hirons won the competition for the design of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York (1928, a designated New York City Landmark) as well as several courthouses and war memorials. Early works of the firm of Dennison & Hirons include the whimsical Childs Restaurant in Coney Island, and such neoclassical style buildings as the Delaware Title & Insurance Company, Wilmington, Delaware, the Kanawha Banking and Trust Co., Charleston, West Virginia, the Purcellville National Bank, Purcellville, Virginia, the National State Bank, Elizabeth, New Jersey, and the Trenton Banking Company, Trenton, New Jersey. Later in their partnership, Dennison & Hirons designed numerous tall bank buildings in the Art Deco style, often collaborating with architectural sculptor Rene Chambellan for the terra-cotta panels.

 

The State Bank and Trust Company of New York at Eighth Avenue and 43rd Street, the Home Savings Bank, Albany, New York, and the Society for Savings, Hartford, Connecticut, as well as the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building were all Art Deco style office buildings designed by Dennison & Hirons and adorned with Chambellan's characteristic ornament.

 

The terra cotta used in these buildings was similar to that featured by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in a special issue of their magazine devoted to the work of this architectural firm.

 

This article included an explanation of Dennison & Hirons method for producing the colored terra-cotta panels used on their buildings. One-quarter scale models were created and painted according to their designs. These were then mounted on the building at their exact locations, so that the colors could be adjusted according to the differing light exposures. After these models were finalized, the Polychrome Department of the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company would create glazes to achieve the desired shades. In this way Dennison & Hirons were able to produce colorful ornament which has remained visually stunning for many years.

 

Rene Chambellan (1893-1955)

 

Rene Paul Chambellan became a noted architectural sculptor and model-maker whose sculpture, bas-reliefs, and panels were executed in a number of materials, including bronze, stone, and terra cotta. Bom in Union City, New Jersey, he was educated at New York University (1912-14), and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (1914-17), and Ecole Julian (1918-19) in Paris and was a student of the sculptor Solon Borglum. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army in France in 1917-19. After returning to the United States, Chambellan worked with Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells on the ornament of the Tribune Building (1924) in Chicago, and participated in the design and execution of the ornament of many important buildings of the 1920s and 30s in New York City.

 

Chambellan did many of the flat, highly stylized designs popular on Art Deco buildings and he worked on several projects with the architects Dennison & Hirons, creating models for the terra-cotta ornament based on Hirons' designs.

 

Art Deco Style

 

The Art Deco or Modern classical style of architecture, which primarily appeared in this country from the mid- 1920s through the 1930s, has been called an "avant-garde traditionalist" approach to creating a contemporary idiom for buildings of the period.

 

Much of the architecture known as Art Deco was based on accepted, standard forms and construction techniques and most of the architects active in this style had received traditional Beaux-Arts training in which the plan and the design of elevations were the first and most important phases in the design of a building. However, designers and critics of this time expressed the need for a new style which could be deemed appropriate for the period dubbed the "Jazz Age," with all its accompanying technological developments. Thus buildings were given a modern cast through the use of a characteristic ornament, and a variety of materials, some new and some simply used in a new way.

 

The popular design and ornamental ideas of the period evolved from numerous influences including: the Paris 1925 Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs (from which the Art Deco style took its name), the well-publicized designs of the Vienna Secessionists and the Wiener Werkstatte, and the German Expressionists, as well as American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, current theatrical set designs, and Mayan and other Native American forms.

 

The most well-known buildings of this period were skyscrapers and their overall shape came about as a result of the 1916 Building Zone Resolution of New York which decreed setbacks at various levels of tall buildings to allow light and air to reach the streets in an increasingly dense city. A series of dramatic renderings by architectural Tenderer Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published in Pencil Points (1923) and in Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929) significantly influenced architects of the period. The drawings and the laws from which they came directed the architects' attention to the building as a whole rather than to a single facade of the structure, thus altering the whole design process. By visualizing buildings "from every possible angle" the architect was transformed from a designer of facades into a "sculptor in building masses."

 

The zoning law provided architects with a rational basis for the form and appearance of the skyscraper as well as a new source of creativity; historical styles did not seem to express this modem sensibility and consequently, a new "skyscraper style" emerged in the 1920s. Major characteristics of the new style, as generated in part by the zoning restrictions, were sculpted massing, bold setbacks, and ornament subordinated to the overall mass. The dramatic rendering style of Ferriss and others articulated this new modernist aesthetic. In addition, an emphasis on the vertically of the tall building derived from the wide influence of Eliel Saarinen's second-prize winning competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Building in 1923. These same sensibilities and vertical emphasis were also often applied to the design of small buildings during this period, with owners and designers trying to demonstrate their modernity.

 

Additionally, architects of this period emphasized the decorative capacity of the building's surface. While designing in such a way as to make it obvious that the outer surfaces were not structural but only there to enclose the space, contemporary designers used a variety of materials. Newly-created metal alloys gave interesting effects, but brick and terra cotta were also favorites because of their wide range of color and textural possibilities. Ornament, usually in low relief and concentrated on specific areas such as the entrance, took the form of angular, geometric shapes such as ziggurats and zigzags, or simplified and stylized floral patterns, parts of circles, or faceted crystalline shapes.

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building

 

In 1928, two lots on the north end of the block bounded by Jamaica and 90th Avenues, and 160th and 161s1 Streets were purchased in the name of Jessica Baylis, wife of the president of the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company. One of these was obtained from the Jamaica Lodge of Free-Masons which had a clubhouse there.15 The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company erected its building on the site in 1928-29, but did not take title to the property until May, 1930, well after the building had been occupied. The company's offices filled the entire structure, including a large, double-height banking room with a mezzanine which occupied most of the street level space.

 

The architects Dennison & Hirons designed many bank buildings during their partnership, both skyscrapers and smaller structures, for the sole use of their owners. By erecting its own building, a company's structure became the symbol of the organization and a physical embodiment of the business in the greater community in which it did business. Banks in particular, wanted buildings which would draw customers but also create an image of stability and reliability. Art Deco style buildings were novel enough to attract attention, but not so unusual that they would be seen as eccentric.

 

Dennison & Hirons were able to satisfy the needs of their customers with buildings that were characterized by simple lines, a variety of setbacks near the roofline, and discrete panels of decoration, strategically placed on the building's facades. Frederic Hirons was a draftsman of exceptional ability and he often worked with modeler Rene Chambellan to create unique panels of terra cotta in flat, stylized designs of leaves, flowers, and fountains which added a distinctiveness to each building.

 

The architects employed all of these elements on the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building. Eight stories tall, this is one of the larger and more unusual structures in the area, with its irregular massing at the upper stories and its colorful ornament. As seen on the more typical Art Deco style skyscrapers, this building has a distinct base with stone cladding which stops in the piers above the second story and an irregularly shaped top created by several floors of setbacks. While this type of massing was originally a response to the 1916 Building Zone Resolution when it was applied to tall buildings in Manhattan, here the architects used the same idea for its aesthetic contribution, since the zoning laws would not have required setbacks on a building of this height.

 

Continuous brick piers with recessed windows also emphasize the height of the building, and stress the grid-like pattern of the facade. The spandrels, which feature inset brick panels, reflect the interest among Art Deco architects for textural patterns on the building's skin. The brightly-colored terra-cotta panels which are located on the spandrels between the second and third stories are unique to this building. The flat, stylized designs of leaves, flowers and fountains repeat across each facade, with the panels on the 90th Avenue side different from those on the two narrow ends.

 

Designed to draw attention to the upper floors of the building, brightly-colored and patterned terra-cotta lintels cap the windows of the eighth story and a large terra-cotta panel is located near the top of each of the narrow facades of the building. These sections display a highly stylized eagle holding a shield, a common symbol on bank buildings and similar to one used by Dennison & Hirons on their City National Bank and Trust Company Building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, of the same period.

 

Following the convention in many Art Deco style buildings of emphasis placed on the entranceway, in this building the two main doors are embellished with surrounds formed of painted ironwork using similar motifs to those found in the terra cotta. In addition a pair of winged griffins in full relief, holding a shield tops each doorway. While the long facade on 90th Avenue has no entrances, its large, ground-story windows have similar, decorative ironwork which has been painted.

 

Subsequent History

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company moved into their new building during the first half of 1929, but their good fortune and success was short-lived. By 1935, the business was bankrupt. Shortly thereafter it was taken over by the state insurance department and its assets, including this building, were liquidated, although the company continued to be listed at this address until 1940.

 

It took many years for the property to clear after the bankruptcy and liquidation. It was finally resold in 1945 to Frederick C. Trump, a large land-holder and developer in Queens and Brooklyn.18 Trump donated the building to the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation in the 1980s and the offices are currently used by this group and a number of other not-for-profit organizations.

 

Description

 

This eight-story office building has designed facades on 161st Street, 90th Avenue, and 161st Street. The fourth facade overlooks a parking lot and is faced with plain brick. Midway across the fourth facade, rising from the second story, is a narrow light court with a door and window on each story. Near the top of this facade, a neon-lit artwork entitled ''Let It Roll" by Cork Mareschi has recently been installed.

 

161st Street Facade

 

The main entrance is located on the eastern facade. The building is three bays wide with a double-height ground story. The main entrance to the building, which consists of a non-historic, revolving glass-and-metal doorway with a glass transom, is located in the southern bay, while an entrance to the ground story office space via double glass and bronze doors topped by a transom is located in the northern bay. Perched on the bronze lintel of each doorway is a pair of winged griffins with long fish tails holding a tablet.

 

A large plate glass window above a painted iron railing fills the central bay. Ornate painted-metal, three-dimensional surrounds ornament each of the three ground-story openings and include stylized fountain and flower designs. Above the first story letters denoting "The Title Guarantee Company" are applied to the stone facade, replacing the original sign identifying the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company.

 

Above a granite watertable, the two lowest stories are faced in ashlar limestone that changes to brick with a stepped design in the piers between the second and third stories. Multi-colored, terra cotta panels in a stylized fountain design decorate the spandrels between the second and third story windows. Between the third and sixth stories, the spandrel panels are composed of brick in a darker tone, with an inset of an embossed square pattern.

 

Continuous masonry piers run from the ground floor through the sixth story. Recessed, paired windows with one-over-one, double-hung sash are located within each of the three bays, with a narrow, continuous pier between the two windows in each pair. These piers project slightly above the plain brick cornice at the sixth story level. The building sets back from the street at the seventh story, which is topped by a continuous, plain brick cornice with a narrow stone cap. At the eighth story, the building steps back again and is also narrower, with a single window in each of the two side bays. The four windows at this level are segmentally-arched, with broad, decorative, terra-cotta lintels. The brick piers continue above this level with a central, stepped parapet ornamented by a terra-cotta eagle holding a shield, which covers mechanical equipment.

 

90th Avenue Facade

 

The building is nine bays wide on this elevation. At the ground story are single-pane, double-height windows over painted iron railings. Letters spelling "The Title Guarantee Company" are located between the first and second stories. The design on the second through the sixth stories is the same as on the 161st Street elevation, with terra-cotta and darker brick spandrels, and continuous piers between the bays. The three center bays rise with continuous piers through the eighth story. The three bays on each side step back slightly at the seventh story, and further at the eighth story. Above this are parapets with recessed bays between brick piers which screen elevator equipment and the water tower.

 

160th Street Facade

 

This facade is three bays wide and is almost the same as that on 161st Street. Here the entrance is in the southern bay and is identical to the entrance on 161st Street. The central bay is filled by a ventilating grill and the third bay has a large window opening over painted iron railings. The upper stories have the same arrangement, ornamentation, and setbacks as those on 161st Street.

 

- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

1 Riverside Drive. Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Prentiss Residence, designed by noted architect C.P.H. Gilbert and constructed in 1899-1901, is an elegant Beaux-Arts style town house located on a prominent site at the intersection of West 72nd Street and Riverside Drive and is one of four grand town houses remaining at that corner. Designed and built in accordance with restrictive covenants in an area long intended for high-quality residential development, it is an excellent example of an impressive town house designed for that area. A town house with an American basement plan, the Prentiss Residence is faced in limestone and has curved bays at the front and side facades and a mansard roof enlivened with dormers and a turret. These features, combined with the siting of the building, give the torn house a striking presence at the gateway to Riverside Drive.

 

Development of the Upper West Side

 

The Upper West Side, known as Bloomingdale prior to its urbanization, remained largely undeveloped until the 1880s. In the early eighteenth century, Bloomingdale Road (which approximated the route of present-day Broadway) was opened through the rural area, and provided the northern route out of the city then concentrated at the southern tip of Manhattan Island.

 

The Upper West Side of Manhattan was included in the Rarriel Survey of 1811 (known as the Commissioners' Map) which established a uniform grid of broad avenues and narrow cross streets in Manhattan as far north as 155th Street. However, years elapsed before most streets on the Upper West Side were actually laid out, some as late as the 1870s and 1880s, and land was subdivided into building lots.

 

Improved public transportation contributed to the growth arid sustained development of the Upper West Side. In 1864 the Eighth Avenue horse car line was extended to 84th "Street; previously the only transit facility was a stage coach line along Bloomingdale Road (renamed the Boulevard and later Broadway in 1898). In 1879, the horse car lines on Eighth Avenue were replaced by street rail service up to 125th Street, and the Ninth Avenue (Columbus Avenue) Elevated Railroad was completed with stations at 72nd, 81st, 93rd, and 104th Streets.

 

Development of the West End (the area between the Boulevard and the Hudson River) began slowly, due, to a large degree, to the hesitation of would-be residents, but, by 1885 the area had emerged as the part of the city experiencing the most intense real estate speculation. The expectation that the blocks along Riverside Drive and West End Avenue would be lined with mansions kept the value of these lots, as well as adjacent land, consistently higher and developers were willing to wait to realize profits from the potentially valuable sites. The real estate developers, including the West End and West Side Associations, ultimately stimulated the demand for houses in the West End. Real estate brochures and the local press drew attention to the territory west of the Boulevard, emphasizing the scenic quality of the setting and the availability of public transportation. The biggest boost to the development of the West End was the creation of Riverside Park and Drive (a designated New York City Scenic landmark).

 

Riverside Drive and West 72nd Street

 

In 1865 the first proposal for converting the' land on the Upper West Side along the eastern shore of the Hudson River into an ornamental park was presented by Parks Commissioner William R. Martin. He and his colleagues believed such a plan would initiate the flowering of the West Side by drawing residents to the area and by encouraging further real estate development and the extension of rapid transit lines. The purchase of the park site and initial plans were approved in 1866. The drive, as proposed at this time, was a straight 100 foot-wide road. Commissioners soon realized this plan was impractical due to the existing topography. In 1873 they hired Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), already distinguished by his role with Calvert Vaux (1824-95) in the successful design for Central Park, to propose an alternate design.

 

Olmsted's design for Riverside Park and Drive evoked simplicity and elegance. Considering the pre-existing topography, landscape, and views, he designed a drive that would wind around topographic features, would be comfortable for horses and pleasure driving, would provide shaded walks for pedestrians, and yet would give easy access to real estate bordering it on the east. Olmsted's plan was adopted by the Commissioners but the park was not executed under his supervision. Actually developed between 1875 and 1900 by designers including Calvert Vaux, Samuel Parsons (1845-1923), and Julius Munckwitz (1829-1902), Olmsted's original design was not adhered to in its entirety, with paths and plantings being added by the later designers. The Drive begins at West 72nd Street and today continues north to approximately 129th Street, where it is effectively terminated by the viaduct and the Manhattanvi1le fault. The Drive has a particularly strong character which derives from its curves that break with the regular street grid and its situation at the highest of the terraces of the Park overlooking the water-side setting.

 

By the fall of 1879, work was completed between 72nd and 85th Streets and Riverside Avenue (as it was called until 1908) was opened to the public in 1880. Riverside Park and Drive fulfilled the Commissioners' plans for promoting the development of the area west of Broadway. The numerous and exceptional advantages of the location, namely, its situation on a plateau, its "advantages of pure air and beautiful surroundings, glimpses of New Jersey hills . . . and, the nearness of parks," assisted in making the area along Riverside Drive prime real estate, deserving of the highest character of residential development. The Drive was characterized by Clarence True, a prolific Upper West Side architect/developer, as "the most ideal homesite in the western hemisphere - the Acropolis of the world's second city."

 

When, beginning in the mid-1880s, residential development commenced along Riverside Drive, grand mansions were the first type of dwelling constructed. As all New Yorkers could not afford freestanding mansions, tcwn houses and rowhouses were also constructed on smaller lots. Clarence True was responsible for many of these rowhouses, establishing the character of much of the lower part of Riverside Drive. Examples of his work can be found in what are new the West End Collegiate and Riverside Drive-West 80th- 81st Street Historic Districts. From the turn of the century through the 1930s, apartment buildings were constructed along the Drive, many of these replacing previously built rowhouses, institutional buildings, or mansions.

 

Originally part of the Harsen Estate, West 72nd Street was subdivided into 500 lots identified for residential use (due to restrictive covenants), and developed into a fashionable street. Its generous width (100 feet) and proximity to entrances to Central Park and Riverside Park gave this street advantages over others nearby. As early as 1866, West 72nd Street fell under the jurisdiction of the Central Park Commissioners; its landscaping was planned and maintained by park employees, while commercial traffic was severely limited. The convenience of the 72nd Street stop on the elevated transit line also fueled early development.

 

Construction on West 72nd Street began in 1880 opposite Central Park with the construction of the Dakota (Henry J. Hardenbergh, a designated New York City Landmark), an early luxury apartment house. After further real estate speculation, numerous rowhouses were constructed along the length of the street, mostly in the later 1880s and '90s. The opening of the IRT subway station at West 72nd Street and Broadway in 1904 and changing socioeconomic conditions of the early twentieth century eventually altered the character of West 72nd Street. Many of the rowhouses were replaced by apartment buildings in the 1910s and '20s. Other rowhouses, mostly concentrated between Columbus and West End Avenues, were altered for commercial use at their first and/or second stories. The tcwn houses located at the intersection of Riverside Drive and West 72nd Street are examples of buildings which survived the later phases of apartment building construction and commercial redevelopment.

 

The city block bounded by Riverside Drive on the west and 72nd Street on the south originally lay partly within the Richard Somarindyck farm and partly within the farm of Jacob Hansen. The property was acquired in 1867 by Gustavus A. Sacchi who began to convey the property in the same year. The intersection of Riverside Drive and West 72nd Street is an unusual one in Manhattan. The northeast corner at 72nd Street gently curves northward, creating an inviting gateway to Riverside Park and Drive. The building lots at this intersection were re-configured between 1891 and 1896 so that the lot frontages could follow the curve of the corner. (Previously an orthogonal lot system was overlaid on the irregular site.) This arrangement gives an air of distinction to the buildings constructed on these lots and draws the attention of the passer-by.

 

The Design of The Prentiss Residence

 

Restrictive Covenants In 1899, lot 3 of Block 1184 was acquired by Lydia S.F. Prentiss from John S. Sutphen, Sr. who once owned the entire blockfront of Riverside Drive between West 72nd and West 73rd Streets and who lived at 160 West 72nd Street. At that time there were two deed restrictions on the property. The first restriction originated in two separate covenants, the first between Gustavus A. Sacchi and Sutphen in 1867, and the second between Sacchi and Sarah H. Wood in the same year. Sutphen acquired most of Wood's property in 1868. Two separate covenants were involved because of a change in the configuration of the lots in this area. Originally arranged orthogonally and later reconfigured to follow the curve of the corner, the new lots along the blockfront extend through the land of Sutphen's 1867 purchase (bordering Riverside Drive) and into that of his 1868 purchase (just to the east of the earlier purchase). (See Map #2.) The restriction in these transactions governed the type of building which could be constructed along this blockfront and required that any building erected within forty feet of the front of the lot be built of stone or brick, and its roof be slate or metal. The 1867 deeds also dictated a lengthy list of prohibited uses and building types, including: slaughterhouses, nail factories, breweries, livery stables, carpenter's shops, sugar refineries, menageries, "or any other manufactory, trade, business, or calling which may be in anywise dangerous, noxious, or offensive to the neighboring inhabitants...." This "covenant against nuisances" was to "run with the land" and was "binding upon all the future owners." The covenant applied to all lots eventually cwned by Sutphen.

 

Another deed restriction on lot 3 was introduced by Sutphen. It required that Mrs. Prentiss

 

erect or cause to be erected within two years from the third of April 1899 and fully to be completed a first class building adapted for and which shall be used only as a private residence for one family and which shall in its building lines and its substantial features conform to the plan thereof made by C.P.H. Gilbert, Architect

Hie plan referred to gives the outlines, including dimensions of the curved bays, of the buildings at Nos. 1 and 2 Riverside Drive and 311 West 72nd Street. The contract further indicated that other lots still belonging to Sutphen would be conveyed with the same restrictions. A tcwn house was not constructed on lot 2, but that on lot 4, 311 West 72nd Street, was constructed in accordance with the plan mentioned in the deed restriction and was designed by C.P.H. Gilbert.^ (See LPC, The Sutphen Residence Designation Report.) Interestingly, by the time the restriction was made, a house of compatible design had been constructed on lot 1, also by C.P.H. Gilbert (see LPC, The KLeeberg Residence Designation Report), although its general outline was not subject to the plan discussed above. The fact that Gilbert was chosen as the architect of these residences suggests that, at the time of the initial plan, it was arranged that the subsequent owners would commission him for their residences. That this stipulation was not included in the deed itself suggests that Sutphen was personally acquainted with each of the subsequent owners and was able to influence their choice of architect. Through these restrictions, first Gustavus Sacchi and then Sutphen endeavored to establish a high-quality neighborhood "which would induce wealthy and select families to purchase and live there and would secure the future character and the occupancy of the residences to be erected thereon." The Prentisses were one such family and in following the restrictions took an active part in establishing the character of the neighborhood.

 

The Owner — Lvdia S.F. Prentiss Little is kncwn of Lydia Smith Ffloyd Prentiss (1847-1932), who owned the residence at No. 1 Riverside Drive. She was a descendant, on her father's side, of David Gelston Ffloyd, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Her husband, Frederick Charles Prentiss, died in 1911, after which time she remained in their residence on Riverside Drive. A daughter, Miss Lydia F. Prentiss (d.1955) who was a volunteer hospital worker, also lived at the Riverside Drive home.

 

The Plan Construction of the Prentiss Residence began on August 7, 1899, and was completed on April 3, 1901. Original drawings for the five-story tcwn house indicate that it was well-appointed. It was typical of houses with American basement designs, which gained popularity due to their provision of a grand entrance hall (entered from a low stoop at ground level) leading to a reception room and a more private second floor which allowed for elegant entertaining. The house was large and commodious— well-suited to the high expectations which Sacchi and Sutphen had for the entire blockfront.

 

The Site The Prentiss residence was designed to take advantage of its curving site along Riverside Drive. The large lot size, over forty-five feet wide, allowed a building thirty-four feet wide plus a side extension at the rear. This arrangement admits light at the side facade which, in its visibility, enhances the monumentality of the design. With the addition of curved bays and projections at the roofline, the form of the residence is pronounced. Additionally, it is harmonious with its neighboring tcwn houses which display similar horizontal divisions, rounded bays, rusticated ground

stories, entrance porticoes, and lively roof lines. The group of four town houses at the corner of Riverside Drive and West 72nd Street, three of which were designed by C.P.H. Gilbert, displays an ensemble quality derived from the requirements of restrictive covenants. The siting and design of the Prentiss Residence, and its compatibility with its neighbors, together produce a striking presence and enhance the fluid transition of 72nd Street to Riverside Drive.

 

Style The Prentiss Residence, constructed in 1899-1901, was designed by C.P.H. Gilbert in the Beaux-Arts style, a mode of design with its foundation in classically-based architecture which was popular during the years around the turn of the century. The resurgence of neo-classicism at this time had its roots in the broader cultural movement of the "American Renaissance." The contemporary generation of American architects, influenced by the principles of the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the architecture of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, shifted their attention toward interpretations of Renaissance and Baroque prototypes of Italian, French, and German origin — the central features of the Beaux-Arts curriculum— for inspiration for their designs. Leading architects such as McKim, Mead & White and Richard Morris Hunt had a great impact on the design of residential architecture in this period through their commissions for mansions for the wealthy in which they drew upon these sources. The stylistic influences, symbolically expressive of the prestige and affluence of America's — and New York's — upper class, in time filtered down to the more modest speculatively-built rowhouses of the middle class. A predominant use of Renaissance forms and details is indicative of the Beaux- Arts style. lavish, classically-inspired ornamental details, including carved friezes, festoons, floral patterns, pilasters, balustrades, columns, and rustication add richness to these facades. The mansard roof is an element often found in Beaux-Arts style residences.

 

C.P.H. Gilbert (1861-1952)

 

Although he was the architect of a great many opulent residences for New York's leading families, Charles Pierrepont H. Gilbert remains a relatively unknown figure today. Born in New York City in 1861, he attended Columbia University and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1883, Gilbert established a brief partnership in New York City with George Kramer Thompson, and in the late 1880s he designed several Romanesque Revival style buildings located within what is new the Park Slope Historic District in Brooklyn.

 

During the late 1890s, Gilbert began to receive commissions from prominent members of New York society. One such commission resulted in the Isaac D. Fletcher Mansion which still dominates the corner of 79th Street and Fifth Avenue (1897-99, in the Metropolitan Museum Historic District). This project brought considerable attention to Gilbert's ability to design imaginative and fanciful compositions, his command of historical detail, and his provision of generous and elegant interiors. The Francois I style of the mansion, based on early French Renaissance architecture, was perhaps Gilbert's hallmark. He adapted the profuse ornamentation of this style on a more modest scale to rowhouse groups on the Upper West Side, as well as to the Kleeberg Residence, a town house at 3 Riverside Drive (a designated New York City Landmark). Gilbert was equally comfortable, like so many architects of his generation, designing in a variety of other styles according to the tastes of his wealthy clients. With equal success he used a Beaux-Arts idiom in the design of the J.R. DeLamar Mansion at 233 Madison Avenue (1902-05, a designated New York City landmark) and created a refined and subtly detailed neo-Italian Renaissance style mansion for Otto Kahn at 1 East 91st Street (now Convent of the Sacred Heart, 1913-18, in association with the English architect J. Armstrong Stenhouse, a designated New York City Landmark). Many of his clients also commissioned him to build their country houses, such as "Pembroke," the DeLamar home on Long Island. In addition to working for wealthy clients, Gilbert often worked with the builder/developer Harvey Murdock in the production of speculatively built rowhouses. Gilbert's stylistically diversified designs — united by the Beaux-Arts approach to composition and planning and a concern for finely worked stone — are well-represented in what are now the Upper East Side and Riverside-West End Historic Districts.

 

Gilbert's attention to detail and his flexibility in matters of style made him one of New York's most productive architects of the turn of the century. In his later years he retired to his home in Pelham Manor, New York. Gilbert was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a member of the Architectural League.

 

Description

 

The Prentiss Residence is a limestone-faced five-story town house with an American basement plan. The facade of the building is divided into three horizontal sections — a one-story base, a three-story midsection, and a one-story top — and two vertical sections, the wider of the two being a rounded projecting bay at the south. The one-story base of the building features rusticated limestone at the curved bay and an entrance at the north. Ground-story windows have no surrounds, but have simple sills and metal grilles. A low stoop leads to a classically-inspired entrance portico with Ionic columns. The entablature has an egg and dart molding, dentils, and stylized brackets supporting a simple cornice. The double metal and glass entry doors (not original) are flanked by Ionic pilasters. Above is a second-story balcony whose balustrade has simple carved panels and scrolls. Metal rails have been added at the balcony and between the columns and pilasters of the portico.

 

The three-story midsection is faced in smooth limestone and is divided into two parts by a stringcourse below the fourth-story sill line. Windows of the second and third stories have simple moldings and sills. The opening above the entrance contains double doors and a transom, is surrounded by an egg and dart molding, and is capped by a broken pediment with foliate carved detail. The center opening of the curved bay of the second story also has double doors and a transom leading to a small balcony on scrolled brackets with a balustrade composed of Doric colonnettes. The surround is ornamented with egg and dart molding and has foliate carving at the top. Windows of the curved bay at the fourth story are flanked by Ionic pilasters and are topped by a heavy copper cornice with dentils. Above the curved cornice is a crest of copper anthemia.

 

The fifth story comprises the lively roof line of the Prentiss Residence. The slate mansard roof is trimmed in copper and has decorative scrolls at its ridge. Above the rounded bay of the lower levels, and set slightly back, is a turret faced in copper and topped by a conical roof. A simple copper cornice is supported by decorative scrolled brackets and simple pilasters flank the windows of the turret. To the north is a gabled dormer, also detailed with scrolled brackets and faced in copper. A chimney rises beyond the dormer at the northern building line.

 

The side facade of the Prentiss residence faces south. Its design is consistent with that of the front facade and is composed of three bays. The center bay is curved from the first through the fourth story. Windows of the curved bay from the first through the third story have no surrounds and simple sills. All fourth-story windows have molded surrounds. Four dormers are found at the roofline, all faced with copper. The westernmost dormer follows the design of that of the front facade. The others are less detailed and have hipped roofs. A chimney rises above the roofline at the western bay. The eastern bay has smaller windows with no surrounds and a door at the ground story. Just beyond the eastern bay of the side facade is a single bay which extends southward and forms the eastern boundary of the courtyard area.

 

A low stone wall borders the sidewalk at the front of the residence and a decorative iron fence follows the lot line along the southern wall of the residence. Windows have one-over-one double-hung wood sash with curved sash at the curved bays of the front and the side.

 

Subsequent History

 

In 1957 the building at 1 Riverside Drive was purchased by the New York Mosque Foundation, Inc. Two years later the foundation made plans to alter the building's interior to acxximmodate a mosque on the first and second stories and apartments on the third and fourth stories. The fifth story was closed off at this time.

  

- From the 1991 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

 

Although its history can be traced as far back as the late seventeenth century, the West Side, including the land within the boundaries of the West End-Collegiate Historic District, was still largely farmland until 1880. Prior to its urbanization at the end of the nineteenth century, the West Side, stretching roughly from 23rd Street to 125th Street, was known as Blooming-dale. This appellation came from the early Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam who called the region "Bloemendael" in fond recollection of a flower-growing area of the same name near Haarlem, in Holland,

 

In the 1660s, Governor Nicholls, the first English governor of New York, granted a large parcel of land in the Bloomingdale district to a syndicate of five patentees. Known as the "thousand acre tract," it was bounded roughly by the Hudson River and what are today 42nd Street, a point midway between 89th and 90th Streets, and Central Park West. The tract was surveyed and subdivided among the patentees. The territory which compromises the historic district fell within lots seven and eight, with the bulk of it being within lot seven. Both lots became the property of Egbert Wouterse, one of the five patentees.

 

In the early eighteenth century Bloomingdale Road was opened through the region following the course of an old Indian trail. The road provided the main link with the city at the tip of Manhattan. Gradually, wealthy New Yorkers began to establish country seats in the hinterland flanking Bloomingdale Road.

 

A number of country seats were established in the vicinity of the historic district. One of them, the homestead of Stephen De-Lancey, which was built before 1729, probably occupied the site of the later Vandenheuvel mansion on the west side of Bloomingdale Road at the present location of the Apthorp Apartments, a designated New York City Landmark. In 1792, John Cornelius Vandenheuvel, former governor of Demerara, built his mansion on this site."

 

By the 1830s, the mansion had been converted into a hotel called Burnham's. The Astor family acquired the site in 1879 and had the mansion demolished in 1905 to make way for the Apthorp Apartments

 

Another country seat in the vicinity was established by Teunis Somarindyck when all of lot seven of the thousand acre tract fell to him. After 1745 Somarindyck's house stood at the northwest

 

corner of 75th Street and Broadway. The house was demolished in 1868 to make way for the Boulevard, now Broadway. A second house belonging to the Somarindyck family was located at roughly the southeastern corner of the present West End Avenue and West 77th Street.

 

In the late 1840s, Fernando Wood purchased this house and the adjoining one, added a structure on its south side and used the house as his country seat. Wood lived here while he was mayor of New York City (1855-1858, 1860-1862). In 1860 Wood entertained the Prince of Wales in the home when the Prince of Wales made his famous trip to the United States as Baron Renfrew.

 

By the early nineteenth century four small villages had sprung up in Bloomingdale. According to historian Hopper Striker Mott, each of these villages was a distinct locality which maintained a semblance of village life at least up to the Civil War.

 

The general vicinity of the historic district was known as Har-senville, a hamlet centered around the present West 70th Street and Broadway. It was named for John Harsen whose house stood between 70th and 71st Streets.

 

Although Bloomingdale itself remained largely rural until the late nineteenth century, its eventual development as an integral part of New York City had been foreseen much earlier in the century. The state legislature appointed a commission of three in 1807 to prepare a plan for the orderly expansion of the city, and John Randel, Jr., an engineer, assumed the task of formulating such a scheme.

 

In 1811 he produced a plan, known as the Randel Survey or Commissioners' Map, which imposed a uniform grid of broad avenues and narrow cross streets upon the rolling hills of Manhattan as far north as 155th Street. The austerity of the rigid grid was relieved only by Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) which cut across the plan diagonally.

 

To be sure, some fifty years elapsed before streets in the vicinity of the historic district were actually laid out. In the interim, the bucolic character of the area began to undergo changes. The large Somarindyck farm was subdivided during the early nineteenth century and much of the land within or near the historic district became part of six separate parcels.

 

Though ownership of these parcels varied throughout the first half of the century, they continued in use as either country seats or farms until being conveyed during the 1850s and 1860s in small parcels and lots. The Wood estate, centered on the present block bounded by West 76th and West 77th Streets, West End Avenue and Broadway, was not broken into lots until the 1880s.

 

The ready availability of land in Bloomingdale encouraged the establishment of a number of institutions there in the early nineteenth century.

 

One, the Orphan Asylum Society of New York, decided to move from its existing home in the increasingly congested and urbanized Greenwich Village area of the city to a new home in Harsenville so that the children in its charge could "enjoy purer air and more ample accommodations.

 

In the 1830s the Society purchased nine and one half acres of land, some of which is presently incorporated into the southern boundary of the historic district, and, on the site presently bounded by Riverside Drive, West End Avenue, West 73rd and West 74th Streets, erected its imposing new asylum. Completed in 1840, the asylum building survived until 1902.

 

During the period, the increase in the permanent population of Harsenville and Bloomingdale was sufficient to warrant opening a local public school. Established in the late 1820s at West 82nd Street and Eleventh Avenue (-West End Avenue), Public School 9 served the families who lived on the farms and in frame houses scattered throughout the area.

 

In spite of these various developments, Bloomingdale retained its countrylike atmosphere to the time of the Civil War. New York City, on the other hand, found itself in the throes of expansion and transformation into a rapidly growing metropolis.

 

Both the impact of the Industrial Revolution and massive immigration from Europe provided the impetus to northerly residential expansion which was channeled primarily to the East Side and roughly followed the uptown march of New York's wealthy citizens.

 

The predilection for development on the East Side was also heavily influenced by transit facilities which were provided there earlier than on the West Side. With the inauguration of the horsecar era in 1852, the city was pushed ever further north until it reached 59th Street.

 

As the city continually expanded to the north, it was increasingly apparent that Bloomingdale would eventually be engulfed by the tide of urban growth. However, residential development proceeded slowly in Bloomingdale. Its pace was influenced by a complex interrelationship of factors which included the opening of rapid transit lines, the construction of various civic improvements, and successive waves of real estate speculation .

 

Rapid growth and expansion only exacerbated the problems confronting New York City and led to closer scrutiny of the deficiencies of the Commissioners Map of 1811. Its rigid grid system for laying streets made meager provision for new squares ,

 

promenades or parks as a means of relieving congestion which resulted from the high densities of urban building. Moreover, the city's breathing spaces were confined to a few small squares, mostly damp and unwholesome "reservations" on the site of old water courses.

 

As early as 1840 a serious campaign was launched to create a park to benefit all the people of New York. By the late 1850s, Central Park, with a southern boundary coinciding with the northern boundary of the city, was under construction in a predominantly rural area of the island.

 

The decision to build Central Park in a rural, undeveloped part of the city spurred development during the 1850s in what is now midtown, particularly in the West 40s and 50s, close to Fifth Avenue, where brownstone rowhouses began to appear.

 

The determination of the park's boundaries also boosted property values to its east, west and north and sparked a wave of real estate speculation in all three areas. This first wave of speculation to affect the Upper West Side was confined to vacant lots along Eighth Avenue, just west of the park, which sold for nearly as much as those just to the east along Fifth Avenue. Since neither the population of the city at the time nor its transit facilities, which on the Upper West Side were limited to a stage line on Bloomingdale Road, warranted the prices at which property was being traded, the speculation was restricted to paper.

 

The period after the Civil War triggered the greatest speculative craze seen to that point in New York City. Land in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue was particularly susceptible even though most of it was unimproved, overvalued, and sold for very high prices. Generally speaking, the postwar speculation undoubtedly was one of the consequences of the inflation which followed the war. On the Upper West Side, it received an additional stimulus from contemplated rapid transportation facilities and from promised civic improvements.

 

The craze, however, was almost entirely restricted to vacant land. In 1868, for example, there were not more than half a dozen "modern" houses on the Upper West Side. In 1873, four lots on 81st Street and Riverside Drive, an avenue which then existed only on paper, were conveyed for $75,000. It was estimated that, between 1868 and 1873, the value of land north of 59th Street increased by 200 percent and in many cases 300 or 400 percent.

 

One of the earliest improvements to fuel post-war speculation on the Upper West Side was the extension of the Eighth Avenue horse car line to 84th Street in 1864. However more ambitious projects exerted far greater influence in this regard. By

 

the late 1860s a new rapid transit system connecting both the Upper East and Upper West Sides with downtown Manhattan seemed virtually assured.

 

The demand for other city improvements was also particularly insistent. Chief among the demands was a proposal to convert the Riverside precipice on the West Side of Manhattan into a park. The idea received additional support when Andrew H. Green, President of the Board of Commissioners of Central Park, submitted a plan to convert the precipice into a landscaped park for the West Side from 55th to 155th Streets.

 

The plan, approved by the Board of Commissioners of Central Park in 1867, called for not only the development of a Riverside Park but also the creation of Riverside Drive, Fort Washington Park and Morningside Park, as well as new streets and avenues that conformed to the natural contours of the land. One of the results was the replacement in 1868-71 of Bloomingdale Road by a wide avenue with grass malls from 59th Street to 155th Street.

 

The new avenue was named the "Boulevard" in the area of the historic district and the "Public Drive" further north. In 1899, the Boulevard and Public Drive were renamed "Broadway." At the same time city improvements, such as the opening, grading and flagging of streets in the area was proceeding slowly. By the 1870s most of the streets and avenues in or near the historic district had been laid out.

 

The Panic of 1873, caused by the failure of Jay Cooke & Co. and the suspension of the Union Trust Co., burst this speculative bubble. Not only did the bottom fall out of the real estate market, but the real estate industry entered into a period of stagnation which lasted until recovery at the end of the decade. During this period little building occurred on the Upper West Side and, more significantly, the value of building lots fell dramatically, often to their pre-Civil War levels.

 

Although this period of stagnation did not completely end until 1879, a large amount of capital had already been invested by then in the region of the historic district. The Boulevard had been opened, Riverside Drive and Park were under construction and the Ninth Avenue Elevated Railroad was nearing completion and in operation by the end of 1879.

 

The erection of the American Museum of Natural History in 1874 - 1877 in Manhattan Square between 77th and 81st Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues, indicated the emerging role of this area of the Upper West Side as a setting for cultural activities. Despite these improvements, the Upper West Side at this time "was barren, open land marked with occasional shanties, vegetable gardens, menacing rock out-

 

growths, lowly taverns and decrepit eighteenth and early nineteenth century mansions."

 

With the gradual return to prosperity by the end of the decade building activity once again resumed in the city, but much of it was confined to the Upper East Side. By contrast, the Upper West Side was distant from the city's historic thrust northward along Fifth Avenue. Rather than shift a mile to the west to proceed up Eighth Avenue or Broadway, development marched logically northward on the East Side into the Sixties and Seventies.

 

Furthermore, when real estate began to recover, owners of property on the Upper West Side who had suffered great losses during the Panic deliberately kept prices high in anticipation of development. ^ As a result, East Side property was more attractive to builders and, hence, nearly all of them were busy on the Upper East Side and even in Harlem.

 

After having lagged some twenty years behind the Upper East Side, development on the Upper West Side was finally stimulated by the completion of the Ninth Avenue El in 1879. However, despite the completion of the El, developers were reluctant, at first, to build on the Upper West Side. Builders hesitated to enter a nearly empty area whose social composition had not yet been determined.

 

Although everyone agreed that Central Park West and Riverside Drive were destined to supplant Fifth Avenue as the future home of New York's wealthy citizens, with West End Avenue being envisioned as the location of small shops catering to the needs of local households, no one seemed to agree about the future constitution of the rest of the Upper West Side. To be sure, the elevated stations at 72nd, 8 1st, 93rd and 104th Streets did attract builders like magnetic points, but there were few other fixed points to guide investors in determining the nature of buildings most profitable to erect.

 

The Upper West Side was a wilderness of confusing possibilities. In addition, high real estate prices, the unreliability of city improvements, delays in opening streets, and difficulties in evicting occupants of the numerous shanties spread throughout the region further confounded attempts at development.

 

Development that occurred on the Upper West Side during the first years of the 1880s was restricted largely to individual entrepreneurs. Construct ion first began in the vicinity of 125th Street at the north and in the area of 72nd Street at the south. Edward Clark, President of the Singer Sewing Machine Co., was the first to make major investments on the Upper West Side. In the late 1870s he invested heavily in property bounded by 72nd and 74th Streets, Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

 

Early in 1880, a row of his dwellings was put on the rental market and later in the same year he filed plans for his long heralded Dakota Apartments, a designated New York City Landmark. Standing at Central Park West between 72nd and 73rd Streets, it was mockingly dubbed "Clark's Folly" because of its unfashionable location.

 

The Dakota, however, soon became the nucleus of a residential community built up on nearby streets. Clark's real estate ventures proved to be superb investments and attracted much public attention and comment

 

Despite the publicity generated by such ventures as Clark's, the "Great West Side Movement" continued to lag behind development on the East Side, but by 1885 the Upper West Side had emerged as the recognized speculative area of the city. The developers already at work there undertook new and larger projects and were joined by nearly all of the larger builders in the city to the degree that the city's whole building force seemed to have been transferred to the West Side.

 

Buildings erected on the Upper West Side now sold readily and builders were inclined and financially able to continue launching even more projects throughout the area. In 1886, the Times wrote:

 

The west side of the city presents just now a scene of building activity such as was never before witnessed in that section, and which gives promise of the speedy disappearance of all the shanties in the neighborhood and the rapid population of this long neglected part of New York.

 

The huge masses of rock which formerly met the eye, usually crowned by a rickety shanty and a browsing goat, are being blasted out of existence. Streets are being graded, and thousands of carpenters and masons are engaged in rearing substantial buildings where a year ago nothing was to be seen but market gardens or barren rocky fields.

 

Construction began on the first houses, as they stand today in the historic district, in 1885. Designed by F. B. White, a very young architect, these houses are located on West End Avenue at 78th Street. Roughly one quarter of the row houses which survive in the historic district were built by the end of the decade. They were concentrated on West 76th and West 77th Streets and Eleventh Avenue, which had been named West End Avenue in 1880.

 

Contrary to earlier expectations, West End Avenue evolved into a street of fashionable houses rather than a commercial thoroughfare.

 

By the early 1890s, the Upper West Side had become more densely built up. The West 70s and 80s, in particular, had acquired row houses and began to establish itself as the Upper West Side's most fashionable neighborhood. Development occurred more rapidly on the streets between the Boulevard and Central Park than on the streets to the west of the Boulevard.

 

This was due, undoubtedly, to two factors. First, the land "vest of the Boulevard was relatively less accessible to street cars and to the Ninth Avenue El. Second, land flanking Riverside Drive, Central Park West, and, to some degree, West End Avenue, was considered to be prime property.

 

Speculation thrived on the notion that New York's socially elite and wealthy citizens would abandon Fifth Avenue, move en masse to the West Side and erect palatial mansions along these avenues. Consequently, the value of land adjacent to these streets remained consistently higher than elsewhere on the Upper West Side. High property values discouraged development there.

 

Promotional brochures and publicity in the press, which began to focus on the territory surrounding the historic district, heightened the interest of buyers and sellers alike in the territory west of the Boulevard. In 1888, for example, the West End Association published a pamphlet entitled "West End Avenue: Riverside Park in the City of New York" in which they lauded the virtues of West End Avenue and environs as an ideal residential area.

 

They pointed out the avenue's proximity to Riverside Park, its high elevation and its scientific sewerage system as its chief amenities.

 

In August 1890, the New York Herald ran a series of editorials and articles extolling the advantages of the Upper West Side but especially the Riverside Drive area. The paper focused attention on the proposals of Peter B. Sweeney, Chairman of the Department of Parks, for the creation of a "splendid public pleasure ground for lovers of the horse and the horse himself" on an embankment of the Hudson River between 72nd Street and 98th Street.

 

The newspaper also portrayed the Upper West Side as an extremely desirable residential area.

 

The district to the east of Riverside Park as far as Central Park is likely, or rather, sure to become within the next twenty years, perhaps the location of the most beautiful residences in the world.

 

The advantages of pure air and beautiful surroundings, glimpses of the New Jersey Hills at the end of each street, with the glitter of the Hudson between; the nearness of parks and the accessibility of the district will be insurmountable factors in popularity.

 

As the time of square brick and brown stone houses has gone by, so alas has the time when New York can afford to neglect her approach and her outward appearances.

 

In spite of the Panic of 1893, the entire area within the historic district had been developed with large row houses for the well-to-do by the late 1890s, a time span of less than 15 years since the first houses were constructed, Especially along Riverside Drive, numerous rows of large, ornate houses were built on speculation.

 

The architect Clarence True was instrumental in developing these houses which, with their broad widths, hardly qualified as ordinary row houses but rather as "mansions" with party walls.

 

By the turn of the century the region of the historic district had evolved into, in the minds of many, the most fashionable residential district in the city. In 1899, one observer noted that West End Avenue above 68th Street was one of the finest residential streets in New York City, while Riverside Drive, known as Riverside Avenue, was "universally acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful and picturesque streets in the world."

 

The early years of the twentieth century witnessed the increasing popularity and acceptance by the upper middle class of the residential hotel and apartment house, particularly in Manhattan.

 

As they appeared throughout the city, the value of available vacant land, which previously had been reserved for row house development, escalated sharply and ultimately the cost of the average row house jumped to a point where not even the prosperous upper middle class could afford to buy one.

 

Legislation of the early twentieth century, which permitted the construction of taller apartment buildings, as well as a "universal demand for comfort, with less care and expense then entailed in private house maintenance," further encouraged the construction of apartment houses and residential hotels and caused the virtual disappearance of rowhouse construction in Manhattan.

 

The completion of the Broadway subway (IRT) in 1904 undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of the apartment house on the West Side. During the first decade of the twentieth century, residential hotel and apartment house construction boomed.

 

Apartment house construction on the Upper West Side continued up until the time of the Depression. However, as vacant lots became ever more scarce, particularly after World War I, developers took to demolishing existing rowhouses, many of which were less than twenty years old, in order to assemble sites for more lucrative apartment house construction.

 

Riverside Drive and West End Avenue were particularly vulnerable to this development trend. Most of the rowhouses which had once lined West End Avenue and Riverside Drive succumbed to the apartment house. Numerous apartment buildings standing along both avenues in the historic district date from this period and are the fruit of this development practice.

 

With the onset of the Depression, the Upper West Side entered a period of stagnation and decline. Little new construction occurred there. Many rowhouses, which had become financial burdens to maintain, were converted into multiple dwellings. Although urban renewal activity in the 1950s and 1960s left its mark on the Upper West Side, it did not affect the historic district. Moreover, the district has seen no major building activity since World War II. In recent years, however, the historic district has become one of the most desirable residential areas in the city.

Kingsbridge, Bronx, New York City, New York, United States

 

Designed in 1900, and built from 1901 to 1902 by the New York architects Arthur J. Horgan and Vincent J. Slattery, the former 50th Precinct Police Station House is prominently sited at the intersection of Kingsbridge Terrace and Summit Place. Its style, scale, materials of construction, direct relation to the street, and ornament contribute to the monumental character, which distinguished the building from the surrounding two- and three-story frame structures of rapidly expanding Kingsbridge.

 

A symbol of the authority of the police force and of the presence of municipal government in early 20th century Kingsbridge, and an exemplar of Beaux-Arts principles of composition, the building should be seen within the context of the City Beautiful Movement.

 

Historical interest in the building further derives from its being among the best surviving works of an architectural firm that was very much in the public eye at the turn-of-the-century.

 

Development of the Kingsbridge Area

 

Coincident with the growth of the northwest Bronx generally, the modern development of Kingsbridge and of the area presently known as Kingsbridge Heights dates from the latter half of the 19th century.

 

Rural and sparsely populated, with a varied topographical character, the Bronx of the 19th century depended for its growth on the gradual subdivision of estates, on changed attitudes respecting the desirability of the area, and on the completion of the Harlem River Railroad, which provided a first impetus to the development of the "north side."

 

Kingsbridge formally began to take shape as a residential community in 1847 when the Macomb family's "Island Farm," an extensive tract, was surveyed and subdivided into building lots, which were then sold for development.

 

Notwithstanding its late development relative to communities on Manhattan Island, Kingsbridge has had a rich history beginning as early as 1609 with the arrival of Henry Hudson on the Spuyten Duyvil peninsula.

 

Apparently, the Dutch had considered siting their projected New Amsterdam colony at Kingsbridge. The plan was soon abandoned, but by the early 17th century, the Dutch were fanning areas, on Manhattan as far north as the flatlands of Harlem.

 

It was not long before they began to seek areas into which the population could expand; thus, in addition to disaffected New Englanders, among the first settlers of Westchester County (chartered in 1683) and the Bronx — the land "upon the Maine" — were the Dutch. Indeed, the earliest European settler of the immediate Kingsbridge area was the Dutchman Jonkheer Adrien Van der Donck in 1641.

 

Van der Donck's tract, known as de Jonkheers, included all of the land from Spuyten Duyvil north eight miles along the Hudson River and east to the Bronx River.

 

The construction of the Boston Post Road in 1673 facilitated travel and communication between Manhattan Island and the northern colonies. Originating in lower Manhattan, the route ran the length of the island, crossed the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, traversed Westchester County and Connecticut, and terminated in Boston.

 

Until 1693 and the construction of the King's Bridge by landowner Vredryck Flypsen, crossing of the Spuyten Duyvil was accomplished by ferry. From the bridge, the Boston Post Road ran to Albany Crescent (which is just north of the old West Farms/Kingsbridge town line), followed Boston Avenue (the original name for that block of Kingsbridge Terrace in which the police station is located), and then veered toward the northeast, crossing the Bronx River at William's Bridge.

 

Another of the early roads radiating from the location of the King's Bridge and moving north along Bailey Avenue, was the Albany Post Road (opened in 1669 as far as the Sawmill River and in 1700 to Albany), which then continued along the western side of the Van Cortlandt properties.

 

That the King's Bridge served as the principal passage from the northern tip of Manhattan Island to the Bronx mainland, underlines the significance of the greater Kingsbridge area during Revolutionary times. As the main military artery for the armies of both the British and the Americans, the bridge was under constant attack during those Revolutionary War years when New York City was subject to British occupation (1776-1783).

 

Boston Hill (the name for the rise in the immediate vicinity of Albany Crescent) was the scene of many battles in the years following 1776, and from 1777 to 1779, the British established a presence at the Van Cortlandt mansion (located on the eastern side of the Albany Post Road).

 

Early indications of the eventual residential development of the area can be seen in the period immediately following the Revolution, at which time, well-to-do New Yorkers focused on the natural beauty of the area with an eye toward moving northward.

 

The eventual annexation of the Bronx proceeded in piecemeal fashion and not without opposition: against the incorporation were those Bronx residents who thought that nothing would be gained by aligning themselves with heavily populated Manhattan, and those New Yorkers who saw no advantage to appropriating farmland.

 

Nevertheless, on 1 January 1874, the townships of Kingsbridge, West Farms, and Morrisania formally became the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wards of the City of New York; from that time until 1898, they were known

 

collectively as the "Annexed District". It was not until 1895, however, that the annexation of the Bronx east of the Bronx River was effected.

 

In 1897, the New York State Legislature passed a charter for the creation of Greater New York City; in 1898, twenty-four local governments including all the annexed districts north of the Harlem River, as well as the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond (Staten Island) were officially consolidated.

 

Commenting on building operations in the Bronx and noting a remarkable thirty-three percent increase thereof between 1898 and 1899, a dealer in real estate averred: "as to the future of the borough, that is assured, for the natural trend of the city's growth is northward, and the Bronx with all its proposed improvements will reap a golden harvest."

 

Corroborating his opinion, the Real Estate Record and Guide of 1901 observed that "more families continue to forsake their downtown neighbors for better homes and the purer air and ampler room above the Harlem and especially brisk in the matter of building is [sic] the upper and eastern sections of the Bronx, where both private and tenement houses are springing up."

 

In point of fact, just after 1895 and the annexation of the eastern section, booms in both real estate and population occurred. These were attributable to a combination of factors, the most important being inclusion into the metropolitan area, self-government, and the improvement of transportation.

 

Bronx Police History and the 50th Precinct

 

Bronx police history formally began in January 1866 when the Metropolitan Police District, created by an act of the New York State legislature in 1857, established a substation in the Village of Tremont in the Town of West Farms.

 

Previously, police activity in Kingsbridge had been under the jurisdiction of Manhattan's 32nd Precinct (currently the 30th), located at Amsterdam Avenue and 152nd Street.

 

Due to an increase in criminal behavior accompanying the immediate post-Civil War growth of the area, the residents of Yonkers and West Farms had favored incorporation within the Metropolitan Police District. Participation in the State's Metropolitan Police District was not long-lived, however; in 1870, as a result of the reorganization of local government according to the terms of the Tweed Charter, the City reclaimed control of the police department.

 

In the following year, Yonkers withdrew from the Metropolitan Police District and organized a police force of its own. In November 1871, the Yonkers police established a substation at Kingsbridge (the predecessor of the 50th) to serve the precinct extending from the West Farms town line to just south of the present Yonkers city line; an existing frame building, located at Verveelen Place, just east of Broadway and south of 231st Street, was adapted for use as a station house.

 

As a consequence of the separation of the Township of Kingsbridge from the City of Yonkers in 1872, the force headquartered at Kingsbridge was administered by a joint Board of Police Commissioners of Yonkers and Kingsbridge. Following annexation in January 1874, the district constituted of Kingsbridge, Morrisania, and West Farms was divided into two precincts and one sub-precinct of the New York Police Department.

 

Shortly thereafter, the sub-precinct, headquartered at Kingsbridge, came into its own as the 35th Precinct.

 

With the consolidation of 1898, the Police Department of Greater New York assimilated eighteen small police agencies, and a move was initiated to conform the boundaries of police precincts to the lines of the individual townships. New precincts were created to serve newly annexed areas and to accommodate rapid population increases and building and commercial development in already established ones.

 

In accordance with the general objective of creating a flexible system that would provide for future expansion of the force, several renumberings of Bronx precincts occurred during the next thirty years. Upon consolidation in 1898, Kingsbridge was redesignated the 40th; in January 1918, the 74th; in April of the same year, the 57th; in 1924, the 26th; and on 1 August 1929, the 50th, which it remains to this day.

 

Despite its changed status upon incorporation into the Greater New York City Police Department, the 40th Precinct (subsequently the 50th) continued to occupy its makeshift quarters at Verveelen Place, which were enlarged in 1886 by taking possession of a two-story frame building to the east. This measure served only as a stopgap, however, for conditions had become progressively unsatisfactory and indeed unsavory.

 

Not only were the quarters cramped, but the basement of the building had flooded so often that the jail had settled out of plumb. A newspaper reporter of the time remarked that "no more unhealthier police station exists in the City of New York than this one, and in the late 1880s, the Board of Health condemned the building. Nevertheless, although a project for construction of a new facility finally was initiated in 1898, new accommodations would not be had until 1902 when " 'the shanty', as the frame building which . . . sheltered the blue-coat guardians ever since the 40th precinct was established [was] abandoned for a modem structure.

 

In a review of the official architecture of New York City, The Real Estate Record and Guide (November 1898) branded municipal architecture a disgrace, deplored its standards, and observed that there appeared to be a tendency to employ builders over professional architects.

 

This situation — in which "there is not even one architecturally decent police station"^ — began to improve as New York embarked on a citywide reconstruction and renovation campaign to modernize police facilities. The turn of the century enthusiasm for constructing civic monuments provided a further impetus.

 

Horgan and Slattery were commissioned to design a new 40th Precinct Police Station House sometime between 1898 and fall 1900, although the City of New York did not purchase the land on which the building is situated until 2 October 1900.

 

The firm estimated the construction costs for the station house, stables, and a prison, at $70,000. Plans were filed in December 1900, but approval to proceed was denied due to the omission of tie rods between the steel floor and the spruce beams of the one-story carriage house.

 

The New Building Application was approved on 9 January 1901 only after the architects filed a petition demonstrating that their use of the Roebling System of Fireproof Construction would constitute a sufficient tie in itself. Construction began 18 March 1901 and was completed 16 April 1902.

 

Horoan and Slattery

 

From 1894, when The New York Times initially reported on the financial difficulties of the firm, until the period 1899 to 1903, when the newspaper regularly and eagerly followed the professional lives of Horgan and Slattery, the architects gained more and more notoriety.

 

While political patronage certainly was not an invention of the Tammany administrators, Mayor Robert Van Wyck was overly zealous about stamping the municipal architecture of New York City with the seal of his administration. It appears to have been Van Wyck's intention either to convey all city projects directly to Horgan and Slattery or to install them in a consulting capacity over more widely renowned architects such as John Thomas (Hall of Records) or Frederick Withers (City Prison).

 

The firm first achieved public recognition with the rehabilitation of the interior of the Democratic Club in 1897. Upon completion of that job, apparently ". finding. . .hundreds of odd jobs, large and small. . .for the favored architects."

 

Queries from a perhaps overly critical press respecting any architect's professional qualifications or lack thereof are not in themselves objectionable.

 

However, in the case of Horgan and Slattery, the situation was rather more complicated as the attacks became a vehicle for denouncing the Van Wyck administration generally and pertained very little, if at all, with a fair assessment of the firm's work. In order to bolster their charges of corruption in the Van Wyck administration, the press seized upon the seeming irregularity in the relationship between the architects and the administration, claiming that the firm name had become "a trademark of municipal disrepute and jobbery".

 

Horgan and Slattery were characterized as political pawns "who had no standing artistic, political, scientific, or financial [but were] used as the cat's paw of politicians anxious to get control of municipal building in New York. . ."

 

Despite the scandals surrounding the firm, political affiliations carried the day, for "on the death of the architect J.R. Thomas, the contract for the completion of the Hall of Records was granted to the favorite Tammany contractors Horgan and Slattery in spite of strong denunciation of such action."

 

Considered cogs in a great political machine and sarcastically dubbed the "universal solvents" or experts in all fields of architecture, the firm was taken to task for lapsed professional and moral responsibilities:

 

The new city administration has acted none too soon and with none too much severity in the cases of those two "devouring absurdities" Horgan and Slattery. Two self-respecting men in their places — but that is unimaginable. Two self-respecting men could never occupy their places. But two men with not more than twice the average thickness of skin would have got out, when Tammany was defeated, without waiting to be kicked out amid the cheers of the bystanders.

 

Upon his election in 1902, Mayor Seth Low called for the "dishorganizing and unslatterifying" of municipal architecture and insisted that "all business relations between the city and Horgan and Slattery, who received the award of all city contracts during the administration of Mayor Van Wyck should be terminated as soon as possible."

 

Mayor Low's administration adopted a hardline position according to which it would be preferable to pay damages in court than to honor any outstanding contracts with the architects.

 

Although ethics rather than aesthetics constituted the point of departure for the accusations in the local press — there having been very little critical coverage of the design work —the artistic capabilities of the architects were fair game as well.

 

Nevertheless, the firm's rise to prominence, even in the context of its alleged association with the great turn-of-the-century New York City Democratic party machine, cannot nullify the inherent value of their designs, which, in large part, combined classical vocabularies and Beaux-Arts principles of composition.

 

The Architects' and Builders' Magazine of January 1907 recognized that, "[J. R. Thomas'] work has been carried on in praiseworthy fashion by Messrs. Horgan and Slattery who have added to Mr. Thomas' brilliant conception much of the virility of design which characterizes their other well-known masterpieces."

 

Scant biographical information exists on the two architects. Photographs or drawings of a fair number of their projects were published in architectural journals, but accompanying text is rare. Arthur J. Horgan (1868-1911) and Vincent J. Slattery (1867-1939) entered into partnership in 1886. Until 1897, the New York City Directory listed them as builders; interestingly, in the 1898 edition, they emerged as architects.

 

Evidently, they had incorporated as such and were working out of an office at 1 Madison Avenue. Apart from Horgan's testimony in 1899^^ before the Mazet Committee that he had studied architecture for five years in the offices of his godfather, Colonel Arthur Crocks, virtually nothing is known about the professional educations of the architects.

 

Slattery testified that the "outside work" of the firm was his responsibility, while Horgan assumed the "inside work"; he also referred all technical questions to Horgan. In the absence of conclusive information concerning their respective positions in the firm, which would elucidate Slattery's statement, one may speculate either that Horgan was the principal designer and Slattery the business partner, or that Horgan dealt with structural questions and Slattery with interior embellishment.

 

Following Horgan's death in 1911, Slattery went into business for himself, retiring in 1934.

 

The Design

 

The former 50th Precinct Police Station House is a handsome example of Beaux-Arts classicism, a mode of design that characterized much public architecture at the turn-of-the-century and became the emblem of the City Beautiful Movement.

 

Although clearly indebted to the architectural styles of the past, the design does not endeavor to replicate historical models exactly, nor did such archaeological accuracy underlie the historicism of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Rather, the elements are derived from classical prototypes but are freely interpreted and ingeniously combined.

 

Typologically, the building refers to an Italian Renaissance urban palace; the ornament is eclectic.

 

Horgan and Slattery approached the design of this small (relative to the grandest examples of the style in New York City, among them the Public Library and Grand Central Station) but imposing building in an imaginative way. The building dominates its site; further, it is the dominant architectural feature on the primarily residential block.

 

The architects' masterful handling is demonstrated in the sensitivity to the site, an understanding of the rules of Beaux-Arts composition, the use of ornament, and the adaptation of an ancient but particularly appropriate building type to a modern use.

 

Their studied application of Beaux-Arts principles is evident in the clear articulation of the parts of the building, the bilateral symmetry, the clearly marked and elaborated openings, the hierarchy of constituent elements in the facades, the play of advancing and receding planes, and the consistency of the articulation.

 

The form of the building refers to two distinct phases in the evolution of the Italian Renaissance urban palace. The 15th-century palace, such as the Pitti or the Medici, with its massive presence, direct relation with the street, and rusticated base, is an appropriate model for the expression of such values as power, security, invulnerability, and monumentality, which, surely in the public mind, are associated with the police force.

 

Strengthening this association are the horizontal extension of the station house, which intensifies the image of its being firmly wedded to its site, and the battlements or crenellations of the roof parapet.

 

The horizontal lines of the building are reiterated in the surface treatment on every level of the facades: by the granite base; by the continuous channels of the recessed brick courses; by the lines of the windows; by the projecting stringcourses; by the continuous cornice, which is distinguished from the fabric of the building both in color, texture and materials; by the roof parapet, which is defined as a series of advancing and receding planes.

 

In the 16th-century type, exemplified by the design for the House of Raphael by Bramante, the ground story rustication is mediated by the application of architectural ornament in the upper stories, which is also the case here.

 

Description

 

The Kingsbridge Terrace of today, which is rather an unprepossessing street lined with detached houses as well as low-rise apartments, does not figure prominently in the street system of the Bronx, or even of Kingsbridge. This was not always the case, however.

 

From the 18th century until 1913, that portion of Kingsbridge Terrace north of what is presently Albany Crescent, was known as Boston Avenue, the name deriving from its having been a segment of the Boston Post Road. As the east/west section of the almost elliptical Albany Crescent (running roughly perpendicular to the present Bailey Avenue) was also a part of Boston Avenue, and Bailey Avenue formed part of the Albany Post Road, the station house is in close proximity to the intersection of two historically significant roads, and at the crest of Boston Hill.

 

From the street, the building appears as a massive two-story masonry block. In plan, however, it is a "U", oriented southward such that its eastern arm forms the principal or Kingsbridge Terrace facade, and its base (at the north) constitutes the secondary or Summit Place facade.

 

The principal facade is 83 feet in length and two stories in height; the secondary facade is 119 feet in length and three stories in height, only two of which are expressed, corresponding to those on the principal facade.

 

The juncture of the eastern and northern facades is mediated by a curved comer treatment. This transitional element, the articulation of whose second story departs from those of both street facades, constitutes the focal point of the composition if the building is viewed obliquely from the northeast.

 

The focal point, shifts, however to the center bay of the principal facade if

 

the building is viewed directly from the east or obliquely from the south; from either vantage point, the comer construction is virtually invisible.

 

In both cases, the corner element and the axis of symmetry (formed of the entry, the parapet directly above it, the window in the second story, the plaque identifying the building) provide vertical accents in an otherwise horizontally disposed composition. The principal facade consists of five bays, the central three flanked by projecting end bays in the north and south.

 

This "ABA" rhythm is repeated in the secondary facade with the difference that the projecting end bays flank a central section of seven bays. Three bays define the curved comer section.

 

Gamboge bricks, which are variegated in hue and are laid in Flemish bond, constitute the veneers of the facades, including the southern wall of the eastern arm of the "U". The contrasting limestone members of the windows, door, stringcourses, and columns, the granite of the base, the terra-cotta ornament, and the green tin denticulated Doric cornice create an impressive polychromatic image.

 

Like the urban palaces of the Italian Renaissance, the two stories are differentiated in characteristic ways: a projecting stringcourse composed of a series of classical moldings (the lowermost of which is egg and dart) literally cuts the building in half horizontally; the elaboration of the second story contrasts with the relatively unadorned ground story; the individual bricks in the second story are slightly more saturated in color than those in the first; and the apparent rustication of the ground story, achieved by recessing one course in every seven, is abandoned at the first stringcourse, above which the wall is planar.

 

In keeping with the unadorned character of the ground story are the openings, which receive identical articulation in both facades, in the corner, and on the southern side of the eastern arm. They differ only in their proportions: those in the north facade are squatter than those in the projecting bays and in the principal facade, and those in the curved section and the eastern arm are more attenuated.

 

The sash is one-over-one double-hung aluminum surmounted by a fixed pane of glass. The openings are unframed, vertically-oriented rectangles with flat-arch brick lintels and limestone sills with classical contours. A console at either end of the sill provides support, and a console serves as keystone in the flat arch (the console keystone is omitted in the outermost bays of the curved unit).

 

There are three distinct window treatments in the second story, although the sash remains constant. While the same size as those in the east, the windows in the north side are the least elaborate, treated in much the same way as those on the ground story. Replacing the consoles, however, are wedge-shaped limestone keystones that are articulated in three dimensions.

 

One such opening marks the second story of the southern side of the eastern arm. The windows of the corner element are squeezed within the intercolumniations of four Roman Doric, unf luted columns on bases, the two end ones of which are engaged; a series of classical moldings constitutes the lintels.

 

The surface bounded by the upper edge of each lintel and the lower edge of the second story stringcourse is pierced by a round window enframed with a terra-cotta wreath; the comers are enlivened with foliate terra-cotta forms.

 

All windows in the second stories of both the principal facade and the projecting bays are aedicular in type.

 

The aediculae, which frame the windows, are constituted of a series of freely interpreted classical elements including flanking pilasters, which are articulated with deep channels running vertically from the base, a capital, impost block, and lintel of classical moldings.

 

The window sill is tripartite: at either end, a segment projects slightly to form a base for the pilasters. A console with pendant foliate and vegetal ornament decorates each pilaster from just above mid-height to the capital. The window extends from the sill to the top of the capital; in the space that is roughly the height of the impost block and extends from the capital to the egg and dart molding of the lintel, is a flat, blank plaque.

 

The panel duplicates on a reduced scale the one crowning the axis of symmetry in the principal facade, which is inscribed with the name of the precinct. Each aedicula of the projecting bays is enframed by a larger aedicula, which is vestigial in that it is composed of thick pilasters that are simply projections of the brick fabric. Elaborating each pilaster are a cartouche, festoon, and pendant foliate form, placed in series within a vertically-oriented rectangular panel.

 

The axis of symmetry in the principal elevation serves a dual function: it divides the facade into two equal and opposite parts, and it creates a strong central focus. The double doors are preceded by two granite steps set between granite blocks, upon which originally were lampposts.

 

Rectangular hollow metal double doors, which have been painted bright red, with a transom on which the name of the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center has been painted in white, are placed within a basket or depressed arch with prominent brick voussoirs. A large, elaborate stone cartouche serves as the keystone.

 

Flanking the arch, large ancones with foliate ornament, surmounted by impost blocks, support the stringcourse, which breaks forward from the plane of the building at the entry. Directly above, a parapet is elaborated by a blank panel flanked by two triglyph-like elements surmounted by scrolls.

 

The triglyph/scroll unit (which resembles a section of fluted pilaster) supports a projecting molding along the upper edge of the parapet. Flanking each of the triglyph/scrolls is an S-shaped scroll in bas-relief.

 

The uppermost element of the axis is a plaque identifying the building as the 50th Precinct Police Station House. The limestone plaque is a horizontally disposed rectangle; a continuous egg and dart molding serves as a border. A tripartite guttae-like feature dangles from each side of the lower edge of the panel.

 

A block with a console in its center projects from the center of the lower edge of the inscribed panel.

 

The facade of the western arm of the "U" is undistinguished and virtually invisible from any street. The brick wall is punctuated by windows in the second story.

 

Alterations to the exterior have been few and have not significantly affected the street facades. The police moved from the building to their current location at 3450 Kingsbridge Avenue in December 1974; the present tenant, the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, took possession in summer 1975. In 1979, with funding from the New York City Capital Budget and the Federal Community Development Budget, the Community Center embarked on a major rehabilitative program, which was completed in 1981.

 

Undertaken by the New York architects, Edelman and Salzman, most of the alterations were in the nature of adapting the interior spaces to new uses and upgrading

 

systems. The architects were sensitive to the original exterior; the north and east facades of the building remain virtually untouched.

 

The terracotta band courses were partially repointed; the existing wooden entrance doors and frames were replaced with hollow metal doors and frame, and the transom was closed; a new wrought iron gate to the courtyard was installed at the south end of the Kingsbridge Terrace facade; the wooden windows were replaced with aluminum ones, and stainless steel security screens were placed on every opening.

 

Unfortunately, the material condition of the exterior appears to be steadily deteriorating. The cornice, a section of which is missing from the curved elevation, shows an advanced state of erosion especially on the underside. Spalling marks the limestone members of the windows, door, stringcourses, as well as the terra-cotta ornament, and large pieces of the window sills have broken off.

 

- From the 1986 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Kalinga is subdivided into 1 city and 7 municipalities. Tabuk was proclaimed a component city in 2007, but in November 2008 the Supreme Court of the Philippines ruled that its cityhood was unconstitutional. However, Tabuk had its city status reinstated by the Supreme Court on December 22, 2009

Another former Safeway/Apple Tree location, this store was subdivided by The Fresh Market. It is currently being remodeled to become a Total Wine. The entrance was originally in the center of the front of the store, but was moved during subdivision. The building was so large it required multiple photos.

 

Picture Taken at: Total Wine #518 2617 W Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX 77025

 

____________________________________________________These photos may not be used, reproduced, etc.. without permission. If you would like to utilize these photos please contact me through FlickrMail or at retailpictures@yahoo.com

Badian is a 3rd class municipality in the province of Cebu, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 37,699 people. The Municipality of Badian is located 97.6 km southwest of Cebu City. It is bounded on the north by the municipality of Moalboal; on the south by the municipality of Alegria; on the east by the municipalities of Dalaguete and Argao; and on the west by Tanon Strait.

Badian is administratively subdivided into 29 barangays.

Alawijao Balhaan Banhigan Basak Basiao Bato Bugas Calangcang Candiis Dagatan Dobdob

Ginablan Lambug Malbago Malhiao Manduyong Matutinao Patong Poblacion Sanlagan

Santicon Sohoton Sulsugan Talayong Taytay Tigbao Tiguib Tubod Zaragosa

The Kawasan Falls is a three-layered waterfall series located in the Municipality of Badian, Cebu, which has become a huge attraction with foreign and local tourists throughout the years. The first waterfall is the largest and highest of the three falls, while the two falls uphill are smaller.

Kawasan Falls is located in Barangay Matutinao in Badian, Cebu. To get to Badian from Cebu City you can take a bus at the South Bus Terminal for a three hour ride that will directly take you to Badian. From there, you can take a tricycle that will take you to Barangay Matutinao.

If you are taking a private vehicle, drive past the Municipality of Carcar, and upon reaching the Municipality of Badian through the picturesque mountain road, then drive to Matutinao village. You can always ask for directions from people along the way if it is your first time to go to Kawasan Falls, so you won’t get lost.

When you reach the main road leading to Kawasan Falls, there is a main entrance to the waterfalls area and an entrance fee of 10 peso’s per person. From there, you start on a 20 to 30 minute walk on a trail that will lead you to the first waterfall.

You will then have to trek a further 10 to 15 minutes uphill to get to the second waterfall, and another 15 minute trek to the third waterfalls. There is a resort with restaurant at the area of the first waterfalls. There are small cottages and tables for rent at 300 peso’s each table as at September 2012 ( on top of the menu prices ) and several rooms for rent for those who want to stay overnight. A popular attraction is a bamboo raft ride leading to a shower under the cool falling waters of the first and second waterfall.

The Mactan International Airport is located in Mactan, Cebu; it is served by major airlines like Cebu Pacific Air and Philippine Airlines. You can also fly from Metro Manila to Cebu. There are many domestic flights and sometimes it is economical because many airlines offer a cheaper airfare. Check also for any available promo. If you arrived earlier in Cebu, you can leave straight to Badian providing you already arranged your accommodation there before your arrival or you can stay for a night in Cebu City and have your trip to Badian the next day.

Your choices to come from Cebu City to Badian are: from the airport you can take a taxi to South Bus Terminal look for Ceres Bus Liner via Barili, you can also take Librando Trans. There are buses leaving Cebu City to Badian every 30 minutes or one hour. It will take 2-3 hours or more bus travel to reach Badian from Cebu City depending on the number of stops. You can also hire a taxi at the airport or at the city to Badian, it is more comfortable and faster. Make sure the driver knows where Badian is. The fare is about Php 1500.00 - Php 3000.00 and be prepare for some bartering and some hidden costs

The capital barangay of Badian town is Poblacion. It is located in the centre of the town. This is where the local high school is located called Badian National High School ( BNHS ) is one of the two high schools in the town of Badian. This is also the largest of the two and many students from the neighbouring town just like Moalboal, Alcantara and Ronda come to study in this high school. The lower educational facility in Badian is the Badian Central Elementary School where all the younger children go to school for the simple fact that it is completely free and the only elementary school and the biggest one in town. One more very important institution that is located in Poblacion is the Town Hospital where everyone from every other barangay goes to in the time of sickness.

The facility has been better than the past management they have more improvements to the hospitals than anything else which is the best thing they could have done because this is where most Badianganons run to in the time of need. This is also the location where the town church is located ~ the church of Santiago Apostol, which celebrates its Festival on the 25th of July every year. Together with the Feast of Santiago Apostle is the Banig Festival which was started about three years ago. Poblacion is also where the Municipal Hall is located in sitio sawang. Thus, I believe that the municipality should ought to have more funding's in the Hospital Facility more so that the roads that they are trying to fix every single year Poblacion has many sitios which is the little corners of Poblacion which is residential or commercial properties. Some of these sitios are; Syma, Walog, Sawang, Highway, and many more. This is the only urban place in Badian compared to any other barangays that surround the town. Poblacion is also the most populated barangay in all Badian. Which has 3854 population as of 2007 Census. Poblacion is where the marketplace is located. Thus, most of the trading is here. Many vendors from all over town will show up mostly on Saturdays and Sundays for the trading.

A view of the entrance hall & canopy of Leicester Central station today. The breeze block wall on the left shows how it has been subdivided into industrial units, most now derelict.

East window by Hardman's, 1868.

 

St Michael's is one of many medieval churches in centre of Cambridge that no longer serves parish use. Following redundancy it went through an unhappy phase with its interior partially subdivided and used initially as a parish hall and latterly as a bookshop but has since re-emerged as the Michaelhouse Centre with the nave in use as a cafe whilst the chancel beyond remains as it was in church use (separated by a glazed screen) still consecrated with its fitting intact.

 

The exterior is difficult to fully appreciate being somewhat tightly packed amongst the surrounding buildings in Trinity Street, its west front and square tower being directly on the busy streetfront. Entry is through the tower and once inside it is a light and cheerful space alive with visitors enjoying the cafe. I thus didn't spend long in the nave and made straight for the chancel instead, which has its old stalls, a fine sedilia and a handsome east window full of rich glass by Hardman's.

 

St Michael's is a fine building worth popping into for a cup of tea and more, and usually open in reasonable hours during the day (closes late afternoon).

www.druidic.org/camchurch/churches/cammichael.htm

 

Photos taken on June 7, 2008. Site of former Adhor Farms Dairy that was converted into a combination Shopping Center and Mall in the late 1960s, early 1970s. The complex is located on La Cienega, a couple of miles to the north of the 10 Freeway and it is retail buildings surrounding a giant open parking lot with another giant covered parking lot behind the old Montgomery Wards Department Store. On the left side was Thrifty Drug Store (converted to Rite Aid and in the last year taken over by Longs Drugs), unknown stores (one being Wherehouse Music), Fazios Supermarket (closed and converted into Builders Emporium Hardware Store, then chain closed and taken over by Circuit City Electronics Store), Woolworths (chain closed and taken over by Family Paredes (chain own by National Stores). To the right of the stores is a two story mall. It was very small, always empty of customers and stores!. Connected to the mall, on the right was a Montgomery Wards Department Store. In the last few years of Wards existence, Wards subdivided their store handing over a portion to Toys R Us. When Wards closed, prior to the chain's demise, the former Wards sat vacant for a few years, then the Wards portion of the original Wards Department Store was subdivided with Staples Office Supply (moved from across the street) and LA Fitness Gym. The Toys R Us has remained and is now going through a renovation. The mall has gone through a series of changes and tenants. Smart and Final Grocery Warehouse finally moved in several years ago, taking over the entire first floor of the mall. Bringing a grocery retailer back into the complex since Fazios left many years ago.

 

Next to Toys R Us is the former Wards Auto Center, which was converted to shops. Finally, there is an office building on one corner of the lot.

 

Across the street was a former Hughes Family Market, which was originally a Daylight Market. When Hughes left, it became a Daylight Market again, until it closed and sat vacant for many years.

  

The Shopping Center was known as Wards Plaza and is now known as La Cienega Plaza. It continues to be modified with buildings added. In recent years McDonalds, Coffee Bean, and El Pollo Loco have been added.

Originally a small abode at the edge of town on farmland is now framed by grand urban houses that they evolved to be subdivided into apartments. It stands its ground.

(Former) Suffolk Title and Guarantee Corp. Building, Jamaica, Queens

 

Constructed in 1929, the (Former) Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building maintains a commanding presence near the business center of Jamaica, Queens. Designed by the distinguished architectural firm of Dennison & Hirons which was known for its bank buildings, this eight-story structure was built at a time of tremendous business prosperity and building activity.

 

The architects used the Art Deco style enhanced with colorful terracotta ornament to create a modern and distinctive headquarters for the Long Island-based firm, which was organized in 1925 to insure real estate titles, guarantee mortgages, and make loans. Echoing the dominant shapes of the prominent Art Deco skyscrapers of the period in this smaller building, the architects emphasized the verticality of the structure with continuous masonry piers and a variety of setbacks near the top.

 

This arrangement, along with the brightly-colored, terra-cotta panels by noted sculptor Rene Chambellan that are strategically applied to the crown and the second story, make this a truly unique building in downtown Jamaica, and a rare example of the skyscraper style applied to small buildings outside of Manhattan.

 

Development of the Area

 

Jamaica, one of the oldest settlements within the current boundaries of New York City, developed into the leading commercial center of Queens County by 1900 and continues to be the largest and most densely-populated neighborhood in central Queens. The Dutch purchased the land in Jamaica from the Jameco Indians in 1655. The following year, Governor Peter Stuyvesant granted a charter to the town, originally known as Rusdorp.

 

Following the transfer of power from the Dutch to the English in 1664, Rusdorp was renamed Jamaica, after the original inhabitants of the region. Queens County (incorporating present-day Queens and Nassau Counties) was chartered in 1683 and Jamaica was one of the three original governing units established there (along with Newtown and Flushing). Outside the town center, Jamaica was largely an area of farms and pastures. The rural village was officially incorporated by New York State in 1814.

 

Jamaica's central location in Queens County, and the extensive transportation network that developed in the town during the nineteenth century, transformed the village into the major commercial center for Queens County and much of eastern Long Island. The arrival of the railroads in the 1830s began this evolution.

 

The rail lines connected Jamaica with other sections of Queens county, Brooklyn, eastern Long Island, and the ferries to New York City. Jamaica's farmland was soon being subdivided into streets and building lots, and many houses were erected.

 

By the turn of the century, Jamaica' s importance as a commercial area became evident in the impressive buildings constructed on Jamaica Avenue, most notably the Beaux-Arts Jamaica Savings Bank Building (161-02 Jamaica Avenue, 1897-98, Hough & Duell), and the neo-ltalian Renaissance Queens County Register Office (161-04 Jamaica Avenue, 1898, A.S. Macgregor, a designated New York City Landmark).

 

After Jamaica was incorporated into the Borough of Queens and became a part of New York City on January 1, 1898, additional transportation improvements brought increasing numbers of people. As a result, the population of Jamaica quadrupled between 1900 and 1920.

 

During the 1920s, when the major mass transit links were in place and private automobile ownership was growing at an extraordinary rate, Jamaica experienced its major expansion as a commercial center. By 1925, lots on Jamaica Avenue between 160111 Street and 168th Street had the highest assessed valuation in Queens County.

 

Many small-scale commercial buildings were erected in Jamaica at this time, as well as several major office and commercial structures, including the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Building on 161st Street (1928-29, George W. Conable) and the J. Kurtz & Sons Store on Jamaica Avenue (1931, AUmendiger & Schlendorf, a designated New York City Landmark). When the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company chose Jamaica for its new headquarters building in 1929, this was the most prosperous commercial section of the borough. It was also a center for banking and insurance in Queens, with several other banks and title guarantee companies located on the same block.

 

Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company was founded in 1925 for the purpose of insuring property titles, making loans on bonds and mortgages, and selling guaranteed mortgages. The company, with businessman Willard Baylis as president, was organized in Suffolk County, but had offices in Manhattan, Long Island City, Mineola, and Riverhead, as well as Jamaica, Queens.

 

Its slogan was "A Title Company that Knows Long Island." Established during the period of intense business activity of the nineteen-twenties, the company expanded rapidly, and by 1927 had acquired another well-known title company, Clarke & Frost. By 1928, the firm needed larger quarters to accommodate its increasing business and began acquisition of this site near the commercial center of Jamaica, Queens. They hired the architectural firm of Dennison & Hirons, known for its important bank buildings in the newly-popular Art Deco style, to create a distinctive headquarters and unique symbol for this growing business.

 

Dennison & Hirons

 

Ethan Allen Dennison (1881-1954) Frederic Charles Hirons (1883-1942)

 

Ethan Allen Dennison, born in New Jersey, studied architecture at the Godfrey Architectural Preparatory School and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He began his career in the office of Trowbridge & Livingston in New York in 1905, joining with Frederic Hirons to form the partnership of Dennison & Hirons in 1910. Their firm continued until 1929, including the one year (1913) during which they were joined by Percy W. Darbyshire, creating the firm of Dennison,

 

Hirons & Darbyshire. Dennison won the Medal of Honor of the Society of Diploma Architects of France and was a member of the Beaux Arts Society of New York, as well as the American Society of the French Legion of Honor. After the dissolution of the firm of Dennison & Hirons, Dennison continued to practice architecture in New York as the head of Ethan Allen Dennison & Associates. Much of his later work was in Connecticut, where he lived, and in 1940 he moved his firm to that state.

 

Frederic Charles Hirons was bom in England but moved as a child to Massachusetts with his family. He worked as a draftsman in the Boston office of Herbert Hale from 1898 until 1901 when he began to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1904, he won the Rotch traveling scholarship, and went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He won the Pans Prize in 1906, enabling him to continue his studies and travel in Europe through 1909.

 

Hirons was always interested in drawing and the education of young students. He led his own atelier for several years after his return from Europe, taught architecture at Columbia University, was a founder of the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, and served as president of the Beaux Arts Society of Architects. He was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his services for architectural education. In 1929 Hirons formed a partnership with F. W. Mellor from Philadelphia for two years, and then practiced under his own name until 1940.

 

Hirons won the competition for the design of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York (1928, a designated New York City Landmark) as well as several courthouses and war memorials. Early works of the firm of Dennison & Hirons include the whimsical Childs Restaurant in Coney Island, and such neoclassical style buildings as the Delaware Title & Insurance Company, Wilmington, Delaware, the Kanawha Banking and Trust Co., Charleston, West Virginia, the Purcellville National Bank, Purcellville, Virginia, the National State Bank, Elizabeth, New Jersey, and the Trenton Banking Company, Trenton, New Jersey. Later in their partnership, Dennison & Hirons designed numerous tall bank buildings in the Art Deco style, often collaborating with architectural sculptor Rene Chambellan for the terra-cotta panels.

 

The State Bank and Trust Company of New York at Eighth Avenue and 43rd Street, the Home Savings Bank, Albany, New York, and the Society for Savings, Hartford, Connecticut, as well as the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building were all Art Deco style office buildings designed by Dennison & Hirons and adorned with Chambellan's characteristic ornament.

 

The terra cotta used in these buildings was similar to that featured by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in a special issue of their magazine devoted to the work of this architectural firm.

 

This article included an explanation of Dennison & Hirons method for producing the colored terra-cotta panels used on their buildings. One-quarter scale models were created and painted according to their designs. These were then mounted on the building at their exact locations, so that the colors could be adjusted according to the differing light exposures. After these models were finalized, the Polychrome Department of the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company would create glazes to achieve the desired shades. In this way Dennison & Hirons were able to produce colorful ornament which has remained visually stunning for many years.

 

Rene Chambellan (1893-1955)

 

Rene Paul Chambellan became a noted architectural sculptor and model-maker whose sculpture, bas-reliefs, and panels were executed in a number of materials, including bronze, stone, and terra cotta. Bom in Union City, New Jersey, he was educated at New York University (1912-14), and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (1914-17), and Ecole Julian (1918-19) in Paris and was a student of the sculptor Solon Borglum. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army in France in 1917-19. After returning to the United States, Chambellan worked with Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells on the ornament of the Tribune Building (1924) in Chicago, and participated in the design and execution of the ornament of many important buildings of the 1920s and 30s in New York City.

 

Chambellan did many of the flat, highly stylized designs popular on Art Deco buildings and he worked on several projects with the architects Dennison & Hirons, creating models for the terra-cotta ornament based on Hirons' designs.

 

Art Deco Style

 

The Art Deco or Modern classical style of architecture, which primarily appeared in this country from the mid- 1920s through the 1930s, has been called an "avant-garde traditionalist" approach to creating a contemporary idiom for buildings of the period.

 

Much of the architecture known as Art Deco was based on accepted, standard forms and construction techniques and most of the architects active in this style had received traditional Beaux-Arts training in which the plan and the design of elevations were the first and most important phases in the design of a building. However, designers and critics of this time expressed the need for a new style which could be deemed appropriate for the period dubbed the "Jazz Age," with all its accompanying technological developments. Thus buildings were given a modern cast through the use of a characteristic ornament, and a variety of materials, some new and some simply used in a new way.

 

The popular design and ornamental ideas of the period evolved from numerous influences including: the Paris 1925 Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs (from which the Art Deco style took its name), the well-publicized designs of the Vienna Secessionists and the Wiener Werkstatte, and the German Expressionists, as well as American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, current theatrical set designs, and Mayan and other Native American forms.

 

The most well-known buildings of this period were skyscrapers and their overall shape came about as a result of the 1916 Building Zone Resolution of New York which decreed setbacks at various levels of tall buildings to allow light and air to reach the streets in an increasingly dense city. A series of dramatic renderings by architectural Tenderer Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published in Pencil Points (1923) and in Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929) significantly influenced architects of the period. The drawings and the laws from which they came directed the architects' attention to the building as a whole rather than to a single facade of the structure, thus altering the whole design process. By visualizing buildings "from every possible angle" the architect was transformed from a designer of facades into a "sculptor in building masses."

 

The zoning law provided architects with a rational basis for the form and appearance of the skyscraper as well as a new source of creativity; historical styles did not seem to express this modem sensibility and consequently, a new "skyscraper style" emerged in the 1920s. Major characteristics of the new style, as generated in part by the zoning restrictions, were sculpted massing, bold setbacks, and ornament subordinated to the overall mass. The dramatic rendering style of Ferriss and others articulated this new modernist aesthetic. In addition, an emphasis on the vertically of the tall building derived from the wide influence of Eliel Saarinen's second-prize winning competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Building in 1923. These same sensibilities and vertical emphasis were also often applied to the design of small buildings during this period, with owners and designers trying to demonstrate their modernity.

 

Additionally, architects of this period emphasized the decorative capacity of the building's surface. While designing in such a way as to make it obvious that the outer surfaces were not structural but only there to enclose the space, contemporary designers used a variety of materials. Newly-created metal alloys gave interesting effects, but brick and terra cotta were also favorites because of their wide range of color and textural possibilities. Ornament, usually in low relief and concentrated on specific areas such as the entrance, took the form of angular, geometric shapes such as ziggurats and zigzags, or simplified and stylized floral patterns, parts of circles, or faceted crystalline shapes.

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building

 

In 1928, two lots on the north end of the block bounded by Jamaica and 90th Avenues, and 160th and 161s1 Streets were purchased in the name of Jessica Baylis, wife of the president of the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company. One of these was obtained from the Jamaica Lodge of Free-Masons which had a clubhouse there.15 The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company erected its building on the site in 1928-29, but did not take title to the property until May, 1930, well after the building had been occupied. The company's offices filled the entire structure, including a large, double-height banking room with a mezzanine which occupied most of the street level space.

 

The architects Dennison & Hirons designed many bank buildings during their partnership, both skyscrapers and smaller structures, for the sole use of their owners. By erecting its own building, a company's structure became the symbol of the organization and a physical embodiment of the business in the greater community in which it did business. Banks in particular, wanted buildings which would draw customers but also create an image of stability and reliability. Art Deco style buildings were novel enough to attract attention, but not so unusual that they would be seen as eccentric.

 

Dennison & Hirons were able to satisfy the needs of their customers with buildings that were characterized by simple lines, a variety of setbacks near the roofline, and discrete panels of decoration, strategically placed on the building's facades. Frederic Hirons was a draftsman of exceptional ability and he often worked with modeler Rene Chambellan to create unique panels of terra cotta in flat, stylized designs of leaves, flowers, and fountains which added a distinctiveness to each building.

 

The architects employed all of these elements on the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company Building. Eight stories tall, this is one of the larger and more unusual structures in the area, with its irregular massing at the upper stories and its colorful ornament. As seen on the more typical Art Deco style skyscrapers, this building has a distinct base with stone cladding which stops in the piers above the second story and an irregularly shaped top created by several floors of setbacks. While this type of massing was originally a response to the 1916 Building Zone Resolution when it was applied to tall buildings in Manhattan, here the architects used the same idea for its aesthetic contribution, since the zoning laws would not have required setbacks on a building of this height.

 

Continuous brick piers with recessed windows also emphasize the height of the building, and stress the grid-like pattern of the facade. The spandrels, which feature inset brick panels, reflect the interest among Art Deco architects for textural patterns on the building's skin. The brightly-colored terra-cotta panels which are located on the spandrels between the second and third stories are unique to this building. The flat, stylized designs of leaves, flowers and fountains repeat across each facade, with the panels on the 90th Avenue side different from those on the two narrow ends.

 

Designed to draw attention to the upper floors of the building, brightly-colored and patterned terra-cotta lintels cap the windows of the eighth story and a large terra-cotta panel is located near the top of each of the narrow facades of the building. These sections display a highly stylized eagle holding a shield, a common symbol on bank buildings and similar to one used by Dennison & Hirons on their City National Bank and Trust Company Building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, of the same period.

 

Following the convention in many Art Deco style buildings of emphasis placed on the entranceway, in this building the two main doors are embellished with surrounds formed of painted ironwork using similar motifs to those found in the terra cotta. In addition a pair of winged griffins in full relief, holding a shield tops each doorway. While the long facade on 90th Avenue has no entrances, its large, ground-story windows have similar, decorative ironwork which has been painted.

 

Subsequent History

 

The Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company moved into their new building during the first half of 1929, but their good fortune and success was short-lived. By 1935, the business was bankrupt. Shortly thereafter it was taken over by the state insurance department and its assets, including this building, were liquidated, although the company continued to be listed at this address until 1940.

 

It took many years for the property to clear after the bankruptcy and liquidation. It was finally resold in 1945 to Frederick C. Trump, a large land-holder and developer in Queens and Brooklyn.18 Trump donated the building to the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation in the 1980s and the offices are currently used by this group and a number of other not-for-profit organizations.

 

Description

 

This eight-story office building has designed facades on 161st Street, 90th Avenue, and 161st Street. The fourth facade overlooks a parking lot and is faced with plain brick. Midway across the fourth facade, rising from the second story, is a narrow light court with a door and window on each story. Near the top of this facade, a neon-lit artwork entitled ''Let It Roll" by Cork Mareschi has recently been installed.

 

161st Street Facade

 

The main entrance is located on the eastern facade. The building is three bays wide with a double-height ground story. The main entrance to the building, which consists of a non-historic, revolving glass-and-metal doorway with a glass transom, is located in the southern bay, while an entrance to the ground story office space via double glass and bronze doors topped by a transom is located in the northern bay. Perched on the bronze lintel of each doorway is a pair of winged griffins with long fish tails holding a tablet.

 

A large plate glass window above a painted iron railing fills the central bay. Ornate painted-metal, three-dimensional surrounds ornament each of the three ground-story openings and include stylized fountain and flower designs. Above the first story letters denoting "The Title Guarantee Company" are applied to the stone facade, replacing the original sign identifying the Suffolk Title and Guarantee Company.

 

Above a granite watertable, the two lowest stories are faced in ashlar limestone that changes to brick with a stepped design in the piers between the second and third stories. Multi-colored, terra cotta panels in a stylized fountain design decorate the spandrels between the second and third story windows. Between the third and sixth stories, the spandrel panels are composed of brick in a darker tone, with an inset of an embossed square pattern.

 

Continuous masonry piers run from the ground floor through the sixth story. Recessed, paired windows with one-over-one, double-hung sash are located within each of the three bays, with a narrow, continuous pier between the two windows in each pair. These piers project slightly above the plain brick cornice at the sixth story level. The building sets back from the street at the seventh story, which is topped by a continuous, plain brick cornice with a narrow stone cap. At the eighth story, the building steps back again and is also narrower, with a single window in each of the two side bays. The four windows at this level are segmentally-arched, with broad, decorative, terra-cotta lintels. The brick piers continue above this level with a central, stepped parapet ornamented by a terra-cotta eagle holding a shield, which covers mechanical equipment.

 

90th Avenue Facade

 

The building is nine bays wide on this elevation. At the ground story are single-pane, double-height windows over painted iron railings. Letters spelling "The Title Guarantee Company" are located between the first and second stories. The design on the second through the sixth stories is the same as on the 161st Street elevation, with terra-cotta and darker brick spandrels, and continuous piers between the bays. The three center bays rise with continuous piers through the eighth story. The three bays on each side step back slightly at the seventh story, and further at the eighth story. Above this are parapets with recessed bays between brick piers which screen elevator equipment and the water tower.

 

160th Street Facade

 

This facade is three bays wide and is almost the same as that on 161st Street. Here the entrance is in the southern bay and is identical to the entrance on 161st Street. The central bay is filled by a ventilating grill and the third bay has a large window opening over painted iron railings. The upper stories have the same arrangement, ornamentation, and setbacks as those on 161st Street.

 

- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Part of the Lunch in a Box bento set offered on Menu for Hope 5 hunger charity, open for entries until December 24, 2008. Full details here.

 

Two tier-tier bento sets (one with watertight lid and flaps, the other with a less secure lid but including an elastic bento belt), two lunch bags with drawstrings, and a matching 340ml thermos with drawstring cloth carrying bag.

Built 1911 for Alexander Macully who named it “Dunluce”, sold to Silas Robert Thomas Carman who subdivided property, became Dunluce Lodge Guest Home, later owned by T S Wilson, now named Dunluce Castle.

 

“The seatholders of St. Jude's Church, Brighton, have unanimously requested the trustees to nominate the Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A., LL.B., of the Semaphore, for the vacant incumbency of the parish.” [Express & Telegraph 23 Mar 1905]

 

“The Rev. A. Macully. M.A., LL.B., has resigned the office of priest-in-charge of St. Jude's, Brighton, to take effect on March 31.” [Evening Journal 19 Dec 1907]

 

“a recital of ‘Hamlet’ at, the Druids' Hall, Park-street, Hyde Park, on Friday, April 24, at 8 p.m. Professor Macully has already won the admiration of the press and the public by his elocutionary efforts.” [Critic, Adelaide 22 Apr 1908]

 

“Poetry Recital. Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A. LL.B., Trin. ColL. Dublin., Hon. Fellow Literature and Art, London, Late Professor Alexandra College, Dublin, About to Open Studio, |City. Cultivation oi Speaking Voice. Aesthetics in English Literature.” [Advertiser 9 May 1910 advert]

 

“Zante Currants, well rooted. £3 10s per thousand. Alexander Macully, Dunluce, Brighton.” [Advertiser 18 Jun 1910 advert]

 

“Garden, Pigs, Poultry. — Gentleman requires experienced, trustworthy Man, on shares; good quarters. ‘Dunluce’, Brighton.” [Advertiser 6 Jul 1910 advert]

 

“Brighton.— About 8 Acres Sandhills, level, with Buck Scrapers. Tenders received. . . Address Macully, Brighton.” [Advertiser 23 Jul 1910 advert]

 

“Mr. Gwynne has accepted an appointment to supervise a large garden for the Rev. A. Macully, at Brighton.” [Areas Express, Booyoolee 11 Nov 1910]

 

“An explosion of petrol gas occurred on Friday afternoon at the newly erected residence of the Rev. A. Macully, Brighton. An escape of gas had been noticeable in the house for some days, and a plumber, after trying without result various means to detect the leakage, lighted a candle, and the disaster followed. The plumber sustained a severe shock. . . Damage was caused to three of the rooms. . . portion of the ceiling fell down.” [Register 17 Jun 1911]

 

“An enjoyable house-warming dance was given. . . to the Misses Macully at their new home, 'Dunluce’, Brighton. About 70 guests were present. Dancing was indulged in the drawing-room and dining-room, a dainty super being served in the turret room.” [Chronicle 1 Jul 1911]

 

“The Outdoor Life. — Wanted, Partner, garden, poultry farm, bees; prospects good. — Macully, Dunluce, Brighton” [Advertiser 5 Jul 1911 advert]

 

“The Value of Literary Competitions. Professor Macully, M.A., has returned to Dunluce, Brighton, after adjudicating at Balaklava and Hamley Bridge.” [Advertiser 22 Sep 1911]

 

“Municipal Corporations. Brighton. . . Rev. A. Macully requested permission to fill up hollows on his property from the sandhills; referred to public works committee.” [Advertiser 4 Mar 1912]

 

“Rev. A. Macully waited on the council, and intimated that he intended levelling the sandhills on the sea frontage of his property to form an esplanade. He asked that the town surveyor be instructed to furnish him with the proper levels, and if road scrapings were placed at his disposal he would use them for covering the sand to prevent drift. Resolved that Mr. Macully’s requests be complied with.” [Register 26 May 1913]

 

“The Rev. A. Macully stated that he had been residing at Brighton for eight or nine years, and the site of the proposed hotel was the next block to his property. He considered a family hotel necessary for the accommodation of visitors, and the site selected was the best for such a building. An up-to-date hotel was necessary for the convenience of the people.” [Advertiser 10 Dec 1913]

 

“Miss Kitty Macully, of Dunluce, Brighton, will continue her instruction in swimming, diving, and life-saving this summer. Classes are being formed now, and will be held in the Glenelg Baths, off the beach, and from a raft at Brighton.” [Observer 30 Oct 1915]

 

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 31st October, in France, Arnold, dearly loved and only son of Rev. Alexander and Mrs. Macully, Dunluce, Brighton.” [Register 6 Nov 1918]

 

“'Dunluce’ Estate, Brighton. The above well-known seaside estate (formerly so well known as the property of the late Professor Macully) has been purchased this week by Mr. S. R. T. Carman. . . to proceed with its subdivision into, residential sites. . . The imposing 13-roomed modern residence, is offered for immediate private sale.” [The Mail 11 Feb 1922]

 

“Dunluce Lodge, Brighton— Furnished Rooms, linen, dining rooms, kitchens. . . Mrs. Salman.

Dunluce Lodge, Brighton—Vacant, 18th, large four Bedroom, private sleeping-out verandah.” [Advertiser 16 Jan 1923 advert]

 

“Dunluce Lodge. . . Brighton. . . Accommodation this week-end; holidays.— Mrs. Salman.” [Advertiser 26 Jan 1923 advert]

 

“Dunluce Lodge Guest Home for comfortable Board and Residence. . . Brighton.” [Register 18 Aug 1927 advert]

 

“Brighton. . . a garden party was held at Dunluce Lodge, attended by members of the Y.M.C.A.” [Register 10 Apr 1928]

 

“Brighton Mothers and Babies' Health Association. . . The annual gift tea to raise funds for the assocition [sic] will be held in the grounds of Mr. T. S. Wilson, Dunluce Estate. Brighton.” [Advertiser 26 Oct 1937]

 

“The twenty first annual meeting and election of officers of the Brighton branch of the Mothers and Babies' Health Association will be held at the home of the secretary, Mrs. T. S. Wilson. Dunluce Lodge. Brighton.” [Advertiser 20 Aug 1946]

 

“To raise funds for a community hall at Brighton and for Townsend House school for deaf and blind children, a fete will be held tomorrow in the grounds of 'Dunluce,' Yester avenue, Brighton.” [Advertiser 4 Dec 1953]

 

MACULLY

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 8th January, at Dnnluce, Brighton, Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A., LL.B., beloved husband of Minnie Macully, aged 74 years.” [Register 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Rev. Alexander Macully. . . was born in the cathedral city of Armagh, Ireland. When he was a child his parents emigrated to Melbourne, and there his father occupied an important position in the Civil Service for about 35 years, He was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, and distinguished himself in English literature, and obtained the first prize in elocution.” [Register 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Rev. Alexander Macully. . . was widely known as Professor Macully. . . His academic distinctions included B.A. and LL.B., degrees of Trinity College, Dnblin. . . In 1888 he graduated M.A. at the Melbourne University. He was ordained deacon in the Anglican Church at Meath in 1880 and priest two years later at Derry. After filling come appointments in Ireland he took the position of curate at Bendigo in 1883. . . rector of Nundah with Clayfield, in the diocese of Brisbane, in 1897. In 1901 he became curate at Hindmarsh, and four years later. . . at Semaphore. From 1903 to 1908 he was priest in charge at Brighton. . . He has left a widow and three daughters. His only son, Arnold Macully, was killed in France during the war.” [Advertiser 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Professor Macully. . . has left three daughters, the Misses Eileen and Norah Macully and Mrs,. E. P. Whyte.” [Register 11 Jan 1921]

 

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 21st October, at ‘Dunluce’, 24, Glenunga-avenue, Glenunga, Julia Maira, widow of Rev. A. Macully and beloved mother of Eileen and Norah.” [Advertiser 22 Oct 1930]

 

“Mrs. Julia Macully. . . was a daughter of the Hon. Alexander Campbell, M.L.C., founder and first chairman of the Australian Mutual Provident Society in Sydney. She was the widow of Rev. A. Macully, who died nine years ago. Born in Sydney and educated abroad, Mrs. Macully assisted her husband in his parish at Bowden, Hindmarsh, and Brighton. She was an active worker for the Red Cross. Mrs. G. Buchanan (Barmera) and Miss E. Macully (Glenunga) are daughters. Other members of the family were Mrs. P. Whyte, who was killed by a shark at Brighton, and Mr. A. Macully, who died in action at the war.” [News 22 Oct 1930]

 

Highbridge, The Bronx

 

Summary

 

The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge in the South Bronx was constructed in 1887-88 to the design of Alfred E. Barlow, a little-known architect who began his career in suburban residences. Highbridgeville (later known as Highbridge) developed along the high ridge of land along the Harlem River located to the south and east of High Bridge (1838-48, John B. Jervis, engineer), part of the Croton Aqueduct system that brought New York City its first adequate water supply. The village was initially populated with the workers (mostly Irish) who built the aqueduct, bridge, and also the railroad along the river. A Protestant “Union Sunday-School of Highbridgeville” was established in 1860, and a chapel was built in 1866 on Highbridge (later Ogden) Avenue.

 

After 1874, the church became affiliated with the Reformed Church of America, and became known as the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. As the congregation grew, a larger building was needed. The significant firm of D.C. Weeks & Son was the builder. Built of random-coursed, rockfaced gneiss ashlar with red sandstone trim, the church is one story with a taller square bell tower at the southwest corner. The Ogden Avenue facade has a steeply-pitched gable and three round-arched windows with voussoirs, connected to the tower by a tourelle, and both side elevations have buttresses and round-arched windows with leaded stained glass.

 

The eastern (altar) end contains a leaded stained-glass rose window (1889) manufactured by the Tiffany Glass Co., with a geometric design composed of seven circular motifs. The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge (now Highbridge Community Church), one of the Bronx’s significant 19th-century religious structures, is also one of the finest surviving churches in New York City in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, named after one of the greatest American architects, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886). It is particularly unusual within New York as a more informal, suburban example of the style.

 

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

 

Union Reformed Church of Highbridge

 

Highbridgeville (later known as Highbridge) in the South Bronx developed on the high ridge of land along the Harlem River located to the east of High Bridge (1838-48, John B. Jervis, engineer), which was constructed as part of the Croton Aqueduct system that brought New York City its first adequate fresh water supply. The village was initially settled by the workers who built the Croton Aqueduct and High Bridge, as well as the railroad along the river. Almost entirely Irish originally, these workers were followed later by other European and Jewish immigrants. The Bronx shore of the Harlem River began to be subdivided in the later 19th century for building lots along the main thoroughfare, Highbridge Avenue. It was re-named Ogden Avenue in 1876, in honor of William B. Ogden (1805-1877), the first mayor of Chicago and first president of the Union Pacific Railroad, who after his retirement owned a Highbridge estate called “Villa Boscobel.” Initially, there were few neighborhood amenities and but one small district school; this was replaced by Public School 91 (1889, George W. Debevoise), 1257 Ogden Avenue.

 

As no church was located within several miles of Highbridgeville, the area’s Protestants organized a religious congregation in October 1860, which was led by William Newton Clark and incorporated in 1864. The “Union Sunday-School of Highbridgeville” held classes in various neighborhood buildings until funds were donated to purchase property and to construct a chapel on Highbridge Avenue. After its completion in 1866, it became the religious center of the community with regular Sunday School meetings. In order to establish a formal church, the congregation called a meeting in June 1874 to vote on a specific Protestant denomination. The Reformed Church of America was chosen and, after official recognition, the church became known as the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. From 1870 to 1884, the church was served by the pastor of the Mott Haven Reformed Church, Rev. Hasbroek DuBois. After 1884, with the installation of its own minister, Daniel Hoffman Martin, the membership of the church grew rapidly and a larger building was needed. Additional property was purchased, the old chapel was moved to the east, and a new church edifice constructed between December 1887 and its dedication in December 1888, at a contracted cost of $18,000. The rockfaced gneiss church, measuring 43 by 70 feet, was designed by Alfred E. Barlow in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, then at the height of its popularity. The New York Times called it a “new and picturesque home.” D.C. Weeks & Son was the builder. This significant firm, established in 1840 by DeWitt Clinton Weeks and including his son, Francis

 

M. Weeks, as a partner in the 1860s, was responsible for the construction of numerous mansions, churches, institutions, and office buildings in New York and elsewhere, including St. Thomas Church (1865, Richard M. Upjohn; demolished), Fifth Avenue and West 53rd Street; the first American Museum of Natural History (1874-77, Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould; demolished); World (Pulitzer) Building (1888-90, George B. Post; demolished), Park Row and Frankfort Street; Biltmore, the George W. Vanderbilt Estate (1888-95, Richard Morris Hunt), Asheville, North Carolina; and Morton F. Plant Residence (1903-05, Robert W. Gibson), 651 Fifth Avenue.

 

The Richardsonian Romanesque style was named after one of America’s greatest architects, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), who created an American interpretation of the Romanesque based on French and Italian prototypes. His Trinity Church (1873-77), Boston, as well as his many libraries and other buildings, firmly established Richardson’s professional reputation and launched the popularity and influence of the style. Following Richardson’s precedent, many architects employed it in the 1880s and 90s for a wide variety of building types, ranging from mansions to courthouses, university structures, and railroad stations, and including many notable churches. The style was characterized by its appearance of massiveness and such features as rockfaced masonry, round-arched fenestration, and steeply pitched roofs with towers and dormers. The noted architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler expressed the opinion in 1903 that “the Romanesque, in the Richardsonian version of it, gave a more rational promise in church building than in almost any other of the phases... there is very much to be said in favor of Romanesque as the most suitable style for church architecture.”

 

The Union Reformed Church of Highbridge is one of the finest remaining examples of the style in New York City. The major features of the church, including the asymmetrical massing of the forms, the bell tower, the arched openings, and the rockfaced gneiss stonework accented by red sandstone, combine to create a masterful, skillfully articulated, and characteristic example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It is particularly unusual within New York City as a more informal, suburban example of the style. A contemporary example outside of New York is St. Mary’s-in-Tuxedo (1887-88, William A. Potter), Tuxedo Park. Only a few major, fully-urban examples of the style survive in Manhattan, including Holy Trinity (later St. Martin’s) Episcopal Church, Rectory, and Parish House (1887-89, Potter), 230 Lenox Avenue in Harlem; and St. Agnes Parish House (now part of Trinity School)(c. 1890-92, Potter), 121 West 71st Street.

 

In 1889, a leaded stained-glass rose window manufactured by the Tiffany Glass Co., with a geometric design composed of seven circular motifs, was installed in the rear (altar end) of the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), originally a painter and later a decorator, started working in stained-glass windows in the mid-1870s and established the Tiffany Glass Co. in 1885. The firm’s early work was largely in the development of ornamental stained glass for windows, which were notable for their brilliant colors and the varied textures within the glass. Robert Koch, in his study Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass (1982), noted that “the best Tiffany windows made prior to 1890 are generally those of purely decorative and geometric design. Examples of such ornamental use of glass may be seen in... the windows of the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge.” Koch further noted the increasing rarity of in situ Tiffany windows in New York, based on an 1893 listing of churches and public buildings in the U.S. containing Tiffany work – “since that time more than half of the churches in New York in which Tiffany had a hand in the decoration have been demolished.”

 

Alfred E. Barlow, Architect

 

Little is known of the background of architect Alfred E. Barlow (1855-1926), who was apparently born in Brooklyn, the son of English-born machinist John Barlow. His career, however, strongly parallels that of fellow architect William Augustus Bates. Barlow was first listed in New York and Brooklyn directories as an architect in 1877, thereafter with an office in Manhattan and residence in Brooklyn. Bates and Barlow were two of the founders (along with Thomas Hastings and Cass Gilbert, etc.) in 1879 of the Architectural Sketch Club, which became the Architectural League of New York the following year. A League publication in 1906 stated that “most of [the founders] were at that time in the employ of Herter Brothers,” one of the nation’s leading interior decoration firms. Bates (1853-1922), the son of a New Jersey lumber merchant, was born in Michigan, educated in Cleveland, and entered Herter Brothers as a draftsman in 1872, where he remained until around 1881, working on one of the most noteworthy commissions of the day -- the decoration of William H. Vanderbilt’s twin mansions (1879-82, Trench & Snook; demolished), Fifth Avenue and West 51st Street. Bates established his own architectural practice in 1882, which specialized in country estates, resort buildings, and suburban houses. He was one of the leading (if lesser known) East Coast proponents of the Queen Anne style (closely influenced by English architect Richard Norman Shaw), as well as the Shingle style. Both Bates and Barlow contributed designs to William T. Comstock’s publication American Cottages (1883), and numerous of Bates’s designs around the country were published in contemporary architectural periodicals, as were some of Barlow’s, including “Astonfield” (1882), a Queen Anne style country estate for Samuel Rhodes. Bates designed Wentworth Hall and Cottages (1881-89), a large resort complex in the White Mountains at Jackson, New Hampshire, as well as the Wentworth residence (1891-92); and at least five houses (1888-99) in the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York. The wealthy pharmaceutical businessman and real estate developer William Van Duzer Lawrence (who founded Sarah Lawrence College in 1926), a friend of Bates from Michigan, hired him in 1890 as lead architect for the planned suburban community of Lawrence Park in Bronxville, New York. Bates moved here by 1893, and worked in the community until his death in 1922, including as a partner in the firm of Bates & [Kenneth G.] How after 1910. Bates’s houses (at least 35 of which are extant) were mostly in variants of the Shingle style.

 

The exact nature of the collaboration between Barlow and Bates is unknown, although they shared the same office address from 1885 until 1910, and an architectural directory listed them as “Barlow & Bates” in 1892. It is probable that Barlow performed work for Bates. They were also associated architects for the Mission Revival style Hotel Gramatan (1905; demolished) in Lawrence Park (which became Bates’s residence). New York’s Great Industries in 1884 had described Barlow as a partner in the firm of Charles W. Romeyn & Co., along with Arthur Jay Stever, working on projects such as Alfred Corning Clark’s enormous Dakota Stables building (1883; demolished) at Broadway and West 75th Street. There are not many known independent commissions of Alfred E. Barlow, though a few of them were prominent. He designed five rowhouses (1887) at 15-23 West 120th Street; the Ivy Club remodeling (1887; demolished), Princeton University; the Berkeley Lyceum (1887-88; demolished), 21 West 44th Street, a theater for amateur players; the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge (1887-88); the medieval chateau-inspired Samuel R. Smith Infirmary (1888-90), 101 Stanley Avenue, Staten Island; a stable/loft building (1891) at 19 Vestry Street; a neo-Federal style town house (1904) at 868 Lexington Avenue; and a store-and-loft building (1907) at 49 West 45th Street. In 1910, Barlow was living in Red Bank, New Jersey, he declared bankruptcy in 1916, he had moved by 1920 to Long Island City, and died in St. Petersburg, Florida.

 

Later History of the Church A large stone parsonage was constructed nearby in 1890, which remained in use until 1925

 

– it was sold and moved down the block, extant today at No. 49 West 167th Street. Due to the growth of the congregation, utilitarian additions were made to the rear of the church (apparently in 1901 and 1913). Rev. Daniel G. Verway served as the pastor for thirty years, until 1946. The old chapel building was demolished for an ambitious educational building (Walter J. Campbell, architect) planned with quarters for the pastor and sexton and administrative offices – it was never completed and only a utilitarian two-story, brick-clad Sunday School building was constructed in 1924 at the eastern end of the church property (this structure and the easternmost 50 feet of the lot are excluded from this designation).

 

The 19th-century character of Highbridge, composed mostly of small homes, changed greatly with the construction of large apartment buildings in the 20th century, spurred in part by the Jerome Avenue elevated railroad in 1918 and the subway (with a stop at the Grand Concourse and 161st Street) in 1933. The Art Deco style Noonan Plaza Apartments (1931, Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine), bordering the church’s property to the south, is one of the premiere complexes in the neighborhood. After World War II, the southwest Bronx, including Highbridge and the area of the Grand Concourse, began to suffer a severe decline. The rapid de-industrialization of the city, increasing suburbanization, heavy-handed urban renewal policies, disinvestment by area landlords, and the redlining of much of the Bronx by local banks all contributed to the economic downturn of the area. The owners of Noonan Plaza defaulted in 1976, and during the 1970s, many apartment buildings were abandoned by their owners and were set on fire, and the neighborhood suffered a catalogue of ills until it began to stabilize in the 1980s. The demographic composition of the Highbridge neighborhood also underwent substantial changes. The area’s residents, largely of European Jewish extraction, began to move to suburban areas, and the west Bronx became a diverse urban community as African-Americans and Latin Americans settled here. By the 1980s, the neighborhood began to experience renewal, as seen by the rehabilitation of Noonan Plaza in 1980-82 for federally subsidized apartments. The former Union Reformed Church of Highbridge, now Highbridge Community Church (sharing its building with Emmanuel Presbyterian Church) stands as a poignant reminder of the earlier history of the Highbridge neighborhood, and is one of the most distinctive churches in the Bronx and New York City.

 

Description

 

Built of random-coursed, rockfaced gneiss ashlar with red sandstone trim, the Union Reformed Church of Highbridge is a one-story structure with a taller square bell tower at the southwest corner. The wide, steeply-pitched roof (originally covered by slate shingles, now asphalt shingles) terminates at the eastern end in a polygonal louvered cupola with a tall conical roof. West (Ogden Avenue) Facade: The west facade, rising from a stone foundation/retaining wall with a stone watertable, consists of the main body of the church with a steeply-pitched gable and three round-arched windows with voussoirs, connected to the bell tower by a tourelle with a conical roof (capped by roofing tiles) and a pierced parapet wall. The base of the tourelle was originally columnar, but was re-built battered. The three windows have geometric-patterned leaded stained glass (covered by plexiglass panels). The gable, tourelle, and tower are pierced by slit windows. A utility meter is attached to the base of the church.

 

The peak of the gable bears an historic ornamental wrought-iron cross. Tower: A cornerstone at the base of the tower bears the date “1888.” Each face of the top section of the tower (which contains an 1866 bell, from the earlier chapel) has large corner columns above a stone molding, two round sandstone arches (originally with louvers, many of which survive) supported by sandstone colonnettes, surmounted by a checkerboard-patterned spandrel and a corbelled stone cornice. The eaves are bracketed. The pyramidal roof of the tower was originally covered with slate shingles (now asphalt shingles); the base of the original ornamental weathervane is extant. South Facade: The main entrance is in the base of the tower, approached by three bluestone steps. The round-arched surround consists of a compound-molded sandstone arch, surmounted by rockfaced sandstone voussoirs, and supported by triple rockfaced sandstone columns with molded capitals, edged by quoins. There are non-historic wooden double doors.

 

The wooden tympanum is ornamented by carved foliation surrounding a circle. A small Gothic lantern hangs above the entrance. The main body of the church has stone buttresses alternating with round-arched windows with leaded stained glass (covered by metal-mesh grilles) and voussoirs. The east end flares out into a polygonal wing capped by a peaked polygonal roof that joins the main gable roof; a stone chimney rises from the juncture with this wing. There is a non-historic metal door in the basement at this end. North Facade: The north entrance, at the western end, is located in a pedimented portico, supported by bracketed stone piers, with grey slate shingle facing and a peaked roof. The round-arched entrance surround consists of a sandstone tympanum surmounted by double rows of rockfaced sandstone voussoirs, supported by triple rockfaced sandstone columns with molded capitals. The spandrel has stone corbels supporting a molded cornice. There are three bluestone steps and non-historic wooden double doors.

 

The main body of the church has stone buttresses alternating with round-arched windows with leaded stained glass (covered by metal-mesh grilles) and voussoirs. Two non-historic lanterns are placed next to the buttresses. The east end flares out into a polygonal wing capped by a peaked polygonal roof that joins the main gable roof. East Facade: The original east facade, clad in red brick, consists of the main central body of the church (now partly obscured) having a taller central pavilion with a hipped roof that rises to the polygonal louvered cupola, flanked by the polygonal wings. The central pavilion contains a Tiffany Glass Co. leaded stained-glass rose window (1889), composed of a geometric design with seven circular motifs (covered by a square metal-mesh grille). The southern polygonal wing has a paneled wooden door and a window (both covered with metal-mesh grilles). There are two utilitarian one-story additions (apparently 1901 and 1913), clad in brick (the northernmost is parged with concrete) and pierced by windows and a door.

 

Property Features: Along Ogden Avenue there is a stone post with non-historic wrought-iron gates, and an historic wrought-iron fence (with signage) atop the stone retaining wall to the north of church; and bluestone steps, stone posts, historic wrought-iron gates, and an historic wrought-iron fence atop the stone retaining wall to the south. On the south side are bluestone stairs (with iron railings) leading to the basement at the east end; bluestone stairs with cheek walls and wrought-iron railings leading to the entrance; a low rubble stone retaining wall bordering the lawn; and a flagstone and concrete walkway. On the north side are an asphalt driveway; a flagstone walkway by the church; and a yard. On the east side are an asphalt parking lot, yard, and a walkway.

 

- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

 

This is the rear of a Super Target in Frisco, Texas outside Dallas. It's where teenagers in this suburban area hang out.

 

Research photo for the documentary film "Subdivided" by Dean Terry www.subdivided.net

Aldinga Beach

South Australia

One third of the final system.composing my thesis project.

 

1. Base point for individual towers, slant, and friendliness given, height and count derived from site fitness calculation.

2. Axis subdivided gathered together when within set distance, and lean apart to rebalance. Additional shift to provide view of/from closest urban epicenter.

3. Profile curves based on footprint, proportion, and tapering, potentially n-gon (though in later versions like this one, I've stopped including the parameter). Oriented to superblock at base, toward focus point at zenith.

4. Massing through profiles can be either 0:stepped, 1:bent, 2:smooth (shown here, bent)

5. Core transfers established mediated condition between tendency for continuity and deviation of massing geometry.

6. Cores sized appropriately for floor area. Cores beyond 30 floors are stacked and include additional express elevators.

7. Required elevator calculator, floor area and height determine number of passengers, expected stops, winding cycle, etc...

8. Core location is extracted at each floorplate

9. Pseudo-convex hull operation captures cores which are not directly connected to a floorplate.

10. Tower intersections are resolved to prevent overlap

11. Floorplates converted to slabs, transfer floors are created on a separate layer (limited application of program sorting).

12. Stairs added to stair cores.

13. Glazing added between floors (more complicated than you'd expect since each floorplate has a different number of vertices-as a result of the pseudo-convex hull-and sorts them in a different order-as a result of tower intersections)

14. Structural diagrid at facade

15. Facade cladding, increased transparency with elevation.

 

more inclusive graphs are here and here, this diagram as a flowchart here.

 

Colonel William Light had the task of surveying the city, which he did in March 1837 and then the Adelaide Plains. The land at Mitcham was surveyed and put up for sale for small farmlets in 1838. It was an ideal spot, slightly above the plains, good deep soils washed down from the hills, and an almost permanent stream running through the district- Brownhill Creek. Like many areas surveyed early, David McLaren, the first manager of the SA Company bought up much of the land for the SA Company. In late 1839 he subdivided some of this land to create the village of Mitcham, so named after the township in southern England. Some of the original purchasers of Mitcham village land, near the village green were Harrison, Hogg, McLaren (for himself), Mugg (first school teacher) Playford, Thornber, Traegar and others. In the early 1840s Mitcham was the biggest and most important village outside of Adelaide along with Port Adelaide. Consequently a road was surveyed and constructed to the village. It began on South Terrace and followed the Great Eastern Road (now Glen Osmond Road) which went up into the hills as far as the current Arkaba corner. Then Mitcham road headed south to the village and beyond to Coromandel Valley. These days Mitcham Road is known as Fullarton Road. It was the late 1850s before a road was constructed across the winter flooded south parklands to link the city, Unley and the village of Mitcham along what is now Unley Road.

 

As a further indication of the importance of Mitcham it was granted the first district council in the state in 1853 after a public meeting at the village called for its formation. Other district councils soon followed after, but Mitcham was the first. Its boundaries stretched from South Terrace along the Bay Road (now Anzac Highway), and then south along Sturt Creek up into the Mitcham Hills. In the east it stretched from the Great Eastern Road, up into the Adelaide Hills covering what is now Crafers. Little wonder that it attracted wealthy settlers, local farmers, and city businessmen. Eventually Mitcham lost the Unley area (1871) and the Marion area. The village grew quite quickly with an early Anglican Church, St Michaels (1848), and a Union chapel (1846) on the creek used by several denominations and an early Baptist Church (1860). This is the church our current Prime Minister attended as a child. The Baptists were led in the Mitcham village by Reverend Playford and services began in 1844, but the church was not finished until 1860. The Union Chapel was eventually used as the village school by head teacher Thomas Mugg from 1848 until 1871when it was moved to the Mitcham Institute. Six years later the school moved to the new the government school when it opened on what is now Belair Road.

 

Minor mines were established along Brownhill Creek in the 1850s but with no great success. Water for the village came from the Creek, and vegetables for the village and the city of Adelaide were grown on the flat areas along the valley. The valley even had its own school for many years. Beyond the village proper settlement grew up around the Torrens Arms Hotel on Belair Road, and some of the wealthy pastoralists established mansions on what was to become Springfield, Urrbrae and Glen Osmond. The horse tramway reached Mitcham in 1879 and it was not electrified until the Metropolitan Tramways Trust took over all tram lines in 1909. In the meantime the railway station at Mitcham opened in 1883 providing a service to the city in 12 minutes, the same as it is today!

 

Built 1911 for Alexander Macully who named it “Dunluce”, sold to Silas Robert Thomas Carman who subdivided property, became Dunluce Lodge Guest Home, later owned by T S Wilson, now named Dunluce Castle.

 

“The seatholders of St. Jude's Church, Brighton, have unanimously requested the trustees to nominate the Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A., LL.B., of the Semaphore, for the vacant incumbency of the parish.” [Express & Telegraph 23 Mar 1905]

 

“The Rev. A. Macully. M.A., LL.B., has resigned the office of priest-in-charge of St. Jude's, Brighton, to take effect on March 31.” [Evening Journal 19 Dec 1907]

 

“a recital of ‘Hamlet’ at, the Druids' Hall, Park-street, Hyde Park, on Friday, April 24, at 8 p.m. Professor Macully has already won the admiration of the press and the public by his elocutionary efforts.” [Critic, Adelaide 22 Apr 1908]

 

“Poetry Recital. Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A. LL.B., Trin. ColL. Dublin., Hon. Fellow Literature and Art, London, Late Professor Alexandra College, Dublin, About to Open Studio, |City. Cultivation oi Speaking Voice. Aesthetics in English Literature.” [Advertiser 9 May 1910 advert]

 

“Zante Currants, well rooted. £3 10s per thousand. Alexander Macully, Dunluce, Brighton.” [Advertiser 18 Jun 1910 advert]

 

“Garden, Pigs, Poultry. — Gentleman requires experienced, trustworthy Man, on shares; good quarters. ‘Dunluce’, Brighton.” [Advertiser 6 Jul 1910 advert]

 

“Brighton.— About 8 Acres Sandhills, level, with Buck Scrapers. Tenders received. . . Address Macully, Brighton.” [Advertiser 23 Jul 1910 advert]

 

“Mr. Gwynne has accepted an appointment to supervise a large garden for the Rev. A. Macully, at Brighton.” [Areas Express, Booyoolee 11 Nov 1910]

 

“An explosion of petrol gas occurred on Friday afternoon at the newly erected residence of the Rev. A. Macully, Brighton. An escape of gas had been noticeable in the house for some days, and a plumber, after trying without result various means to detect the leakage, lighted a candle, and the disaster followed. The plumber sustained a severe shock. . . Damage was caused to three of the rooms. . . portion of the ceiling fell down.” [Register 17 Jun 1911]

 

“An enjoyable house-warming dance was given. . . to the Misses Macully at their new home, 'Dunluce’, Brighton. About 70 guests were present. Dancing was indulged in the drawing-room and dining-room, a dainty super being served in the turret room.” [Chronicle 1 Jul 1911]

 

“The Outdoor Life. — Wanted, Partner, garden, poultry farm, bees; prospects good. — Macully, Dunluce, Brighton” [Advertiser 5 Jul 1911 advert]

 

“The Value of Literary Competitions. Professor Macully, M.A., has returned to Dunluce, Brighton, after adjudicating at Balaklava and Hamley Bridge.” [Advertiser 22 Sep 1911]

 

“Municipal Corporations. Brighton. . . Rev. A. Macully requested permission to fill up hollows on his property from the sandhills; referred to public works committee.” [Advertiser 4 Mar 1912]

 

“Rev. A. Macully waited on the council, and intimated that he intended levelling the sandhills on the sea frontage of his property to form an esplanade. He asked that the town surveyor be instructed to furnish him with the proper levels, and if road scrapings were placed at his disposal he would use them for covering the sand to prevent drift. Resolved that Mr. Macully’s requests be complied with.” [Register 26 May 1913]

 

“The Rev. A. Macully stated that he had been residing at Brighton for eight or nine years, and the site of the proposed hotel was the next block to his property. He considered a family hotel necessary for the accommodation of visitors, and the site selected was the best for such a building. An up-to-date hotel was necessary for the convenience of the people.” [Advertiser 10 Dec 1913]

 

“Miss Kitty Macully, of Dunluce, Brighton, will continue her instruction in swimming, diving, and life-saving this summer. Classes are being formed now, and will be held in the Glenelg Baths, off the beach, and from a raft at Brighton.” [Observer 30 Oct 1915]

 

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 31st October, in France, Arnold, dearly loved and only son of Rev. Alexander and Mrs. Macully, Dunluce, Brighton.” [Register 6 Nov 1918]

 

“'Dunluce’ Estate, Brighton. The above well-known seaside estate (formerly so well known as the property of the late Professor Macully) has been purchased this week by Mr. S. R. T. Carman. . . to proceed with its subdivision into, residential sites. . . The imposing 13-roomed modern residence, is offered for immediate private sale.” [The Mail 11 Feb 1922]

 

“Dunluce Lodge, Brighton— Furnished Rooms, linen, dining rooms, kitchens. . . Mrs. Salman.

Dunluce Lodge, Brighton—Vacant, 18th, large four Bedroom, private sleeping-out verandah.” [Advertiser 16 Jan 1923 advert]

 

“Dunluce Lodge. . . Brighton. . . Accommodation this week-end; holidays.— Mrs. Salman.” [Advertiser 26 Jan 1923 advert]

 

“Dunluce Lodge Guest Home for comfortable Board and Residence. . . Brighton.” [Register 18 Aug 1927 advert]

 

“Brighton. . . a garden party was held at Dunluce Lodge, attended by members of the Y.M.C.A.” [Register 10 Apr 1928]

 

“Brighton Mothers and Babies' Health Association. . . The annual gift tea to raise funds for the assocition [sic] will be held in the grounds of Mr. T. S. Wilson, Dunluce Estate. Brighton.” [Advertiser 26 Oct 1937]

 

“The twenty first annual meeting and election of officers of the Brighton branch of the Mothers and Babies' Health Association will be held at the home of the secretary, Mrs. T. S. Wilson. Dunluce Lodge. Brighton.” [Advertiser 20 Aug 1946]

 

“To raise funds for a community hall at Brighton and for Townsend House school for deaf and blind children, a fete will be held tomorrow in the grounds of 'Dunluce,' Yester avenue, Brighton.” [Advertiser 4 Dec 1953]

 

MACULLY

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 8th January, at Dnnluce, Brighton, Rev. Alexander Macully, M.A., LL.B., beloved husband of Minnie Macully, aged 74 years.” [Register 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Rev. Alexander Macully. . . was born in the cathedral city of Armagh, Ireland. When he was a child his parents emigrated to Melbourne, and there his father occupied an important position in the Civil Service for about 35 years, He was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, and distinguished himself in English literature, and obtained the first prize in elocution.” [Register 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Rev. Alexander Macully. . . was widely known as Professor Macully. . . His academic distinctions included B.A. and LL.B., degrees of Trinity College, Dnblin. . . In 1888 he graduated M.A. at the Melbourne University. He was ordained deacon in the Anglican Church at Meath in 1880 and priest two years later at Derry. After filling come appointments in Ireland he took the position of curate at Bendigo in 1883. . . rector of Nundah with Clayfield, in the diocese of Brisbane, in 1897. In 1901 he became curate at Hindmarsh, and four years later. . . at Semaphore. From 1903 to 1908 he was priest in charge at Brighton. . . He has left a widow and three daughters. His only son, Arnold Macully, was killed in France during the war.” [Advertiser 10 Jan 1921]

 

“Professor Macully. . . has left three daughters, the Misses Eileen and Norah Macully and Mrs,. E. P. Whyte.” [Register 11 Jan 1921]

 

“MACULLY.— [Died] On the 21st October, at ‘Dunluce’, 24, Glenunga-avenue, Glenunga, Julia Maira, widow of Rev. A. Macully and beloved mother of Eileen and Norah.” [Advertiser 22 Oct 1930]

 

“Mrs. Julia Macully. . . was a daughter of the Hon. Alexander Campbell, M.L.C., founder and first chairman of the Australian Mutual Provident Society in Sydney. She was the widow of Rev. A. Macully, who died nine years ago. Born in Sydney and educated abroad, Mrs. Macully assisted her husband in his parish at Bowden, Hindmarsh, and Brighton. She was an active worker for the Red Cross. Mrs. G. Buchanan (Barmera) and Miss E. Macully (Glenunga) are daughters. Other members of the family were Mrs. P. Whyte, who was killed by a shark at Brighton, and Mr. A. Macully, who died in action at the war.” [News 22 Oct 1930]

 

Original house built c1856 on land owned by William Martin Letchford, leased 1877 to Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson. Purchased, enlarged & named Eynesbury by George Wilcox 1881, property subdivided 1919, house purchased 1919 by Henry Maxwell Bradford, later converted to flats, leased 1980s by religious group, leased as a school 1990-2001, now private.

 

“District Councils. . . Mitcham. . . [Letter] from W. M. Letchford, for culvert to his entrance on Unley-road, offering to pay half cost of same — to be attended to.” [Register 28 Aug 1872]

 

R Hickson, Lower Mitcham [Adelaide Directories 1878, 1879]

 

“Mr Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson. . . From 1874 to 1881 he was engineer-in-chief of harbours and jetties In South Australia.” [Sydney Morning Herald 29 Jun 1923]

 

“A garden party, followed by a banquet, was given to the Stow Church Choir and their friends on Saturday, October 19, by Mr. and Mrs. George Wilcox, at their residence, ‘Eynesbury’, Lower Mitcham. During the afternoon outdoor games were participated in, and in the evening about forty guests sat down to the spread.” [Evening Journal 21 Oct 1889]

 

“the beautiful grounds of Eynesbury, the residence of Mr. George Wilcox at Mitcham, presented a busy scene when a strawberry fete in aid of the building fond for a new Anglican church at Hawthorn was held.” [Advertiser 15 Nov 1897]

 

“the fine wisteria climbing over Mr. George Wilcox's residence, Eynesbury, Mitcham, shows the enormous growth to advantage. The wisteria is 30 ft. high, and covers a space of over 1,200 ft., and now that it is in full bloom makes a beautiful exhibit.” [Critic, Adelaide 13 Oct 1900]

 

“The late Mr. George Wilcox purchased the property from Mr. Letchford, of the firm of Messrs. Shuttleworth & Letehford in March, 1881, but the owner was not living there at the time, as Capt Hickson, the Engineer for Harbours, was then renting the place. When Mr. Wilcox took possession the whole of the back portion of the land was under vines, but these were subsequently rooted out. The late Mr. Wilcox also imported all the ornate ironwork for the front gates, fence, and balconies. These were purchased by his son, Mr. John Wilcox, while he was in England. The first consignment of .this material went to the bottom of the sea on a sailing ship off the coast of Ireland in 1884, and the duplicate set ordered is that now standing at Eynesbury House.” [Register 8 May 1919]

 

“'Eynesbury House', Unley Road, formerly the residence of the late Sir. George Wilcox. This imposing mansion, which is massively built of stone, is famed throughout Australia for its wonderful wistaria [sic] creeper. The estate, which comprises some 20 odd acres, has just been subdivided, leaving 3 acres of garden surrounding the house, and the balance of the land (together with the beautiful tree-studded paddock adjoining Mr. Alfred Wilkinson's residence) has been surveyed into 66 residential sites, and named 'Kingswood Park'. 'Eynesbury House' contains 12 rooms, also magnificent ballroom (52 x 25 ft.), and extensive domestic offices. For a family residence, a high-class guest home, for residential flats, or for a rest home it would be hard indeed to find its equal. The trustees of the estate (Elder's Trustee & Executor Co.. Ltd., and Mr. Sydney Wilcox) have instructed Messrs. Wilkinson, Panda, & Wyles to dispose of the property by public auction. . . To ensure its sale, the nominal upset price of £1,700 has been placed on ‘Eynesbury House' (with 3 acres).” [The Mail 10 May 1919, p 11]

 

“Eynesbury House. . . The residence of the late Mr. George Wilcox, containing 12 rooms, &c. realised £1,825, the purchaser being Mr. J. Milburn. The iron fencing on the Unley road frontage of the estate was sold separately, and realized the sum of £120.” [Register 29 May 1919]

 

“the following sales by public auction and private contract. . . Account Messrs. Milburn and Jeffery — the well-known two-story residence of 14 rooms, &c., known as Eynesbury House, Kingswood Park, to Mr. H. M. Bradford.” [Register 4 Dec 1919]

 

“Mr. W. M. Bradford, 'Eynesbury', Unley, referring to the 380 ft. of iron palisading, presented to the Town Council by Mr, Willcox [sic]; as he had purchased 'Eynesbury’, he would be pleased to make the Council an offer for 120 ft. of same, as he desired to replace the home as Mr. Willcox left it.” [Bunyip, Gawler 5 Mar 1920]

 

“Mitcham Study Circle. At the invitation of the Misses Humphris, the opening meeting of the Study Circle will be held at Eynesbury House, 69 Victoria terrace, Mitcham.” [Advertiser 23 Feb 1934]

 

“Super U. furn. flats, s.c. 5 or 6 rooms, adults, garage, Eynesbury House, 69 Victoria terrace. L. Mitcham.” [Advertiser 18 Nov 1936 advert]

 

WILLIAM MARTIN LETCHFORD

“At a meeting of the ratepayers, held at the Brownhill Creek Inn, Mitcham. . . Mr. William Letchford was duly elected to serve as a Councillor for the year 1858.” [Register 2 Jul 1858]

 

“LETCHFORD. — On the 16th July, at Lower Mitcham, after 12 hours' illness, Anne, the beloved wife of W. M. Letchford, aged 36 years.” [Register 17 Jul 1872]

 

“the death of Mrs. W. M. Letchford. . . at Mitcham. . . Mrs. Letchford leaves seven young children behind her.” [Register 17 Jul 1872]

 

“LETCHFORD — CHAMBERS.— On the 4th June, at the residence of the bride's father, Mr. Wm. Walker, Parade, Norwood, by the Rev. W. L. Binks, W. M. Letchford, of Lower Mitcham, to Anne, widow of the late Thomas Waterhouse Chambers.” [Advertiser 18 Jun 1874]

 

“For Sale.— The Valuable Freehold Property, known as the Residence of Mr. W. M. Letchford, comprising 18 Acres of Land, on the Unley and Mitcham Road, together with the Excellent Family Residence erected thereon, and Stabling, Storerooms, Wine Cellars, Tanks, and every requisite required.” [Register 1 Jul 1876 advert]

 

“For Sale, or To be Let on Lease, with or without Right of Purchase, the Residence of the undersigned, Grove Villa, Lower Mitcham. . . W. M. Letchford.” [Evening Journal 26 Dec 1876 advert].

 

“At Glenelg fronting the sea wall, a handsome villa residence in the Italian style is being erected for Mr. W. M. Letchford.” Advertiser 10 Jan 1877]

 

“LETCHFORD. — On the 13th December, at Albert-terrace [now South Esplanade], Glenelg, William Martin Letchford, aged 56 years.” [Advertiser 14 Dec 1880]

 

“Mr. W. M. Letchford. . . many years ago established the soap and candle factory in South Adelaide which is now known as Tidmarsh & Co.'s. Since then, for a number of years, he has carried on business as a land and estate agent, and was confidential manager for Mr. T. G. Waterhouse. . . South Australian Carrying Company. . . Equitable Insurance Company, and also of the Equitable Building and Investment Society.” [Register 14 Dec 1880]

 

ROBERT ROWAN PURDON HICKSON

“On Wednesday morning, June 30, the professional and clerical staff of the Department of Harbours and Jetties waited upon the Engineer, Mr. Hickson, in his office, for the purpose of bidding him farewell prior to the dissolution of the department, which was to take effect on the following day.” [Register 3 Jul 1880]

 

“Mr. Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson, I.S.O. . . born in .1842, in County Kerry, Ireland, and served articles as an engineer to James Burton, engineer-in-chief of the principal works in the North of Ireland, He was appointed to take charge of the Carlingford Harbor works in 1864, and was Engineer-in-Chief of Harbors and Jetties in South Australia from 1876 to 1881. In 1881 Mr. Hickson became Resident Engineer at Newcastle. . . President of the Sydney Harbor Trust, 1901-1912. . . He is survived by a widow, 7 children. . . Mrs. W. F. Everett (London), Mrs. E. A. M. Merewether (Newcastle), Messrs. G. F. Hickson (Mildura), R. P. Hickson (Gunnedah), W. L. Hickson (Singleton), C. H. Hickson (Western Australia),. R. M. Hickson (Armidale).” [The Sun, Sydney 28 Jun 1923]

 

GEORGE WILCOX

“WILCOX.— On the 13th April, at Eynesbury House, Lower Mitcham, Annie, beloved wife of George Wilcox (suddenly), aged 57 years.” [Register 14 Apr 1897]

 

“wife of Mr. George Wilcox, of Mitcham. . . was a native of Huntingdonshire, England, and a colonist of over thirty-five years. . . There are two daughters — Mrs McRostie and Miss Wilcox — and three sons, who are in business in Sydney.” [Advertiser 15 Apr 1897]

 

“WILCOX.—On the 5th September, at Eynesbury, Lower Mitcham, George Wilcox, aged 78 years. No flowers by request.” [Express & Telegraph 6 Sep 1917]

 

“Mr. George Wilcox. . . took keen interest in his garden at Mitcham, and was particularly proud of the magnificent wistaria [sic] — one of the finest and largest in Australia — growing against the house.” [Register 6 Sep 1917]

 

“Mr. George Wilcox. . . was a native of St. Neots, Huntingdonshire. He was born in 1838. . . Mr. Wilcox became apprenticed to the grocery trade in England, and in 1858, he came to South Australia and started as a storekeeper at Gawler, where he remained until 1872, when he relinquished business and returned to England for two years. In 1874 he returned to South Australia. . . a business as an export merchant until 1903, when he retired. Subsequently he interested himself only in the Koonamore sheep station in the north-east, which he held in partnership with the late Mr. William Hamilton. . . Two sons (Messrs. Sydney Wilcox, of Adelaide; and Murray Wilcox, of Sydney), and two daughters (Mesdames H. E. McRostie, of Glencoe East, and Miss Wilcox, of Mitcham) survive. Mrs. Wilcox died about 20 years ago.” [Critic, Adelaide 12 Sep 1917]