View allAll Photos Tagged thomas
Buffalo, Victoria, Australia.
Olympus OMD EM5.2,
converted to 720nm infrared.
Pentax 18mm f2.8
on a tilt-shift adaptor.
National Trust. Kinver Edge and the Holy Austin Rock Houses. A truly fascinating place to visit and to learn about it's place in history. Kinver, Stourbridge, Dudley in the West Midlands.
On Kinver Edge there are several rock houses that have been carved out of the soft red sandstone. The Holy Austin rock houses were inhabited until the 1960s. The most famous are the homes at Holy Austin Rock, now restored and open to visitors. There are stoves, furniture, windows and doors – all set into the sandstone, just as they were when the houses were lived in. They are also known as Martindale Caves. The house that has been renovated represents life in the 1930s.
Up to 11 families lived in the cave homes. Three levels of homes were constructed in the rock. Each had a bedroom and living area. After the last two families moved out in the 1950s the buildings fell into disrepair.
These cave people led comparatively comfortable lives, away from society and surrounded by nature: their water came from the deepest private well in Britain and the easy-to-carve sandstone made house renovations simple. It’s thought that Kinver Edge’s first inhabitants stumbled on it in the early 17th century, though official records date from 1777. “We believe quarry workers arrived in the early 1600s and were the first people to excavate,”
Nanny’s Rock and Vale’s Rock aren’t restored but they can be seen from the Rock Houses walking trail. You can climb into Nanny’s Rock, peer through the remains of the windows and wander around the five empty rooms. Was Nanny a herbalist, a potion maker, a white witch? Passed down through time, there is no explanation for this curious name.
The National Trust was given 198 acres of Kinver Edge in 1917 in memory of Thomas Grosvenor Lee, a Birmingham solicitor born in Kinver. The National Trust care for close to 600 acres of this special landscape.
Only one of the cave houses in the study area is a listed building, Vales Rock, Wolverley, Grade II, and only one is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the restored National Trust caves at Holy Austin Rock, Kinver.
Rock-cut Dwellings on Kinver Edge.
The group of cave houses and rock cut dwellings discussed here fit into a small geographical area and all lie on or within a couple of miles of a massive sandstone escarpment called Kinver Edge. This cuts through the county boundaries of Staffordshire and Worcestershire and the parish boundaries of Kinver, Staffordshire and Wolverley and Cookley, Worcestershire.
Album: National Trust & English Heritage
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No Group Banners, thanks.
Taken a few weeks ago at the Thomas weekend on the GWSR. 2807 AKA Henry the big green engine passes Jessie (AKA Thomas) at Toddington.
Thomas and I both made a trip over the mountains today to the little town of Cove Fort. I met him at the gas station where I stopped before leaving for home to see if there were any strangers. At first I took a few photos of my daughter, but then I worked up the nerve to look around for a person to photograph. I could see Thomas's bandana peeking out from behind a vehicle, so I headed in his direction where I found him selling jewelry.
At first Thomas wasn't comfortable with the idea of being photographed, but he changed his mind after asking me about the 100 stranger group. It turns out that Thomas has a Flickr account and was enrolled in a photography class some time back. Unfortunately, he ran into some problems when trying to renew his Flickr Pro account, so he hasn't been back since. Maybe the "New Flickr" some people love to hate will help to bring back all the missing photos with that free terabyte. :)
Once again I was a nervous idiot and did a bit of rambling, but Thomas's quiet and gentle personality didn't seem to mind. I did manage to shut up long enough to learn that he is from one of the most beautiful parts of Utah near Bryce Canyon National Park and many other amazing sights.
As I walked away, Thomas wished me luck, and that's the story of Stranger #77. :)
Find out more about the 100 strangers project and see pictures taken by other photographers at www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
THOMAS, WILLIAM, architect, water-colourist, and engineer; b. c. 1799 in Suffolk, England, son of William Thomas and Ann —; m. 17 Sept. 1826 Martha Tutin in Birmingham, England, and they had four sons and six daughters; d. 26 Dec. 1860 in Toronto.
William Thomas’s significance among his generation of architects in British North America lies not only in the outstanding nature of the work he executed but also in the unique opportunity his career affords of tracing the relationship between his extensive preparation in England and his work in Canada, the latter being more accomplished and much more important relatively. Other architects such as John George Howard*, George Browne*, Frederic William Cumberland*, and Thomas Fuller* arrived when they were much younger than Thomas, with the result that their early work is unknown. Thomas came in his maturity.
Shortly after William’s birth, the family settled at Chalford, Gloucestershire, where his father was innkeeper of the Clothier’s Arms. William and his three brothers all entered the building trades. John, the youngest, was apprenticed to a letter-carver or mason at first, studied briefly under William in the early 1830s, and achieved some success as an architect; he is, however, best remembered as one of the most prolific sculptors of the period. Between 1812 and 1819 William was apprenticed to John Gardiner, a local carpenter and joiner.
Some time after receiving his indenture papers, William moved to Birmingham, where he married Martha Tutin in 1826. He may have been the pupil of Richard Tutin, a builder-turned-architect who was apparently a relative of Martha. In 1829 Thomas entered into partnership with him, but it was probably dissolved the following year. In 1832 Thomas moved to nearby Leamington, a flourishing watering-place in Warwickshire. Here he had a varied career: initially serving as agent for a developer, he promoted and executed his own building speculation schemes and designed numerous buildings for clients. The failure of a local bank in 1837 may have obliged him to apply for the office of town surveyor – he was acting surveyor in 1838–39 – and undoubtedly precipitated his bankruptcy in 1840, along with those of most of the other building speculators in Leamington. Thomas had opened a branch-office in Birmingham, but there were few architectural commissions available because of widespread depression in the early 1840s.
Thomas’s architectural work in England comprises designs for a remarkable range of structures, including houses, churches, shops, a conservatory, a public bath complex, and iron and stone bridges. The bulk of his work, however, consisted chiefly of speculative housing for the middle class in Leamington. He is known to have designed town houses on Beauchamp Terrace, beginning in 1831, and two chapels in 1834. Two impressive housing complexes followed the next year: Lansdowne Circus, a horseshoe-shaped grouping of plain Georgian-style semi-detached houses and villas (most with decorative cast-iron porches and balconies under tent-shaped roofs), and adjacent Lansdowne Crescent, a curving terrace of connected and landscaped town houses executed in a fully elaborated classical style. For Lansdowne Crescent, Thomas had acquired the property in partnership, furnished the designs, and developed some parcels with covenants requiring conformity in the design of façades. In a somewhat similar vein he was responsible for the development on Brandon Parade and Holly Walk (which adjoined both the crescent and the circus) of about ten villas, in a mixture of Grecian and Gothic Revival designs. Before his bankruptcy Thomas lived in one of these villas, Elizabethan Place, which is conspicuously dated 1836 and signed “WT.” A combination of small volumes balanced in effective groupings with ornamental flourishes at the edges is characteristic of the mature Thomas. Victoria Terrace, Pump Room and Baths, a multipurpose building begun in Leamington in 1837, formed a major focus of the town and was his grandest work in England.
In Duddeston (Birmingham) he erected St Matthew’s Church (Anglican) in 1839–40. This rectangular brick building, executed in a mixture of Early English and Decorated Gothic Revival styles with a projecting three-storey tower at the west end, would be used by Thomas as a basis in developing many of his Canadian churches. In the same years he was also responsible for a palatial draper’s shop in Birmingham called Warwick House. A water-colour by Thomas of this highly ornamented block, which was bombed in World War II, shows a four-storey building of seven bays, with immense display windows set between graceful piers opening up the ground floor, while the second and third floors are set off by colossal columns and the fourth floor is richly treated as an attic. This was a successful formula for commercial structures and would be used for one of Thomas’s best-known works in Canada. In essence, Thomas’s career up to this point forms a modest and provincial parallel, in its range of activity, styles, and enterprise, to that of John Nash, the fashionable architect who had done so much to reshape London in the first quarter of the 19th century.
In December 1842 Thomas sent to press a slim book entitled Designs for monuments and chimney pieces, a discreet piece of self-advertisement which was published in London the following year. Consisting of 41 lithographed plates with 46 Grecian, Roman, Gothic and Elizabethan patterns, the book is indicative of the eclectic approach to architectural design prevalent during the late Georgian and early Victorian periods. Like most other designers, Thomas felt free to choose historical revival styles that were deemed fitting to the location and function of a work. His churches, for example, were generally designed in the Gothic style, which readily identified their religious function and association with the devout Christian beliefs of the Middle Ages.
In April 1843 Thomas left England for Toronto. Precisely what prompted him, in his early 40s, to emigrate with his wife and eight children or to choose Toronto for his new home is unknown. His forced bankruptcy three years earlier and the dearth of work must have been contributing causes, but the key factor was probably his ambition. Toronto, which was entering a boom period with a population of more than 15,000 but with only three practising architects, was an appealing location for an industrious architect. Thomas’s journal of his transatlantic crossing in 1843 reveals an acute and well-informed observer. He emerges from the journal as a patient and loving father, a warm and sympathetic man. Possessed of a considerable sense of humour, he was very sociable as well and enjoyed chess, card-playing, conversation, singing, and dancing. Thomas settled with his family at 5 York Street and opened an office at 55 King Street East, in the city’s main commercial district. His first major commission in Toronto seems to have been the Commercial Bank of the Midland District on Wellington Street. Designed in 1844 and built a year later, it was one of the earliest banks fashioned in the Greek Revival mode in British North America and its façade remains one of the best examples of that style in the city. The only other bank known to have been designed by Thomas, the Bank of British North America, Hamilton (1847–49), has been demolished.
It was, however, his churches that brought early acclaim. Reputedly there were eventually more than 30 of these, 12 in Toronto alone. The first, St Paul’s Church (Anglican) in London, was erected in 1844–46 of red brick (with a white-brick front) in the Decorated Gothic style. Described by William Henry Smith* in the year of its completion as “the handsomest gothic church in Canada West,” it was elevated to cathedral status in 1857 [see Benjamin Cronyn*] and extended in the 1890s by means of transepts.
Before St Paul’s was completed, Thomas commenced his most ambitious ecclesiastical work and the largest church in Toronto at the time, St Michael’s Cathedral (Roman Catholic), which was constructed in 1845–48 of the then-fashionable white brick. Extending from Bond to Church streets on the north side of Shuter, its long flank commanded McGill Square before that area was built over. St Michael’s too was designed in the Decorated Gothic style, but on a cruciform plan, and it was both more substantial and more ornamental in character than St Paul’s. The congregation could not immediately afford Thomas’s tower and spire; these and the dormers were later added by the firm of Thomas Gundry and Henry Langley*. A palace for Bishop Michael Power* was also designed by Thomas, in the Tudor Revival style, and was erected in 1845 on Church Street just north of the cathedral.
Thomas was especially favoured by Presbyterian congregations, particularly those created as a result of the disruption of 1844 [see Robert Burns*]. In Toronto alone he designed Knox’s Church (Free Presbyterian), Queen Street (1847–48), a church for the United Presbyterian congregation of the Reverend John Jennings*, Bay Street (1848), and Cooke’s Church (Free Presbyterian), Queen Street (1857–58). But he worked for many other denominations in the city, designing the Methodist New Connexion Church, Temperance Street (1846), the Unitarian Church, Jarvis Street (1854), Zion Church (Congregational), Bay and Adelaide streets (1855–56), and the German Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bond Street (1856–57). All have been torn down or replaced.
Although Thomas was unsuccessful in the 1849 competition for the Church of England cathedral in Toronto, he received commissions in 1851–52 from Anglican congregations in Guelph and Hamilton which resulted in churches of considerable significance. St George’s Church in Guelph, begun in 1851, was not only one of the first churches executed in the Romanesque Revival style in British North America but was also one of the first based on an asymmetrical plan. Three bays, including a corner tower forming a porch on the axis of Wyndham Street, were added in stone to an existing wooden church. Designs drafted by Thomas in 1856 for the rest of the church and for an elegant interior were not implemented and the church was later demolished. In Hamilton, where he had opened an office by 1849, possibly in the care of his son William Tutin, Thomas began work on Christ’s Church (now the Anglican cathedral) in 1852. This was his most adventurous work structurally, calling for a stone building on a basilican plan, with a tall nave carried on piers, a decoratively treated open wooden roof, clerestory lighting, flanking aisles, and a short but distinct chancel. These features suggest that the design was an early instance in this province of the ritualistic neo-medievalism advocated in architectural design by the Ecclesiological Society in England, though Thomas was by no means doctrinaire in his designs for churches. Only the chancel and two bays of Christ’s Church were built, as tall additions to Robert Charles Wetherell’s neoclassical wooden church of 1842, and the disjointed effect gave rise to the name “the hump-backed church.” In 1873–77 it was completed. Simpler churches were well within Thomas’s capability and at least three still stand: St George’s-on-the-Hill Church (Anglican) of 1847 in Etobicoke (Toronto), the Free Presbyterian Church (now Grace United) of 1852 in Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake), and MacNab Street Church (Presbyterian) of 1856 in Hamilton. Of these, the Niagara church is particularly appealing. Executed in a predominantly Romanesque mode, it features chunky corbel tables and pilaster strips which look less skimped than those in his conventional Gothic designs.
Thomas’s design for another Presbyterian church in Hamilton, the well-preserved St Andrew’s (renamed St Paul’s in 1874), was his most successful composition. It was begun in 1854 on a large budget, which encouraged a rich treatment in stone and an elaborate interior. The tower is bold and massive, with deep angle buttresses and dense carving in areas such as the entrance and the gables. The octagonal spire is apparently the only stone spire erected in Ontario. The interior is equally striking in the richness of its sombre decoration, carved in dark wood. Although the cost proved ruinous for its congregation, the church has been consistently admired: in 1901 the Canadian Architect and Builder regarded it as still “well worth the study of architects” because “the construction is genuine” and “an essential part of the aim was honest work.”
Thomas was busy almost continuously designing a succession of significant public buildings for centres throughout British North America. These include the Fireman’s Hall and Mechanics’ Institute building, Toronto (1845), the combined district court-house, town hall, and market, Niagara (1846–48), the Talbot District Jail, Simcoe (1847–48), the House of Industry, Toronto (1848), the Kent County Court-House, Chatham (1848–49), the St Lawrence Hall, Arcade, and Market building, Toronto (1849–51), the town hall and market-house, Peterborough (1851), the town hall and market, Guelph (1856–57), the custom-house, Quebec (1856–60), the town hall and market-house, Stratford (1857), the city jail (now known as the Don Jail), Toronto (1859–64), and the Halifax County Court-House, Halifax (1858–62). All survive except those in Peterborough and Stratford, and the Fireman’s Hall and Mechanics’ Institute building in Toronto. Most of these commissions were won in competition and follow a common formula in their design: a long symmetrical front, with a projecting frontispiece under a pediment, often with colossal orders, seated on a heavy base. Not all of Thomas’s competition designs were successful. In 1859, for example, he was an unsuccessful entrant in the contest for the parliament buildings in Ottawa.
The best known of Thomas’s public structures is undoubtedly St Lawrence Hall in Toronto which, with its original arcade and market, comprised the St Lawrence Buildings. An earlier town hall and market on the site, designed by Henry Bowyer Joseph Lane, were destroyed in the fire of 1849 and Thomas immediately received the commission for their replacements, his design closely following his successful (but unexecuted) competition design of 1845 for refronting the earlier buildings. The St Lawrence Buildings were I-shaped, with the hall fronting on King Street, the market on Front Street, and the 200-foot arcade between the two. The hall contained shops on the ground floor, committee rooms on the second, and an assembly room on the third, the latter offering a more dignified space for concerts, balls, lectures, and the like than those provided by local hotels or the earlier town hall and market. An enlarged and more controlled version of Thomas’s Warwick House (executed in Birmingham nearly a decade earlier), St Lawrence Hall is his most graceful exercise in classical design. The market and arcade have been replaced, but the hall has been refurbished and remains an important civic focus.
Thomas’s earlier public buildings at Niagara and Chatham are both Late Georgian in style and nearly as restrained as St Lawrence Hall, but most of his other public works were designed in a forceful Victorian version of the Renaissance Revival style. There is a deliberate crudity of scale and texture in these visually powerful buildings which reflects their association with the law, public administration, and commerce. They are characterized by blocky masses, rugged surfaces, and abrupt transitions. The Halifax County Court-House best displays these characteristics in Thomas’s later public buildings. The dominant feature of this sandstone structure is its heavily textured frontispiece with bands of contrasting stone at every level up to the stout brackets that support the simple pediment. The three splendid keystones, which are carved in the form of sombre bearded heads and alternate with lion’s-head medallions, are hallmarks of Thomas’s last, and most vigorous, architectural phase.
His civic architecture also included public schools, which were just beginning to be designed in Canada as architecturally distinctive institutions. His Union School in London (1849), described two years later in a government report as “by far the finest school house in the Province,” was followed by designs for two schools in Toronto. In 1851 the city’s first elected school-board, under the chairmanship of Dr Joseph Workman*, launched a school-design competition. Thomas’s plan was used in 1852–53 for the Park and Louisa Street schools. These were designed in the Tudor style, which was popular for institutional buildings because it afforded ample lighting and ventilation as well as an interesting silhouette, all within a reasonable budget. All three schools have been demolished. In 1853 Thomas received the commission for the combined county grammar and common schools in Goderich.
The columnar monument to Sir Isaac Brock* on Queenston Heights (1853–56) is arguably Thomas’s most florid composition. It is 185 feet tall, rising from a richly trophied base guarded by carved lions. A colossal statue of Brock stands on a lavish capital, designed by Thomas himself rather than drawn from the classical orders. Gates, a lodge, and steps, all completed in 1859, frame the monument in scenographic fashion. Thomas displayed a stone model of it at the universal exposition in Paris in 1855.
His English work had consisted largely of housing and numerous Canadian examples can be identified. In Toronto, a handsome row of houses called Wellington Terrace, built on Wellington Street in 1847, has been demolished, but three units of another group, built in 1848, survive on Church Street behind St Michael’s Cathedral. In Hamilton, Thomas’s firm was said by the Halifax Reporter in 1860 to be responsible for “the greater number of the very beautiful private residences that meet the eye in every direction.” Surviving work there attributed to Thomas includes Undermount (on John Street), designed for John Young* in the Italianate style in 1847, and two Gothic villas: the Presbyterian manse (at Herkimer and Park streets), completed in 1854, and Inglewood (on Inglewood Drive), built for Archibald Kerr about the same date. Thomas’s Wilderness House (1848–51), built for Aeneas Kennedy, was destroyed in 1853. Thomas also designed a villa in London for Lawrence Lawrason*. His own Toronto residence, Oakham House (1848), a Gothic composition on Church Street, stands but has been gutted and additions replace his office wing on Gould Street; his 1859 Italianate home on Mutual Street has been destroyed. He is also known to have built houses in Toronto for at least six prominent businessmen, including John McMurrich*. Among Thomas’s last known residential works was the house, which still stands, built in St Catharines in 1859–60 for William Hamilton Merritt*.
Mixed commercial and residential buildings by Thomas were surely numerous too. The first of these was probably the Adelaide Buildings on Yonge Street (1844), which were altered in 1853 and subsequently torn down. In 1846 William Henry Smith described some stores designed by him and under construction on King Street, Toronto, as “the handsomest buildings of the kind in Canada, and equal to anything to be seen in England.” Although some of the stores were damaged in the fire of 1849 and others were demolished later, several still survive, now generally altered. More stylish were two Italianate works, both large-scale dry-goods businesses: the 1847 store (named the Golden Lion in 1849) of Robert Walker and Thomas Hutchinson on King Street and the premises of Ross, Mitchell and Company, built at Yonge and Colborne streets about 1856. Both have been demolished. In a period of vigorous economic growth in Canada, at least three other Toronto firms, including Bryce, McMurrich and Company, commissioned buildings from Thomas, who also designed stores in Port Hope and Hamilton.
Thomas formally took two of his sons, William Tutin and Cyrus Pole, both of whom he had trained, into his flourishing business in January 1857 and the firm became William Thomas and Sons. It was shortly to expand again. Thomas’s design for Knox’s Church in Toronto had so impressed visiting members of St Matthew’s Church (Presbyterian) in Halifax that, when it was destroyed by fire in 1857, his firm was asked to design its replacement, which was built on Barrington Street in 1858–59 and still stands. This project brought the Thomas firm to Halifax, where Cyrus opened an office in 1858. The firm’s successful entry that year in the county court-house competition no doubt led to commissions after the fire of 1859 for rebuilding much of the commercial section at the north end of Granville Street [see George Lang*]. At least 12 four-storey buildings, more than half of the new construction, were designed by the firm and nearly all were completed by the end of 1860. The group is remarkable not only for the number and variety of the commissions (executed simultaneously for no less than eight different clients) but for the impact of the resulting streetscape, which survives. Contiguous properties called the Palace Buildings were handled uniformly as the largest single design. Unity of effect elsewhere in the group was achieved through the use of stone (from different Nova Scotian quarries), elevations of related height, and recurring rhythms. All but one building had decorative cast-iron shop-fronts, which are important as early examples of this type of construction in British North America. Cyrus Pole Thomas visited Daniel D. Badger’s Architectural Iron Works in New York in 1860 to arrange for the shop-fronts and internal detailing, some of which were later reproduced in Badger’s lavish publication, Illustrations of iron architecture.
Thomas had risen quickly in Canada and had made a number of connections in the Toronto community and elsewhere. Concerned for the public enjoyment of the arts, he was probably instrumental in establishing the Toronto Society of Arts in 1847; he was elected its first president and showed his architectural drawings at the society’s exhibitions of 1847 and 1848. He maintained limited contact with English architecture through the publications that he bought and the visit he paid in 1851 to the Great Exhibition in London, where his brother John exhibited sculpture. When John George Howard made a trip to England in 1853, Thomas served as city engineer in his stead and was appointed to superintend the work on Toronto’s Esplanade. He also trained architects of the next generation, including, in addition to his sons, William George Storm*, who became a leading architect in Toronto, first in partnership with Frederic William Cumberland and then on his own.
The role played latterly by the sons in Thomas’s business is difficult to determine. The later work of William Tutin, who moved to Montreal about 1863, is both more assured and more flamboyant than that of his father; Cyrus, who worked in Montreal before settling in Chicago, claimed credit for the firm’s Haligonian work. It is reasonable, however, to assume a division of labour in William Thomas’s last years. He suffered “long and continued illness,” necessitating a journey to England in 1858. The financial burden of illness and treatment is reflected in the firm’s extra efforts to collect new commissions and overdue payments. There was ever-increasing competition for architectural work: by 1859 there were 16 architects in Toronto, many of them well trained in the latest developments in style and construction. Thomas’s seniority was nevertheless recognized and he was elected president in 1860 of the Association of Architects, Civil Engineers and Provincial Land Surveyors of the Province of Canada, which had been established the previous year.
William Thomas died on 26 Dec. 1860 of diabetes, according to cemetery records. Survived by his wife and six of their ten children, he was buried in the family’s plot at St James’ Cemetery beneath the handsome Grecian tombstone which he no doubt had designed. Although his obituary in the Globe commented conventionally that he would be remembered for “his kindly social qualities which endeared him to a numerous circle of friends,” the statement rings true. A portrait, a bust, and a photograph all show an engaging figure. Moreover, maintaining a successful practice required a diplomatic touch in an era when, increasingly, important commissions were for public buildings, which entailed intense professional competition and often difficult negotiations with building committees.
A combination of experience, ambition, and personality made him a leading architect, with the largest architectural practice in British North America. He apparently prided himself on his ability to design substantial structures which could be built at reasonable cost. When Upper Canada was experiencing a great wave of prosperity, Thomas and a handful of other architects, including William Hay* and Kivas Tully*, were able to design major buildings for the fast-growing communities: churches to express their faith, civic structures to display their pride and their optimism about the future, and commercial buildings and residences to reveal their growing wealth.
Thomas was the versatile architect who, in the manner of his period, worked in various styles, some of which he rendered in a fashion that can be clearly identified as his. The prevailing aesthetic of the picturesque movement was especially important to him, with its emphasis on variety and richness of visual effect. But deeply rooted in his work too was the older Georgian tradition of compactness, balance, and regularity. Such conservatism of style is not surprising in one who immigrated to the colony in mid life and whose contact with professional developments in Britain was limited to rare return visits and the receipt of publications. What is all the more remarkable, in contrast to other designers of the same generation working in British North America, is Thomas’s professional maturation and independence which was demonstrated, in the work he produced in his last decade, by his new-found confidence in large works, his use of cast-iron, and his own form of the Italianate style. But although he continued to develop, the financial constraints imposed by some clients, a limited range of materials, and a shortage of skilled workmen must have contributed to a certain severity that is also noticeable in his architecture.
It was no mean achievement to have made a major contribution to Leamington’s residential street-scape; subsequently Thomas reshaped the skyline of Canadian cities from Halifax to London with a series of churches and public buildings. George P. Ure, in his Hand-book of Toronto, claimed that “his high professional talent and correct taste have tended greatly to the embellishment and improvement” of Toronto, above all. Thomas’s obituary in the Globe concurred: “To him we owe some of the most tasteful buildings of which our city can boast.” His contributions to the development of architecture as well as the scope and quality of his work substantiate Thomas Ritchie’s claim that William Thomas was “one of the founders of the Canadian architectural profession.”
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford hatching plans!!!
The genesis of the electric vehicle?
Photo courtesy Ford Motor Company
Irma Thomas, the Soul Queen of New Orleans @ JazzAscona 2012, June 27. Ascona Jazz Award recepient 2012. Irma Thomas is undoubtedly one of the stars of this 28th edition of JazzAscona. A member of the generation of great black voices of, for example, Aretha Franklin and Etta James, the “Soul Queen of New Orleans” has been in the music circuit for over fifty years. Among her greatest achievements: great hits that were interpreted by Tracey Ullman, Otis Redding, and the Rolling Stones, numerous solo albums and countless feauturings as special guest, soundtracks, sold-out performances in the most important American clubs and halls, a Grammy Award as Best Contemporary Blues Album with her masterpiece After the Rain in 2006 and the inclusion in the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
She is also active culturally with her Lion’s Den foundation (which was closed following hurricane Katrina) and has participated at events such as the New Orleans Mardi Gras.
An extraordinary artist with an excellent voice and versatility that allow her to present a broad repertoire that goes from jazz to soul, from blues to R&B, and gospel.
One of America’s most distinctive and classic singers, Irma Thomas will take the Ascona stage to receive the Ascona Jazz Award 2012 on June 27.
Thomas Nast is the father of modern American political caricature. He earned his renown working for Harper's Weekly between 1859 and 1886 drawing cartoons about corruption in New York and the Civil War. He created the version of Santa Claus we think of today.
The source for this image of Thomas Nast is a photograph by Mathew Brady that is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia. The background is from adapted from a photo in the Brady-Handy Collection availble from the Library of Congress. The Harper's Weekly covers are also from the Library of Congress: On wall and in hands.
Thomas K. trio
avec Loïs Coeurdeuil & Guillaume Verchère
Concert la Cave Poesie, Toulouse 20/08/2016
Pour son passage à la Cave, Thomas Kretzschmar avec sa formation revisite la musique du célèbre Hot club de France de Django Reinhardt et Stéphane Grappelli, entre tradition et modernité, sans pour autant se cantonner à ce style si singulier…
Les compositions ainsi que les adaptations originales issues de folklores divers contribuent à l’éclectisme et la subtilité de leur univers musical. L’efficacité et l’énergie déployée par la section rythmique laisse libre cours aux improvisations complices des deux solistes.
Toute la série... Les Thomas K. trio...
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First Student Exeter, NH 71 Passnger Air Brakes Air Door Came In used in 2013, beginning state operated for is unknown. Has unusual specs for our area.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 342. Photo: Walter Scott Shinn, New York.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was the inventor of the phonograph, power stations, and the carbon switch microphone. With his pioneering film studio, he produced and directed such silent films as The Trick Cyclist (1901), Bicycle Trick Riding, No. 2 (1899) and the first American film version of Frankenstein (1910).
Thomas Alva Edison was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, USA. His father, Samuel Edison, was of Dutch ancestry and his mother, Nancy Elliot, was of English descent. Thomas was home-schooled. He used a primitive cylinder and foil device to create the first known recording of a human voice (his own, reciting the poem "Mary Had A Little Lamb"). Although he invented the cylinder recorder (phonograph), it was Emile Berliner who created the flat disc. Edison licensed the patent(s) from him. Other inventions to his credit include cellophane tape, waxed paper, an improved version of the typewriter keyboard, and 'the electric pencil', a forerunner to the fax machine. He is often credited with the invention of the incandescent light bulb, but that is untrue; he only perfected it. Similar bulbs were already in existence but they were expensive, did not last long, and gave off a bad smell. By developing a low-cost, long-lasting, carbonized cotton filament, Edison made electrical light cheap enough to be financially practical.
Thomas Edison is also credited with the invention of sprocketed cinema film. He also invented the Kinetograph camera and the peephole kinetoscope viewer. The Edison Manufacturing Company's earliest films were produced solely to demonstrate the use of the peephole viewer. The studio made several experimental short films, some lasting only several seconds, mostly to test his equipment. One film, Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894), features a man sneezing, runs for 1-1/2 seconds. Many of Edison's experimental films were made in a small wooden building dubbed 'The Black Maria' because it resembled a police wagon of the same name. Edison's Black Maria was built on a lot next to his lab and office. The building, essentially a large wooden shed covered with tar paper, was small enough that it was mounted on circular tracks so it could be turned to accommodate sunlight through an opening in the roof. The original has long since burned down, but a reproduction of the structure is located at the Edison National Historic Site, a museum with a preserved laboratory facility in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison himself played virtually no role in the production of individual films by his company which produced the first American film version of Frankenstein (1910). This film paved the way for modern-day horror as we now know it. Edison formed the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC), and teamed up with a few other prominent figures in film production, giving them a sort of monopoly on filmmaking. They wouldn't let other filmmakers use their technology, and they controlled the different steps of production. Supposedly, they even hired goons to enforce their monopoly. His attempts to force independent filmmakers to use his patented movie equipment resulted in an exodus of the film industry from the East Coast, where almost all films were produced, to California and a little town called Hollywoodland, now known as Hollywood. The last years of his life were plagued by financial failures, including plans to make houses out of poured formed concrete (it never caught on with the public) and making rubber from goldenrod (it decomposed too quickly). In 1928, he was awarded a Congressional Gold Meda. Thomas Edison was married to Mina Miller and Mary Stilwell. He died in 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey, USA. When he lay dying at his home in New Jersey, newspaper reporters were anxiously awaiting a sign from his wife of Edison's death. She signaled Edison's passing by turning a light ON, not off, in his bedroom. Edison's son allegedly captured his last breath in a glass jar. The jar is on display at the reconstructed Menlo Park at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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German postcard by Kolibri, no. 2007.
German actor Thomas Fritsch (1944) was a teen idol of the early 1960s. The son of ‘Sunny boy’ Willy Fritsch made several entertainment films and recorded Schlager songs. He also worked for the stage and TV and later often worked as a voice actor who dubbed many blockbusters.
Originally WUG127S a Leyland Leopard with Duple Dominant body. It was rebodied for its former owners Wallace Arnold for its use around Dartmoor as a tourist coach. Bought by Thomas Brothers of Llangadog and now preserved and seen at Bristol Harbourside Rally in 2013
via Painters' Table - Contemporary Art Magazine: Daily Painting Links on Artist Blogs, Painting Blogs and Art Websites ift.tt/1VFlX50
while on our st thomas island excursion, we stopped at some beach where you can snorkel, parasail, & swim. we went parasailing and it was a blast! so after we parasailed, i just wondered off again on my own and found this beautiful beach! you can see people snorkeling and some were swimming. if i would have known about this beach, i would have jumped in. i should have worn some swim trunk on this day.
Waiting patiently in the yard. Thomas and Wilbert are scheduled to be entertaining the children at the end of November 2015.
Bain News Service,, publisher.
Thomas
[between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920]
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.
Notes:
Photograph shows John Charles Thomas (1891-1960) a baritone opera and concert singer. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2017)
Title from data provided by the Bain News Service on the negative.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).
Format: Glass negatives.
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication. For more information, see George Grantham Bain Collection - Rights and Restrictions Information www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/274_bain.html
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Part Of: Bain News Service photograph collection (DLC) 2005682517
General information about the George Grantham Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.31080
Call Number: LC-B2- 5269-7
The painter's daughters chasing a butterfly, Ca.1756.
The two little girls in this unfinished portrait are Mary and Margaret, Gainsborough’s daughters by his wife, Margaret Burr, and their only children to survive infancy. Mary was baptised on 3 February 1750 and Margaret on 22 August 1751. Mary was given the name of the couple’s first daughter, who died at about 18 months old.
Margaret and Mary run hand-in-hand through dark woodland in pursuit of a cabbage white butterfly, which has landed momentarily on a tall thistle. Margaret reaches out her hand, while Mary clutches her looped-up muslin apron as a net. The children’s attempt to catch the elusive butterfly may be intended to suggest the fleeting nature of childhood, and the fragility of children’s lives. The wood in Gainsborough’s picture is dark and sombre.
This is probably the earliest of at least six double portraits that Gainsborough painted of his daughters between about 1756 and 1770.
The National Gallery, London.
Our Daily Challenge - Critter
And Thomas steps up to help with today's challenge.
Free Online Dictionary definition ~ The most common meaning of critter is "a living creature," whether wild or domestic.
Guy's and Thomas' were my second hospitals I worked at in London after The Royal London and St Bart's. I was head hunted for the Clinical PET Centre "Positron Emission Tomography" following the completion of my MSc in Nuclear Medicine and Applied Radiation Science. PET is novel imaging modality utilizing onsite created radionuclides from our own cyclotron reacted with biologically active pharmaceuticals and then introduced into patients expressing a multitude of pathology's mapping it's distribution and deviation from the norm. I also was a patient here following two lots of heart surgery, needless to say, I know the place well!
Thomas Faed RSA, The Last of the clan 1865 detals
'When the steamer had slowly backed out, and John MacAlpine had thrown off the hawser [rope], we began to feel that our once powerful clan was now represented by a feeble old man and his granddaughter, who, together with some outlying kith-and-kin, myself among the number, owned not a single blade of grass in the glen that was once all our own.' Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865, this painting was accompanied in the catalogue by this paragraph which was probably written by the artist himself. Such emigrant scenes were common occurrences in mid 19th-century Scotland when, partly as a result of the Highland Clearances, the land could no longer support the people. Emigration, often forced, to places such as America and Canada, was the only hope of survival.