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Without doubt, Satin Bowerbirds are visually the strangest male-female pairing of any bird species in and around Canberra. They share lovely violet-blue eyes, but that is where the similarities end. The female (shown here) is predominantly green, whilst the male is black with a satin blue-violet sheen.
For comparison, a photograph of the male can be found here ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/26206989437/
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Links for background information ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satin_bowerbird
canberrabirds.org.au/our-birds/canberra-garden-birds/bowe...
www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Ptilonorhynchus-violaceus
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[ Location - Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia ]
Photography notes ...
The photograph was taken using the following hardware configuration ...
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
- Hasselblad X1D-50c Medium Format Mirrorless Digital Camera (Silver) - MFR # H-3013900 (2017).
- Hasselblad X1D GPS Module - MFR # H-3054772.
- FotodioX Hasselblad V-Mount to XCD-Mount Camera Lens Adapter - MFR # HB-XCD-PRO.
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss lens - Sonnar CF 250mm f/5.6 Superachromat lens (1987).
- FotodioX B60 Lens Hood for Select Hasselblad Telephoto CF Lenses.
I acquired the photograph (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 800, an exposure time of from 1/250 seconds, and an aperture of f/11.0.
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the UHS-I SDXC card from the camera and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image file (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the 3FR image. Applied a standard metadata preset (20161110 Import 001) during the import process.
Lightroom - Made various lighting and color adjustments to the image.
Lightroom - Applied a square crop to the image (retaining the)i.e., 1:1 aspect ratio).
Lightroom - Saved the Develop module settings as a preset.
Lightroom - Output the image as a JPEG image using the “Maximum” quality option (1802 x 1802 pixels).
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for any final processing, review, enjoyment, and posting to social media.
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MFZ #Hasselblad #X1D #Color #Bird #SatinBowerbird #PtilonorhynchusViolaceus #Feathers #Black #Blue #Violet #Green #Beak #Shy
"Visually and technically inspired by the record-breaking vehicle that exceeded the mythical threshold of 300 mph (482 km/h) for the first time. The CHIRON SUPER SPORT 300+ underwent two years of development before launching the limited 30 units... Aerodynamic enhancements, including air curtains, extended body design, and a revised rear end, result in reduced drag, increased downforce, and improved overall aerodynamic performance..."
Source: Bugatti
Photographed at Charity Gala taking place at Culloden Estate and Spa, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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One Front Street, formerly known as Shaklee Terraces, is a prominent office skyscraper in the heart of San Francisco's Financial District. Towering 164 meters (538 feet) tall with 38 floors, it was completed in 1979 and has become a recognizable part of the city's skyline.
The building's facade bears a striking resemblance to the Shell Building in Berlin, designed by Emil Fahrenkamp and built in 1931. This architectural influence is evident in the use of vertical bands and setbacks, creating a visually distinctive and elegant exterior.
Sadly not a patch on previous times I've been. Visually less of everything across the board. It's clear reenactors, stall holders, vintage vehicles etc., have given it a miss in advance.
The event organisers [Pike and Shot] say 80% of the groups let them down. Cant blame the groups for the mass exodus. You're the organisers, they have supported this event for over 10 years. The fault is on your doorstep.
I was watching and listening to the fella firing up the Rolls Royce engine. He was furious to put it mildly (as seen in my video). He received a call to start it earlier than scheduled. He had to! He did with reluctance and was subsequently drowning out the singers nearby. When he challenged the staff about it they were not so sympathetic. Awful for him. To his credit he apologised to the small crowd of what happened that he was instructed to start the engine early. So for me, this was a live example of the organisers causing unrest as the event unfolded.
Having been to several 1940s events this year, this was the bottom of the pile. When I spoke with quite a few visitors and stall holders etc., they were expecting so much more, as in the past.
Singer: Miss Trixie Holiday
The other singer, not in this video, was Ricky Hunter. Decided not to include him in my video because he spent way too much time looking at his phone, playlist, drinking water, while singing, rather than entertain the crowd. He was a last minute guest singer anyway. He had not been invited for over 5 years.
Entrance fee was £10! (reduced to £4 very late on into the second day). No concessions. No signposting to the event. No map or itinerary. Limited parking. A bare bones event. Purely the fault of the organisers and Rufford Abbey Estate collectively.
Without Prejudice.
West Kelowna is a visually stunning community and a four-seasons playground, located on the western shores and hillsides of Okanagan Lake.
The Westside (as the locals like to call it) has always been appreciated for its quiet beaches, rolling hills of orchards, and fantastic outdoor activities.
West Kelowna has a diverse economy, which includes agriculture, construction, finance, food and retail services, light industry, lumber manufacturing, technology, tourism and world renowned wineries.
The Kelowna Bridge over Okanagan Lake
The building of the original Kelowna bridge was one of the most important milestones in the history of Kelowna not only for it's economic development, but also for a vital social link, by opening transportation to the South Okanagan and beyond.
Built in 1958, the Okanagan Lake Bridge was also referred to as the Kelowna Floating Bridge. The bridge served as a major landmark and a primary north-south highway corridor in the province of BC, and an important link from the Pacific Northwest United States to British Columbia and north on to Alaska.
The bridge itself was a pontoon bridge, or floating bridge that contained a vertical lift span which could open up to allow boats to pass under it.
Pontoons would support the bridge deck floating on the water. According to history, floating bridges have been around since the 11th century .
Historically, from the mid 1880's to the mid 1930's, Sternwheelers such as the SS Okanagan and the SS York provided transportation to people and goods down and across Okanagan Lake. From the mid-30's, until the original Kelowna bridge was built, ferries would carry vehicles across Okanagan Lake from Kelowna to Westbank, BC, now known as West Kelowna.
Image best viewed in Large screen. Thank-you for your visit!
It is very much appreciated...
Sonja
Visually, this was my favourite exhibit from all the international pavilions in the Biennale Arte 2015 (Giardini). Titled The Key in the Hand by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, this exhibit was patiently created with over 50,000 keys suspended using red string. The keys were donated by people from America, Japan but mostly from people visiting an exhibit at the Berlin Museum. The key in your Hand symbolises ‘a chance’, “the future is in your hands” as the artist says. The colour and shape of the red form with hanging keys was inspired by the Fukushima volcano.
The Japan Pavilion curator Hitoshi Nakano explains: “In our daily lives, keys protect valuable things like our houses, assets, and personal safety, and we use them while embracing them in the warmth of our hands. By coming into contact with people's warmth on a daily basis, the keys accumulate countless, multilayered memories that dwell within us. Then at a certain point we entrust the keys, packed with memories, to others who we trust to look after the things that are important to us. In this work, Shiota will incorporate keys as a medium that conveys our true feelings. Moreover, she will place two boats in the centre of the yarn and the keys, suspended from the ceiling to the floor of the space. The boats symbolize two hands catching a rain of memories (i.e., countless keys) pouring down from the ceiling. While struggling and working with the hands, the two boats will move forward through a huge sea of memory as they collect individual memories.”
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV3AwzrQbIo (Interview with the artist, Chiharu Shiota).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GolS9Db3BMM (View around the exhibit. The music was added to the video and was not part of the exhibit).
2015.veneziabiennale-japanpavilion.jp/en/project/ (Rationale behind ‘The Key in the Hand’ exhibit).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiharu_Shiota (Chiharu Shiota (b.1972), Japanese artist living in Berlin).
"The visually exposed Empire house from 1818 includes older structures, the stone cellars are probably medieval.
A terraced one-storey house with a basement in a corner position stands on the main square in the centre of the historic centre of the city. It has a rectangular ground plan, a mansard roof with small dormers, two roof ridges run perpendicular to the facade – a hipped roof adjoins the neighbouring house. The roofs are covered with eternit on the outside, and with burnt grooved tiles on the inside. The southern facade to TG Masaryk Square has 5 window axes on the first floor, on the ground floor on the left a window, a glazed entrance to the pharmacy, a window, a passage gate and a glazed display window with an entrance to the shop. The entrance to the passage is vaulted with a compressed arch, flanked by a profiled cornice with a vault and emphasised by half-columns carrying straight entablatures. The other openings on the ground floor are rectangular, flanked by cornices. The ground floor is divided by a bossage, separated from the first floor by a cordon cornice. The floor is divided by fluted pilasters with volute capitals between each window. Under the crown cornice with dentil is a strip with plastic decor, around the windows there are profiled chambranes with ears, window and window sill cornices and plastic decor in the parapet fillings and suprafenestras (festoons, floral curtains, ribbons). The side facade to Pernštýnské Square is designed similarly to the front facade with a bossage on the ground floor and pilasters on the floor, 3 windows on the left side of the facade have a semicircular raised window cornice, 4 windows on the right are distinguished by pilasters on each side of the window (i.e. there are two pilasters between the windows). On the ground floor there is a window on the left and a rectangular entrance to the house, from it to the right there are 4 window axes, windows without chambranes. The narrow courtyard facade is smooth, on the ground floor there is a passage opening vaulted with a compressed arch and a window, on the first floor there are 2 semicircular arched windows. The passage is vaulted with Czech flats into the waists. There are vaults in both shops - mainly barrel vaults, then barrel vaults with sectors, barrel segmental vaults, barrel vaults into traverses and a Prussian vault. A straight staircase vaulted with a compressed barrel vault leads from the passage to the first floor. On the first floor there are flat-ceilinged rooms, some with fabions, the layout has been subsequently modified. The cellars are dissected, barrel vaulted, made of stone, others of brick masonry. The roof is traditional wooden, with hambálky and a standing stool, under the wooden floor of the attic there is a mezzanine that used to be used for storage.
The visually exposed Empire house from 1818 includes older structures, the stone cellars are probably medieval. Apart from the cellars, the most valuable parts are the facade and the vaults on the ground floor." - info from the National Heritage Institute.
"Prostějov (Czech pronunciation: [ˈproscɛjof]; German: Proßnitz, Yiddish: פראסטיץ Prostitz) is a city in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 44,000 inhabitants. Today the city is known for its fashion industry and AČR special forces unit 601. skss based there. The centre of the town is historically significant and is protected by law as urban monument zone.
The first historical mention of the village Prostějovice is from 1141. By the middle of the 13th century, it had developed into an important market village. At that time, German settlers were invited here, who established a new settlement on the site of today's TG Masaryk Square, to which the rights of the original settlement were transferred. On March 27, 1390, Prostějov was granted the right of the annual market thanks to the lords of Kravaře, which in fact became a town. In the Hussite period, the promising development slowed down as the city suffered delays on both sides; the insufficiently fortified Prostějov became easy prey for the troops of Margrave Albrecht and was burned down in 1431. The prosperity of the city was brought about by the establishment of the Jewish city and especially after a year 1490 more than a century-old government of the Pernštejn families, whose property became the town. In 1495, the city began the construction of stone walls with four gates with bastions. Between 1521 and 1538, the townspeople built a Renaissance town hall.
At the end of the 16th century, the city became the property of the Liechtensteins, which resulted in the stagnation of the city's development. In Prostejov the year 1527 printer Kaspar Aorga printed the first book on Moravia. During the Thirty Years' War, the town was devastated and in 1697 a fire broke out, killing the town hall, the school and the church. Then the city began to acquire a Baroque character. Around the middle of the 17th century, mainly thanks to local Jews, the food, textile and clothing industries developed rapidly, and in 1858 the first Czech ready-to-wear clothing industry was founded in Prostějov - the factory of the Mandla brothers, which attracted new inhabitants. In the 1960s, Prostějov was connected by rail with Brno and Olomouc. The 19th and 20th centuries changed the face of the city in the style of historicism and Art Nouveau. Since the 20s and especially 30s, dominating the construction becoming in Prostejov functionalism.
Moravia (Czech: Morava [ˈmorava]; German: Mähren) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
The medieval and early modern Margraviate of Moravia was a crown land of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown from 1348 to 1918, an imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire from 1004 to 1806, a crown land of the Austrian Empire from 1804 to 1867, and a part of Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918. Moravia was one of the five lands of Czechoslovakia founded in 1918. In 1928 it was merged with Czech Silesia, and then dissolved in 1948 during the abolition of the land system following the communist coup d'état.
Its area of 22,623.41 km2 is home to about 3.2 million of the Czech Republic's 10.8 million inhabitants. The people are historically named Moravians, a subgroup of Czechs, the other group being called Bohemians. The land takes its name from the Morava river, which runs from its north to south, being its principal watercourse. Moravia's largest city and historical capital is Brno. Before being sacked by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War, Olomouc served as the Moravian capital, and it is still the seat of the Archdiocese of Olomouc. Until the expulsions after 1945, significant parts of Moravia were German speaking." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
Submitted by: Raj K Raj
Country: India
Organisation: Special Photo journalist with Hindustan Times New Delhi
Category: Professional
Caption: Visually Impart couple Bibekananda Tripathi, 42, first met his wife Sasmita, 35, Good samaritans usually step forward to help the couple, but many people pass by
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Photo uploaded from the #StrongerTogether Photo Competition website (photocomp.iapb.org)
A blind man plays chess in the library of Unión Nacional de Ciegos del Perú, a social club for the visually impaired in Lima, Peru. Unión Nacional de Ciegos del Perú, one of the first societies for disabled in Latin America, was established in 1931 to provide a daily service for blind and partially sighted people from the capital city. The range of activities includes reading books in a large Braille library, playing chess or using a computer adapted for visually impaired individuals. As the majority of the blind does not have a regular job, the UNCP club offers them an opportunity to learn and lately, to provide massages to the club visitors and thus generate some income. © Jan Sochor Photography
Standing on the yellow tactile paving blocks for visually impaired pedestrians on a sidewalk in Nara Japan
The experimental Black Fives were visually unappealing. Here 44753 waits at Platform 12 at Bristol Temple Meads, ready to depart with 2M74 18.30 stopping train to Birmingham on Monday November 4, 1963. The DMU at Platform 14 will form the 19.25 to Severn Beach, a train I often caught home to Redland Station on a night. Note the parcels ready to be loaded, probably onto 1N59 19.25 Bristol-Newcastle train, which would be the next departure from Platform 12. The words "Parcel Post" can be seen on the sack. 44753 had arrived earlier in the day on 1V31 11.36 arrival from Nottingham. Here is an ealier picture as the ecs still with 44753 on the train is towed back to Barrow Road carriage sidings.
www.flickr.com/photos/bristolsteam/5153652123/in/set-7215...
And what better way to visually represent it than in stroboscopic zoetrope format? By the inimitable Peter Hudson (who you may remember from the American Dream TantalUS and Homouroboros Monkey Tree zoetropes of years past).
What the hell is a zoetrope and how does it work? From wikipedia:
a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words "zoe", "life" and τρόπος - tropos, "turn". It may be taken to mean "wheel of life".
Though in this case, quite cleverly: wheel of death. And rather than pictures, this device uses three-dimensional forms to create an animation. Most effective at night, the wheel comes to life when 12 people collaborate to tug on giant ropes which set the wheel into motion. Once it reaches the proper speed, a strobe light is activated, lighting each form in succession giving the illusion of fluid motion.
Represented here is Charon, the mythological ferryman who carries the souls of the deceased across the river Styx to Hades.
©2011 Steph Goralnick - Please do not publish or repost without permission
This visually grabbing entry in the 'Corean Culture' series of postcards features a staged shot of a cooper and the tools of the trade, including a pipe. Very rare now.
Okay, I totally blew this shot out and tried to fix with picnik and I just love the deep rich colors that came out when I worked on it. I hope you like as well.
Have a wonderful weekend my friends.
Visually distilling what a family get-together can look like, for me Part 2. Canon 5D Classic + Sigma ART 35mm F1.4 EF
Clicked at The Little Flower Convent for the Visually Impaired, Chennai
This is a request to all my Flickr friends. Pl do visit my Facebook page at Vinoth Chandar Photography and if you do really like my page please click on "Like" . Kindly post your comments and suggestions.
Thanks to all my friends for the visits, comments and faves!!!
Have A Great Day!!!
The visually bold and graphic '6' on this vintage lapel badge refers to Chevrolet's engine which was an inline 6 cylinder unit that the company produced between 1929 and the early 1960's. It's a lovely example of automotive memorabilia as the 'Six' is cleverly morphed into the famous Chevy 'Bow Tie' logo.
The engine entered popular slang as the 'Stovebolt Six' because many of the screws were round headed, with a slot and resembled stove bolts; the engine size varied between 3.2 - 3.8 litres. Chevrolet called it the 'Blue Flame' and it was considered ahead of its time. Engines produced in the late 1960's didn't use the slotted head bolt and are not classified by Chevrolet purists as Stovebolt Sixes.
The Chevrolet Motor Car Company began in 1911 and the famous 'bow tie' logo was introduced for the first time in 1914.
Photography, layout and design: Argy58
(This image also exists as a high resolution jpeg and tiff - ideal for a variety of print sizes
e.g. A4, A3, A2 and A1. The current uploaded format is for screen based viewing only: 72pi)
Turtle Bay, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Summary
Paul Rudolph, one of the most celebrated and innovative American architects of the 20th century, was associated with 23 Beekman Place for more than 35 years, from 1961 until his death in 1997. Trained at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the 1940s, Rudolph was a second-generation modernist who grew dissatisfied with functional aesthetics but remained committed to exploiting industrial materials to create structures of great formal complexity. From 1958 to 1965, he served as chairman of the Department of Architecture at Yale University, where he designed the well-known Art and Architecture Building, now called Paul Rudolph Hall. Rudolph began leasing an apartment on the fourth floor of 23 Beekman Place in 1961, which became his full-time residence in 1965. He purchased the building in 1976 and converted it into five apartments in 1977-82, adding a remarkable multi-story penthouse that suggests a work of architectonic sculpture.
New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger praised the steel-and-concrete design, calling it “a handsome composition, a neat arrangement of geometric forms that is visually pleasing in itself and a welcome addition to Beekman Place’s already long list of architectural styles.”
23 Beekman Place was also home to actress Katharine Cornell. Dubbed by drama critic Alexander Woolcott the “First Lady of the Theater,” she purchased the building with her husband, director-producer Guthrie McClintic, in 1922 and lived here until the early 1950s. Although the elaborate multi-level interiors have been modified by subsequent owners, the exterior is virtually unchanged. Rudolph completed only six buildings in New York City. 23 Beekman Place stands out as one of his most personal and experimental designs, drawing on themes that he explored throughout his prolific career, as well as anticipating aspects of his later work in Southeast Asia.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Beekman Place
The Paul Rudolph Penthouse & Apartments is located on Beekman Place, a small residential enclave in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan. Close to the East River, this street extends just two blocks, from Mitchell Place (aka East 49th Street), past 50th Street (aka Dunscombe Place), to 51st Street. Topography has always played a significant role in this neighborhood’s appeal. Because the numbered cross-town streets end slightly to the east, for more than a century Beekman Place developed in quasi-isolation, standing above and apart from early industrial activities in the area, and construction of the United Nations, which began in the mid-1940s. Furthermore, due to the street’s unique and secluded character, it attracted a continuously changing roster of prominent residents, from the late 19th century to the present day.
Beekman Place was first opened in the mid-1860s. Most of the property in the area was owned by Samuel W. Dunscombe, a former minister. Four-story houses, faced with brownstone and classical detail, were soon erected on both sides of the new street, as well as a stone retaining wall to separate the rear yards from a narrow piece of river front property that James W. Beekman and family continued to own. These single-family houses were similar to those along 48th and 49th Streets, in what is now the Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District; each building was 20 feet wide, with a continuous metal or wood roof cornice, as well as a stoop rising to the first or parlor floor. Early residents included author Henry Harland, who produced popular novels under the pseudonym Sydney Luska. In Mrs. Peixada (1886) he described the street’s character:
Beekman Place, as the reader may not know, is a short, chocolate-colored, unpretentious thoroughfare, perched on the eastern brink of Manhattan Island, and commanding a fine view of the river, of the penitentiary, and of the oil factories of Hunter’s Point.
When Beekman sold the property, he promised that any future development would rise no higher than Dunscombe’s retaining wall – about 40 feet. He also promised that “nothing could be built there considered dangerous, noxious or offensive.” In 1914, the estate’s lawyers asked that these restrictions be nullified to allow improvements to the property. They claimed that commercial use was part of the “natural progress of the city,” but the New York State Supreme Court upheld the 1865 agreement, maintaining restrictions. Such litigation had a significant impact on Beekman Place; in addition to protecting views from the houses that faced east, these events brought the area increased attention and a large number of buildings were sold, substantially altered, or demolished.
Residential Beekman Place
Actress Katharine Cornell (1893-1974) and producer-director Guthrie McClintic (189361) acquired 23 Beekman Place in 1922. They purchased the former town house from Charles Schmid, who acquired it from Maria L. Higgins in 1906. It seems likely that one of these owners removed the stoop and divided the structure into at least two apartments, which were occupied in the 1910s by Schmid and four children, and Roger Howson, who later became chief librarian at Columbia University, as well as his wife, three children, and a governess.
Cornell and McClintic met in 1921 and married, forming a professional partnership that lasted four decades. Though relatively little is known about their private lives, they collaborated on 28 theatrical productions, with Cornell in the lead roles. Critic Alexander Woollcott described her as the “First Lady of Theater” and she was often compared to such luminaries as Helen Hayes and Lynn Fontaine. McClintic rivaled Cornell in terms of his contribution to the New York stage, directing 94 theatrical productions, including both classic and contemporary works.
Architect Franklin Abbott was hired to “remodel” the front elevation in 1929, as well as the interiors. Simple neo-classical details were added to the facade, as well as round-arched windows at the base and rusticated stonework. It was probably at this time that a service entrance was added to the right side of the ground story, as well as a metal canopy to keep water from collecting in the areaway. The basement was also extended at the rear of the property and walls were built around the garden. According to the United States Census of 1930, McClintic and Cornell occupied the building with two servants, a butler and cook, and possibly, a single tenant. A visitor in the 1940s described their home as “veritable theatrical museum,” with Cornell occupying the third floor, and McClintic, the fourth. They moved to Palisades, New York, in 1951 and the house was sold two years later, in 1953.
In the 1920s, Beekman Place developed considerable cachet, attracting prosperous families and cultural figures, such as: John D. and Blanchette Rockefeller III at 1 Beekman Place (Sloan & Robertson, 1929); Noel Coward at 2 (1932); composer Irving Berlin at 17 (1929); landscape architect Ellen Shipman at 19-21 (Butler & Corse, 1920s); CBS executive William S. Paley at 29 (Eldridge Snyder, 1934); art critic and historian Walter Pach at 33 (redesigned by Harrie T. Lindeberg, 1925); and painter Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim at 39 (redesigned by John B. Thomas, 1925). Physical changes to the immediate neighborhood also contributed to an aura of exclusivity, starting with construction of the East River (now Franklin Delano Roosevelt) Drive in the 1940s. Built on landfill and pilings, this highway project eliminated commercial wharves and reduced local access to the waterfront.
The city also acquired riparian rights to a section of the shoreline between 52nd and 53rd Streets and a pedestrian bridge was constructed above the highway, near 51st Street. This trend continued in the 1950s, with the completion of the United Nations Headquarters, which occupies a 17-acre site, south of 48th Street. Acquired from developer William Zeckendorf, a resident of 30 Beekman Place (Emery Roth, 1932), this large parcel had been occupied by tanneries, breweries, and slaughterhouses. The buildings at 860 and 870 United Nations Plaza, a mixed-use development with the apartment entrances facing 49th Street and Mitchell Place, were erected by the architects Harrison & Abramowitz in the mid1960s. Like “Beekman House,” a neo-Gothic style apartment building at 439 East 51st Street (Treanor & Fatio, 1925) that stands at the street’s north end, this pair of sleek, bronze-colored International Style towers blocks views south and provides a sense of enclosure.
Paul Rudolph in New York City
Paul Rudolph was an important late 20th century American architect, with a close association with New York City. He moved his practice here at the height of his career, during the mid 1960s, when his tenure as chairman of the Department of Architecture at Yale University was coming to a close and his firm was embarking on many ambitious projects, including a large number in the metropolitan area.
Born in Kentucky in 1918, Rudolph received a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now Auburn University, in 1940. During the Second World War, he spent nearly four years as an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he oversaw ship construction. For a brief period prior to the war (1941-42), and after, he attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied with Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, formerly of the Bauhaus. Rudolph graduated in 1947 and following travels in Europe, was active in Florida where he worked with the Sarasota architect Ralph Twitchell (1890-1978). The sleek, box-like houses that he produced were widely praised for their imaginative forms and sensitivity to the natural environment. Rudolph also worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, collaborating with design curator Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., on the “Good Design” exhibition of 1952.
Several years later, in 1955, he designed “The Family of Man,” organized by photography curator Edward Steichen. With more than five hundred images on display, this immensely popular exhibition included one of the museum’s most daring and memorable installations.
Rudolph maintained three architectural offices in the early 1960s: in New Haven, where he designed the controversial and now-celebrated Art and Architecture Building at Yale University; in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Manhattan. His approach to design became increasingly sculptural and many projects were executed using textured concrete. Though most schemes in the metropolitan area remained unrealized, such as an audacious plan for the Lower Manhattan Expressway (1967-72) and a Graphic Art Center over the West Side Highway (196768), he did execute at least five other projects here: a townhouse at 101 East 63rd Street (1966), Manhattan; Tracy Towers (1967-72), 20/40 West Mosholu Parkway, the Bronx; Davidson Houses for NYC Housing Authority (1967-73), 810 Home Street in the Morrisania section of the Bronx; Middletown Plaza for the NYC Housing Authority (1967-73), 3033 Middletown Road in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx; and 246 East 58th Street (1989-94), Manhattan.
His first office in Manhattan was located on the top floor of 26 West 58th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Designed 1964-65, the interiors suggested a terraced garden with distinct and overlapping levels of interconnected workspace that anticipate the general layout of the penthouse. When the 58th Street building was demolished in 1969, Rudolph settled into a smaller space at 54 West 57th Street, near Sixth Avenue, where the alterations to 23 Beekman Place were planned. In the early 1990s, he moved the office to 246 East 58th Street, which he designed and built as an investment. In his final years, he worked at 23 Beekman Place, where he converted his bedroom into a small atelier. During this period, most of his clients were located in Southeast Asia and local firms were responsible for preparing the final production drawings and overseeing construction. Rudolph died in 1997; in his New York Times obituary, architecture critic Herbert Muschamp discussed his evolving reputation and continued significance:
Mr. Rudolph leaves behind a perplexing legacy that will take many years to untangle. With the exception of Louis I. Kahn, no American architect of his generation enjoyed higher esteem in the 1960s . . . [he] wielded enormous influence over the direction of American architecture at mid-century. His buildings . . . were widely studied and imitated. In recent years, American architecture students too young to remember the 1960s have rediscovered Mr. Rudolph as a model of rare integrity. In 1993, at a lecture at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, he drew a standing room only crowd composed mostly of the young and held the audience spellbound, as if he were a visitor from a long-vanished golden age.
In the introduction to a 2008 collection of architect’s writings, Robert A. M. Stern declared that Rudolph “possessed the greatest talent of his generation of American architects.”
Re-designing 23 Beekman Place
Rudolph began his three-decade association with 23 Beekman Place in 1961, leasing the fourth-story from Philomena Marsciano, of the Mariscano Foundation, which had purchased the building as an investment five years earlier. He was currently living in New Haven and probably used the 700-800 square foot apartment on weekends, or occasionally, as a workspace. It became his primary residence in 1965. Two years later, in 1967, New York Times reporter Barbara Plumb wrote: “This one-bedroom apartment may be small, but its influence is likely to be huge because the architect, Paul Rudolph, former chairman of the School of Architecture at Yale University, lives here.”
In the mid-1970s, Manhattan’s real estate market was weak and Rudolph purchased 23 Beekman Place for $300,000. Having already completed several significant alterations as a tenant, he wrote in GA Houses:
For approximately 15 years I have occupied an 800 square foot apartment overlooking the East River. During this period its constrictions were modified in various ways. Three small windows facing the river, Roosevelt Island, and industrial Queens (complete with its 40’ x 90’ neon signs) were replaced by a glass wall with doors opening onto a small terrace.
Though the text devoted considerable attention to the interiors, he concluded with this cryptic sentence: “The apartment no longer exists, but it was never more than a series of sketches, or studies, for other projects.” In saying this, Rudolph hinted at forthcoming changes, not only to his apartment but to the entire structure at 23 Beekman Place.
Initial plans for a $120,000 alteration were filed with the Department of Buildings (DOB) in July 1976. Plan examiners expressed objections to the proposed height and the enlargement of the second, third and fourth floors by as much as 25 per cent. Alfonso Duarte, a Queens engineer, presented Rudolph’s case to the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA), arguing that it was “not feasible or practical nor even economical to erect a new comparable structure on the site” and that by taking specific precautions it would actually improve safety. The BSA granted a variance in February 1977 and a DOB permit was issued in June 1977.
Donald Luckenbill, who was employed in Rudolph’s office from 1969 to 1982, served as project architect. Trained at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, he remembered 23 Beekman Place as an extremely challenging project that needed to be broken down into “manageable parts.” The rear was demolished and a new steel-and-glass facade was erected that extended out by as much as 17½ feet. Furthermore, the roof-top addition was carefully engineered to support multiple mezzanines, terraces, and cantilevers. At the front of the building, the cantilever projects approximately five feet, matching the depth of the areaway below. Some proposals, however, were rejected by DOB, such as a roof-top swimming pool and rooms without windows. Luckenbill met frequently with plan examiners during 1976 and 1977. He worked closely with contractor Marco Martelli, of the Omar Building Corp., of New Rochelle, as well as structural engineer Vincent J. DeSimone.
Though the upper floors are the most conspicuous element, the first stage of work involved rebuilding sections of the brick sidewalls, which were determined unsafe. The penthouse was then erected during late 1977 and 1978 using “exceptionally light” steel supplied by East Bay Iron Works, located in the Hunt’s Point Section of the Bronx, and concrete block panels manufactured by Imperia Brothers, of Pelham Manor, New York.
By the end of 1978, most of the interior work on the rental apartments was done and the materials needed for the penthouse were being raised to the fifth floor. The building received temporary certificates of occupancy throughout 1979 and 1980. So that the apartments could be rented at market rates only five units were built. Two were duplexes at the rear of the building, spanning the ground and first floors, as well as the fifth and sixth floors. The penthouse, sometimes described as a quadriplex, was arranged on four interconnected levels. Entered from the main stairs near the west end of the sixth and seventh story, it contained a two-level guest suite on Beekman Place, as well as a private elevator. At the core was a large volume of space ringed by cantilevered floors, narrow bridges, open stairs, windows of varying dimensions, and terraces. In total, there were estimated to be seventeen distinct levels. A final certificate of occupancy was awarded in January 1982.
Rudolph would continue to rework the interiors (not part of designation) in subsequent years, often serving as his own contractor. Various completion dates have been proposed, including as late as 1988, when architect-critic Michael Sorkin called the penthouse “one of the most amazing pieces of modern urban domestic architecture produced in this county, a structure packing more finesse and design wallop in its compact volume than many architects manage to produce over entire careers.”
Architectural and Aesthetic Significance
Rudolph was a “second-generation” modernist. Trained at Harvard University in the 1940s, he studied with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius but eventually grew dissatisfied with the so-called “International Style,” which he described as “monotonous” and “timid” as early as 1952. To Rudolph, functional aesthetics became a cliché after the Second World War and he said that “driving down Park Avenue [was] rather like flipping through the pages of a window manufacturer’s catalogue.” Though he never completely rejected this training, like his classmates Edward Larrabee Barnes, Victor Lundy and I. M. Pei, he saw modernism as “a base on which one could build, not merely a formula.” Rudolph later remarked:
I think things grow, one thing from another, and develop, and retard and take side trips and whatnot. [International-style modernists] figured out a lot of things that give you a base to proceed.”
Rudolph’s once-distinguished reputation entered a slow period of decline in the 1970s – Post-Modernism (and the rediscovery of traditional ornament) was becoming fashionable. Despite trends, he remained strongly opposed to using historical forms, claiming as early as 1962: “neoclassicism is a dead duck. We have been through almost a decade of neo-classicism, which has nearly ruined American architecture.”
23 Beekman Place is a late work in Rudolph’s career that draws on themes that he explored throughout his life, as well as anticipating projects that he would design for Southeast Asian clients during the 1980s. At a time when many of his peers were drawn to stone surfaces with classical detail, he remained committed to experimenting with industrial materials to produce complex abstract forms. Consequently, this project ignored current fashion – not only would it provide him with a spacious residence and rental income, but it would demonstrate his continued vitality as a designer and the enduring relevance of architectural modernism.
In New York City, relatively few buildings have been designed and built by architects for their own use. Two significant 20th-century survivors can be viewed in nearby in Turtle Bay, close to Beekman Place: the William Lescaze House & Office (1933-34, a designated New York City Landmark), and the Morris Sanders House & Studio (1934-35, a designated New York City Landmark). Like 23 Beekman Place, these pioneering modern works incorporate industrial materials that contrast sharply with their earlier row house neighbors. Architect Edward Durrell Stone, however, adopted a somewhat different strategy at 130 East 64th Street (1878/1958, part of the Upper East Side Historic District), where he replaced the original masonry facade with a glass curtain wall disguised by a decorative concrete screen. This solution transformed the exterior without sacrificing some of the Victorian-era interiors, including a paneled Eastlakestyle parlor.
While many mid-20th-century architects have been criticized for ignoring history and context, these issues did interest Rudolph. He wrote in 1962:
Le Corbusier’s solution was to tear down Paris; Gropius tried to reduce planning to a few simple rules and principles; even Wright – not that he was an International Stylist – had nothing to suggest, except that we all move to the country. We have still to learn how to add to the evolving city without tearing down everything in sight . . . Most buildings should be background buildings, so to speak; only a few should stand out to stop a certain sequence …
As an urban planner, Rudolph believed scale, rather than ornament, should be used to tie old and new construction together. He also felt that how a building is perceived from the street and sidewalk is as important as how it looks against the sky.
What sets 23 Beekman Place apart from earlier Rudolph designs was his decision to place a highly-conspicuous, multi-story addition on top of an existing structure. As a long-term tenant, he was familiar with Beekman Place and the neighborhood’s historic fabric. In effect, he took an aging town house and turned it into a podium, fusing disparate aesthetics and building campaigns into a memorable late 20th-century modern design. Juxtaposing new construction with old, as well as steel, glass, concrete and masonry, it differs significantly from how most New York architects approached roof-top additions. When floors were added to row houses in the late 19th century, the original roof was sometimes replaced by a mansard, inspired by Second Empire French residences and palaces. Steep canted roofs, usually with large windows, were also popular, especially among artists and their patrons. In contrast, additions to most 19th- and early 20th-century office buildings were remarkably seamless, displaying almost identical materials and ornament. One memorable exception to this pattern was the penthouse headquarters that I.
M. Pei (in association with William Lescaze) designed for William Zeckendorf in 1952. Erected on the roof of the Webb & Knapp Building at 383 Madison Avenue (1920s), there was a floor of glazed office suites and terraces, as well as remarkable cantilevered circular pavilion. This eye-catching addition contained the developer’s office and private dining room.
Penthouses appeal to New Yorkers because they offer increased privacy, superb vistas, cool breezes, and in many cases, substantial prestige. According to the American Heritage Dictionary (2000), the word is derived from the Latin appendre, meaning “to cause to be suspended.” It first appeared in the New York Times in 1924 under the headline “Homes on The Roofs: Penthouses Under the Sky Are Prized by City Dwellers, but Few Can Be Had.” More of these apartments became available in subsequent years, especially in buildings located near public parks and along the riverfront. Many incorporated terraces that were positioned on setbacks required by the 1916 zoning ordinance. After the Second World War, however, slab-like towers came into vogue and cantilevered balconies were much more common. These stacked outdoor spaces were initially large and well-proportioned, as at Manhattan House (1947-51, a designated New York City Landmark), but later examples provided considerably less square footage, with limited benefit to residents.
Rudolph’s penthouse fits squarely into this tradition and was conceived as a private refuge, a place where he could escape from and observe the city. Designed to take full advantage of its elevated position, there are five distinct outdoor spaces on four staggered levels. The largest terrace, located at the apex of the building, is L-shaped and opens to the sky. It faces east, providing exceptional views of the East River, Roosevelt Island, and Queens. Like an outdoor room, each space is enclosed by an exposed steel framework that functioned as a pergola. Hung with plants and vines, these natural elements were intended to provide a leafy camouflage, softening the structure’s rectilinear character, while providing shade and visual privacy. Though Rudolph encountered some difficulty finding the right mix of greenery, towards the end of his life the vegetation, sometimes hung by gridded wires, was remembered as full and abundant.
Architecture, Rudolph claimed, was a “serious game of space” and the spaces he created at 23 Beekman Place were intended to be as varied and challenging as possible. It served as his private laboratory in which the layered interior organization is expressed on the exterior through the play of open and closed forms that project out, rise up, and recede from the street. Constructed with thin steel elements, these box-like silhouettes display similar proportions to the rooms they adjoin. This treatment recalls the Walker Guest House (1954) on Sanibel Island, Florida, which Rudolph considered one of his most successful early projects. To give this modest beach house increased visual coherence the gridded framework was painted white, but in the case of 23 Beekman Place the steel is brown, to contrast with the color of the concrete panels.
Concrete was an essential material in Rudolph’s work. Though some of his best-known projects of the 1960s, such as the Art & Architecture Building at Yale, feature textured surfaces, here the rectangular panels were assembled from concrete blocks and coated with stucco to create a smooth, unbroken appearance. Arranged vertically, they appear to float weightlessly in front of the windows, allowing light to leak through the slender gaps that divide them. Most are lined up along the side elevations, but a large, nearly square panel fronts the terrace that extends over Beekman Place. Similar in texture and color to the lower facade, the panels toward the front of the building screen the windows, while creating a visual link between the penthouse and the floors below.
Rudolph frequently employed cantilevers in his institutional designs, but in a residential neighborhood it comes as a complete surprise. While it somewhat recalls the deep extended eaves that crown many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, in other instances it suggests the late, more sculptural work of the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, whom he especially admired. Rudolph wrote in 1954:
Why do buildings always have to flank the street? Why can they not sometimes be placed over the street, thereby forming an enclosure and a focal point? . . . the tyranny of the endless streets must end.
The penthouse hangs over the front areaway and interrupts the street wall, occupying vertical space that is commonly left open. He did this to provide a place for an external stair, to enlarge the guest suite, and perhaps, to make the penthouse even more visible from the street. As an added benefit, this feature increased privacy. In a 1986 interview, he said: “The fact of the matter is that because of the cantilevers you don’t see into the building much. You see underneath the building.” The base of the cantilever is steel, except for two rectangular openings, one filled with clear glass and the other left empty. Like the transparent and reflective materials used throughout the apartment, the juxtaposition of solids and voids was intended to create a sense of dislocation and unease.
At the height of his career in 1967, Rudolph’s varied production was justly praised in the New York Times for being “unpredictable” as he urged students and contemporaries to create structures that “give visual delight.” Though some neighbors on Beekman Place objected to the penthouse and the views that were lost, his was certainly a unique solution that reflected a bold and distinctive architectural philosophy. Abstract and minimal, open and closed, classical and industrial, 23 Beekman Place has a strong sculptural quality – a quality rarely found in Manhattan’s residential streetscape.
Subsequent Owners
Following Rudolph’s death in 1997, 23 Beekman Place was sold to Gabrielle and Michael Boyd in 2000. They converted the four apartments and penthouse into a single-family residence in 2001. Though some writers praised their alterations, others strongly criticized changes to the interiors. The current owner, Rupert LLC, purchased the building in 2003. The architects Jared Della Valle and Andrew Bernheimer began renovating the building in 2004, undertaking structural work and exterior renovations.
Description
The Paul Rudolph Penthouse & Apartments is located at 23 Beekman Place, on the east side of the street, between 50th Street and 51st Street. Approximately 20 feet wide, the structure has two distinct sections: a five-story masonry structure and four-story roof-top addition that cantilevers over the sidewalk, as well as the rear yard. The front (west) facade is visible from Beekman Place and 50th Street, and the rear (east) facade is visible from Peter Detmold Park, as well as the FDR Drive.
The rusticated ground story is set below grade and incorporates three round-arched openings. Reached by steps, the left (north) opening is slightly wider than the two windows and serves as the entrance. Above the door, attached to the keystone, is a non-historic glass-andmetal lighting fixture, flanked by simple decorative reliefs. There is an Adamesque wood-paneled door, probably dating to 1929-30, with an arched transom that incorporates scalloped details similar to those that crown each window. The mullions and wood details are painted black. To the right of the door is an oval plaque, sponsored by the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation. To the right of the south window, a small metal camera is attached near the top of the wall. Between the ground story and first floor is a continuous flat metal awning supported by four metal columns, probably dating to 1929-30. The metal is painted black, though the underside is painted white.
Above the center window, the awning is interrupted and part of the air conditioning unit is visible. Attached to the north column is a metal tube to drain water. Metal railings parallel the sidewalk, as well as along the north and south edges of the areaway.
The second story has three nine-over-nine windows, set in recessed frames, with shallow decorative metal screens at the bottom. The third, fourth, and fifth stories have non-historic double-hung windows. The third-story windows have sills and prominent keystones that meet the raised scalloped cornice that extends between the third and fourth stories. On the third story, the sill below the center window has been removed and replaced by a recessed air conditioning unit. The center windows on the fourth and fifth stories are treated in a similar manner.
The penthouse begins at the sixth story and cantilevers above the sidewalk. It is constructed with exposed steel I-beams and metal panels, painted brown. It has floor-to-ceiling windows, screened by rectangular concrete block panels, with non-historic metal coping. There are multiple panels along the north and south elevations, and a large, single panel facing Beekman Place. The base of the cantilever has small openings on the left and right side. The left side has a metal grate and the right has been left completely open. Above the concrete panel, at the sixth story, is a wide terrace with stairs on the left side ascending to the uppermost terrace and mezzanine. To shade the stairs, the framework above it is filled with what appears to be tinted plexiglas.
The rear facade faces east, overlooking the East River. It is framed with painted steel and is entirely glazed. Each floor has a shallow terrace that extends the full width of the building. The south facade is partly visible from 50th Street and Beekman Place, and points to the southeast. The west section consists of vertical concrete panels of various widths, separated by small gaps, the rest of the facade is mostly faced with stucco. Single rectangular windows are visible near the east end, on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors. The widest window, consisting of slender vertical mullions and glass panes, extends across the east side of the seventh floor. A slender vertical strip of windows, near the center of the south facade, extends from the seventh to eighth floors. The north facade is partly visible from Beekman Place, and points to the northeast. Near the west end, the penthouse levels are enclosed with concrete panels, steel, and glass. The east end is less visible and features cage-like steel framing.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Visually appealing and delicious - a wonderful breakfast from the Fairholme Manor B&B.
Eggs benedict with homemade hollandaise and smoked salmon - a tasty touch of luxury.
For Our Daily Challenge Oct 7 - Luxury
For 111 pictures in 2011- #88 Round
A more visually appealing Belle twists out from under Canal St. and is about to roll through CP Cutoff. With the rear of the train clear of the Milwaukee Depot and to fight the friction of the curves, the hogger is back on the throttle as evidence by the heat waves rolling around under the bridge.
"Visually and technically inspired by the record-breaking vehicle that exceeded the mythical threshold of 300 mph (482 km/h) for the first time. The CHIRON SUPER SPORT 300+ underwent two years of development before launching the limited 30 units... Aerodynamic enhancements, including air curtains, extended body design, and a revised rear end, result in reduced drag, increased downforce, and improved overall aerodynamic performance..."
Source: Bugatti
Photographed at Charity Gala taking place at Culloden Estate and Spa, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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Blind people relax in the changing room of Unión Nacional de Ciegos del Perú, a social club for the visually impaired in Lima, Peru. Unión Nacional de Ciegos del Perú, one of the first societies for disabled in Latin America, was established in 1931 to provide a daily service for blind and partially sighted people from the capital city. The range of activities includes reading books in a large Braille library, playing chess or using a computer adapted for visually impaired individuals. As the majority of the blind does not have a regular job, the UNCP club offers them an opportunity to learn and lately, to provide massages to the club visitors and thus generate some income. © Jan Sochor Photography
Our Silences is an itinerant sculpture created to make us reflect on the importance of free speech and self-censorship. It intends to incite an intimate dialogue with the spectator on one of the most fundamental human rights and, at the same time, to establish a symbolic interchange with the places where it is shown.
The ten monumental bronze busts with covered mouths and the so called “tactile box” for the blind and visually weak, are both designed to journey all over the world. Since 2009, the installation has been presented in Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Russia, Mexico and the United States in cities like San Diego and, very recently, in San Francisco, by the bay.
Rivelino’s appropriationist style —apparent in the way he freely uses typical antique sculptural forms in his proposal— clearly seeks to establish an immediate bond with the past and the memories of the spectator and, at the same time, a strong physical relationship between the work and the spectator Nevertheless, underlying all this is a profound reflection on liberty and its daily exercise.
The eleventh sculpture is an interactive cube (2m3) which allows spectators to perceive what cannot be perceived with the eye. Each side has two holes that incite the spectator to discover what is inside and what is found are four tiny sculptures that reproduce the ones outside. People can actually touch the sculptures by introducing their hands through the holes and experience tactile, thermic, and affective sensations.
The purpose of this huge steel cube is to attract all kinds of spectators, but especially young people, children, and those visually weak or blind. It is a unique sculpture because it offers, beyond our sense of sight, the opportunity of sharing in a simple way an extraordinary aesthetic experience. For all this, Our Silences is an inclusive, open, artistic and social project.
Rivelino, Member of the Young Mexican Sculpture, has developed an artistic proposal characterized by the research and construction of reliefs and also by being one of the most active artists in Mexico in the field of sculptural intervention on the public urban space.
For Rivelino, a relief is a surface which expresses itself through the aesthetics of the materials being used, a space that becomes a territory by being occupied with volumes and marks, and an object that claims to encapsulate stories. Materials for the sculptor are “a skin with inscriptions engraved of ancient rituals, beliefs and memories common to all mankind”.
His sculptures are characterized by a poetic which moves from the recognizable to the strange and mysterious. “Divided between anthropomorphic figures of hieratic expression and geometric omnipresent objects, his sculptures preserve the importance of the relief through added volumes or engravings carved on their surfaces.”
Rivelino’s interest in triggering a dialogue with collective memory has lead him to consider the urban space as an ideal encounter territory for imaginary pasts and presents, a place which embraces several memories.
His sculptures on streets, squares, iconic monuments or any other public space break with the identity and the history of those places “with themes that deal with social problems, ethics and human rights […] they alter the established aesthetic perception of spectators through a sculptural narrative that moves from the surreal to the real; from the possible to the impossible.”
An independent artist, Rivelino divides his activities between creation and social activism related to topics like economy and culture. In 2010 he participated at the Universal Expo in Shanghai with the relief “Natural Dialogues”. In 2011 he inaugurated the art gallery at the Secretaría de Economía in Mexico with the exhibition “Limits and Consequences”, and in 2012 he participated in the Economics World Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in the “Art and inequality” panel.
His artistic projects are always daring. His successful work Nuestros Silencios (“Our silences”) approaches the right to free speech and it has been exhibited in American and European cities since 2010. In 2012, he shattered the Mexican institutional artistic establishment with his work Raíces (“Roots”), a gigantic metaphor of Mexican identity. The work was a giant serpent which climbed and slithered amongst prehispanic, colonial, and modern buildings in downtown Mexico City.
In 2015 Rivelino participated in The Dual Year Mexico-United Kingdom festivities with his monumental sculpture You, a work that remained for five months on the iconic Trafalgar Square. During 2016 he participated on the project Obra en Obra (Work on Work) with a piece called ¿El ejército de quién? (Whose Army?), which consisted in more than ten thousand soldiers covered in gold leaf posing the question: Who do armies protect? At the beginning of 2017, the piece You was presented for the first time in Mexico, at the Macroplaza in Monterrey. Today, the piece is being exhibited at the Patio Mayor of the Instituto Cultural Cabañas in Guadalajara, Mexico.
San Francisco officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center in Northern California. With a population of 808,437 residents as of 2022, San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of California. The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers) at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second-most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four New York City boroughs. Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include Frisco, San Fran, The City, and SF (although Frisco and San Fran are generally not used by locals).
Prior to European settlement, the modern city proper was inhabited by the Yelamu, who spoke a language now referred to as Ramaytush Ohlone. On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate, and the Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, transforming an unimportant hamlet into a busy port, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time; between 1870 and 1900, approximately one quarter of California's population resided in the city proper. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, it was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, the rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution, the peace movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States.
San Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities, high-tech, healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, and professional services sectors. As of 2020, the metropolitan area, with 6.7 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($874 billion) and 2nd by GDP per capita ($131,082) across the OECD countries, ahead of global cities like Paris, London, and Singapore. San Francisco anchors the 13th most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States with 4.6 million residents, and the fourth-largest by aggregate income and economic output, with a GDP of $729 billion in 2022. The wider San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland Combined Statistical Area is the fifth-most populous, with 9.0 million residents, and the third-largest by economic output, with a GDP of $1.32 trillion in 2022. In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $252.2 billion, and a GDP per capita of $312,000. San Francisco was ranked fifth in the world and second in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2023. Despite an ongoing post-COVID-19 pandemic exodus of over 30 retail businesses from the northeastern quadrant of San Francisco, including the downtown core, the city is still home to numerous companies inside and outside of technology, including Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb, X Corp., Levi's, Gap, Dropbox, and Lyft.
In 2022, San Francisco had more than 1.7 million international visitors - the fifth-most visited city from abroad in the United States after New York City, Miami, Orlando, and Los Angeles - and approximately 20 million domestic visitors for a total of 21.9 million visitors. The city is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods, as well as its cool summers, fog, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Alcatraz, along with the Chinatown and Mission districts. The city is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of California, San Francisco, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the de Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, the SFJAZZ Center, and the California Academy of Sciences. Two major league sports teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors, play their home games within San Francisco proper. San Francisco's main international airport offers flights to over 125 destinations while a light rail and bus network, in tandem with the BART and Caltrain systems, connects nearly every part of San Francisco with the wider region.
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.
The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.
Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.
Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.
The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.
Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.
The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.
The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.
After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.
Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.
The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.
During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.
During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.
In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.
From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.
One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.
After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.
In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.
The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).
Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.
Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.
In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.
The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.
In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.
At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.
Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.
In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.
Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.
In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.
Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.
To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.
Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.
In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.
During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.
Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.
In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.
Many people are used to the fact that agbada is purely trousers and blouse. However, the styles can be very versatile. Vertical stripes and interesting headdress visually stretch the silhouette. This style provides tremendous freedom of creativity. Now female agbada styles are incredibly relevant and in demand. These outfits look very refined and elegant, suitable for occasions and everyday life. If you wear these clothes, you not only make your image. Agbada is one of the names for a flowing wide sleeved robe worn by men in much of West Africa, and to a lesser extent in North Africa, related to the dashiki suit[citation needed]. The name "Agbada" originates from Yoruba language, one of the major languages on the continent. The robe is also known as Agbada in Dagomba language.Agbada styles for female began to gain popularity in 2018. Many people thought they would lose relevance as quickly as they received it, but this was not what happened. It does not look like this trend is going to exhaust itself in the near future. Agbada is known by various names, depending on the ethnic group wearing them:Agbada (Yoruba , Dagomba ), boubou (from the Wolof word mbubb), babban riga (Hausa), mbubb (Wolof), k'sa or gandora (Tuareg), darra'a Maghrebi Arabic, grand boubou (in various Francophone West African countries) and the English term of gown. The Senegalese boubou, a variation on the grand boubou described below, is also known as the Senegalese kaftan. The female version worn in some communities is also known as a m'boubou or kaftan.Women’s fashion is very diverse, as it allows you to be both feminine and classy. Designers show unprecedented talents, creating interesting stylish combinations. Never have their creativity manifested so brightly. Its origin lies with the clothing worn by the Islamic Tukulor, Mandé and Songhai peoples of the 8th-century Takrur and Ghana Empires, and 13th-century Mali and Songhai Empires. (See Bisht and kaftan for information on these.) The use of the grand boubou as clothing became widespread throughout the West African region with the migration of semi-nomadic groups such as the Fulani, and traders such as the Dyula and Hausa. The grand boubou as a full formal attire consists of three pieces of clothing: a pair of tie-up trousers that narrow towards the ankles (known as a sokoto pronounced "shokoto" in Yoruba) and a long-sleeved shirt and a wide, open-stitched sleeveless gown worn over these. They are generally of the same colour, and historically were made from silk, but increased understanding of Islamic restrictions on clothing meant the grand boubou is now mostly made from cotton and synthetic cloths made to resemble silk. The grand boubou's use was historically limited to various Islamised Sahelian and Saharan peoples of West Africa, but through increased trade and the spread of Islam throughout the region, it gained use among Islamised peoples in the savanna and forested regions of West Africa. Through this, the grand boubou was historically worn by Chiefs of the Yoruba of Nigeria, Dagomba of Ghana, the Mandinka of the Gambia, the Susu of Guinea and the Temnes of Sierra Leone.
This robe or gown is a distinctive example of the traditional hand-woven and -embroidered, loose-fitting, wide-sleeved, over-the-head garment worn by elites in Nigeria. These robes are always worn over other clothing and generally fall to the lower leg. In the past, such prestige robes were traded over vast distances and similar or related garments are found throughout much of West Africa. They are called agbada (Yoruba), riga (Hausa) and boubou (corruption of Wolof mbubb). Fine old robes have become family heirlooms passed on from father to son and worn with pride at major celebrations such as weddings and funerals. Even today, the grand boubou is mostly worn by Muslims, although it is gaining popularity as a fashionable form of attire among Christians in West Africa, the African diaspora, and very recently, even among Bantu people in East, Southern and Central Africa. Although usually a form of men's clothing, women's traditional clothing in much of Sahelian West Africa is of similar construction, though usually worn differently. In some places these are called the m'boubou. In other regions of West Africa, the female formal clothing has been a boubou variant, called a kaftan, and in other places it is the wrapper and headscarf.Also, there are more free options that suit women with almost any figure. The free cut hides all the imprefections and creates the effect of airiness, lightness, and tenderness.
Budgets - Personal Finance Manager to track your spending money visually
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As well, it’s beautiful.
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Larger snowflakes are visually beautiful when you find them during an active snowfall. They appear almost like impossible creations falling on your sleeve or mitten. This is what one of those big and beautiful snowflakes looks like up close - view large!
You really need to zoom in on the center of this snowflake. The hexagonal center is covered in cavities (bubbles) that brighten up certain areas and reveal an inner snowflake pattern well before the branches of the snowflake ever formed. These patterns are common, but it’s less common to see such sprawling branches evolve from them. Usually a snowflake with these patterns falls to earth before big branches are allowed to form. Not this time!
The branches grew each beating to their own drum, but it’s clear to see that it was the same make and model of drum that they were using. None of the six branches are even remotely identical, but there are signs that they were affected by similar physics along the way. The atmospheric conditions can’t change too drastically from one tip of a snowflake to the other, which is why most snowflakes have similar growth patterns. The conditions do change slightly, and aerodynamics play a part, but most snowflake have a similar “feel” across their structure, like we see here.
There are a few instances of very similar growth, most noticeably at the tips of each branch. Here we see broad growth that forked new branches at exactly the same time on all angles. Nearer to the center, a large branching event happened that created the broad branches inside the structure. Remember this: these branches all started to grow at the same time. This means that the main branches were at different lengths when the branching event happened. You can use these markers to create a mental image of how the snowflake might have looked at various stages of its life.
The further away you get from the center, the less likely things stay balanced and symmetrical. This snowflake is a slight exception with similar branch tips, but symmetry is a hard thing to hold on to. Nothing ties together the growth of the branches of a snowflake, and nothing makes us think they are beautiful. Atmospheric physics and human perception are at work here in some remarkable ways, and I’m happy to keep sharing these images until the end of winter. :)
If you’d like to dive deeper into the world of snowflake science and photography, there’s a book for that: Sky Crystals: skycrystals.ca/book/ - 304pg hardcover that will change the way you think about winter!
I’ve edited MANY of these images. I still enjoy each one, but the body of work has grown so large that I have been able to compile all of my snowflake images into a single print titled “The Snowflake”: skycrystals.ca/poster/ - check it out to see what five years and 2500 hours of work can create!
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WHEN I WENT TO DC-8 SCHOOL at the ABX Training facility in Wilmington, Ohio, the DC-8 pilot-trainer there showed us, on a visually open version of the DC-8 ground spoiler mechanism—the new in-flight prevention device retrofitted into the ground spoiler mechanism.
Far too late to save Flight 621.
But finally, there it was—and it looked to be such a simple mod.
People had to die because DC-8s lacked this until 1973?
A $500 retrofit from Douglas Aircraft or rather, after the 1968 merger, McDonnell-Douglas DC-8s? Really?
The ground spoiler problem was known for years before the 621 air disaster—this couldn’t have been fixed before?
So, finally, in 1973, another catastrophic crash of a “Stretch” DC-8-61 (Loftleidor - Icelandic airline) occurred at JFK, and the NTSB (National Transport and Safety Board ) hammer came down.
The DC-8 ground spoiler mechanism would finally be changed in two ways.
First, a protective assembly was required that would NOT allow the ground spoilers to extend, accidentally during flight. Second, the system had to stop the ground spoilers from being deployed manually during flight, by an overriding decision of the flight crew.
Sadly, again, too late to save Flight 621.
There were other factors in the crash. Erroneous FAA approved Douglas DC-8 Operation Manuals and just as erroneous Air Canada DC-8 Flying Manuals - all DC-8 types for starters.
The manuals stated the ground spoilers couldn’t be deployed in flight. Soon every DC-8 pilot flying, and the whole aviation industry knew they could. That was as unbelievable, as it was unsafe. There were several documented instances (various airlines) where the ground spoilers had done just that—extended. Accidentally, or by manual deployment of the flight crew. Either way, it was just bad, bad, design. And in the case of Flight 621 — lethal.
These DC-8 pilots and co-pilots were just trying to deal with an unsafe and unpredictable ground spoiler system. Spoilers do just that, they spoil the ability of an airplane to stay in the air. And they are the only thing that keeps an airplane on the ground during landing. Because, as former TCA pilot Harry Bell (deceased) told me, “an airplane loves to fly.”
Pilots everywhere were afraid of the DC-8’s ground spoilers.
Once armed, these spoilers could proceed to the next stage, extension, and do so unexpectedly. An electrical surge or even a pilot thinking he had only armed the spoilers sometimes discovered he had, in fact, extended the spoilers in flight! Usually, at about 2000 feet, roughly around the same time one had dropped the 8’s landing gear, so no harm done. Still, it shouldn’t have happened. or been possible. That was unnerving.
DC-8 pilots, worldwide, had come up with work-around solutions to remove the danger the spoiler system posed to their flying machines.
Captain Peter Hamilton and Captain Don Rowland had their own different work-arounds. Who was flying as captain for that flight got to use his “system” and the other, the sitting co-pilot (first officer), would co-operate.
On Flight 621 that’s where their competing systems got into trouble. After laughing off an argument, Hamilton and Rowland went with Rowland’s spoiler deployment system, even though he was the co-pilot on the 621 flight. At 60 feet above the ground, Rowland went to arm the spoilers, but instead skipped that step…and pulled the spoiler aft, extending the DC-8’s spoilers immediately. Flight 621 hit the runway with incredible force.
One thing, here, why did Don extend the spoilers, instead of just arming the spoilers?
Douglas Aircraft redesigned the ground spoiler lever on the new “Stretch” DC-8s. The older smaller DC-8s had a spoiler lever that resisted movement. One "wrestled" it into the armed position, so to speak. A movement in the moment one isn't likely to forget.
On the new, bigger DC-8s, it took very little effort to arm or deploy the spoilers. I’m guessing, but I think it just slipped Don’s mind (the process execution), as he was likely still distracted from his "soft spoiler argument" with Peter Hamilton who was “tired of fighting it”. Don was attending to other details during the very regimented, and labour intensive, DC-8 landing sequence.
Since the Air Canada DC-8 fleet comprised roughly 50/50 new, bigger…with 50% older, smaller DC-8s, and each group's airplane with different spoiler lever tension. Switching from one type of DC-8 to another might pose a transference problem for some in a crisis, or worse…in a moment of habitual repetition. Folks, we’ll never know.
Had Flight 621 crashed right at the airport because of the now famous spoiler error, the pilot and co-pilot might have been mostly at fault for the crash.
But, when the Air Canada DC-8-63 hit the runway, it lost an engine as it tore away from the starboard wing. Critical electrical and fuel lines were severed…which immediately resulted in a wing fire! Add to that, there was now a ten foot gaggle of loose sparking and arcing wiring hanging from the DC-8’s damaged wing. Now—with all these problems in tow, Flight 621 was airborne again.
Folks, the wing fire NEVER should have happened.
Never, never, never…
DC-8 engines were designed with exploding separation bolts!
In the event of unexpected engine stress, or if a DC-8 engine snagged something immovable, like, let’s say a runway—exploding engine bolts would ensure the engine would shear off cleanly—and not take volatile fuel lines and sparking wiring along with the departing engine. No harm, no foul.
But, clearly these exploding separation bolts failed on Flight 621's DC-8 and a deadly wing fire DID result.
Another faulty Douglas Aircraft design error. I repeat, the separation bolts failed to do what they were actually designed to do.
This ghastly wing fire meant the DC-8 was now on borrowed time.
From the Flight 621 air disaster timeline, we learned that “borrowed” time was roughly about three minutes, and distance-wise 8 miles or 14 kms of flight time. The time and distance Flight 621 travelled from Toronto airport (YYZ) to where it crashed in Castlemore, ON.
It’s hard to believe, but on top of all this—Douglas had yet another design flaw built into the DC-8 that led to Flight 621’s crash!
I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. Analog gauges in the cockpit!
That’s why the flight crew—Captain Peter Hamilton, First Officer Don Rowland, and Second Officer Peter Hill had a hard time getting a grasp on what was ACTUALLY happening to their DC-8! When power is cut to analog gauges, they “freeze”. So your airplane could be bleeding fuel…but since the fuel gauge has no power now, (wing tear and damaging engine separation) the cockpit gauge IS still registering "FULL". Same with oil gauges, hydraulic gauges, etc.
Remember, people…these guys have only three minutes, three lousy minutes, to pilot their large, and now compromised DC-8 to safety.
They won’t make it.
Partly because gads of time was just eaten up—trying to figure what the hell was going on with their DC-8…all along being fed "false positives" by misleading cockpit gauges.
Soon enough the wing fire will eat through the right wing. The second engine will fall off, the wing will split with one portion falling on the Wilbur Duncan* property, and the second portion falling on the Parr Farm acreage across the road. The struggling DC-8 will finally crash past the Parr property, and near to the Burgsma residence in Castlemore.
But in spite of all these converging Douglas Aircraft design flaws, and spoiler deployment errors by the air crew, Flight 621, could have been saved.
And we can turn to a more recent crash, the Concorde crash, to understand the failure that was the final undoing for Flight 621.
The 1970 Inquiry Report gave a “pass” to one group who featured prominently in the crash.
The Tower. Or ATC (Air Traffic Control) in modern parlance.
And in many folk’s opinions, their actions or lack there of, sealed the fate of Flight 621.
On page 29, we have this ridiculous Inquiry quote,
“In sum, there was nothing Mr. ——— (The Tower) could have done which would have assisted the air crew in ANY WAY in accomplishing remedial action after the initial touch down of this aircraft on Runway 32.”
And then again, on page 105 of the Inquiry,
(xxxii) “There was nothing that any personnel in the airport control tower (ATC) at Toronto International Airport did which caused this catastrophic result, nor is there anything that any of them could have done either before or after the initial touchdown of this aircraft to have avoided it.”
Nope. Wrong.
I strongly disagree with the Inquiry pandering to, and its’ excusing of air traffic control (The Tower) .
I can only think that somewhere in the background equation there was some sort of vested interest happening, an attempt to deflect from someone incurring a bigger portion of the liability pie? But, who knows for sure?
However, as soon as I read the page 29 quote, coming so early in the report, and before any real information about the crash had been relayed, alarm bells immediately went off in my head.
So, to get to the truth of the Flight 621 crash, let’s look at the 2003 Concorde crash…to learn what should be known about the 621 crash, shall we?
Like Flight 621’s DC-8, when Air France’s Flight 4590 Concorde departed the runway at Rossy-Charles de Gaulle Airport on take-off…its wing was on fire.
Watch what happens next.
De Gaulle Airport Air Traffic Control then warned the Air France Concorde pilot, Christian Marty, with this ominous observational statement:
“CONCORDE ZERO 4590, you have flames … STRONG FLAMES… you have flames behind you.”
Did Air France Captain Marty ignore this new input of information?
No. Captain Marty rapidly changed the course of his Concorde, aiming to immediately land at nearby Le Bourget Airport. He did not just ignore the fire and continue on to New York.
Unfortunately, we all know his Concorde also didn’t make it – the initial wound to the Concorde being far more lethal than the initial wound to Flight 621’s DC-8.
The Concorde only travelled a couple miles before crashing…while Flight 621’s DC-8 got eight miles away from the airport, with a full three minutes of flight time under its belt. Plenty of time to re-land.
The Tower should have just told Flight 621 that their DC-8 was billowing black smoke!
Why would you withhold such critical information that clearly was well beyond normal, EXPECTED, flying perimeters?! Tell the pilot what you were seeing (billowing smoke). That’s all it would have taken to save Flight 621.
The Air Canada Viscount (Flight 254) immediately following Flight 621 certainly mentioned the fire to air traffic control!
He told the tower, right away, directly!
I repeat why did “The Tower” hold back this critical information?
They did tell Captain Peter Hamilton he couldn’t re-land on Runway 32 because of debris on the runway!
The runway Peter just left. The failed to tell Peter that NEW runway debris was from his Air Canada DC-8!
Yes, the Tower was that remiss!
The Tower THEN gave Peter the option of swinging over to Runway 5. But Hamilton had no need to because he trustingly stated, “I think we’re alright." He only thought his DC-8 was alright because he didn’t know his wing was on fire! Something ATC could see quite clearly.
I talked to several DC-8 pilots who stated they could have landed the ailing Air Canada DC-8 within the seven mile, and three minute parameters. One pilot said he could have landed Flight 621’s DC-8 within a five mile flight route! All pilots believed they would have had plenty of time to save Flight 621 completely.
If ATC hadn’t been remiss, if Captain Peter Hamilton had been updated—as to the ailing status of his airplane—it was on fire—Flight 621 never would have crashed.
Observation of incoming/outgoing aircraft and status reporting to pilots—is the responsibility of air traffic control. That’s why controllers are high up, in a tower. A building with 360 degree windows all around its’ structure! So designed in order to see everything happening in the air and on the runways at the airport.
Had the Tower not been remiss on that ill-fated Sunday morning of July 5, 1970 and like De Gaulle Airport Air Traffic Control…had just done their duty and told the pilot his wing was on fire, this likely would have been Captain Hamilton’s response,
“Roger, understood! Pan-pan! Pan-pan! Pan-pan! All stations! All stations! All stations! Air Canada 6-2-1 swinging around immediately for an emergency landing on 05R. WING FIRE! Roll all emergency response vehicles! We will try to bring everyone in safely!”
And Air Canada Flight 621 would have landed with minimal loss, PROBABLY NOT any.
So sad—that with this accident, and so many other things in life—there are no do-overs ~
ADDENDUM
“Maybe, Peter Hamilton would have still flown the long 27 mile go-around circuit anyway, even if he knew his DC-8 wing was on fire?
No, he wouldn’t.
Peter Hamilton was WWII Halifax bomber pilot who got shot down over Germany. He bailed out from his bomber because it was on fire, and out of control. He knew how little time one had, when one’s airplane was on fire. Since one can’t “bail out” from a DC-8, the only other option is to land. And quickly. Peter would have swung around to Runway 5R which would have been the fastest way to land.
“But everyone seems to blame the pilots for the crash.”
Ignorance. And because of First Officer Don Rowland’s famous grief quotation,
“Sorry, oh sorry, Pete” was a sorrowful apology for extending the ground spoilers, accidentally, at 60 feet above the runway.
This oft quoted remark that forces one to commiserate with his plight, and that of those who perished on Flight 621 clouds the sombre fact, that actually, the crash wasn’t really his fault! Ground spoilers NEVER should have been able to have been deployed in flight! Show me a Boeing, a De Havilland Canada, or Airbus aircraft that allowed you to instantly crash a plane by deploying its ground spoilers ACCIDENTALLY, or MANUALLY while in flight. You can’t—because those other aircraft manufacturers had mastered the basics.
The DC-8 had serious design flaws, each one activated on its own could have led to a catastrophic accident. The fact that ALL of these design flaws came into play on Flight 621 and contributed to the crash, at varying degrees, can only leave one speechless.
“Maybe the Tower didn’t see what was happening to Flight 621?”
Sorry, I know the “official” Inquiry alluded to that, but I don’t buy it. When I had my Flight 621 crash site up, hosted at Apple Computer 2004/5/6 I had a retired air traffic controller residing in Australia see my site and contact me. He stated he was there in the Tower, that day. He was quietly reading the Globe and Mail when Flight 621 flew by—billowing black smoke that continued right out to the plane crash in Castlemore.
Unsure, if this guy was just finishing, just starting, or on break, but he was in the Tower and he saw the ailing DC-8.
Air Canada Flight 254 called the Tower to inform them, from their vantage point, due in to land right after 621 (flying 2.5 miles right behind 621) that Flight 621’s DC-8 wing was on fire.
You mean to suggest to me that the controller actually assigned to guide/watch Flight 621 during landing…didn’t see all this—and even more?! Get outta’ here.
“Can you give us a brief summary of the causes of the Flight 621 crash?”
Failure prone McDonnell-Douglas DC-8 spoiler deployment system. This system allowed the ground spoilers to be extended in flight manually, or even unexpectedly, from the armed position.
Erroneous McDonnell-Douglas DC-8 manuals misled airline operators about spoiler operation and inherent safety.
Air Canada in-house DC-8 manuals deviated from the manufacturer's guidelines.
Engine shear separation bolts failed to separate cleanly as per safety design which caused a right wing tear, and immediate wing fire upon engine separation.
Analog flight gauges.
Air Traffic Control failed to inform the pilots that their aircraft had caught fire after Flight 621’s failed attempt to land. Accident was entirely recoverable had pilots been informed of the status of their aircraft, immediately, on the overshoot.
Co-pilot made attempt to arm spoilers—but accidentally pulled the lever back extending the spoilers in flight. This initial action carried little weight in comparison to previously mentioned contributing and compounding factors.
.
ADD A CONDOLENCE to the FLIGHT 621 FAMILIES, or a LOVED ONE from FLIGHT 621, or a MEMORY of a PERSONAL EVENT related to the crash…at the City of Brampton's permanent Flight 621 site…SEE: www.brampton.ca/EN/City-Hall/Protocol-Office/Brampton-Rem...
PRAY FOR THE REPOSE OF THE SOULS for the passengers and crew of Flight 621:
Adams, Celine Fradette
Adams, Pierre J
Beaudin, Gaetan
Belanger, Mrs.
Belanger, Jacques
Belanger, Jean
Belanger, Roland
Belanger, Rosanne
Benson, Helen
Benson, Leonard
Benson, Mary
Benson, Richard
Bertrand, Ginette
Boosamra, Lynn
Boulanger, Guy
Bradshaw, Dollie
Cedilot, Robert J
Chapdeleine, Jeannine
Chapdeleine, Joanne
Chapdeleine, Mario
Charent, Jean Maurice
Clarke, Devona Olivia
Cote, Francine
Daoust, Yolande
Desmarais, Brigitte
Desmarais, G
Dicaire, Alice (Marie)
Dicaire, Gilles
Dicaire, Linda
Dicaire, Luke
Dicaire, Mark
Dion, Suzanne
Dore, Jacqueline
Earle, Lewella
Earle, Linda
Filippone, Francesco
Filippone, Linda
Filippone, Marie
Gee, Bernard
Goulet, Denise M
Grenier, Madeleine
Growse, Diana Cicely
Growse, Jane
Growse, Roger
Hamilton, Karen E
Hamilton, Peter Cameron
Herrmann, Ronald Alvin
Hill, Harry Gordon
Holiday, Claude
Houston, Irene Margaret
Houston, Wesley
Jakobsen, Vagn Aage
Labonte, Gilles
Leclaire, Marie Rose
Leclaire, Oscar
Leduc, Henri W
Lepage, Claudette
Mailhiot, Claire Gagnon
Mailhiot, Gerald Bernard
Maitz, Gustave
Maitz, Karoline
McKettrick, Winnifred
McTague, John
Medizza, Carla
Mohammed, Dolly
Molino, Antonio
Molino, Michael (Michel)
Moore, Frederick T
Partridge, Andrea
Partridge, Carnie (Carnis) Ann
Partridge, Cyril Wayne
Phillips, Kenneth William
Poirier, Rita
Raymond, Gilles
Raymond, Martial
Robert, Aline
Robert, Georges E
Robidoux, Lionel
Rowland, Donald
Silverberg, Marci
Silverberg, Merle
Silverberg, Steven
Simon, Istvan
Simon, Mark
Smith, Dwight Lee
St. Laurent, Blanche
Stepping, Glenn Thomas
Sultan, Celia
Sultan, Jerald. M
Sultan, Robert. L
Szpakowicz, Borys
Szpakowicz, Serge
Tielens, Carmen
Tielens, Frederick
Tournovits, George
Tournovits, Soula (Athanasia)
Weinberg, Carla
Weinberg, Rita
Weinberg, Wendy
Whittingham, Jennifer
Whittingham, John
Whittingham, Reginald
Whybro, Mary Baker
Wieczorek, Hildegund
Witmer, Edgar
Wong, Ngar-Quon
Wong, Suzie
Wong, Wong (Mansing)
Woodward, Dallas J
©2020-LPR CARDIN II - Special Projects In Research
* The former Wilbur Duncan property became part of the Flight 621 crash arena…when part of the Air Canada's DC-8's wing separated from the aircraft…and crashed into the house and backyard of the Duncan residence.
Sadly, on August 11, 2020, a 72 year-old man drowned in Castlemore (Brampton) in the backyard pond at the former Duncan residence, just a few feet away from the resting spot of the shorn DC-8 wing.
In the CP24 aerial video, the spot where the Air Canada DC-8 wing came to rest can be seen, and was the grassy area between the pond and the larger part of the house.
SEE:https://www.cp24.com/news/man-dead-following-reported-drowning-at-pond-in-brampton-paramedics-1.5059935
There are three Ashfords, really. The modern newtown, Swindonesque newbuilds stretching into the countryside; the Victorian railway town, all neat rows of brick buit houses and the station, and then there is the old town, timber-framed houses along narrow lanes, with St Mary standing towering above all but the modern office blocks.
The west end church was given over to a Christmas Fayre, but is also used now as a concert venue, while under the tower westwards is still in use as a church, with many of its ancient features left alone by the Victorians.
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A stately church in a good position set away from the hustle and bustle of this cosmopolitan town. The very narrow tower of 1475 is not visually satisfactory when viewed from a distance but its odd proportions are hardly noticed when standing at its base. The church is very much the product of the families who have been associated with it over the centuries and who are commemorated by monuments within. They include the Fogges and the Smythes. The former is supposed to have wanted to create a college of priests here, but by the late fifteenth century such foundations were going out of fashion and the remodelling of the church undertaken by Sir John Fogge may have just been a philanthropic cause. Unusually, when the church was restored in 1860 the architect Ewan Christian kept the galleries (he usually swept them away), but Christ Church had yet to be built and the population of this growing town would have needed all the accommodation it could get. Even in 1851 1000 people had attended the church in a single sitting. The pulpit, designed by Pearson, was made in 1897.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Ashford+1
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THE TOWN AND PARISH OF ASHFORD
LIES the next adjoining to Hothfield eastward. It is called in Domesday both Estefort and Essetesford, and in other antient records, Eshetisford, taking its name from the river, which runs close to it, which, Lambarde says, ought not to be called the Stour, till it has passed this town, but Eshe or Eschet, a name which has been for a great length of time wholly forgotten; this river being known, even from its first rise at Lenham hither, by the name of the Stour only.
A small part only of this parish, on the east, south and west sides of it, containing the borough of Henwood, alias Hewit, lying on the eastern or further side of the river from the town, part of which extends into the parish of Wilsborough, and the whole of it within the liberty of the manor of Wye, and the borough of Rudlow, which adjoins to Kingsnoth and Great Chart, are in this hundred of Chart and Longbridge; such part of the borough of Rudlow as lies adjoining to Kingsnoth, is said to lie in in jugo de Beavor, or the yoke of Beavor, and is divided from the town and liberty by the river, near a place called Pollbay; in which yoke there is both a hamlet and a green or common, of the name of Beavor; the remainder of the parish having been long separated from it, and made a distinct liberty, or jurisdiction of itself, having a constable of its own, and distinguished by the name of the liberty of the town of Ashford.
ASHFORD, at the time of taking the general survey of Domesday, was part of the possessions of Hugo de Montfort, who had accompanied the Conqueror hither, and was afterwards rewarded with this estate, among many others in different counties; in which record it is thus entered, under the general title of his lands:
¶Maigno holds of Hugo (de Montfort) Estefort. Turgisus held it of earl Godwin, and it is taxed at one suling. The arable land is half a carucate. There is nevertheless in demesne one carucate, and two villeins having one carucate. There are two servants, and eight acres of meadow. In the time of king Edward the Confessor, it was worth twenty five shillings; when he received it, twenty shillings; now thirty shilling.
The same Hugo holds Essela. Three tenants held it of king Edward, and could go whither they would with their lands. It was taxed at three yokes. The arable land is one carucate and an half. There are now four villeins, with two borderers having one carucate, and six acres of meadow. The whole, in the reign of king Edward the Confessor, was worth twenty shillings, and afterwards fifteen shillings, now twenty shillings.
Maigno held another Essetisford of the same Hugo. Wirelm held it of king Edward. It was taxed at one suling. The arable land is four carucates. In demesne there are two, and two villeins, with fifteen borderers having three carucates. There is a church, and a priest, and three servants, and two mills of ten shillings and two pence. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth seventy shillings, and afterwards sixty shillings, now one hundred shillings.
Robert de Montfort, grandson of Hugh abovementioned, favouring the title of Robert Curthose, in opposition to king Henry I. to avoid being called in question upon that account, obtained leave to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, leaving his possessions to the king; by which means this manor came into the hands of the crown. Soon after which it seems to have come into the possession of a family, who took their name from it. William de Asshetesford appears by the register of Horton priory to have been lord of it, and to have been succeeded by another of the same name. After which the family of Criol became owners of it, by whom it was held by knight's service of the king, in capite, by ward to Dover castle, and the repair of a tower in that castle, called the Ashford tower. (fn. 1) Simon de Criol, in the 27th and 28th year of Henry III. obtained a charter of free warren for this manor, whose son William de Criol passed it away to Roger de Leyborne, for Stocton, in Huntingdonshire, and Rumford, in Essex. William de Leyborne his son, in the 7th year of king Edward I. claimed and was allowed the privilege of a market here, before the justices itinerant. He died possessed of this manor in the 3d year of Edward II. leaving his grand-daughter Juliana, daughter of Thomas de Leyborne, who died in his father's life-time, heir both to her grandfather and father's possessions, from the greatness of which she was stiled the Infanta of Kent, (fn. 2) though thrice married, yet she died s. p. by either of her husbands, all of whom she survived, and died in the 41st year of Edward III. Upon which this manor, among the rest of her estates, escheated to the crown, and continued there till king Richard II. vested it, among others, in feoffees, for the performance of certain religious bequests by the will of king Edward III. then lately deceased; and they, in compliance with it, soon afterwards, with the king's licence, purchased this manor, with those of Wall, and Esture, of the crown, towards the endowment of St. Stephen's chapel, in the king's palace of Westminster, all which was confirmed by king Henry IV. and VI. and by king Edward IV. in their first years; the latter of whom, in his 7th year, granted to them a fair in this town yearly, on the feast of St. John Port Latin, together with all liberties, and to have a steward to hold the court of it, &c. In which situation they continued till the 1st year of Edward VI. when this collegiate chapel was, with all its possessions, surrendered into the king's hands, where these manors did not continue long; for that king, in his 3d year, granted the manor of Esshetford, with that of Wall, and the manor of Esture, to Sir Anthony Aucher, of Otterden, to hold in capite; and he, in the 2d and 3d of Philip and Mary, sold them to Sir Andrew Judde, of London, whose daughter and at length heir Alice, afterwards carried them in marriage to Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, commonly called the Customer, who died possessed of them in 1591, and lies buried in the south cross of this church, having had several sons and daughters, of, whom Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, the eldest, succeeded him here, and was sheriff anno 42 Elizabeth. Sir Thomas Smith, the second son, was of Bidborough and Sutton at Hone, and ambassador to Russia, of whom and his descendants, notice has been taken in the former volumes of this history; (fn. 3) and Henry, the third son, was of Corsham, in Wiltshire, whence this family originally descended, and Sir Richard Smith, the fourth, was of Leeds castle. Sir John Smythe, above-mentioned, died in 1609, and lies buried in the same vault as his father in this church, leaving one son Sir Thomas Smythe, of Westenhanger, K. B. who was in 1628 created Viscount Strangford, of Ireland, whose grandson Philip, viscount Strangford, dying about 1709, Henry Roper, lord Teynham, who had married Catherine his eldest daughter, by his will, became possessed of the manors of Ashford, Wall, and Esture. By her, who died in 1711, he had two sons, Philip and Henry, successively lords Teynham; notwithstanding which, having the uncontrolled power in these manors vested in him, he, on his marriage with Anne, second daughter and coheir of Thomas Lennard, earl of Sussex, and widow of Richard Barrett Lennard, esq. afterwards baroness Dacre, settled them on her and her issue by him in tail male. He died in 1623, and left her surviving, and possessed of these manors for her life. She afterwards married the hon. Robert Moore, and died in 1755. She had by lord Teynham two sons, Charles and Richard-Henry, (fn. 4) Charles Roper, the eldest son, died in 1754 intestate, leaving two sons, Trevor-Charles and Henry, who on their mother's death became entitled to these manors, as coheirs in gavelkind, a recovery having been suffered of them, limiting them after her death to Charles Roper their father, in tail male; but being infants, and there being many incumbrances on these estates, a bill was exhibited in chancery, and an act procured anno 29 George II. for the sale of them; and accordingly these manors were sold, under the direction of that court, in 1765, to the Rev. Francis Hender Foote, of Bishopsborne, who in 1768 parted with the manor of Wall, alias Court at Wall, to John Toke, esq. of Great Chart, whose son Nicholas Roundell Toke, is the present possessor of it; but he died possessed of the manors of Ashford and Esture in 1773, and was succeeded in them by his eldest son John Foote, esq. now of Bishopsborne, the present owner of them. There are several copyhold lands held of the manor of Ashford. A court leet and court baron is regularly held for it.
THE TOWN OF ASHFORD stands most pleasant and healthy, on the knoll of a hill, of a gentle ascent on every side, the high road from Hythe to Maidstone passing through it, from which, in the middle of the town, the high road branches off through a pleasant country towards Canterbury. The houses are mostly modern and well-built, and the high-street, which has been lately new paved, is of considerable width. The markethouse stands in the centre of it, and the church and school on the south side of it, the beautiful tower of the former being a conspicuous object to the adjoining country. It is a small, but neat and chearful town, and many of the inhabitants of a genteel rank in life. Near the market place, is the house of the late Dr. Isaac Rutton, a physician of long and extensive practice in these parts, being the eldest son of Matthias Rutton, gent of this town, by Sarah his wife, daughter of Sir N. Toke, of Godinton. He died in 1792, bearing for his arms, Parted per fess, azure, and or, three unicorns heads, couped at the neck, counterchanged; since which, his eldest son, Isaac Rutton, esq. now of Ospringeplace, has sold this house to Mr. John Basil Duckworth, in whom it is now vested. In the midst of it is a large handsome house, built in 1759, by John Mascall, gent. who resided in it, and died possessed of it in 1769, and was buried in Boughton Aluph church, bearing for his arms, Barry of two, or, and azure, three inescutcheons, ermine; and his only son, Robert Mascall, esq. now of Ashford, who married the daughter of Jeremiah Curteis, esq. is the present owner, and resides in it. At the east end of the town is a seat, called Brooke-place, formerly possessed by the family of Woodward, who were always stiled, in antient deeds, gentlemen, and bore for their arms, Argent, a chevron, sable, between three grasshoppers, or; the last of them, Mr. John Woodward, gent. rebuilt this seat, and died possessed of it in 1757; of whose heirs it was purchased by Martha, widow of Moyle Breton, esq. of Kennington, whose two sons, the Rev. Moyle Breton, and Mr. Whitfield Breton, gent. alienated it to Josias Pattenson, esq. the second son of Mr. Josias Pattenson, of Biddenden, by Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Felix Kadwell, esq. of Rolvenden; he married Mary, daughter of Mr. Henry Dering, gent. of this parish, and widow of Mr. John Mascall above-mentioned, by whom he has no issue, and he is the present owner of this seat, and resides in it. There have been barracks erected lately here, which at present contain 4000 soldiers. The market is held on a Saturday weekly, for the sale of corn, which is now but little used; and a market for the sale of all sorts of fat and lean stock on the first and third Tuesday in every month, which has been of great use to prevent monopolies. Two fairs are annually held now, by the alteration of the stile, on May 17, and Sept. 9, and another on Oct. 24; besides which, there is an annual fair for wool on August 2, not many years since instituted and encouraged by the principal gentry and landholders, which promises to prove of the greatest utility and benefit to the fair sale of it. That branch of the river Stour which rises at Lenham, runs along the southern part of this parish, and having turned a corn mill belonging to the lord of this manor, continues its course close at the east end of the town, where there is a stone bridge of four arches, repaired at the expence of the county, and so on northwards towards Wye and Canterbury. On the south side of the river in this parish, next to Kingsnoth, within the borough of Rudlow, is the yoke of Beavor, with the hamlet and farm of that name, possessed in very early times, as appears by the register of Horton priory, by a family of that name, one of whom, John Beavor, was possessed of it in the reign of Henry II. and was descended from one of the same furname, who attended the Conqueror in his expedition hither. The parish contains about 2000 acres of land, and three hundred and twenty houses, the whole rental of it being 4000l. per annum; the inhabitants are 2000, of which about one hundred are diffenters. The highways throughout it, which not many years ago were exceeding bad, have been by the unanimity of the inhabitants, which has shewn itself remarkable in all their public improvements, a rare instance in parochial undertakings, and by the great attention to the repairs of them, especially in such parts as were near their own houses, are now excellent. The lands round it are much upon a gravelly soil, though towards the east and south there are some rich fertile pastures, intermixed with arable land, and several plantations of hops; but toward the west, the soil is in general sand, having much quarrystone mixed with it, where there is a great deal of coppice wood, quite to Potter's corner, at the boundary of this parish.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a large handsome building, consisting of three isles, with a transept, and three chancels, with the tower in the middle, which is losty and well proportioned, having four pinnacles at the top of it. There are eight bells in it, a set of chimes, and a clock. In the high chancel, on the north side, is the college John Fogge, the founder of the college here, who died in 1490, and his two wives, the brasses of their figures gone; but part of the inscription remains. And formerly, in Weever's time, there hung up in this chancel six atchievements, of those of this family whose burials had been attended by the heralds at arms, and with other ceremonies suitable to their degrees. Underneath the chancel is a large vault, full of the remains of the family. On the pavement in the middle, is a very antient curious gravestone, having on it the figure in brass of a woman, holding in her left hand a banner, with the arms of Ferrers, Six masctes, three and three, in pale; which, with a small part of the inscription round the edge, is all that is remaining; but there was formerly in brass, in her right hand, another banner, with the arms of Valoyns; over her head those of France and England quarterly; and under her feet a shield, being a cross, impaling three chevronels, the whole within a bordure, guttee de sang, and round the edge this inscription, Ici gift Elizabeth Comite D' athels la file sign de Ferrers . . . dieu asoil, qe morust le 22 jour d'octob. can de grace MCCCLXXV. Weever says, she was wife to David de Strabolgie, the fourth of that name, earl of Athol, in Scotland, and daughter of Henry, lord Ferrers, of Groby; and being secondly married to John Malmayns, of this county, died here in this town. Though by a pedigree of the family of Brograve, she is said to marry T. Fogge, esq. of Ashford; if so, he might perhaps have been her third husband. Near her is a memorial for William Whitfield, gent. obt. 1739. The north chancel belonged to Repton manor. In the vault underneath lay three of the family of Tuston, sometime since removed to Rainham, and it has been granted to the Husseys; Thomas Hussey, esq. of this town, died in 1779, and was buried in it. In the south chancel are memorials for the Pattensons, Whitfields, and Apsleys, of this place; and one for Henry Dering, gent. of Shelve, obt. 1752, and Hester his wife; arms, A saltier, a crescent for difference, impaling, on a chevron, between three persons, three crosses, formee; and another memorial for Thomasine, wife of John Handfield, obt. 1704. In the north cross are several antient stones, their brasses all gone, excepting a shield, with the arms of Fogge on one. At the end is a monument for John Norwood, gent. and Mary his wife, of this town, who lie with their children in the vault underneath. The south cross is parted off lengthways, for the family of Smith, lords of Ashford manor, who lie in a vault underneath. In it are three superb monuments, which, not many years since, were beautified and restored to their original state, by the late chief baron Smythe, a descendant of this family. One is for Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, in 1591; the second for Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, his son, and Elizabeth his wife; and the third for Sir Richard Smyth, of Leeds castle, in 1628: all which have been already mentioned before. Their figures, at full length and proportion, are lying on, each of them, with their several coats of arms and quarterings blazoned. In the other part of this cross, is a memorial for Baptist Pigott, A. M. son of Baptist Pigott, of Dartford, and schoolmaster here, obt. 1657, and at the end of it, is the archbishop's consistory court. In the south isle is a memorial for Thomas Curteis, gent. obt. 1718, and Elizabeth his wife; arms, Curteis impaling Carter. Under the tower is one for Samuel Warren, vicar here forty-eight years, obt. 1720. The three isles were new pewed and handsomely paved in 1745. There are five galleries, and an handsome branch for candles in the middled isle; the whole kept in an excellent state of repair and neatness. There was formerly much curtious painted glass in the windows, particularly the figures of one of the family of Valoyns, his two wives and children, with their arms. In the south window of the cross isle, and in other windows, the figures, kneeling, of king Edward III. the black prince, Richard, duke of Gloucester, the lord Hastings. Sir William Haute, the lord Scales, Richard, earl Rivers, and the dutchess of Bedford his wife, Sir John Fogge, Sir John Peche, Richard Horne, Roger Manstone, and—Guildford, most of which were in the great west window, each habited in their surcoats of arms, not the least traces of which, or of any other coloured glass, are remaining throughout this church. Sir John Goldstone, parson of Ivechurch, as appears by his will in 1503, was buried in the choir of this church, and gave several costly ornaments and vestments for the use of it.
Visually impaired and disabled Veterans from across the United States participate in the 21st National Disabled Veterans TEE Tournament
"MAGNIFICENT SOLAR FLARE: A visually beautiful solar flare erupted from the east limb of the sun today. Extreme UV radiation briefly ionized the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere; otherwise, our planet was not in the line of fire. The responsible sunspot will turn toward Earth in the days ahead, boosting chances for geoeffective solar activity as the week unfolds."
[ SpaceWeather.com ]
NASA SDO image 8.24.14 -- AIA 094, 335, 193.
Thank you NASA/SDO, and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams, for the wonderful data/resources.
Bali is one of the few places on earth made visually stunning by its main economic activity. In no other locale of the island does this hold truer than in the Tabanan District of west Bali where the cascading rice terraces of Jatiluwih are the most striking feature of the agricultural landscape, claiming even slopes that look too formidable to be of any possible use.
Along with majestic Pekerisan River in Gianyar and the stately Taman Ayun Temple in Mengwi, Jatiluwih has been chosen as a new nominee as a World Heritage site. It’s a great honor for Bali to have its natural and cultural wonders included, as the sites will take their place right along side world-famous Borobudur, Prambanan, the Sangiran archaeological site, Ujung Kulon, Lorentz and Komodo national parks, and the tropical rainforests of Sumatra.
The achingly picturesque area of Jatiluwih actually comprises not only rice fields but also forests, lakes, springs, temples and a huge natural mountain reserve scattered over a wide area around the slopes Mount Batukaru, a sacred landscape whose boundaries are defined by a cluster of temples supported by traditional villages and farmlands administered by age-old subak organizations, the local water boards.
This site is among the most striking examples of terraced agriculture in the world and is arguably Bali’s oldest and most complex real-life model of the subak agricultural system which vividly reflects the intertwined, mutually beneficial relationship between the island’s traditional rice growing culture and its Bali Hindu spiritual belief system.
Bali’s terracing and irrigation practices are even more elaborate, sophisticated, and seasonably predictable than those on Java. Though beautiful rice field terraces also can also be found in Sumatra and Sulawesi, there is no irrigation organization in Indonesia comparable to Bali’s water conservation and distribution system. Only the 2000-year-old Ifugao rice terraces of the Philippines can hold a candle to Jatiluwih.
As it exemplifies such effective water usage over centuries, Bali’s famed environmentally friendly subak system itself is being considered for the World Heritage list. The effort to get the subak system listed to World Heritage status is especially urgent in the face of widespread diversion of agricultural lands. Over the past 20 years Bali lost more than 1,500 ha of precious rice fields to make way for the development of tourist resorts, restaurants, housing complexes, road construction and other commercial enterprises.
The Realm of Dewi Sri
Jatiluwih is one big sculpture. Because of the Tabanan area’s superb drainage pattern, the high volcanic ash content, and the island’s equable climate, conditions for traditional sawah cultivation exemplified by Jatiluwih’s terraces are perhaps the most ideal in all of Bali.
Rice growing is practiced as both an art and a science. Bali’s steep and narrow ravines, as typified especially in the western part of Jatiluwih, are not easy to dam. To remedy this problem, the area’s farmers have devised an ingenious system of hand-built aqueducts, small catchments, and underground canals to collect rainwater from Bali’s mountain lakes, spilling each farmer’s precious allotment of water onto tiers of paddy via thousands of tiny waterfalls.
Jatiluwih’s rice fields are irrigated by water that is sometimes channeled by tunnels through solid rock hillsides. Water needs high on the ridges often require tunnels two or three kilometers long. This complex irrigation system, continuously maintained, groomed, and plowed, has been developed over many centuries. The historical manuscript, the Bebetin, records that Balinese farmers have used the Subak system since at least 1071.
Some scholars have postulated that it is due to the expertise of Bali’s rice farmers that the Balinese have been able to support such a refined civilization with such a theatrical and colorful religion. The discipline required to share water and resources has created a remarkably cooperative way of life. Rugged individualists cannot exist in communities where every farmer is utterly dependent on the cooperation of his neighbors.
The word for rice (nasi), a staple of the Balinese diet, is the same word for “meal”. A Balinese cannot imagine a meal without rice. Specialized vocabularies deal with every aspect of rice farming, and a huge amount of time, energy, and money go into petitioning the gods so the rice farmer’s work may yield good results. Popping up everywhere in Jatiluwih’s rice terraces you see small temples dedicated to Dewi Sri, the beloved goddess of rice.
So, since having the realisation that I use my 365 as a chance to visually document one event of the day, it has made my mind a lot clearer on the approach to shooting.
This shot was slightly influenced by Lism
Today it rained in the morning, which was good because it finally got rid of the remnants of snow. Which meant for the first time in about 2 weeks I have been able to wear shoes other than my age-old cowboy boots.
Its not quite safe enough for heels yet, so I wore my flats. I bought these shoes in London in May. I love red shoes the best, however I have an uncanny ability to always chose the most inappropriate shoes for any occassion. If I am ever let down, it is through my choice of footwear. Wedges to do archery, yellow jellys on worn away steps (you can read about this here ) and none-grip wellies on sheet ice, I've been there.
I bought these because of another shoe-faux pas.
I went to London for a few days break and at the same time meet up with my friend Margaret. She was over from Canada, we met on Facebook and this was a good chance to meet in person.
The first night I hooked up with her, we were walking all around London and on the tube stations through rush hour until suddenly I couldn't walk another step. My wedges were now too painful to walk any further. Margaret has great style and came to the rescue! She took me to Office and showed me these shoes she had seen earlier in the week. I tried them on and bought them immediately- they are sooo comfortable!
So, I'll dedicate this photo to her, the Canadian lady with a vintage twist :)
Oh and I'm sick of wearing black. Somehow my brain goes on autopilot when its time to do a load of washing, and I manage to only do black washes. Which results in a funereal approach to style. So, I deliberately washed brights this week. And clashed with block colour tights. Lovely :).
Visually distilling what a family get-together can look like, for me Part 2. Canon 5D Classic + Sigma ART 35mm F1.4 EF
Located just above the riverfront, the Savannah Cotton Exchange is a visually stunning display of historic architecture on Bay Street. Erected in 1886, the Exchange was designed by well-known architect Williams Gibbons Preston.
At the time of the Cotton Exchange’s conception, Savannah was ranked first as a cotton seaport along the Atlantic, and second in the world, making The Cotton Exchange a predominate station for the cotton trade. Up until the beginning of the Civil War, cotton was the leading export from Savannah, making up eighty percent the city’s agricultural products.
The Cotton Exchange uses a Romanesque revival style of architecture. Constructed of red, terra cotta bricks, the structure is accented with ornate detailing over the doors and around the windows. Built-in columns frame the façade and its symmetrical layout. At the top of the structure where the cornices meet, a pediment, or ‘gable’, contains a relief sculpted of terra cotta.
The Cotton Exchange is also one of the rare structures in the world to be built over an existing public street (Factor’s Walk).
Image by Ron Cogswell using a Nikon D80, with minor Photoshop effects.
DSC_0176
A group of blind and visually impaired performers from Morocco, Togo, United Kingdom, and Switzerland performed during a cultural event on October 6, 2016 organized by WIPO and the Government of Morocco. The cultural event also included an exhibition entitled "The Centenary of Industrial Property in Morocco."
The event was held on the sidelines of the WIPO Assemblies, which met in Geneva from October 3 to 11, 2016.
Copyright: WIPO. Photo: Violaine Martin. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO License.
Located in the heart of San Francisco, Osha Thai Restaurant and Bar offers a visually stunning dining experience that perfectly blends modern design with traditional Thai aesthetics. As soon as you approach, you’re greeted by a lush exterior adorned with vibrant florals and greenery, setting the tone for an inviting atmosphere. The restaurant's architecture is a feast for the eyes, featuring a contemporary take on Thai elegance with sleek lines, wooden accents, and a color palette that exudes warmth.
Inside, the design continues to impress with ambient lighting, strategically placed to highlight the restaurant's architectural details. The open-concept layout creates a sense of spaciousness while still providing intimate nooks for diners. Large windows and soft lighting make it a prime location for enjoying both a casual meal and a special occasion.
Osha Thai’s exterior features modern landscaping that complements the restaurant’s urban vibe, complete with an alfresco dining area that's ideal for soaking in the energy of the city. The lush greenery and hanging florals add a tropical touch, while the use of natural wood and metal contrasts beautifully with the vibrant surroundings, creating an urban oasis feel.
Known for its sophisticated ambiance and exquisite cuisine, Osha Thai has established itself as a landmark in San Francisco's dining scene. Whether you're drawn by the design, the food, or the atmosphere, this spot has become a must-visit for locals and visitors alike.